Questions

Whenever an ***?piring writer speaks to me about fiction writing ***?ps, one of the most frequently ***?ked questions is: how do you find the ***?me to write?

The answer I ****?t to give, “just do it,” doesn’t quite suffice. So in this article, we’ll examine the matter in a little more detail.

We live in a busy world, with numerous demands on our ***?me: jobs, spouses, children, draining work commutes, TV shows we ****?t to watch, emails to read and respond to, phone calls to ***?mily and friends. When you look at your daily schedule, it may appear that you simply don’t have ***?me to write.

Well, I’ve got both ****?d and bad news for you.

The ****?d news: even with a ***?ght schedule, you can still get work done. The bad news? Something in your lifestyle will have to suffer, or change, to accommodate your fiction writing.

There are no short ***?ts, no easy answers. You’ve got to get creative–and motivated.

For example, do you get a lunch break at your job? Start taking a notepad with you and using that ***?me–even if it’s only thirty minutes–to work on your stories. Do you commute to work via carpool, bus, or subway? Instead of reading the newspaper or listening to music on your iPod, plug away on your novel.

One of the keys to productivity is learning how to identify those pockets of free ***?me during the day, and then using them to your benefit. It’s not ***? hard ***? you may think. In ***?ct, when you really examine your daily schedule, you might be ***?tounded at how much you could accomplish.

Can you do some fiction writing while your children are playing, eating, or napping? Could you scribble or ****?tate a few paragraphs while waiting in line somewhere? Zip out some prose ***? you wait for dinner to cook?

And yes, you might even have to give up some things. Do you really have to watch all of those TV shows every week? Do you have to spend hours on social networking web sites, accomplishing nothing in particular?

Locate the “fat” in your life, trim it out, and replace it with some fiction writing! Even if all you can manage is just one hour a day, that is something. Do a page an hour and you’ll have a solid draft in 9 - 10 months, which isn’t so bad at all.

You can do it. Really. Starting today.


- Brandon R. Massey

I love a short story. A great short story can take me on a ride, deposit me in delicious emotional upheaval, or prompt ongoing thought. Only, not all short stories are a pleasure to read. The truth about short stories is that they can be dull. Yes, they can be self-involved, confusing, predictable, droll, drivel.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for writing straight from the heart or the head onto the page; it can be therapeutic in wonderful ways. But I’m not talking about that type of expression here. I’m talking about the stories that a writer wants to put out there in the wider world — publish or have published — not the other stories. Those stories should stay firmly put, at home in a journal; written for self or the pure joy of writing, shared with family and friends perhaps, but not inflicted on the outside world.

So how can you know which stories should be inflicted on the outside world? The answer involves just two words. These two words are essential to the short-story writer, but are often forgotten while embroiled in the whole process of generating a story — these words are “the reader”.

Let me introduce you to the reader. The reader likes to be entertained. The reader shies away from anything predictable or clichéd. The reader will scoff at anything that doesn’t ring true.

The art of the perfect short story is to consider the reader when you write your story.

Here is what the reader wants: The reader wants something to happen in your story. She doesn’t want to have to wade through paragraphs of flowery prose or stream-of-consciousness emotion to find the action, climax or event. Besides, there’s no room for all that in a short story. Aim for Interesting and punchy; take the reader on a ride, not an aimless amble through the country.

There’s no room for lots of complex twists and plots. Your perfect story is simple, but told in an interesting way. Is there confusion in your story? The reader sighs deeply and tells you to go back and remove it immediately. Your story has a beginning, middle and end; the reader wants no more, and no less.

The truth be told, the reader wants to get emotionally involved. So allow the reader to get emotionally involved. Wait, don’t just allow it: Demand it. Write something that provokes emotion in the reader. The reader doesn’t want you to hand them emotions on a platter. Don’t tell “Helen was happy”, but show the events that made her happy, so the reader can participate in her happiness. Don’t just say “It made Helen smile”; communicate her happiness with original description.

The reader wants to meet the characters in your story head on. She has no interest in convening with wishy washy characters with ordinary uninteresting traits. Ban stereotypical characters with stereotypical traits from your stories. Each character wants something; work out what it is they want. Make your main character someone the reader can empathize with, sympathize with, or so interesting she can’t look away.

As you can probably tell by now, the reader is demanding. Well that’s not the half of it. The reader not only wants interesting characters, she wants interesting settings too. Be inventive and imaginative with your settings.

Most of all, the reader doesn’t want only glimpses of brilliance in a short story, she wants consistent brilliance. She wants snappy attention-grabbing prose ending the race with a strong finish, not a feeble flop over the finish line. The reader doesn’t want a raw first draft, spilt directly from your head onto the page (refer to paragraph 2). The reader wants something planned and polished, where every sentence advances her towards the peak moment of the story and the ending; where each word is there by necessity.

So take heed from the reader before you embark on your next short story. The moral of this story, if there is one, is — Don’t be short-story selfish. Think of the reader, not yourself.


- Suzanne Male

There’s nothing like a great opening to a story to get your readers hooked. Here are some suggestions that will almost guarantee that your readers will keep reading.

Your story should start with some significant event or turning point and present the main character with a problem they have to solve. It should interrupt the hero’s life and send him off in a new and exciting direction. It should excite the readers’ interest and hook them into wanting to read more.

If you can include a sentence or phrase that poses the problem, or the hint of a mystery or some sense of intrigue, then the reader will eagerly devour your prose to find the answer. If there’s one thing readers like it’s a good puzzle, and better still they like to engage with the author and try to work out what’s going to happen next. So hint at some difficulty or coming conflict which will engage the reader’s mind and get them thinking.

For instance: ‘Elaine opened the letter she had been dreading and read, “Dear Ms Corquadale, We have conditionally accepted you application as Head of Science at Tollesbury School for Girls, but we have further questions to put to you regarding your late mother’s will and the unusual bequest she has made to the school.”‘

Your opening should quite clearly tell the reader what kind of story it is. Is it a romance? An adventure? A horror story? Humourous? Whatever it is make this obvious from the start.

If you are introducing more than one character as you open your story make it clear who your main character is. From then on unfold events from his or her viewpoint. Don’t make the mistake of bringing in too many characters too soon. Let the reader become acquainted with them gradually or they may become confused. It’s a bit like being introduced to strangers at a party; you need time to remember their names.

“But how will the poor reader understand what has gone on before and how my hero got to the opening hiatus?” I hear you asking. Well, for starters it’s a bit early in the morning to start using words like ‘hiatus’ but I know what you mean. The thing is you can use the ‘flashback’ device that will neatly answer this problem.

You know what that is, I’m sure, but for any writers new to the craft I’ll explain. After zapping the reader with your exciting opening there should soon come a time when the pace slows down a bit. At this point you can introduce a flashback to fill in some background.

For instance: ‘Gerald sat down breathlessly on the grass behind a thick hedge well away from the farmer’s shotgun. If only he had realised, he thought to himself, that his decision to leave sleepy Swancote-by-the-Sea and embark on the life of a photo-journalist could have landed him into so much hot water, things might have been different.’ This gives an anchor to his past, and more can be filled in later if needed. There are other devices but space does not permit.

Another opening gambit is dialogue. Start with someone saying something. Not necessarily the hero, but make what they say pertinent to the story’s theme with that all important hook to engage the reader. Such as, “Mr Bullstrode, if you don’t come out of your bedroom immediately I shall call the police!”

Hopefully the above ideas will have given you the inspiration to get cracking and create some great openings to your stories.


- Mervyn Love

I hear hes all the rave these days, i just want to know what type of writer he is. And how’s his prose i hear its kind of weird.
And please write why you think he is either a liteary writer or pulp fiction. The longer your answer is the better/
- wefangwe

Time is precious, and readers need a reason to keep reading—it’s a fact of life these days when information is available almost instantaneously. Especially in the Internet, you must get to the point right away, as studies have shown that on average you’ve only got nine seconds to make an impression and hook a reader before he or she clicks away. Readers want to know why they should bother reading the documents you produce, and they don’t want to wade through dense, unclear prose, which is why writers can make their work more successful by learning the art of brevity.

To ensure your intended message comes across clearly and quickly, consider the following strategies.

1. Know Your Reader

Knowing your intended reader is essential for success, no matter what you’re writing. But in the context of brevity, knowing what your reader needs to gain from your document allows you to get straight to the point. So consider: what does your reader want? What you’re your reader need? And how can you communicate that right away? Always consider the reader first and then use that knowledge to convey your written document’s purpose in a way that hooks the reader immediately—then you can eliminate everything that isn’t critical.

2. Brevity Doesn’t Mean Your Ideas should be Under-Developed

While many of the clients and readers you’re writing for will like shorter documents, shorter isn’t always considered better. No matter what you’re writing, you have to make your points effectively. So you can’t just eliminate content for the sake of keeping it short. The key is to say what you mean in as few words as possible, whether you’re writing a 100,000-word novel or a 300-word blog post.

Remember, too, that brief and clear are not necessarily the same thing. A piece of text can be brief, while not clear at all. As always, choose all your words carefully and do enough research to ensure that you can communicate the most important points in a concise way.

3. Work within Your Word Count

An important factor to consider in this discussion is word count. If you’re writing an assignment, you may have a word count guideline that you need to meet. In this case, the challenge is often to keep your information concise so that you don’t exceed your limit. Make sure all the content is relevant. Once again, this means that you’ll need to look at the project with an objective eye and cut any information that doesn’t belong, even when it might be part of an otherwise beautifully written sentence. But you shouldn’t write less than the required amount, either.

For example, when consultants are contracted to carry out research and produce the necessary reports, readers often prefer to see longer, more developed works submitted to them. As well, when a school tutor asks for a 500-word essay, they really mean it and you won’t get away with anything less. Of course, that goes for publishers as well. Most have minimum word requirements that they expect any submission to follow. Not hitting the prescribed amount usually means that your text may be discarded.

4. Copyedit for Conciseness

Another way to ensure that everything you write is brief is to use language effectively by conveying your meaning with as few words as possible. Where brevity is concerned, you should go back over your text to look for sentences that can be reworked in a more concise way. For example, adverbs and passive verbs often add unnecessary wordiness. Remember that unnecessary words and phrases will only turn the reader off from the subject matter, and when that happens often enough, they’ll turn away from the piece altogether.

Brevity and Clarity in Your Writing

In their work and private lives, people are pressed for time and if you can’t give them a reason to keep reading right away, then they won’t. When you use these strategies, you can ensure that your written works are as clear and brief as possible, and that your readers will stick with you to the end.


- Melinda Copp

So, I’m lame and am trying to write some meandering prose about nothing in particular.

Do you have any tips for coming up with names for characters? Some I come up with are interesting and usuable but those are few and far between.

Does anyone have a method they use in creating character names?

Could you point me towards a book or paper discussing names in creative writing?

Thanks!
- locash

Silence Is A Poetry

Silence is a poetry, not a prose.
One sound of silence rhymes with
Every other sound of Silence.
Silence is a poetry.

Life Is A Poetry

Life is a poetry.
Days rhyme with days,
Nights rhyme with nights,
Sea splashes rhyme with each other.
Baby cries rhymes with each other.
Summers rhyme with summers.
Winters rhyme with winters.
Heart beats rhyme with each other.
Life is a poetry.
- Alex N

some site that will have reviews and all that but it should be free…
- AskMe

What would make for a good writing hobby? Would it be good to adopt a traditional format and to try my hand at short stories or a novel? I am looking for a way to express myself and to work on something lovely. Can I sit at the word processor and start plugging away? Are there any writers out there who can give me advice? Or is there anyone who enjoys a creative writing hobby? Really, anyone at all, who wants to give me a shout, can respond, in good faith that I will enjoy reading the answer.
- parrotdaryl