Time to Write

The lessons of the Four Hour Work Week for writers

Tim Ferriss is the author of the runaway best-sell, "The Four Hour Work Week." Ironically, Ferriss spent about 60 hours a week promoting the book, but nonetheless there is some very useful information in it for writers.

 The core idea of the book is that you should be doing only what you do best. You need to outsource the rest. This is in line with the 80/20 Principle, which says that when you focus on the 20% of your activities that give you the greatest payoff, you gain exponentially. The problem is that much of the remaining 80% does need to be done--it won't go away if you ignore it. In fact, eventually it will turn into a crisis.

The 80% might include paying your bills, doing your laundry, grocery shopping, etc. I recently attended a seminar led by Laurel Langemeier, a financial management guru who has appeared on the top TV talk shows. Her advice was to hire a housekeeper as soon as possible, to free up your time for the things you do best. 

Of course many people say they can't afford this. Langmeier's retort is that if you can't earn more than a housekeeper doing what you do best, it's time to get a different line of work.

 For writers, I think the message of both of these authors comes down to two things:

 1. Figure out what you can outsource to free up more time to write. Would it make sense to have a cleaning person come in once a week or maybe once every two weeks? Could that person also do your laundry and ironing? What about other chores? Consider hiring a student who wants to pick up a bit of extra money. 

 2. Figure out what parts of your writing you can outsource. For instance, research. I used a service called Hire My Mom (.com) to get some research done for my current book. I paid $12/hour and got the services of an experienced researcher who has a young child and wants to work from home. She did a great job, too.

 If you conduct interviews and have been transcribing them yourself, that's an easy one to outsource. I used fiverr.com to find someone to transcribe the webinar I did recently on screenwriting. I paid a total of $20 to get a transcript of a one-hour phone call. (However, the person I used for that, from fiverr, said she'd underestimated how long it would take and now is raising her prices. But even at double that, it would be a bargain.)

You can also outsource things like proofreading, getting together an index, etc.

You may not be making any money from your writing yet. You may be working on a proposal or a novel to submit to publishers, with no guarantee that you'll be paid. I encourage you to have faith in yourself and your writing. If necessary, cut back somewhere else in order to come up with the funds required to outsource tasks that give you more time to write. It may or may not pay off financially, but at the very least it will give you more time to do what you love. That's a great payoff in itself.

(For more practical tips and friendly support, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," and consider signing up for my Writing Breakthrough Strategy Program--see www.jurgenwolff.com for more information.)

 

 

3 ways to get the distance you need for rewriting

Have you ever said to yourself, "I'm too close to this material to be able to rewrite it?" 

 That's exactly the problem, so the answer must be...distance!

 There are (at least) three ways to get distance from the material in order to be more objective about it.

 1) The distance of time. If possible, put it aside and start work on something else. Give it at least a week or two, ideally a month. Working on something else in the meantime is crucial, because that new project will help you cleanse your mind so that when you return to the first one you'll see it much more clearly.

 2) The distance of space. When you critique your own material, don't do it in the same space where you composed it. In that space, you get into a creative trance. Now you want to snap out of that and be able to be analytical. Print out your project and take it at least into the next room or, ideally, a totally different location like a coffee shop.

 3) The distance of a different sensory system. When you write, you hear it in your head. Now read it out loud and hear it that way. This is essential for material that is intended to be performed, like plays and films, but it's also helpful for novels and short stories.  You may even want to get someone else to read it. If you find that too embarrassing in your presence, have them record it and listen to the recording in private.

 You can experiment with all these and find out which one is most effective for you. 

(there are lots more tips on writing and rewriting in my book, "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers. More information at www.YourWritingCoach.com)

How to engage with your Inner Critic

One of the members of my Writing Breakthrough Strategy Program has hit that point in the writing process where his inner critic is starting to bring up some Big Doubts: does the story really work? Was this the right choice of story? Would it be better to totally revamp the outline rather than writing scenes? 

I'm guessing these sound familiar. Those of us with strong inner critics (which is most of us) usually find these kinds of unsettling thoughts coming up at some stage of writing a script or manuscript. 

Fortunately, there is a way to engage with the inner critic and turn its input into something constructive. Here's how:

Have an interview with the inner critic. Ask him/her/it what are the specific concerns about the story--"it doesn't work" isn't a good enough answer. Insist on specifics,  but without defending the current story. Make a list of all the specifics your IC comes up with.

Then do something physical (even a minute of jogging in place is fine) and go to a different room and get into a neutral frame of mine--imagine this is somebody else's story--and go over the list. Which, if any, are valid concerns?

If some are, check whether they are big enough to warrant reworking the story, or whether they can be addressed as you go along. For instance, if one of the comments is that a certain character seems weak, can you fix that by making sure she comes alive in the scenes you already have planned, or does it mean having to rejig the story to give her a bigger role?

This strategy gets you away from the generalizations ("The whole thing doesn't work, maybe I should start over, or maybe I should do a different story alteogether") to specifics ("OK, there's not enough happening in the second act, so let me look at whether a subplot might help with that and also bring out more about my protagonist's earlier life").

If the IC can't come up with specifics, you know that what you're experiencing is just general insecurity. Put it aside and work on faith for a while. When you get some momentum going, the anxiety will fade. 

I hope that is useful--let me know!

Ruth Rendell on "finding" your novel's characters

One more excerpt from Ruth Rendell's article, recently republished in The Writer magazine. This one is about how she "finds" her characters:

"Increasingly, I look through books of pictures, the works of old or modern masters, for my characters' faces..it is interesting how a character begins to form itself as one gazes at some marvelously executed portrait. Slyness must lurk behind those eyes surely, cruelty in that thin-lipped mouth, subtlety and finesse revealed by those long thin fingers."

She adds, "I wish I had known of this method when I first began and struggled unwisely to make a character fit the plot instead of a plot growing naturally out of the behavior of the characters."

Now that so many museum collections are online, you don't have to be near a museum or gallery or to spend a lot of money on coffee-table art books--these cruel or sly faces are waiting for you online! And in the meantime, what do we detect in Rendell's face...

(There's lots of good advice on creating characters in my book, "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline bookseller.)

Ruth Rendell on how to make readers care about a "bad" character

The Writer magazine recently re-published an article by Ruth Rendell. In it, she wrote:

"It is an intriguing fact that in order to make readers care about a character, however bad, however depraved, it is only necessary to make him love someone or even something. A dog will do, even a hamster will do." 

She also says that shades of grey are more interesting than black and white: "I think the time for a blackness and whiteness of characters, a Dickensian perfect good and perfect evil, has long gone by...Even the worst character in a novel should inspire in the reader some fellow-feeling."

You'll find great examples of this in Patricia Highsmith's novels, the Ripley series, and even the deranged character in "Strangers on a Train" garners some sympathy from the reader.

(There's practical advice on creating great characters, in my book "Your Writing Coach." It's available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers.)

Ray Cooney reveals the secret of comedy

In an interview in Playlist, Ray Cooney (who has written many hit comedy plays) recently revealed what he considers the key to great comedy plots:

"The plot in a good farce should be able to be transplanted into a stark tragedy. Most tragedies have as their theme the struggle of the individual against forces that are overwhelming and the individual's efforts to combat those forces as the tide runs stronger against him. Also, the individual is usually tortured because of his own character flaws and his inability to control those flaws under stress. Well, that sums up most of my farces."

My old writing mentor, Danny Simon, also thought this was the essence of great comedy: make it real. No matter how ridiculous things get, keep a link to the believable. Be sure that it is the audience that finds the events funny, never your characters.

You can prove the truth of this by considering "Hamlet." It's a great drama, and it would also make a great (early) Woody Allen comedy.

When I was story editing comedy scripts, I always found that the way to make a script funnier was to make it more real. Not more conventional, but more in tune with the characters and the situation that has been established. That surprised a lot of newer writers, who thought the way to a funnier script was more punchlines (and watching some comedies on TV, it's clear there are plenty who didn't get the memo).

(If you want to write sitcoms, get a copy of my book, "Successful Sitcom Writing," published by St. Martin's Press--it's out of print now, but there are used copies on Amazon. The examples may be older, but the principles haven't changed.)

Writing for children--why the "rules" are rubbish

There's nobody better than Lauren Child to tell us what works in writing for children. Her "Charlie and Lola" series of illustrated books has world-wide sales of over 5 million, as well as a TV spin off series that's also popular internationally. Kids love her books and adults find her quirky humor appealing as well. 

Yet it was the publishing industry that has given her the hardest time, she told Carla Power in Time magazine:

"Any resistance I met with came from the industry. I was told, 'You'll never get a book published in the first person' and 'Children don't like to have words and pictures integrated.' It was absolute rubbish."

Time describes her illustrations this way: "She mixes naif drawings with collage, incorporating everything from fabric scraps to Polaroid photos. New fonts pop up for a sentence, only to change again for the next; the text can skip across the page as exuberantly as Lola does."

If you're interested in writing for kids, her books are worth studying--not to copy her style, but to see how effective it is to develop your own.

(For tips on all kinds of writing, see my book, "Your WRiting Coach." And if you're not getting the support or managing to make time for your writing, you would benefit from my Writing Breakthrough Program. You can get full details, plus my free report on "Seven Things that Are Stopping You from Writing and How to Overcome Them, by clicking here.)

 

A message for you if you've stopped writing

If you've stopped writing and you don't miss it, skip this post.

But if you've stopped writing and you miss it...and maybe you feel a little guilty--after all, perhaps you started out with the intention of writing ever day and now it's been a lot of days since you last sat down to write...here's my advice:

Forget about what you haven't done,and get started doing what you want to do!

Rather than feeling guilty or ashamed about stopping writing, consider whether you can learn anything from that experience. What happened last time, and how can you avoid repeating that experience?

Maybe you were too ambitious. Maybe writing every day isn't realistic for you at the moment. Re-calibrate and decide you'll write twice a week or three times a week or whatever seems doable. Don't buy into the myth that "real" writers write every day. Some do, some don't. I've been a full-time writer for a long time, and I don't write every day.

Or maybe you became ill and when you felt better you didn't get back to writing. Understand that these interruptions are inevitable. Take care of business, and then ease back to your writing schedule. 

Or perhaps you just lost interest in the project you were working on. Revisit it now. If your excitement about it has come back, work on that. If not, think about what other projects you might enjoy more and get started on one of those.

Most important is not dwelling on your "failure." The minute you start writing again, that wasn't a failure, it was a pause. I've used the photo of the sundial to remind you (and me) that these days we judge ourselves so much on short-term outcomes. 

Now get out that writing folder...

(For innovative time management strategies that help you make time to write, get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done," published by Pearson and available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers. There's more information at www.focusquick.com.)

Why your screenplay or novel scenes need an extra layer

One more tip from David Hare's lecture at the British Film Institute, this time about adding interest to a scene (and this works as well for novels as for screenplays). He recommends adding layers. He said:

"When you add a complicating factor, it means that a scene begins to feel like real life. Scenes die when they are just about themselves."

As an example of a layered scene, he mentioned "Mad Men." In the scene in which Don Draper's wife confronts him with his past, he has his mistress hiding outside in his car.

We used this basic idea when creating stories for the sitcoms for which I wrote. Usually we would establish that something was happening before that week's story line came into play. For instance, it might be as simple as the idea that the whole family has the flu. The episode's story line might be about how grandma tries to take over the household whenever she comes to visit. By setting up the flu first, we created something that would be impacted by, and would impact, the action of the story line. Automatically, each scene had an extra layer.

(You'll find many  more tips on creating good stories, in my book "Your Writing Coach." It's available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers, and there's more information at www.yourwritingcoach.com)

David Hare: why so many stories fail

In his lecture at the British Film Institute, playwright and screenwriter David Hare offered some tips for screenwriting success. One was: make outcome movies rather than proposition movies.

A proposition movie or novel is one that sets up a great "what if" premise. For instance, what if a man wakes up one morning and discovers that everyone around him is a stranger--but they claim to be his friends and family? Interesting idea, right?

The problem is coming up with an equally great outcome. We've all seen lots of movies that start out really intriguing us, only to feel let down when the facts are revealed. The worst solution is "It was all a dream."

What Hare means by an outcome movie is one in which the ending is at least as amazing or interesting as the beginning. He said, "The end is what I think about first. If you get the ending right and you know where you're going, and that place is good, you can't go wrong."

Too bad the people behind "Lost" didn't do that. 

Not only do you have to have a good ending in mind, along the way you have to drop enough clues to keep people interested (rather than confused). "Lost" continually added weirdness to the mix, but not the feeling that we were heading toward a coherent conclusion.

The same fate befell "Flash Forward"--even more so, since it was cancelled long before reaching whatever ending they had in mind. As of this writing, it's too early to tell whether "The Event" will go the same route.

This doesn't apply only to science fiction stories, it is of equal concern when writing in other genres, especially romantic comedies, where usually we know the general outcome--boy gets girl or girl gets boy (or any other mix of genders)--so it had better have something extra if it's going to stand out.

Endings are difficult. You'll find any number of people who will tell you they have a great idea for a movie, when all they really have is a great idea for a beginning. It's the professionals who know how to grow that opening into a story that will be as good in its last five minutes as in its first thirty.

(For tips on building great stories, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers. There's more information at www.yourwritingcoach.com)

A monstrous way to interest children in writing

The Guardian reports on the opening of a new London venture:

"...[Nick Hornby] the bestselling writer, creator of Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, launched a laudable public enterprise that aims to put the act of storytelling ahead of all the other distractions surrounding his celebrity.The Ministry of Stories Literacy Project will turn an empty shop in Hoxton, east London, into a purveyor of monster supplies intended to draw a stream of young people across its threshold. Once inside, the children will find, in Hornby's words, "a ministry of stories secreted behind its humble facade".

Acclaimed fellow writers Roddy Doyle and Zadie Smith are backing the scheme, which has been inspired by the success of the American novelist Dave Eggers's 826 National movement."

The store will sell supplies needed by any self-respecting monster, including Fang Floss, Zombie Mints, tins of Mortal Terror, and a line of edible human preserves. In the back, however, kids will have the chance to take part in a variety of activities related to story telling and story writing. 

They need volunteers as well as funds. You can find out more at www.minstryofstories.org. I hope the project will spread to other cities world-wide--at a time when it's more important than ever to get kids writing.

 

What to do when you get stuck in your writing (part one)

The most likely time you'll get stuck in any writing project is the middle. 

The problem probably is rooted in what has gone before (or what has not gone before).

What could happen earlier that would make this moment more interesting, more challenging, more suspenseful, more funny, or more whatever you want it to be?

If you've run out of action, what problems could you plant earlier that will come alive in the middle? 

If you find that you need to cut away from the action in the middle, what subplot could you start nearer the beginning, to come back to now?

Sometimes this means going right back to the characters, not only to the previous action. If you have miscast a character, fire him or her (as novelist Elmore Leonard says he does) and “hire” a new character. Or modify the one you have in order to get congruence between who they are and what they do.

For instance, if you need your protagonist to go to extreme measures in the middle of the story, you have to establish earlier what drives him or her and make use of that. Is her family the most important thing the world--something she would die for? Is avoiding humiliation the most important thing to him--so much so that he'd kill anyone who threatened to do so? Obviously the specifics depend on the story but we need to believe that your characters would really be motivated to do what you want them to.

The same is true of any changes in your character. If you need him to start getting tough in the middle, be sure that we see what causes the change. 

The big secret of fixing problems is: look where the problem starts, not just where it crops up.

(There are lots more tips for writing well in my book, "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers. For a free copy of my report, "Seven Things that Are Stopping You from Writing and How to Overcome Them," see here.

 

Creating an (unlikely) character that earned £10million

Imagine this: you're in a meeting in which a group is trying to come up with an advertising strategy for a company called Compare the Market, which sells insurance, energy, and mobile phone plans. 

 Somebody says, "How about this--we use an animated meerkat! It's a pun, see--market, meerkat!"

 Somebody else says, "What's a meerkat?"

 "It's an animal. I think it's part of the mongoose family. See, he's upset because he's got this campaign called Compare the Meerkat, but people get getting it mixed up with Compare the Market!" What do you think?

"Meerkat and Market don't actually sound alike."

"We'll give him a Russian accent! Then they do sound alike, sort of!"

 So...what do you think you would have said? Choose an option:

 1."Most people don't even know what a meerkat is and it's a terrible pun and this could be possibly the worst idea I've ever heard."

 2."I don't know...does anybody else have any other ideas? ...No? ...Nobody? OK, I guess we'll try it."

3. "Brilliant! I predict that this campaign will take our website visitors from 50,000 a month to 2 million a month, give us 25% of the market, and lead to a 16% in profits, worth more than £10 million. What's more, eventually we can publish the "autobiography" of this character and it will attract more advance sales than the life story of Tony Blair!"

 As you probably are aware by now, number three would have been the most accurate. The "autobiography" of Aleksandr Orlov", the meerkat in question, is being launched for the big Christmas book-buying season and is expected to be a best seller. It's probably only a matter of time before there's a movie, a TV series, a line of toys.

 Me? I would have chosen answer number one. Remind me never to go into advertising.

(Have the next great idea? Get support and innovative time management strategies so you can turn your idea into reality with the Writing Breakthrough Strategy online mentoring program. You can get full information about the program and a free copy of my e-report,"Seven Things that Are Stopping You From Writing and How to Overcome Them"  here. 

 

Is your protagonist a "yes, but" or a "yes,and" person? Which are you?

In improvisation, one of the first techniques you learn is that if you want a scene to come to a grinding halt, respond to your partner's statement with a "yes, but..."

For instance, you say, "We're trapped!" Your partner says, "Yes, but there's a hidden door over here." What they did was kill immediately any tension or drama that could have arisen out of the situation.

In literature, Scrooge is a "yes, but" person at the start. The poor are starving? Yes, but there are poorhouses and workhouses."

We encounter lots of "yes, but" people in real life, too. You say, "I sold a short story to a little magazine!" They say, "Yes, but nobody really reads those, do they?" Or, if they're more subtle, "Yes, but I'm sure one of these days you'll sell something to a bigger magazine!"

The alternative is "Yes, and..." In the improvisation example, the response could be, "Yes, and I hear something growling!" That ramps up the suspense and opens another line of drama. In the personal examples, it might be, "Yes [you sold a short story to a little magazine} and we must celebrate!" 

By the end of "A Christmas Carol" Scrooge has turned into a "yes, and" person. It's Christmas! Yes, and let's buy the biggest goose we can find for Christmas dinner!"

In "yes, but...", whatever comes after the "but" tends to negate or devalue or cancel out whatever was said. In "yes, and..." whatever comes after the "but" tends to enhance or add to whatever was said.

As you can tell, "yes, and..." people are much more fun to be around. We like them more than we like "yes, but..." people.

That can be a useful thing to keep in mind when you're creating characters and writing their dialogue.If you want to create someone annoying and unpopular, give them the "yes, but" attitude. If you want the reader or viewer to warm to them quickly, give them the "yes,and" attitude.

Hmm, might be worth checking whether we are "yes, but..." or "yes, and..." people ourselves!

(For more on creating fascinating characters, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," available from Amazon and other online and offline booksellers. Find out more at www.YourWritingCoach.com)

 

Sometimes a writer needs to stay IN the box & work with what's there

I did a webinar about scriptwriting last night with Jason Brubaker (to get his excellent free ebook about film-making, go to www.FreeFilmMakingBook.com; and if you haven't done so yet, have a look at my screenwriting blog at www.ScreenWritingSuccess.com). I had an email this morning from one of the people who heard the webinar and I thought his question might be of interest to you, too.

Basically he was asking how you can get past the frustrations of not having much in the way of resources when you want to make a film--other words, how to cope with having little money, equipment, access to actors, etc.

Here's my suggestion:

I think it would be good for you to get started with something not too ambitious--even a one to five-minute short film would be a great start.

You can shoot this with a Flip camera or even the video feature of a digital camera. If you don't have one, I'm sure a friend or family member would let you borrow theirs.

There is free or almost-free editing software around. I use iMovie and find it sophisticated enough to take care of most of what I'm doing, and there are many others for PCs.

In terms of actors, check out the drama departments of local colleges and amateur dramatic groups. I guarantee wherever you are, there are people around who want to act and would love to be in a short film.

Try to be as imaginative as possible in the methods you use. Just as an example, when a character talks about his childhood, if you had unlimited resources you might do a flashback with him as a child, his family, maybe an event like a birthday party with loads of guests. 

Instead, you could do some child-like drawings of that kind of event, as though they were drawn by your character as a child, and showing really what happened (which might be different from what he remembers or tells other people), and cut shots of those into the sequence. That could actually have a bigger impact and feel fresher than a typical flashback.

For each instance where you find something you'd like to do but don't have the resources, brainstorm creative alternatives. 

Sometimes limitations call for the greatest creativity, so I hope you'll take yours as a challenge rather than as obstacles.

I've found that to be true of just about everything, not just film-making. 

(For innovative approaches to setting and reaching goals, get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done," available from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline bookseller.For more information, see www.FocusQuick.com)