Tag: Writing

  • O Is For… Opening!

    Openings.  They’re hard.  “You have to grab the reader in the first sentence.”  “If you haven’t gotten the reader’s attention in the first three pages, you’ve lost them.”  “The first three chapters are all you’ve got.  If you can’t take the reader by storm in the beginning, the you aren’t going to keep them reading.”

    No pressure, hah!  That’s heaps of pressure!

    Many times when I sit down to open a book my brain will go blank, because I’m trying to come up with a knock-their-socks-off opening.  Here’s how I get around it:

    I don’t try to start at the beginning.  Another piece of advice is, “get into the action as late as possible, and get out as early as possible.”  So when writing, if I see a scene but not the opening, I don’t worry about the setup.  I get into the scene and write what I do see.  In the process, I usually come up with an opening – or I worry about it during edits.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What advice do you like about starting new projects?

  • M Is For… Maps! – by Rachel Wilder!

    My partner in crime, Rachel Wilder, has some thoughts about maps for you. Rachel, take it away!

    This turned out to tie in with the previous post. I guess great minds think alike!

    Maps are great in preventing you from getting lost and are also useful in that respect, when an author is writing. Engaging characters and a well thought out plot are huge factors for a successful good story. Setting is right up there in importance and maps can help in that regard.

    I love road maps for many different things when I write. From telling me how long that car trip is going to take, to where a side street is for our hero to rush out and rescue our main character. Another useful tool is a simple, pencil drawn home-made map for a setting.

    This is from Burning Bright, a male/male romance penned by A. Catherine Noon and yours truly.

    Sasha approached the street corner. This side of the brick building housing the Factory lay quiet and unoccupied, its exterior lights out. On the other side of the narrower street, empty windows stared at him. Too rattled to read the name of the business on the placard, he turned right and glanced back after discovering no parking lot with his Chevy waiting.

    “Hi.”

    The voice startled him and he stopped short of running into the muscular chest of a man, who stepped out from a doorway. He wore a leather trench coat over jeans, Russian gang tattoos visible on the naked skin of his upper torso.

    “Fuck,” Sasha blurted.

    The sketch above was invaluable in keeping us- and the action – right where we needed it to be. Don’t worry about the level of your ability, just have fun and grab a pencil.

    So, have you ever gotten lost?

  • L Is For… Location! – with Guest, Grace Kahlo!

    Please help me welcome Grace Kahlo, one of the newest members of the Writer’s Retreat.  Grace, take it away! 

    No matter which genre you write, location is a fundamental base to your story. The setting complies of more than time and place. It goes along with culture, architecture, vegetation, dialect, and everything that makes your story world complete and unique.
    The fun thing about location is that how you go about it depends on you. Some writers choose to write about a location they know, some travel especially for research purposes, some writers enjoy couch traveling, and some invent everything from scratch.
    Personally, I prefer to spend less time researching, and more time writing. I’m currently writing and editing a romantic high fantasy, and planning a contemporary romantic suspense. 
    For the fantasy, I pretty much invented every aspect of the setting, and even drew a map of the world. I decided I wanted a mountain ridge, with each mountain belonging to a different type of magical being. On the lower grounds, I have a city for wizards, city for witches, and basically there are different beings on every piece of land. 
    Why?
    Because, in my story, the land chooses its caretaker.
    Now what would happen when different beings want to live on other lands? It’s gonna get messy, and that’s part of the fun. 🙂
    That’s just scratching the surface. Because every caste of magical beings have their culture, their dialect, their approach to the land. And the weather is different on a mountain’s peak—colder, fresh and biting—than the warm, moist weather of the lower grounds.
    So, setting is an integral part of every story.
    For the contemporary, I need to research. My starting point is that I need a woodsy area with wild animals to heighten the stakes and make the scenes heart-thumping with worry and danger. I decided to go with Florida. Now I need to set a trail, because there’re going to be lots of running away and chases in the book. 

    How about you? How do you go about deciding the location and all of the details of your setting?

  • J Is For… Just – and Other Garbage Words

    We all use them.  They’re the little words that don’t really need to be there, like “really.”  They come from colloquial conversation and pepper our writing because it’s how we talk, but not necessarily how we write.

    Here are some examples of “garbage words” that I look for when I’m editing a manuscript:

    • So
    • That
    • Then
    • And then
    • Just
    • Really
    I literally use the “find” function in my word processing software to look for these words.  This helps me tighten up the writing.  So, you really just have to find the words that make your writing slow down, then remove them, and then you’ll really have something that’s just worth reading.
    See?  Easy as pie.
    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What is your favorite editing tip?

  • I Is For… Initiation

    When I attend prompt circles and other writerly groups, one question that keeps cropping up is, “How do I get started?”  It’s usually asked by someone that, to my eye, is quite ready to get onto the page, they just don’t know where the page is.  My answer is always the same:  open your journal and start writing.  Set a timer for ten minutes.  Write whatever’s in your mind.  If you totally can’t think of anything to write, then tell me how you got here, to this moment, today – start from the minute you woke up this morning.

    That’s it.  Start with where you are.  Right here.

    Now.

    What about you, Dear Reader?
    What’s the best advice you have for getting started (in anything, not just writing)?

  • H Is For… Holes – As in Plots (get that mind out of the gutter ~grin~)


    I tend to write without outlines, character sheets, or even much of a plan. Sometimes this approach fails utterly because the stories can go off on a tangent and then sputter out.  Or, as referenced in the name of this post, the plot ends up full of holes. That is at least fixable. Other times, however, something clicks for extremely satisfying results.
    For the month of April, I’m endeavoring to rewrite a story that faltered back in November of 2013 during National Novel Writing Month. The Office of Letters and Light is hosting a similar challenge called Camp NaNo, so it’s full steam ahead once again.
    Some new ideas have since cropped up for my contemporary gay romance tale, and that feels good. As of today (actually April fifth as I type this), the tale has not advanced far but I am hopeful. The whole idea came about with a silly opening line. Then I thought of an interesting name and just ran with it. We’ll see how it goes as the month progresses.
    If you’re a writer, what tools work to help you create a cohesive story? Inquiring minds want to know. ~grin~ Happy writing!

    –

  • E Is For… Event – Camp NaNo


    Besides posting some A to Z entries here and the entire alphabet for my Darla M. Sands blog, I am also endeavoring to meet another writing challenge. The Office of Letters and Light, hosts of November’s National Novel Writing Month, provide still more opportunities for writer’s to test themselves. Camp NaNo happens in both April and July, I believe (can’t stop to research details now!).
    The rules are much less strict than for NaNoWriMo, and contestants can even set their own word count. I, however, decided to go for broke and attempt another fifty thousand during the month just as in November. Wish me luck.
    What are you writing today?

    –

  • D is for…Distraction

    Case and point…I’m late posting today, because I was distracted.  Granted, I was distracted with family events and a bit of exhaustion.

    Many days, when I’m writing I have to fight distraction.  A. Catherine Noon pointed out yesterday that she was distracted by the Internet.   The Internet is where I spend hours in the name of research, however I often end up in the weeds looking for some minuscule detail.

    I’m writing a steam punk novel currently and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wandered off into costuming in the name of research.  I’m sure my search engine thinks I have some sort of Corset/Weaponry fetish. 🙂

    Distraction may be a good thing too.   I imagine if we sat at our desks and weren’t occasionally distracted, we would suffer from some sort of burn-out.   If you can’t write because you’ve turned off the Internet and you spend thirty minutes staring at a blank screen, your lack of productivity may be a sign you need a distraction.

  • Planting the Seeds – Darla’s Creative Garden

    March is not yet half over, but spring seems nearly here in my little corner of the world. Today I saw a crocus blooming in my garden. More exciting is the fact our migrating vultures have returned in droves, filling (!) a neighborhood tree. All the same, May’s vegetable planting season remains far off. So I have made plans for April, enough to keep me busy before I can seriously dig in the dirt.
    One activity is the A to Z blog challenge. Thinking of alphabetical subjects is already interesting. An additional undertaking is Camp Nano. I enjoyed National Novel Writing Month so much last fall that this additional event held by The Office of Letters and Light beckoned, too. I would have forgotten without a friend inviting me to join her virtual cabin.
    (Thanks, Rochelle Bradley!)
    We “campers” can set our own goal for Camp. It doesn’t have to entail the full fifty thousand word craziness of NaNoWriMo. Yet the way I figured it, why not go big? 50,000 it is. So, I plan to rewrite my November 2013 novel, Jimmying the Locke. Maybe this time I will think of an ending because that’s one tale that meandered off track.

    Whatever the season in your area, what are your plans? I hope you enjoy some creativity, indoors or out.

    –

  • Writer Wednesday – Fear

    We were having a discussion today on Romance Divas about fear and success, and it got me thinking.  One thing I’ve learned about fear is that conquering it doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.  I used to think that being brave meant that I wouldn’t feel fear, I’d somehow achieve this Zen state of serenity where I could do those things that frightened me without feeling any fear or anything scary.  Since that never happened, and I felt fear anyway, I never achieved that Zen state.

    But what did happen was far more magical:  after some experiments in feeling the fear but moving forward despite it, when I did the thing that frightened me, I felt a great surge of serenity.  Isn’t that ironic?  I had to go through the fear to get the serenity – nothing else worked.  I couldn’t avoid it, or not do the thing that made me afraid, or any of a dozen other avoidance tactics.  It was only by going through that I got through.

    What are some of your favorite coping mechanisms for dealing successfully with fear?