Time to Write

The number one writing question I get (and my answer)

The number one writing question I get both via the blog and my Breakthrough writing coaching clients is, "How can I find more time to write?" One answer is to use every spare moment:

There will be minutes you can steal, such as when you’re waiting in line at the supermarket and the person in front of you has realized at the last minute she’s going to have to actually pay for her groceries and only then starts digging through her purse for her money.

The secret to making use of these moments is to have a notebook with you and to have decided in advance one point you’ll brainstorm. For instance, it might be how to make the villain of your piece more interesting (maybe he kills a shopper ahead of him in line…), or how to make a scene more interesting, or simply what comes next.

At the start of your day, decide what you'll think about in that day's spare moments, write it in the form of a question in your notebook, and refer to it during those odd moments during the day. At the start of your next writing session, harvest those thoughts.

(If you want loads of creativity tips, sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin by sending an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com. Also get my newest book, "Creativity Now!" published by Pearson and available via Amazon and (in the UK) from WH Smith travel outlets and other bookshops.)

A quick back-up lesson I learned the hard way

Quick tip: Back up everything you’ve written during the session. Backing up onto another disk in the same location isn’t enough, as I learned years ago when a house fire destroyed not only my computer, but also the back-up discs I’d carefully hidden in an upstairs closet. One option is a pen drive you carry with you, another is to use a service that saves your material on the Internet. If you’re in a hurry, attach your new material to an email that you send yourself.

Embrace your versatility

In an interview for Success magazine, fashion designer, film-maker, actor, opera director and cabaret artist Isaac Mizrahi said, “My piano teacher said, ‘You have to choose what you want. You can’t continue to study the piano for eight hours a day and be an actor and design clothes.’ I listened to what he said and he made sense, but I couldn’t relate to that model. I am not a specialist.”

 He says he’s had insomnia since he was twelve but a lot of his inspiration comes to him in dreams. And he embraces the fact that he is easily bored: “I think it’s just a way of being in the world. Some people just like to do a lot of things.”

 Another potential drawback he turned into a plus: as a fat kid he felt he couldn’t wear fashionable clothes and shoes, so he designed them instead.

 He also embraces his lack of one identifiable signature style, saying, “I always try to think of something fresh, something innovative, and it almost comes from this weird psychic place.”

 He doesn’t mind risks, either. For a name designer to associate himself with Target, as he did, was definitely a risk but it’s been a huge success.

 Here’s the advice that sums it all up: “Do what you want—don’t let anyone tell you to do a version of what you want. Do exactly that you want, then wait it out...” Of his own next venture (directing a film) he says, “I don’t know if I’ll be good at it, but I know I’ll like doing it. If someone thinks I’m good, then I’m really happy about it.”

(Want tips on how to be more productive and creative? Sign up for my free monthly Brainstorm e-bulletin by sending an email request now to BstormUK@aol.com)

Story secrets of the balloon boy incident

Yes, I’m also sick of all the ways the media are spinning out the story of the (non) Balloon Boy, but we can’t deny that it’s a story that gripped the world. Whenever a story does that, I’m interested to consider what elements made it so compelling and this time there are two levels of story to learn from.

The original story was a simple one, with familiar elements:

• a child in danger
• a ticking clock—how long can the balloon stay aloft?
• a mystery: is he really in there?
• someone whose emotions we can share: the distraught parents
• a weird twist: the kid isn’t down a mine or trapped in rubble (which would also work for dramatic purposes), he’s up in the sky in a UFO-style balloon
• a strong emotional image: him dropping out of the balloon while it’s still up high or crashing with it to earth;  like looking at a car crash—we don’t want to see it but we can’t help looking (or imagining)

 Anybody writing a thriller could take a cue from these elements, and many have: have you noticed how many thrillers are about a missing child?

 The second story layer appeared when it turned out the whole thing was a hoax. Now it’s not about life and death, it’s about psychology. Now we had:

• a villain: the father who deceived us and forced his child to go along with the plan
• an innocent victim: the little boy, who was so uncomfortable with lying that he threw up—twice!
• an ambiguous character: the mother—was she a willing accomplice? Or was she bullied into it by the father? Why did she tell on him?
• a new mystery: what will be the father’s punishment? Will the kids be taken away?

 That has taken us into the realm of motive and of course our response is also fueled by outrage that we were fooled in the first place. My hunch is that this emotion is stronger at the moment than it would be in good times. We already feel like we’ve been fooled by the bankers and politicians and we know we still don’t have the full story, but it’s hard to pin down exactly who is lying and about what.

 With Balloon Boy father, it’s a lot simpler. My guess is that there’s going to be a big market over the next year or two for stories in which pinning blame is easier than it is in real life.

(for guidance in writing your book, get a copy of mine: "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey--see more information at www.yourwritingcoach.com)

How to make your story work better (part 2 of 2)

In the previous post I mentioned that it strengthens a story when the story’s key event interrupts something else more normal that’s going on. One more tip in terms of story dynamics is to try to make sure each scene reveals character as well as advancing the plot.

 For instance, I gave the example of a sitcom plot in which the son in the family is being bullied. We might have a scene in which the father tries to teach his son to defend himself and the mother objects and says violence never solves anything. So far, so predictable. But if the father reveals that when he was a kid, he tried to reason with a bully and the boy humiliated him in front of a crowd of other kids, suddenly we find the father a more vulnerable and sympathetic character and have discovered something about him that we didn’t know before.

 If you watch a well-written drama or comedy series like “Mad Men,” you’ll soon spot a lot of examples of how good writers consistently manage to reveal character as they move the plot forward.

(Would you like me to guide you through to your writing goal over the course of 60 days? See my new Breakthrough Strategy Program at www.jurgenwolff.com)

How to make your story work better (part one of two)

A subscriber emailed me asking whether I can give any advice on plotting short form fiction, such as sitcom episodes or short stories.

 The tip that comes to mind immediately relates to one of the first questions I ask myself when plotting a sitcom episode. Whatever the main plot—let’s say it’s how the son in the family will deal with being bullied—I ask, “What else is going on that is in some way interrupted by these new developments?”

 For example, maybe the family is planning a party or someone is coming to visit. Having the new development (the bullying) intersect with the more normal activity adds another dimension to the story.

 The same thing can work in a short story—the moment in time that we encounter the characters usually features an unusual event, but it gains resonance when we also understand what the norm is.

(For more tips on constructing great stories, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon.com and other online and offline retailers--and when you have the book you'll also find the secret code words that unlock the chapter bonus material at www.yourwritingcoach.com.)

How to write better dialogue

One of the topics that usually is skimmed over in writing books is how to construct compelling dialogue. Naturally you have to start with compelling characters—then what they have to say has a much better chance of being the same. However, in an article in Poets & Writers magazine, novelist Benjamin Percy gave some more specific tips:

 “If you must have a protracted verbal exchange, then damn it, give your characters something to do. By that I do not mean give them a cigarette or a beer. I mean make them grill a steak or attend a carnival or splat together a papier-mache volcano or inch their car through a long stretch of construction.”

 He calls these tasks a lower-order goal—in most scenes every character wants something but in this case there is something else, relatively pedestrian, to be achieved as well.

 I’d add that the activity you choose may, of course, have some meaningful relationship to the deeper meaning of the scene.  If they’re making plans for their wedding while washing and drying the dishes, for instance, if he drops a valuable plate, that might act as foreshadowing for an emotional crash coming up somewhere later.

Percy

also writes about how tone relates to voice and to music: “…the foot-tapping rhythm of the page. Typically, dialogue is staccato, while narrative is legato. To linger too long in the choppiness of dialogue disrupts the smoothly connected paragraphs of the narrative…But one’s impassioned plea for forgiveness interrupted by the other’s slow, methodical arrangement of a house of cards has enough rhythmic interruptions to keep us tonally engaged, like any carefully constructed orchestration.”

Percy

cities one of my favourite authors, Graham Greene, as worthy of study in this regard and there are many others, including Anne Tyler, Richard Price, and Elmore Leonard.

(To write good dialogue, you need to create great characters. That's one of the many topics covered in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)

 

More writing secrets of Dan Brown

Whether or not you’re a fan of Dan Brown’s work (admittedly, I’m not) he’s got something the public wants. In an older Slate article, Bryan Curtis examined what makes Brown’s fiction tick:

 “Brown has done a lot of thinking about what makes a successful Dan Brown thriller. He has found that it requires a few essential elements: some kind of shadowy force, like a secret society or government agency; a ‘big idea’ that contains a moral grey area; and a treasure. The treasures in Brown’s four novels have been a meteorite, anti-matter, a gold ring, and the Holy Grail.”

 “When all of Brown’s elements come together, doled out over cliffhanging chapters, with characters that exist to ‘move the plot along,’ it is like mixing the ingredients to make a cake.”

 Here’s what Brown himself says: “All of my novels use the concept of a simple hero pulled out of his familiar world.”

“The trick is to make your characters experts…then you pair them with an expert of a different discipline, making it convenient for the experts to assay to one another at some length, in the process spilling all the research you have done for your novel.”

 I don’t advocate trying to follow anybody else’s pattern but having a look at what works for somebody else might inspire you to figure out your own version.

(Want to be guided through to your writing goal over the period of 60 days? Check out my new Breakthrough Strategy Program at www.jurgenwolff.com.)

Is structure your writing weakness? Here's one solution...

I’ll admit it: when writing fiction I’m usually more interested in the characters than the structure of the plot (the same applies to my reading). But of course we have to make sure that our stories work. In an article by Hallie Ephron in The Writer, crime novelist Val McDermid told how she dealt with this:

 “Analyzing her first effort, McDermid recognized that her weakest skill was plotting. ‘So, I consciously worked very hard on storytelling and the structure of the next books. For a long time I literally would outline each book, chapter by chapter, on file cards.’ …As the plots in the Kate Brannigan novels became more complex, McDermid found she had to use multicoloured file cards to keep track of the plot strands.”

 “With each new book, McDermid says, the breakthrough for getting into the writing comes when she finds a structure that works to tell the story. …About five books ago, despite stories that increasingly required structuring, McDermid found she no longer needed coloured index cards to manage the multiple plots. ‘I could do it all in my head,’ she says.”

 When working out storylines for a TV series, I use Post-It notes stuck to the wall, with one horizontal line (and one colour) for the main plot and then extra horizontal lines each in a different colour for the subplots. If structure is a challenge for you, too,  give it a try.

(If you want a complete guide to writing, get my book, "Your Writing Coach" from Amazon or your favorite online or offline retailer. If you want a 60-day coaching program that guides you through the process with coaching calls, tons of tools, and email feedback, see my Writing Breakthrough Strategy at www.jurgenwolff.com.)

How writers and others can build a platform - fiction writers (part 4)

Your platform is the methods you have to reach your target audience. In previous parts of this series, we looked at how to identify that audience and where to find them, and whether you will entertain them or inform them. Finding the best way to attract readers is harder for novelists than for authors of non-fiction. However, there are a variety of approaches you can use:

•  Create a blog or a Facebook page or a Twitter stream that is (apparently) written by your protagonist. This works best if the protagonist is an eccentric, outspoken, or otherwise especially interesting character. The format could be this person’s diary as they go through the events in the book, or their commentary on the events of the day, or their manifesto, for instance.
•  If the location of your book plays a big part in it, and is one people would find of interest, create a blog or Facebook page about that place. It could be a city like Berlin or Brighton, or a smaller part of a city (Chinatown in San Francisco, for example). You could give interesting information about that place, perhaps as seen through the eyes of one or more of your characters.
•  Create a series of videos that act as trailers for your book. On this blog from time to time I feature ones that seem to be most effective or interesting. You can also see good models on the sites of the major book store chains. There are lots of formats you can use: you talking about the book (if you are a good presenter), a slideshow with audio, a brief animation, etc.

 If you are a fiction author, you may want to consider these options and brainstorm some others, and decide which ones you think would work best. The next post takes both fiction and non-fiction authors to the next step of selecting the best media.

(Much more on building a platform and the other essentials of crafting a successful career as a writer are in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers. Also see my site: www.timetowrite.com )