Power Words Exercise

Courtesy of Darrendean at stock.xchng

Continuing on in my Wednesday Writing Exercise theme today I want to give you an exercise to make you focus on the power of the written word. 

Tomorrow, I want you to write a note to someone and in as few words as possible, completely change their day. 

Simple. Right? Yeah, okay, you're not going to fall for that one.

Yes, it is going to be hard, but you can do it, you're a writer!

Here are just some suggestions:

I'm not a big fan of the 'I love you', unless it is really actually going to mean something to them, because it's been a bit overused and killed. 

'I'm having your baby' would obviously work in some situations, but I don't want you to lie.

The good old 'by the way, I'm not wearing any underwear' might be of use for those of you who are married. 

But even in the most banal cases, such as writing on a group birthday card, as a writer you have an obligation (I believe, and try to live up to) to make the most of each written word you give to someone else. You have been gifted in choosing the right word for the right time to evoke an emotional response. 

Don't forget that. 

Practice it as much as you can. 

And yes, it can be easier to evoke a response by wounding someone, ripping out their heart and handing it back to them, but I would prefer if you stayed positive. 

So, go ahead and try it. One note, change their day. 

ROW 80 Check In

For those who have been following my blog, you will notice that I haven't posted anything on this blog or my other one since last Wednesday, even missing my Sunday check in.

Have to admit, the day after I got my book out, I totally crashed (emotionally speaking, not physically like last time I fell off my bike). It was quite unexpected and really threw me. Am still slowly trying to claw my way back. So apologies everyone.

However, considering we are almost at the end of this round, I feel I should set some kind of goal. 

So, by Sunday I want to have rewritten the beginning of my NaNoWriMo romance: After the Winter. I sat down two nights ago to start reading through it again (not having touched it since the end of November, but with fond memories) to find that beginning was... well... to be blunt, it was crap. There were some good ideas and passages interspersed with a lot of 'oh my goodness, I actually wrote that? I thought those words would join together to make a sentence an English speaker would understand and relate to?' as well as a complete lack of intelligible pacing. It was sad. Very sad.

For a while I thought about ending it all! (Well, the book at least) But walking home tonight from work I was listening to Writing Excuses, the podcast, and they were talking about beginnings, and it got me thinking about how to restart mine. 

Their great bits of advice:

1. Come in late, get out early for each scene.

2. Make sure the setting and tone of the novel is introduced in the beginning. 

3. Come in right when the 'change' that motivates the story is happening. 

4. make sure there is motion in the first section. 

So, keeping all of that in mind, I'll see what I can do over the next few days. 

Anyone else got great advice on how to write a good beginning scene? 

(I've got some great advice on how not to, if anyone is interested :D)

Plot Mash-Ups

Anyone that watches Glee will understand the concept of a 'mash-up'. Basically, you take two songs and mash them together to make something greater than the sum of the parts. 

Well, I found out the other day that stories need plot mash-ups. 

I have a good plot point for my current story: three children discover a secret railway used only by animals. 

Unfortunately, that is not a story. 

Listening to Writing Excuses, Season 1 Episode 1, they talk about how plots actually need to be two ideas to make a full story. Based on a theory by Orson Scott Card (I think), they stated that plots should be made up of a mundane plot idea and an extraordinary one. Though, I have to admit for a lot of their examples it sounded like just two awesome ideas. But, hey, if you have two awesome ideas, just go with it!

So, I have plot point number one, what I need is plot point number two. 

What can you do with a secret railway, children and animals? Well, my first plot has no conflict, just a method of movement. So, obviously I need a second plot that introduces conflict. 

My answer: creatures from another dimension that have found a way into this world.

Not yet sure how best to mash these together so that it makes a coherent story, but hopefully it will come as I write. 

Perhaps the creatures are currently bound to a particular location, but if they could capture the train, they would be able to take over the whole earth... 

My other idea was that halfway through just when the kids are about to win, the creatures take their memories and leave them stuck perpetually on the train, until they manage to regain their memories and fight themselves free...

Votes? Suggestions?

Well That Solves That Problem: I'm Not Meant to Be a Full Time Writer

Today was my first day back at work. 

It was also the first time in a week that I wrote for about 4 hours. 

I had a total of two, maybe three, successful full days during my holidays, and a lot of that included working on this blog and writing agent query letters etc.

The concept of a full day where I have nothing to do but write I thought would be amazingly liberating, would let me write so much more!

Wow, was I wrong. 

It was horrifying. 

But then I started to think that maybe all writing had become horrifying, that maybe I had just lost my will to write.

But no, do not fear. I just needed to be a bit more busy.

Was listening to Writing Excuses last night, an episode called 'pantsing'. They were talking about discovery writing, also known as by the seat of your pants writing, which is what I am currently doing a lot of. One of them was pointing out that when you do discovery writing, you really need to have a large block of time so that you can really get into the narrative flow.

Then another pointed out that this wasn't always good. Writing expands to fill the amount of time you have, like a gas. Having very strict writing times can actually help you to write more.

Wow, I thought to myself, wow. It's like they are talking about me!

Though, that was not all of my problems. It is definitely true for me that if I give myself too long a period, I just slow down and also get intimidated by the amount of time. However, it is also true that if I say I can write at any time in the day, I can very easily end up not writing at all. 

The third thing I found out today is that part of the problem might be the Castle Innis series. Well, not it, but me, but me to it, not just me. If you see what I mean.

I sat down again this morning to continue the amazingly slow work on book 3 (slow, largely because I haven't spent that many hours on it but also slow because it just isn't coming out). I then got a text from my sister saying I should try to get my first book published in Australia, and John Marsden's publisher, Pan McMillan has Manuscript Monday, where anyone can submit the first chapter of the manuscript along with a 300 word synopsis, and they promise to read it. 

So I went back to my first novel, Sally Hunt Book 1. I had spent quite a few hours yesterday editing it (how did it STILL have so many typos?) and had gotten to the part where I knew I had to re-write an entire scene. This morning, after spending about half an hour on Castle Innis, I then went and spent an hour and a half editing then beginning to write this new scene. 

The speed and easy with which it came out was like watching champagne overflow down a pyramid of glasses; beautiful, delicious, bubbly. And it wasn't because I knew what was going to happen, because I didn't, I hadn't expected what happened at all! 

And tonight night came home from work and said I would start writing at 7.30. Since I finished dinner at 7pm, I started reading Stephen King's Gunslinger. However, after finishing the intro, I decided I wanted to move straight into working on Sally Hunt, just because I felt like writing.

I spent the next two hours and think I have nailed most of the new scenes.  I just need to weave it back into the old text. I also need to change one or two more things later on (evidently my readers did not like that I left a lot of things until book 2, so will give some hints at how they are going to work out). 

So, obviously my mind is just in a young adult's language mode. I have had no trouble writing in regency period English before, so it is strange that I have it now, except perhaps I needed more time to switch over. 

But this is the end of the fortnight. And since my next book is a children's story (think E Nesbit style of thing), I might keep the simplified language and come back to Castle Innis after I've done some other historical practice. 

So, back to work, back to writing, back to trying to have it all.