Articles
Getting the Words Down
No matter if you are starting out or already have books completed there is one important thing every writer needs to know, writers write. It is kind of in the job description. It is a hard job, not everyone is set out to be a writer, writers live a life of solitude, their closest friends are those they create on the page.
None of this means anything unless you get the words down. The more you get the words down the better you become, learning the subtilties of prose, style, and learning more about writing. You are learning not only how to communicate but how to think as well. Don’t take it lightly, your words will last forever, reaching out into the future, connecting with people who will be born next year, the next decade, or even hundreds of years. This is the opportunity that is given to you by writing.
You need to make sure that you write, talking about writing, reading about writing, watching a video on writing, is not writing. Get behind that keyboard and start making a stamp on the world, release your voice, your knowledge, and your humanity on the world, let your words echo down the ages, touch hearts.
Get writing
Story
Story is a series of events that take the reader on a journey, they are in your hands as a writer, the reader that is. The other important thing is a story is much more than just a series of events, it is also a number of life changing interactions your characters have with the world, themselves, or other characters. The core of every story is that of conflict, internal and external, character against the world, story is conflict and without it you don’t have story. Remember that when you are planning your next manuscript.
Conflict is drama, not necessarily arguing, you don’t create drama from having two people just arguing about something. It goes deeper than that, it is an all-out assault on the character, they must take it personally. Conflict is an all-out siege of the characters soul, from dependencies through to physical altercations, drama is the keystone to the archway of the story. It is important and vital for it to be in every scene, every interaction.
Characters
Every story no matter what it is needs characters, they can be people, things, or anything really but they need to be put through the trials to become a different person by the end of the story. You have to be ready to put your characters through hell really, no self-respecting writer will shy away from making their characters’ lives awful. The two main characters that will be needed are the Hero and the Villain.
Heroes are the main character we follow through the story, we follow their growth, live their pains, experience what they are experiencing. They need to start the story and grow throughout it, being a different person from who they were at the start. They have to learn something about the world, about themselves, and about others. This growth is vital to every story, it is there to help the reader see the growth within themselves. Our hero in our story is a stand in for the reader, readers see themselves as the hero, don’t let them down.
Villains are there to get in the way of the hero, make their life difficult. One mistake you can make when writing a villain is to make them bad because they are the villain. No one is all bad, just watch or read a few interviews with people who knew a murderer, many of them will say the person seemed nice. Villains are not there either to just stop the hero from getting what they want. The villain wants something, the villain is the hero of their own story, and the conflict between the villain and the hero make the story something interesting and readable.
All your characters should be fully formed, meaning they have skin in the game, or skin in the story. Just having a character there to serve part of the story is a mistake and readers notice it. Every character has to be there for a reason, not just because they are needed to give information or fill in a few pages.
Structure
Structure is important if you want your story to be readable. Let’s leave it at, if you don’t plan, you plan to write something that is going to be hard to read, or not that interesting. Having said that, there are writers who do very little structure and others who will get down in the weeds writing more pages on the structure than there are in a finished manuscript. No matter where you are on your writing journey it is a good idea to work on a basic structure.
The basic structure has Three Acts, and a number of key points you should hit during your story. The structure is going to help you have your hero grow and learn throughout your story. Here is a quick outline of the basic structure.
Act One
The World as it is at the start, we learn about the hero, their current life.
Something happens to change the World.
The Hero is forced to take on a journey to protect, find, change or save the World.
Act Two
The hero is a fish out of water, they are not experienced or knowledgeable about the changed World.
They are tested two times, which helps them prepare for the final conflict or battle.
They find the darkest moment in their lives, nothing has gone right, they are shown to have a rebirth of some from, spiritual, emotional, or even physical.
Two more test to teach them the skills they need to win the final battle.
Act Three
They are faced with a no-win scenario which they need to overcome
They do batter and win the day.
They are now a different person, wiser.
The language here seems to point at an adventure, but even in roman novels they do battle with their doubts. This is the basic structure of almost every story ever told.
Editing
Editing can be one of those thorns in the side of a writer, reworking their manuscript over and over again can be difficult. But it is one of those things we need to do if we want to get something written. Your responsibility doesn’t stop when you finish your first or second or even your fiftieth draft, you still will need to make sure you edit and go over your work. Many writers, when starting out, think that an editor does all the heavy lifting for the editing, actually you are responsible to make it readable, the editor fine tunes what you have done to make it better.
Three are three main types of editing, each one of these you should complete on your work before submitting it anywhere, if your manuscript is subpar chances are the publisher will decline it. This is not to say that if you do these edits that you will get a publisher signing you, but it won’t hurt.
Developmental edit is the first one you should do, this make sure the story makes sense, it is engaging, interesting, free of plot holes, and generally would engage a reader for the length of a novel.
Line editing is the next one, this is when you go through your work and check for your word selection, sentence structure, and make sure there is no fluff in the writing.
Proofreading is where you go over and make sure the gramma is correct, spelling, and the names of characters are consistent. It’s important that you do all three of these edits before you even consider submitting it to a publisher. You will need to put your final work away for a month or so then go back to editing it, this puts time between you and your work, allowing you to see the writing with fresh eyes.
Sentences
Sentences come in four basic flavours. You can tell a whole story with one type of sentence, but for interest and impact you should use all the different types of sentences available to you as a writer.
Types of sentences.
- Simple: Sue ran up the hill.
- Complex: Sue ran up the hill, winning the race.
- Compound: Sue ran up the hill, and she won the race.
- Complex compound: Sue ran up the hill, winning the race, and she collapsed in exhaustion.
Formats of the sentences
- Simple sentence = One dependant clause
- Complex sentence = A dependant clause with an independent clause
- Compound Sentence = 2 or more independent clauses joined by conjunction
- Compound Complex Sentence = 2 or more independent clauses with 2 or more dependent clauses
Clauses
There are two types of clauses, a dependent and an independent.
- Dependent clauses are missing something, they don’t complete an idea or thought.
- Independent clauses complete a thought or idea.