Writing Something
"Thinking about writing, is thinking about what you'd like to say, is thinking about who you’d like to say it to and how your writing will communicate the message..."
This month Unheardwords
continues with its mission to pull together a wealth of collaborative advice. Creating a concise writers’ guide, designed to help you with your writing, regardless of the stage you’ve reached as a writer.
The first part of the guide 'thinking about writing' was covered in January's editorial).
Writing - Writers' Guide Part 2
When you are a writer, you'll write. It may be occasional (part time), it may be random or sporadic - what ever way, you'll be drawn back in, you'll need to write. This section of the guide offers writing advice.
Think of writing as a craft. The product of this craft is skilfully produced, it is personal, valuable, and well made. It communicates it’s purpose to its audience.
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Most writers need to write and, most importantly, rewrite. Keep on revising until you are confident that your writing says what you really want to say -when page comes to be read, you won't be there, your words must speak for themselves.
Read and re-read your writing or get someone else to read it before submitting it to a publisher, agent or deciding to self-publish. Simple grammatical, typographical or spelling errors give the impression that you cannot be bothered to make an effort. If
you are not concerned with getting it write, will be concerned enough to read it?
When you write, try to make every word, not just the doing words serve a purpose. Generally we write to be read by others. Consider carefully your choice of words. Some writers think the use of flowery language elevates their work. They try to impress by digging up obscure words from the thesaurus. Why use 'lode', when you could use ‘layer’, and why use 'profligacy', when you could use ‘extravagence’ for example. There are no restrictions just decisions. What serves the clarity of the writing and will aid the clarity for the reader?
Be aware We may cling to ‘our darlings’ too (liking the way something sounds despite the fact that it doesn't work, isn't clear or doesn't fit) - shoving words in willy-nilly, creating dense passages of text. Editing is about being severe. Prune those plants, don’t be afraid to cut them back hard in the pursuit of abundant growth.
By contrast too few words can be a wasted opportunity. Take the sentence, 'Arthur shaved'. The writer could have written, 'Arthur took a new twin-bladed razor from his sponge bag, and rubbed some tangy foam over his five o'clock shadow. He drew the razor across his cheek and watched as his skin was revealed like a path in the snow. He winced when he nicked the edge of his nostril and a droplet of blood bubbled out'.
Sometimes, reducing the task of writing to the fundamentals can help you get started or keep going. In essence, a story comprises:
Characters, Events and Relationships
Can you identify with this on a personal level? You as the character, facing a milestone event, which will impact one or more relationships. With just a moments thought about each of these elements, you should be able to jump-start your writing - or at least, continue moving it on.
Working with Characters
If your writing involves the creation of characters, be prepared to give them a little back-story. A way of doing this is to create a number of qualities or facts about each character (example):
-Gender, height, build, weight, appearance
-Birth place, colour, religion
-Education, views, aspirations
-Favourite things, clothes, music
-Personality, extrovert, introvert, content, depressed, happy-go-lucky
-Family, siblings, relationships, friends
-What they think, how they talk
-Where have they come from?
-Where are they going?
-What's happened inbetween?
Consider Your Main Characters
-What do they look like?
-Where do they live, does this tell us anything about them?
-What part will they play in the story?
-How well will
we know them?
-What's their relationship with others?
Creating characters doesn’t have to involve a great fictional adventure. You’re a character aren’t you? So are your family, friends, colleagues, and everyone else around you. Characters, unless they’re only intended as bit part players, should be believable. They will need to occupy an environment and be capable of living day-to-day lives.
If you’re blessed with an infinite imagination the creation of characters may pose no problems for you at all. But, some writers need a little help from their
friends - so use real life to inspire the creation of your characters. This approach may reduce some of the pressure you feel, providing reassurance that you don't have to create absolutely everything from scratch.
Writing part-time presents particular problems of keeping track of 'the story so far' (scenes, characters, interaction, plot). This is where an OUTLINE can help. Consider using an outline in order to develop your ideas, whilst maintaining an overall record of the links between characters, plot and scenes.
The format for your outline can be simple, including:
-Chapter or scene reference
-character(s) involved
-Brief description of what happens
-Timing (day, month or year)
Having a summary of the differnt parts of the story will allow you to stand back; get a view of its overall structure. An outline will give you the freedom to roam backwards and forwards across the span of your story: adding; amending where you see fit; filling in the details layer by layer; fleshing out characters and descriptions; building relationships and background; fine tuning plot and sub-plot.
All the while, if you keep the outline up-to-date it will contiue to serve you well, providing a quick reference to structure and key events.
Poetry -
What is it and would I recognise it if I saw it coming towards me
on a rainy night in Georgia?
The answer to the first part of this question is less clear than the answer to the second part. We may not know what poetry is but we do recognise it when we see it or write it. In my opinion it needn't get any more complicated than that. There were undoubtly times when great minds sought to define and distinquish poetic from prose forms. It was about line and stanza structure, lenght and rhythm. Thankfully, I think the necessity for these differences is gone now. The poetic form is a medium (way of writing) and a tool (that enables writing). Sometimes you will find this tool allows you to say what you'd like to, and sometimes you will find that you're writing fits this medium.
When writing poetry you'll still need to think about which words to use, how to structure those words, where you want the line breaks to be and how best to get the message you want across to the reader - it requires just as much attention to detail as any other form of creative writing.
Here's an exercise to help you analyse the way in which you see poetry.
Think of some poetry that you like and some that you are less taken by. What is it that you like? What is it that doesn’t work for you in the work you appreciate less?
Now write some poetry of your own or take another look at your own poetry. Does it have the elements you’ve classed as ‘likeable’?
All writing, though you may intended it to be consumed from the page and drawn into the reader’s mind through attentive eyes, will benefit from being read aloud. For poetry this is vital, how else can you judge its pace, flow, deliberate or distributed rhyme? How else can you weigh up words, one against another or stanza’s, their balance, effect and fit.
Poetry often involves resolving dilemma’s: between your core ideas and those thrown up by the possibilities of words and phrases; between the what you're setting out to say and what emerges of its own accord. Another way to see it is as, 'the author writing the poem or the poem writing the author'.
Beware the occurance of unintended repetition, why use the same word, when you can increase variety and colour with another.
Beware the rouge stanza, which marks the point of departure from the essential poetic thread or is inserted purely to plug a gap.
To quote two poet’s whose work I certainly admire: 'when someone says a poem’s deep, it probably means they don’t understand it'; 'when a poem works, it’s like that sense of satisfaction you get when you’ve applied just enough effort to achieve the outcome you intended'.
Editing poetry is not easy as much of what the poet writes is a matter of their vision or view. But, this doesn’t mean you should be afraid to edit. Some say they like to throw the words down one-time (part of a therapy of expression perhaps), and that’s fine. However, if you're writing for others, you're unlikely to be that talented or that lucky. Seperating out the write from the arrange can help. Try setting the words out before beginning the process of re-arranging them, adding, removing or altering them. When something doesn’t work, be prepared to cut it out and try something else. When a lot doesn’t work be prepared to abandon the whole thing – put it in a draw for another time – and start again. Sometimes shortening lines helps to increase the impact. Sometimes splitting lines helps to increase the precision. Equally, adding words can help to slow or round the piece.
Three quick tips to poetry editing:
1. Read the poem aloud, to give a sense of the flow and the natural end points of lines;
2. Create structure to bring clarity (to the look and the read) and to determine pace, by dividing the poem up by line or stanza;
3. Consider pruning what ever isn’t necessary to get the point across, make every word work and remove those that don’t (also applies to unintentional repetition or overstatement of words or phrases).
Advice in General (finding time)
It's a sign of the times that time itself has become a major preoccupation. And, where once labour saving devices would grant us all free-time, now we see that they simply pose another demand on
our time. This puts pressure on the time you have to do the things you want to do, including -the time we have to write.
So, if you are feeling pressured by the clock, keep it simple, allocate a small amount of time (15, 30, 60 minutes) and make a personal pledge to write for that number of minutes each day.
Your writing time may be between waking, breakfasting, dressing; before you start the car, on the bus or train or underground (subway). Before work begins or during a rest break or lunch, before the TV, an email, internet or phone call commences or last thing at night. Your writing time may even result from some of these activities (notes, reports, emails, texts are all writing).
You CAN find those minutes.
Find them - before you find time to do the things you must do or inside of the time you spend not doing.
Format or formality have a lot to do with what stops us from doing. The start-up of a new activity represents effort. In order to use the writing minutes you’ve found you need to get rid of any barriers and simply get down to writing. When the moment comes to write, you need to be able to locate what you need quickly. OK you think, my 15 minutes starts here. You take a piece of paper (or book, note pad, MS Word, Wordpad), you take a pen (pencil, keyboard), you write. Or, being a little more flexible. You use your time to consider an aspect of writing or the piece or writing your working on, this is fine. As we explored in
part one, all writing begins in the mind.
Finally, try this activity:
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Imagine a character and describe three of their past memories or significant events in their lives - each memory or event should be desribed in no more than 100 words.
And / or
Write a poem from the perspective of your imagined character - it should be about a view they hold, happening or event that's significant to them.
How do they or does their poetry differ from yours?
This exercise shows the importance and challenges of getting into the heads of the characters you write about.
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