She’s Write About That!
Last fall, my friend and fellow writer, Michele Bekemeyer and I put our heads together and wrote a series of essays on our approaches to different aspects of writing. This is the archived content from that endeavor.
Yesterday, my friend Michele Bekemeyer (MichBek) and I were discussing the implications of insanity that probably come with talking to our characters. They are, after all, imaginary people, right? Somewhere along the lines, we got to talking about what a great writing blog post that would make, and our conjoined blog plot was born. I can’t fully take the credit. It was actually the brilliant idea of James Melzer, who while listening to me relay my conversation with MichBek said, “You know what you guys should do…” So, I talked to MichBek, and here were are embarking on our first tag team writer’s topic blog post. Are you scared yet?
Each week, we will choose a writing topic to tackle, and without looking at what the other had to say, we’ll post on Sunday evening and link to each other’s blogs. It’s a two for one on some pretty interesting topics, so I hope you’re as excited about it as we are.
And now, on to the topic of the week: Talking to your characters…
I won’t lie. I do it. I do it all the time, and sometimes I talk to those imaginary people with more emotion and feeling than I use when talking to actual people in my every day life. Our characters are a part of us, but as we weave them into the tapestry of their own stories, they take on a life of their own. They become separate entities with wants, needs, desires and emotions beyond that which we first envisioned when we first conceived of them on random slips of notebook paper while daydreaming during work or school.
Now before you scoff at me, and start dialing for the men in white coats, I have to ask you this: how well do you know your characters? If I asked you what his favorite color was, or the place she would most likely run off to if she were having a bad day, could you answer me? Who is his mother? Does she have any siblings? Are they close to their families, or estranged? How does his familial structure play into who he is today, and what kind of effect would that have on him if he found out his girlfriend or wife was pregnant with his first child?
I could go on all day, and I’m sure you could too, especially if you talk to the people who live inside your head. It sounds crazy, but hey, we’re writers, and in order to orchestrate lives and universes you almost have to be unhinged. Sometimes my relationships with the characters I write about (note how I did not say create, as I really think these people existed somewhere in the universe long before I wrote about them, and I just channeled them to tell their stories…) is so intense that I find myself arguing with them over details in the story that we disagree on. I think he should wait to kiss the girl, he thinks they should have had sex yesterday…
All crazy talk aside, maybe you don’t hear your characters that clearly, and that’s okay too, but I will tell you this: knowing your characters inside and out is essential to making them into believable people. Believable characters resonate with readers and become old friends by the end of a story. Think about the last book you read that left you feeling lonely as you closed it upon reading the final page. It wasn’t the words you missed, or the smell of the paper… it was the people you shared the journey with–the characters.
So maybe you have some trouble hearing your characters clearly, or you just really want to get in on the crazy I’ve been talking about. Either way, there are things you can do to tune in to your characters and make them spill their secrets so you can write them the way they were meant to be read.
Long before you ever start writing the serious parts of your story, spend some time getting to know the people who will frequent that world. Create character sheets, many varieties can be found for free download online, and print them out. Sit down somewhere quiet, fill in the blanks and answer the questions on your character sheets. Answer the questions naturally, not allowing yourself to put too much time into them. Over-thinking will lead to the creation of a stubborn character who doesn’t really know what he or she wants or stands for. Natural answers are instinctual, and your character’s way of saying, “Yes! That is me. That is who I am!” Keep your character sheets and notes on hand when you start writing, as you may need to refer to them for minor details.
While you’re writing a scene, pay attention to the thoughts that go through your mind, and look for subtle nuances in the tone of voice. This is often the voice of your character breaking through. Personally, this takes a lot of focus for me, as I tend to tune out completely when I’m writing, as though I’m channeling wisdom directly from the muse. Take notes if you can, as sometimes these notes will lead you to great discoveries about your characters that will impact the nature of your story.
Write side stories. A great way to get to know your character and the events in his or her life that led up to the person you are writing about now is to write side stories. Remember all those details you wrote down when filling out your character sheets and the notes you took while tuning into your character’s voice? Now is the time to draw on those things to get to know your character better. A great example of this, to demonstrate what I mean, occurred in the third Indiana Jones film. Since Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was no small secret that Indy wasn’t fond of snakes. In the third film, we find out about an event that happened during his childhood that likely perpetrated that fear of slithering, legless beasts.
Now you may be asking me about the actual conversing with my characters, since I haven’t really mentioned that yet. Don’t worry, the crazy is coming… and by crazy I am not afraid to admit I have written letters to my characters in moments of frustration to try and help me unearth ways to get to the bottom of monumental standoffs. By standoff, I mean writer’s block, and now I want you to ask yourself how often your writer’s block has been the direct result of not seeing eye to eye with your character’s needs. Sit down and write a letter to your character and ask him to show you the way to a solution. You’d be surprised how often this works.
Now I’m going to get really hokey. Some of you may be incredibly surprised by how hokey, but I would be selfish not to share the techniques that work for me. I’m a little new age, have been all my life, and I’m a firm believer in guided meditation. This may take a bit more work for those of you who do not practice meditation regularly, but over time and through meditation, plan out a face to face meeting with your character. Sit down and talk directly on this level and find out how you can work together.
Short of these more extreme methods, it’s not uncommon to find me sitting at my computer screen with my face twisted into a scowl and the words, “What the hell are you trying to prove you stupid zombie slayer…” just on the tip of my tongue. Most of the time they’ve already been spoken, and I have no shame about that.
In closing, talking to your characters is also a clever way to disguise what some people might term as mental illness. If anyone dares to look at you and exclaim, “My word! You’ve got multiple personality disorder!” You can always shake your head and say, “Oh no, I’m a writer.”
Now, go find out what MichBek has to say about talking to your characters because you can guarantee that She’s Write About That!
At first, I wasn’t sure why I proposed to MichBek that we write about writer’s block. Other than the fact that it affects just about every writer on the planet, I sometimes like to think it doesn’t affect me. I have always had an abundance of creative ideas. In fact, right now I have about twelve, possibly even more, ideas for short stories and four or five novel topics. My excuse for not writing them: time.
As I reevaluated my excuse this morning over coffee, it hit me that the real reason I do not write them is because I am blocked. The truth is, I have four open short stories right now waiting for me to finish them and three novels. That’s a lot of unfinished business, and maybe you’re eyes are wide as you start to ask me, “So why don’t you just finish them, already?”
My pathetic answer, “I can’t.”
Well, not can’t, not really. I can, but the fact that I haven’t lends to poor attitude, which grows into self-perpetuated doubt in my eventual ability to do so. Instead of writing, I feel bad about not writing, and come up with more ideas for future stories instead. Sometimes I actually start those new stories and wind up with a bigger pile of unfinished stuff staring back at me with eyes angrier than the ones Mrs. Potato head uses on her snarky husband in Toy Story: 2.
This is a block, and as long as I’ve been writing I’ve considered blocks to be excuses. If you read my blog yesterday, you know how I feel about excuses. They’re like little lies we tell ourselves to feel better when we aren’t doing what we should be. “But I had a dentist appointment… But I have to work… But I have kids… But I have blah-blah-blah…” What you have is a bunch of excuses and in the end nothing to show for them.
Is writer’s block the same for everyone? Of course not. Some people get to a certain point in the story and they don’t know where they want to go from there. Even worse, they know exactly where they want the story to go from there, but don’t know how to get to that point from where they are. This second restriction is one of the worst types of block, because I personally believe it is a direct result of perfectionism. We want the story to be exactly like we see it in our head, but sometimes it doesn’t come out on the paper that way, at least not at first. Instead of pressing on and finishing the story first, we pick at the unfinished product until there’s nothing left of it but a lost idea we would rather not touch at all.
So what do I do when I have writer’s block? Do you want the truth, or some fancy advice I cooked up to make you feel empowered and like you can do anything? Okay, I’ll tell you the truth first, and then I’ll share my fancy advice with you too. When I have writer’s block, I don’t do much of anything. Well, that’s not true. I do everything but write… I clean my bathroom, vacuum the floor, walk the dog, walk myself, make some lunch, go shopping, mess around on Twitter, play mind-numbing games… the list goes on and on. I do everything except write–the one thing I need to do more than anything else.
What’s my fancy advice? This is an easy one: glue your butt to the chair and write. Now before you slap yourself in the middle of the forehead and say, “I could have told you that!” It’s a lot harder than it sounds. Why? Because first you have to shut the voices in your head off long enough to actually get some work done. What voices am I talking about? Not the character voices we talked about last week, but the voices of doubt and confusion, the high-pitched whine of perfectionism that wants to eat away at writer you until there’s nothing left but a perfect sentence no one will ever read.
Writing past the block means not being afraid to just keep going, to let go of the wheel, so to speak, and let he words fall onto the page. They may not be perfect the first time you write them, but you will have a complete project if you press on. A project you can preen and polish to your heart’s content AFTER you finish it. Maybe it’ll take a different turn than you originally intended. That’s okay too. Just finish the idea. Finish the project. Put it away for a few days or weeks after you’re done and move on to the next idea. Follow the same routine. Before you know it, writer’s block won’t have anything on you.
Of course, I know this is all much harder than it sounds. This is where the excuses start to become really easy to make. Most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re making them. The thing is, being an artist, musician or writer is not a comfortable thing. It’s all consuming, and sometimes the excuses we make help us escape when the creative pressure is too much. Ask yourself this, though: Would you rather give up the creativity altogether? Try to imagine the rest of your life without you ever writing another story, creating another character, completing the final edits on a manuscript… because every time you give in to writers block and the excuses that come with it, the writer inside of you dies just a little bit.
Writing is the only way to break writer’s block. Writing through the block, even when it’s hard and it feels like everything you type or pen is absolute crap. Write through it. Worry about fixing it later. Just write.
Grand advice… now I am going to go put it into practice, and so should you. Before you do, you should go see what my friend Michele has to say about writer’s block. You can guarantee that whatever it is, She’s Write About That!
See you next week!
Look at me, blogging when I’m out of town. Okay, not really, I wrote this blog before I left because Michele and I didn’t want to leave you guys in a lurch on our third week out. This week, we’re talking about reading our work out loud, something podcasting requires you to do, obviously, but long before I was a podcaster, I read everything I wrote out loud.
My penchant for reading my work out loud actually started around the same time I started writing. I would sit down, scribble out a story, and then read it to myself over and over again, sometimes tweaking bits I thought needed work or might sound better if read a different way. As my life as a story writer/teller evolved, I often trapped my poor friends into listening to me read my latest endeavors while we talked on the phone. Some of my friends, bless, suffered this torment until I was well into my twenties. Friends I shared the writing passion with often traded story time with me over the phone, or while we hung out in person, and after a reading we would talk about the characters, plot and structure which was incredibly helpful to me as a writer.
When I went into college, my second creative writing class, creative nonfiction with Professor Jerry Wemple, required us to read our work in front of the class as part of the workshopping process. Arriving in class with completed drafts of our projects, we took turns reading those drafts out loud and then offering feedback to each other. It put every writer in the class on the same level and was designed to help us put important factors like voice, characterization and dialogue into perspective.
Oral storytelling is one of the oldest forms of literature known to mankind. Long before there were massive paper tomes, e-Readers and Podiobooks, people sat around their village fires and told stories. It is likely those stories began as re-tellings of the battles and deeds of great warriors, and as the stories evolved they gathered elements of fiction until it became popular for the storytellers and bards to spin fictional pieces strictly for entertainment purposes.
For centuries reading and writing was reserved for scholars and priests, but that did not stop men from telling stories around the fireplace. Even as reading and learning was explored by those of other social class and status, vocal storytelling remained a favored pastime in every culture.
You can learn a lot about yourself as a writer from reading your work out loud. For example, how natural does your dialogue sound? When creating scenes between characters, you also want to create a unique voice and personality through the use of dialogue. In order for your readers to be able to relate to your characters, it is essential that you craft believable dialogue that contributes to personality and character development. Reading your work aloud will allow you to listen for these differences to ensure that you are not simply going through the motions with dialogue and making everyone sound exactly the same.
Another benefit to reading your work out loud is that you get to hear your writer’s voice. In the beginning, many writers imitate their favorite authors and influences, but over time every writer develops their own unique voice and style. As you read your work out loud, listen for signs of your unique voice, and even strain to hear the impact of your literary influences.
Error-proofing is one of the greatest benefits of reading your work out loud. No matter how many times I edit a chapter, I’ve found that reading it aloud is one of the best proofreading methods in the world. Generally as we read and skim our manuscripts of errors, our brains don’t catch everything. Sadly, they also misinterpret data from time to time because it reads it the way we intended for it to be read at the time. Reading your work out loud requires you to really read the words on the page, and will help you cut down on the number of overall mistakes in your manuscript.
Podcasting Goblin Market has made a huge difference in how I view my characters and their actions. While recently recording episode ten of Goblin Market, I came across an section of the writing that made no sense at all when I read it out loud. The funny thing about that is when I first wrote that passage I distinctly remember thinking it was clever and witty. Boy was I wrong! Of course it only took a few minor word rearrangements before it made sense, but that’s another one of those cases where your mind gets ahead of your fingers and the words come out distorted. You may not see that when reading over it because the voice in your read it out of context.
Another great benefit of reading my work out loud, at least for me personally, is that it instills a sense of confidence in the writing. You become certain of the words as you make those minor adjustments throughout the story, lending believability and conviction to your story.
While I am relatively certain not everyone is interested in podcasting their fiction, you may want to record your work in a free program like audacity, then sit back and listen to yourself and your story. Imagine all the things you could learn about your writer’s voice, your characters, your tone and your story by listening from an outside perspective. We writers tend to be perfectionists by nature, always honing and preening our work until every last word is absolutely perfect (which is never, usually,) so an added opportunity to put on your editorial cap and get to work will more than likely be welcome.
If you can’t record your own stories to listen to them, try to find a willing ear to listen and offer you feedback as you read your story aloud. Don’t be afraid. Minor stage fright never killed anyone, and besides it’s good practice. You know, for that day you become a famous writer and are asked to read one of your short stories in front of a crowd. You’ll be practiced and ready!
Now that I’ve convinced you of the importance of reading your work out loud, I hope you’re dusting off your microphone and getting ready to record. Before you do that, however, click on over to see what my colleague, Michele Bekemeyer has to say. Whatever it is, you can guarantee that She’s Write About That!
Homework. The word brings dread to the hearts and minds of nearly everyone who hears it. It inspires memories of high school algebra, chemistry and vocab. It may even bring to mind that horrid teacher, you know the one who was always on your case about turning in late assignments, but when I talk about homework, I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about research.
Michele and I picked this topic for She’s Write About That! almost two weeks ago, and I’ve been itching to get started writing my post ever since. No matter what genre you write in, research is an essential factor to creating believable fiction. Research keeps your facts straight, strengthens your hold on the subject material, but most of all it keeps your mind fresh because you’re always learning.
A long time ago, I read a horoscope that said, “Gemini: You must always be learning. To stop learning is to stagnate. Stagnation leads to depression and death.” Wow. Way to layer on the doom, cosmos! In all seriousness, those words resonated with me. In high school I wrote constantly, and part of the joy of writing my stories revolved around doing the research that made them more identifiable and real. I dug deep into the heart of the places I was writing about so that even if I hadn’t been there in person, I could try to capture the essence of that place through research.
Research is how you come to know material you wish to write about, but have no prior experience with. There are people who will tell you that you should write what you know, and that trying to write outside your knowledge sphere will lead to unrealistic and unbelievable material. As a writer who’s delved into horror, fantasy and science fiction nearly all my life, I can tell you that gathering first hand experience in demonic unicorns is not easy. Those little bastards are tough to find in the wild, so turning to other forms of research is necessary.
Reading is fundamental. I’ve blogged this topic inside and out over the last year because I firmly believe in that those old plugs they used to play between Saturday morning cartoons. The more you read, the more you know/grow. Since it is impossible to hop into Doctor Who’s TARDIS and head back in time to Victorian England to gather knowledge for your novel, history books are there to guide you. Hundreds of scholars have specialized over the years in putting together thorough historical accounts on everything from period behavior, literature of the time, appropriate clothing, rules of courtship and so much more.
Another great source of information is well-versed authors specializing in the type of fiction you want to write. If you’re going to write about werewolves, check out other authors who have explored the beast within. If you’re writing romance, check out all variations of the genre. The books you read don’t have to be NY Times Bestsellers either. I’ve read and learned from books by some rather obscure authors that unfortunately most people will never even hear of. You should too.
Outside of reading and taking extensive notes while doing so, hands on experience is a beautiful thing. While I realize that gaining hands on experience is often difficult, especially if you write in a genre that doesn’t allow much in the way of reality, there are ways you can get close to even the most imaginative creations and time periods. A few years ago, while I was writing Goblin Market, I spent every weekend working the local Renaissance Faire. The reality setting for Goblin Market is set in an obscure time period, and the fantastic setting is a place that doesn’t even exist, but traipsing through the faire every morning and watching it come alive with faeries and goblins, royalty and peasants was an eye opening experience that provided more inspiration than I could have ever asked for. Here were people who loved the historical and fantasy aspects of history and literature so much, they dove into character and created something so unique that it deeply influenced my writing.
Conventions and reenactments offer a peak into lost and forgotten worlds and time periods. Imagine all the experience and information you could gain from partaking in a Civil War reenactment, or the Vampire’s Ball. Laugh if you must, but these experiences are more inspirational than you could ever dream, and they will put you in the frame of mind you need to be in to write about them.
Travel is another aspect of research that will lend credibility and strength to the settings of your stories. If you’re writing about a local place you’re familiar with, spend time learning the folklore, legends, landscape and history of that place. The ability to walk the land and breathe the air of that place will seep into your fiction in such a way that your readers will really feel as if they are there, experiencing the moment.
Not everyone has the travel budget of their dreams, unfortunately, so sometimes you may have to wing it and travel vicariously through documentary and written guides. A couple of years ago I wrote a series of urban fantasy stories about Selkies. Selkies are legendary beings from Celtic mythology, seal people, if you will. The stories passed down from generation to generation tell of these magical creatures who shed their seal skin to walk on the earth in human form. If their skin is captured, they become the property of whoever holds it. Many a poor selkie woman became wives to greedy and possessive human men, bearing their children, but all the while longing to return to the sea. My ancestors come from Norway, Scotland and Ireland, so this legend intrigued and inspired me. I was unable to travel at the time I was writing, but I sunk deep into the legends, the land and the sea. All of my stories in this collection were set between America and the Orkney Isles, a place that I still long to explore after having spent so much time researching and learning about them. I read every travel guide I could find, watched every video in the public library and spent countless nights online exploring Orkney, and increasing my longing to one day walk its pebbled shores in search of selkies.
I guess what I’m getting at in this long-winded blog post is that even in school, when they assigned us homework, it was for a good reason. Doing your homework strengthens your grasp on the things you wish to become well-versed in, and as a writer you must have a strong grasp on your subject material. You need to live, breathe, eat, sleep and dream it twenty-four hours a day in order for your depictions of it to be realistic and memorable.
And now, I’m off to the werewolf farm to study waxing and waning moon cycles and cast a few silver bullets, but before you take my word on all of this, don’t forget to check out what my co-blogger and friend, Michele Bekemeyer has to say about doing your research. Whatever it is, you can guarantee that She’s Write About That!
While sitting in class, Ken leaned forward to poke Anne in the back with his pencil, “What are we writing again?”
Anne’s annoyance flared over her shoulder in a hot breath, “Dialogue, you idiot!”
Ken looked down at the paper in front of him. Dialogue. What the hell was dialogue? God, he hated English class. It was such a bore. He poked Anne’s shoulder again, “What’s dialogue?”
“Ken, if you poke me again with that thing, and I’ll snap it in half.”
“Dude,” Daryl leaned over and nudged Ken in the side, “that’s what she said.”
Okay, enough with the dirty jokes, but with the title of this week’s She’s Write About That, I honestly couldn’t resist. Dialogue, for many people, is the bane of their writerly existence. Either the formatting throws them off, or it feels impossible to create believable exchanges between characters, but the fact is, dialogue is one of the most important parts of your story. It creates atmosphere, draws away from the “telling” aspect of characterization and plot, develops character and sets the overall tone for your story.
There are a number of basic, structural rules that seem to allude new writers. I’m not going to spend much time on them here. You can learn a lot about how to structure your dialogue by reading and making note of how the dialogue appears within the text, how it is tagged, when to use quotation marks and how every new speaker gets a new paragraph. These things are very important in establishing a readable story, so if you’re not sure how to set up dialogue, you may want to spend some time reading, and studying grammar tomes.
As I mentioned above, dialogue is a great way to develop character. If everyone in your story spoke in the same tone all the time, everyone would sound like a robot. It’d be impossible to tell one character from another. Think back to when you were just learning to read. Many of us grew up on the Dick and Jane books, even though they were horribly outdated by the time.
See Dick run.
“Run, Dick. Run.”
Every bit of tagless dialogue in those early stories was incredibly simple, and obviously used to make a point at the time, but looking back, much of the time you couldn’t tell one character from the next. Every slab of dialogue was as meaningless and droll as the next, and all I ever really learned about Dick and Jane was that they had a dog named Spot, and sometimes they liked to run.
When you’re writing scenes in your stories that contain dialogue, that dialogue should carry the moment. It should be quick, witty and the central focus in the scene, but not because it’s poorly executed. It is a great place to drop plot hints, establish character traits and personality and carry the story by deviating from the narrative.
One of the best tips I ever got from a mentor was people watching to learn about dialogue. Dialogue sequences should be quick, in most cases, just like normal conversations. Sitting in a coffee shop and listening carefully to the conversations that go on around can give you a realistic idea of the natural flow and exchange of words between people.
Realistic dialogue is rarely rigid, and much of the time people hardly speak in complete sentences. People interrupt each other, laugh and groan, sigh and pause, and all of these things are essential when crafting your dialogue to make it believable. After all, despite the fact you’re writing fiction, it needs to be convincing in order for people to follow along as you’re telling the story.
One of the pitfalls with trying to recreate natural dialogue is adhering to closely to social structures. If you sat in a diner and recorded a conversation for later study, one of the things you would notice is how difficult it is to follow without the action between speech to break up the monotony.
“He said he would be there.”
“And he didn’t show?” Marla looked down into the coffee mug in front of her, watching the cream swirl.
“He didn’t show,” she said. “I think he’s cheating on me.”
Marla still didn’t lift her gaze, “Really? Cheating on you?”
“If I could just catch him in a lie…” her voice trailed off into silent reverie. “Maybe I should follow him next time.”
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
Stacy didn’t hear the hint of alarm in Marla’s tone, she was too caught up in vengeance, and maybe that was a good thing. It would give her time to warn Derek before it was too late.
So obviously, Marla and Derek are up to something, and if you’re blinded by emotion and on the brunt end of that something, chances are you won’t see it, but the reader can. Without the extra action added into the scene, it would be impossible to tell what was really going on, and your plot would take even longer to unravel.
You also don’t want to give away too much information all at once. If you spill out the entire conversation in two sentences, you don’t have time to develop plot, action and personality.
And speaking of personality, another important thing to consider is how your dialogue shapes your characters. If everyone speaks in the same, dull tone, it will be hard to tell one character from the next. Adding quirks to the action and tags of your dialogue will help you make stronger, more identifiable characters. One thing you want to avoid is resorting to over-exaggerated dialogue with too much slang, profanity and regional dialect, unless that is your character’s natural voice. Even still, over-exaggeration, unless your writing a comedy will make it harder to take your characters seriously. Referencing region and interjecting elements that demonstrate the region will strengthen both the plot and character. For example, if one of your characters is a hard-nosed cop from Brooklyn or a delicate southern belle, you’ll want to avoid relying too heavily on conversational stereotypes to enhance the character. Through characterization and action, you can draw these elements out more effectively, than by relying on dialect.
Avidly study other writers and how they employ dialogue in their stories. Some writers seem to do it effortlessly, while others may struggle with it, but you can learn a lot from your fellow writers. Some great dialogue masters that I’ve always loved include Charles Bukowski, Anne Rice, Jonathan Carroll and Neil Gaiman. No matter your personal opinion about these writers, or their work, there is something about the way they craft that dialogue that draws me into their stories and makes me believe in their imaginary worlds.
I could go on for days talking about dialogue, but instead, I’m gonna direct you now to see what my partner in words, Michele Bekemeyer, has to say about the subject. Whatever it is, you can bet the farm that She’s Write About That!
As a huge advocate for all things zombie-related, of course I got a shiver of delight when @michbek and I chose brainstorming for this week’s “She’s Write About That.” Even though brainstorming really has nothing to do with zombies, and would probably be a good way to kill them if you could configure the details, it is a great way to add detail, structure, history and backstory to your work. Sometimes it’s a fantastic jumpstarter for creative endeavors, whether writing related or not, and while you may not be a fan of typical brainstorming techniques, I bet you do it all the time, and don’t even know it.
One of my favorite brainstorming methods is the old bounce-an-idea technique. Sometimes in basic conversation about the weather or some odd tidbit of news, lightning strikes in the brain, and you find yourself recovering with the vibration and buzz of an exciting new idea. “Oh my giddy aunt,” you back out of the conversation for a minute. “That scenario would make a great story.” As the idea starts to generate momentum inside your brain, you tell your conversation partner about it to see what they think. If this friend is a writer, chances are you’ll get some great feedback on how to fill it in and get it started, and an outside view into bits and pieces you might not have considered originally. Even if your friend is not a writer, you can get a great perspective from outside the writer’s frame of mind. Either way, bouncing ideas off of interested friends adds fuel to idea sparks, turning them into raging infernos you can’t wait to get started on. Some of my most favorite stories have resulted after sitting down and hashing out the idea with a good friend, so there is definitely merit in doing so.
Recently, while exchanging emails with an incredibly helpful mentor who wanted to know more about what I was asking for assistance with, I added further explanation, which lead to more explanation. The funny thing is, I had nothing more than a basic idea about the one character’s history, but as the emails increased in number, and I found myself digging deeper to explain things, I created the full backstory for one of my characters and didn’t even realize I was doing it. Then it hit me. w00t! That part of my process was done. So I sat down, and wrote the history thanks to that great conversation, which means less work for me to do later. Sure, I’ll still need to do more research to make sure the holes are all filled in, but my direction is much clearer now than it was originally.
While I was in college, I took this weird writing class with one of my favorite professors: Dr. Michael McCully. In truth, I don’t even remember what the title of the course was, but he really emphasized in the early weeks of the course on freewriting. Each day for a week, he had us sit down and freewrite for ten-fifteen minute increments, and then at the end of the week asked us to leaf through the pages to find common elements. Our final project for that time period was to find one theme among the writing and create a unique essay from it. At the time, I was hell bent on reality TV being the bane of universal existence, and every one of my freewrites was this cloud of reality tv ranting. While combing through them, I pieced together a pretty interesting piece that earned me an A. Imagine what I could have come up with he’d asked me to write fiction? Oh, believe me, I came up with some pretty interesting fictional scenarios that would have had him raising his eyebrow, but the point is, just freewriting itself was a huge source of inspiration.
Sometimes sparking an idea to life through freewriting can lead you to some really amazing places, because the whole point of of freewriting is to just write whatever comes to your head. “I think this class is really boring. God, I wish I was home watching TV. Tonight is Destination Truth. I love that show. Josh Gates is my hero. I swear that man could do anything. Last week they went to Abudabe and researched strange alien cats that occasionally arrive in post-marked box from the house of some guy named John. Wonder if he has a cat… Or maybe a dog who doesn’t like cats. Wouldn’t it be funny if cats could send mail? I bet my cat would send me dead mice in the mail. She’s weird like that. Last week, she went outside and ran around in circles for two hours. I wonder what goes on inside cat brains…” You get the point. And while that little escapade was really ridiculous, but afterwards, while coming through it, I could the beginnings of an interesting story about an underground race of cats who use the post office to traffic strange, cat wares. Ridiculous, but it’s an idea. 
The thing is, when many of us sit down and start writing, it’s because of an idea that sparked inside the mind. Some people meticulously plan and plot for weeks, sometimes months before they can even start the actual writing process, and others dive “write” in and get to the writing. It doesn’t matter which method you employ, but brainstorming for ideas strengthens your story. It can help you create plot points, characters, character motivations, setting, period details, climactic scenes and so much more.
No matter how you brainstorm, whether you use a microcassette recorder on long car trips, a pad and pen, post-it notes, index cards, a good friend or any of the other dozens of brainstorming techniques recommended by a vareity of writers, it will strengthen your writing. Why does brainstorming work? Because it is a right-brain activity. When you’re writing, you use your left brain, so you don’t think on the same level. Giving your right brain some exercise through brainstorming will make your work even that much more creative AND believable, because you’re putting the time and effort into strengthening your ideas.
Personally, I’m a talker. I love to hash out ideas with friends and bounce them off of other writers for outside perspective. I’m not sure how Michele Bekemeyer does things, but you should check out her blog this week about brainstorming. Whatever she has to say, you can bet the farm that She’s Write About That!
Okay, okay. Maybe you do need an editor. I know that even doing editing for others, I still need an editor myself. We all need an extra set of eyes from time to time to look over our work, pick out the mistakes and help us improve the overall content., but long before you hit up an editor, self-editing is an essential part of the creative process. Editing your own work will not only help you analyze your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, but you can pinpoint spelling and word mistakes, grammar errors, plot and character weaknesses and points in your story that might need expansion or even reduction. There are a number of self-editing techniques you can put into practice, like proofreading, reading aloud and even reading backwards.
Workshopping is one of my favorite self-editing techniques because a second pair of eyes definitely helps you find things you don’t even think to look for. Blinded to your own errors, it somtimes pays to have someone else help you see where you might need a little work. Not to mention the fact that you will read things as you wrote them originally and will be more likely to skip blindly over simple errors. Someone else unfamiliar with the work will be able to easily pick things out.
Another great technique for catching those hard to spot errors is reading the text backwards. Printing out your work and going backwards line by line through the sentences will mix up the word order just enough so that you can spot spelling mistakes and double words. This seems like a weird technique, but trust me, it works. It also works much better if you print the work out. Trying to read on the computer screen is hard enough as it is, but to read backwards is even harder on the eyes.
And speaking of printing and computer screens doing a number on your eyes, I know it seems a small feat, but you can pick up a lot of errors if you print your work off and set it aside. Give yourself three days to a week before you proofread, so you put some distance between yourself and your story. Putting distance will allow you to catch the aforementioned errors that you may have just passed over because the story and the writing was still fresh in your mind. For longer pieces of work, you may need to wait even longer. Find a comfortable medium for yourself.
One of my favorite self-editing techniques came along long before I started podcasting my work. Reading out loud helps you test the power of your words, the structure and flow, and you can guarantee that you’ll find more than you bargained for in the way of errors. You can test out the conversational impact between characters and really get a feel for the way others will read into your words. You can record yourself reading and listen to the result after the fact for little details that need attention.
As I said above, everyone needs an editor. Even editors miss things, so the more polished your work is before you send it out, the less you need to worry about the editor missing. A well polished story will also impress the editor you work with, and make you a client they look forward to editing for. So the next time you think your first draft is okay, because we all do it, think again. Take the time to edit your work before you share it with the world. Employ one or more methods for the best results in presenting the cleanest, tightest writing. Let’s face it, as writers we have a hell of a job on our hands when it comes to drawing in our readers, and the last thing you need is minor editorial distractions to deter from the quality of your story.
Don’t forget to hop hop hop over to see what Michele Bekemeyer has to say about self-editing. We all have our methods, and whatever MichBek has to offer in the way of advice, you can guarantee that She’s Write About That!
