Time to Write

What are your novel's or screenplay's 3 magic words?

If you are writing a novel or screenplay, this is a simple way to make sure that it has the qualities that will attract readers and buyers. 

Lou Kunzler, who teaches the ‘writing for children’ workshop I attend, had this great suggestion: before you write anything, decide on three words that describe it in a way that will make people want to read it.

Put those words on a sticky note and put it where you can see it as you write, as a reminder that every chapter should fit that description.

For the novella I’m writing, I’d say something like “killer pursuit thriller”—it’s the story of a boy and his father on the run from people who want to kill the father.

That reminds me to make sure to keep up the pressure, to show how much is at stake, and to keep the action thrilling.

You could also choose three adjectives that don’t refer to the plot, just the writing itself, something like “funny, insightful, touching.”

If you are self-publishing you might also find the three words come in handy when you're coming up with the marketing materials for your ebook. However, when pitching or writing a query letter don't use too many adjectives but rather make sure the way you summarize or describe the project suggests those qualities. In other words, instead of writing in a letter to an agent that your book is "funny, insightful, and touching," make your description project those.

I think this strategy could extend to other kinds of goals as well. If you want to improve your health and fitness, what three words describe the result you’re after? Maybe energetic, flexible, strong, for example.

You could also apply it to the process you employ in pursuit of the goal. For you to stick to an exercise regime, for instance, what three words describe what it should be like? Maybe enjoyable, non-competitive, efficient (that is, gets results in minimum time)?

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Want to write bigger stories or just think bigger? Here's how.

Want to write bigger stories or just think bigger? Here's how.

Readers and movie-goers like big stories. That doesn’t mean only stories in which the world is going to be destroyed by aliens or international terrorist rings try to bring down the Western world.

It can be a story about the effect of a divorce on a child but even when the event is small we want to see the big impact. In one case it’s the impact on the planet, in the other it’s the impact on a child.

If you tend to make your stories too small, or in the case of screenplays not visual enough, you can use the BLOW-UP METHOD (blow-up as in inflate, not explode).

It means pushing a particular incident as far as you can, far beyond what is sensible. By expanding the boundaries that far, you can then cut back and still end up with a choice that has more impact than the one you started with.

I’ll give you an example. In a script I’m working on, I have a father who owns a company, and his grown son, his second-in-command. The son expects the father to retire and then the son will finally run the company. In the first draft I have a scene in their boardroom where the father announces he’s changed his mind. He’s not going to retire any time soon.

This is  a feature film, and the scene seemed too small. The problem was mainly the setting—it’s hard to make a scene in a board room very visually interesting. I also wanted to make the son’s humiliation bigger.

I blew it up to the biggest example I could think of: the father pushes aside the Pope on the balcony of the Vatican and announces it to a crowd of half a million people.  Or he goes on a national television show and announces it.

Of course those are not workable, but it got me to thinking: where could he logically announce it, where there are lots of people?

The idea that came up was a big trade show for their industry, which happens to be greeting cards. The father is speaking to a big crowd of people, everybody knows it’s supposed to be his fond farewell, and instead he announces he isn’t handing the company over to his son. Bigger, more humiliating, and visually more interesting.

The key with this method is not to be afraid to expand your mind by taking the situation to ridiculous extremes before you cut back to something that actually works. 

(If you'd like friendly guidance for writing your book or script, get a copy of Your Creative Writing Masterclass: featuring Austen, Chekhov, Dickens, Hemingway, Nabokov, Vonnegut, and more than 100 contemporary and classic ... novels, screenplays and short stories (click for Amazon.co.uk)

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How to write in your sleep

OK, maybe you can't write a novel or a screenplay in your sleep, but you can certainly generate useful material.

In my book, Your Creative Writing Masterclass, I mention several great authors, including Robert Louis Stevenson, who spun stories from their dreams. In her book, Writers Dreaming, 26 Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process, Naomi Epel cites some others.

Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, said, ""Sometimes, if I'm stuck on the ending of a story, I'll just take the story with me to bed. I'll let it become part of a dream and see if something surfaces." 

William Styron, author of Sophie's Choice, said he had a "lingering vision" of a young woman with a tattoo on one arm and he "was seized by this absolute sense of necessity--I had to write the book." He said the ""whole concept of the book was, if not the product of a dream itself, the product of some resonance that a dream had given me."

Writing mentor and novelist John Gardner has said that a work of fiction should read like "a vivid and continuous dream," so to some degree you can use your own dreams as a model for what you write. Naturally dreams are much more chaotic than novels or scripts, but they're raw material that you can shape, edit, and combine. 

Dreams are especially useful for people who want to write children's books because their surreal elements can be adapted for picture books or fanciful fairy tales.

If you don't remember your dreams you can train yourself to do so. Every morning jot down anything at all you remember, even if it's just one tiny fragment. Over time you'll begin to remember more and more. You can dicate rather than write, if you prefer, using a digital recorder or your smart phone.

If you have writer's block, remind yourself before you go to sleep that you'd like to dream a solution to the problem that's blocking you and see what comes up.

Give it a try; if it works for you, you can have a good sleep and still say you were working all through the night.

(There are lots more great tips in "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

 

 

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Go BIG with your characters for your novel or screenplay

If you're writing a novel or a screenplay, think about the characters that have stuck in your mind from the books you've read and the movies you've seen. Would you say they are average people? Most likely, no. Probably they're bigger than life. The ones I think of include the Godfather, Hannibal Lector, and Ellen Ripley (Aliens).

Obviously this is influenced by the kind of story you are writing, but at the idea stage it’s good to make your characters big. If someone is stingy, make them REALLY stingy.

A great example from real life is Hetty Green, a woman who came to be called the Witch of Wall Street. She was born in 1834. When her father died she inherited $7.5 million (equivalent to about $110 million today). She made her fiancé sign a prenup contract renouncing all rights to her money.

When her Aunt left $2 million to charity, Hetty challenged it and produced a will that left all the money to her. The courts judged it to be a forgery.

Hetty Green developed an investment strategy that made her another million dollars one year but she remained an outrageous miser. She never used hot water or heating. She did her business at the offices of the bank she used because she didn’t want to pay to rent an office. When her young son Ned broke his leg she tried to get him treated at a clinic for the poor. The people there recognized her and chased her out. 

Her son survived but eventually became as big a spendthrift as his mother was a miser. One of his prize possessions was a diamnd-encrusted chamberpot. 

Of course you don’t want to make your characters grotesques, but it’s easier to go big with them at the start and then pull back, than it is to make them more interesting  after you’ve drawn them as boring.

(Do you want to know how Dickens, Austen, Hemingway and many other great authors created their memorable characters? You'll find the answer in my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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If feedback on your writing makes you cry... (plus advice from 7-year-olds)

In a New York Times article, novelist Chelsea Cain (“Kill You Twice”) describes two writing groups she attends. One consists of fairly well known authors, the other is made up of seven-year-olds.

She writes, “In the almost seven years that I’ve been going to Monday night workshop, I’ve had to excuse myself three times to go and cry in the bathroom. I’m not the only one. Some of us sob at the sink. Some of us get “headaches” and have to go home. Some of us remember that our baby sitter has to leave early and we need to go home right now.”

That’s right, she’s talking about the adult group.

“The children in my morning group cry, too," she says. "They cry because they’ve lost their pencil, or because I’ve threatened to send them back to class for being squirrelly, or because someone wants to sit next to someone else. One thing they do not cry about is writing. I guess when you’re 7 you have more important things to worry about. Writing is fun.”

She ends with advice I’ll add to the next edition of my book, “Your Creative Writing Masterclass,” alongside the writing counsel of authors like Dickens, Austen, and Hemingway:

“Write what you love. Write about dragons. And if you get stuck, roll around on the floor a little.”

("Your Creative Writing Masterclass" is published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

Three revealing quotes about writing--and life

Today I wanted to share three quotes about writing and about life.

"I read and I walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me." -- Anna Quindlen

That one hits home for me; I used to wander around the Stanford campus late at night when I was a student there, sometimes feeling like I was in a movie but not knowing whether it was a comedy or a tragedy. Come on, those are the years when it's easy to imagine yourself as some kind of doomed hero because you don't yet have a mortgage to think about and you doubt you'll ever make it to old age (40) anyway. I think it did occur to me that the person who had to step out of the darkness could be me, or even that it had to be me, I just didn't know how--but it always seemed to involve writing.

"You fail only if you stop writing" -- Ray Bradbury

Bradbury never did stop writing, not until he stopped breathing. He gave you the feeling they were pretty much the same thing.

After the 99th rejection or a few particularly frustrating incidents it can be tempting to stop, but one thing I've found helpful is to switch to a different genre or even a totally different type of writing for a while.

I've spent a lot of my career writing scripts but when I got fed up with some of the more aggravating aspects of that, I switched to writing non-fiction books.

At the moment I'm back to writing a script, but also trying out something totally new for me, a young adult novel.

Yes, it's good to focus your efforts because breaking in to any type of writing is a challenge and you don't want to spread yourself too thin. However, sometimes it's healthy. As the saying goes, sometimes a change is as good as a rest.

"Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with completely different people." - Roald Dahl

Being in a different place with completely different people is what made me love reading, and makes me love writing.

With a few exceptions, I've avoided writing (or reading, or seeing films) about serial killers, child molesters, and murderers, mostly because these are not people I want to spend time with.

If you do enjoy vicariously confronting horrible people, perhaps making sure they get their comeuppance more often than is the case with their real-life counterparts, that's great, too.

Either way, I hope you're taking advantage of our unique ability as writers to create worlds and people to live within and to share with thousands or even millions of our fellow escapees.

(For writing advice from the finest writers, including Dickens, Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as modern masters like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, get a copy of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

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If you want to write, you'll get friendly guidance in my two books: "Your Writing Coach" and "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," both published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

52 Tips for Writing Success: create your plot in five steps

If you want to write a screenplay or a novel it’s getting started that’s the most daunting. Here are five steps that will help you work out your plot:

1: Write a two-sentence summary of the story. The first sentence should include the protagonist and the conflict . For example the first sentence might be: “A retired school teacher takes on a gang ruining the school he’d proudly built into a center of excellence.” 

Normally this is the extent of the logline. I suggest adding a sentence that gives more information about the conflict and reveals the outcome. This could be: “When lawful methods fail, he resorts to violence that ends in his death but motivates the community to join together to drive out the gang.”

2: Brainstorm about all the key elements of your summary. You can put your thoughts into a mind map or onto index cards.

•  What ideas come up about your protagonist? Why does he care so much about this school even  after he’s not working there any more? What is his background? What is his life like now?
•  What’s the nature of the opposition—the gang? Why is this school important to them? Who leads  the gang? What makes him or her tick?
• What are some possible escalations of the conflict? What would a teacher try first? Second? Third?   What could push him over the line into violence?

Don’t stop at your first good answer to each of these. Jot down alternatives. Try not to judge your ideas, just make sure to record them.

3. Winnow. Go through all the raw ideas you came up with in step two and cross out or put aside the ones that won’t work or are too familiar.

4: Use the remaining elements to construct a rough outline. It may be useful to employ a three-act structure: beginning, middle, end. 

5: Start writing when you’re happy with the outline. Some writers like to go from a very rough outline to starting to write the novel or the script. Others prefer to refine the outline until they have all the building blocks in place.

Often I will start writing with only a very rough outline, until I get to about a quarter of the way through the book or script and then stop to outline the rest of the story in greater detail. 

Experiment with what works best for you.

(To find out what writing advice was given by the greatest writers like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as more modern greats like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Kurt Vonnegut, get a copy of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass." It also guides you in how to apply their advice to whatever you are writing. You can get the book from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.)

 

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