Connecting with your work

“As soon as you connect with your true subject, you will write.”
- Joyce Carol Oates

Have you found that this is true? I’m in that spot now. I’ve got quite a bit of a novel wrote, but I feel like the heart of it is missing. I guess I’m looking for my true subject.

I feel like I have a lot of good words, but it just won’t quite come alive for me. What do you do when you’re in that spot? To me its different than writer’s block in the fact that I can write and know where the writing is going. I just feel like I’m missing a main ingredient. Its like leaving the yeast out of bread. It doesn’t rise in the way its suppose to.

Writing Routines

Do you have a routine? So many words a day? A certain time of day? Certain music?

Remember when we were kids and our parents had a bedtime ritual set up for us? I knew when it was bath time, then brush my teeth time, that the bedtime was next. It mentally prepared me to be tired. 

The same is true with writing. Sometimes a set ritual helps prepare our mind to get ready to write. For me, I’m used to the television being on for background noise. My computer is in the living room, so I don’t get much choice in that. I always have a Dr. Pepper beside me. Sometimes a snack too.

I’m looking forward to school starting next week. I can shift my writing time to the night after everyone goes to bed. I’m going to try to write a certain amount of words each day then. I haven’t decided how many yet. With school being out, I have to share my computer with all three kids. So I don’t get much writing time or time without someone saying “when will you be done?”

Do you have any writing habits? What are they?

Character Profile

The better we know a character the more like a person they will seem as we write. We know things about our characters that we will never use, but the fact that we know them makes the character feel like a friend. When we use a profile like this, its a jumping off place. It should grow and change as you write and get to know the character more.

 

Character Profile

 

Given name

Any nicknames who calls him/her that?

Age sex height weight body type

Unique Physical Characteristics and/or unique habits

A “look” or “impression” that may sum up the physical appearance of this character

What is his/her goals, dreams and wants?

What are his/her biggest fears?

Secrets?

Problems?

Everyone has flaws. What are this character’s flaws?

His/her passions?

What is the one thing that can motivate this person into facing his/her fear?

What personality type would summarize your character?

What is his/her attitude toward school?

Work?

Friends?

Who is his/her best friend?

For how long?

How did they meet?

What is his/her clothing preference?

What are his/her likes and dislikes as far as foods?

What are his/her guiding beliefs?

Are the religious?

Do those beliefs influence his/her daily life?

What unique skills do they possess that will help them in life?(and in your storyline)

How does he/she react to new people?

New situations?

When he/she is uncomfortable?

What past events in his/her life shaped the way the character is today?

Are his/her parents alive?

If not, how and when did they die?

What was his/her relationship like with the parents?

How is his/her relationships with any siblings?

Does he/she have pets? If so, what kind?

What does he/she like to do when not at work/school?

Does he/she have any hobbies that they are passionate about?

Does he/she like sports? To watch? To play?

Does he/she do any type of volunteer work?

Describe his/her family life.

How does he/she relate to family members?

What kind of dwelling do they live in?

How is it decorated?

What is the most treasured piece that they own? Is it on display?

What is the overall impression that the home gives?

What sort of vehicles does he/she have? How old is it?

What is the vehicle of his/her dreams?

What sort of work does he/she do?

Does he/she find it rewarding?

What was the job that they dreamed about when they were a kid?

Did they ever do it?

If not, why not?

Did something in life prevent them from fulfilling their dreams?

How does he/she handle money?

Are they always broke?

Are they frugal?

Do they spend it as soon as they get it?

Do they invest?

Are they sensible about what they buy?

Cure the Writer’s Block

I’ve managed to spend my day wasting time so that I could avoid writing. You know how it is, you try to look like you’re really doing something useful toward your writing. You’ve done it too. Right?

It’s that dreaded writer’s block. I know my character, I know what I want to happen, but it just all seems so flat. So I’ve been web surfing on the subject.

One of the suggestions I saw was to have a regular writer’s routine. It can be a set amount of word count to write in a day, or it can even be just a regular time to set down and write. Do you like to listen to music while you write? Or do you like total quiet? Me – I usually have the TV on for background noise. Especially since my computer is in the living room. I’m use to hearing it. Of course then I run the risk of wanting to watch what’s on. Do you keep snacks handy? Or a drink? The idea is to have a set of circumstances that tells your brain that its time to write when you do this routine. Kind of like kids with bedtime.

Did you do enough planning? Do you have an outline or a basic plot already in mind? Sometimes we don’t really know where it is that we want to go. So we get stuck. Here is a link that is great with the brainstorming aspect: Brainstorming the Snowflake Method

You can also just write. Don’t worry about whether its good writing or bad at this point. You can edit later. Especially for the first draft, just get the story down. This is a good time to free write whatever comes into your mind. You may find that your character has something to show you that you didn’t know.

Try coming at the piece from a different angle. That’s what I’m going to do. I realized that I feel like my writing is flat because I haven’t found a way to make the plot more personal for my character. He needs to solve the murder not because it’s his job, but because he has a NEED to. So, I’m taking some scenes and writing them in first person from his point of view to get into his head more. To see what he has to say about it. If you’re having trouble with the beginning, write the end. Or something from in the middle.

Sometimes we can all use a jump start. You may want to try a writer’s prompt. Writer’s Digest Prompts  or Creative Writing Prompts

This website has a lot of suggestions to get your mind stimulated. hack-your-way-out-of-writers-block

 This one is fantastic. It has a lot of interactive things to get you going. It even has a name generator that can be broken down by race or even religious roots. Language is a virus 

So lets get writing. Especailly me.

Links to the Craft of Writing

I’ve been web surfing this morning and I just wanted to share some of the sites that I’ve found out there. These sites have valuable articles on the subjects of improving your craft of writing. That is something that I believe as a writer we should always do. We may have talent and a way to set forth the images that we desire, but there is a structure that goes behind it to keep all our pretty words from falling down. These links are just a small part of that structure. I’m a firm believer that we can learn from one another.

http://edittorent.blogspot.com/ This has a post about building the right kind of inconsistant characters

http://inspirationaleditor.blogspot.com/ This is about writing an effective synopsis. There is also a link on top for body language, something our characters use a lot of.

http://suspensenovelist.blogspot.com/  This one has several good posts on it. I especailly liked the 10 writing rules by William F. Nolan.

http://forensicsandfaith.blogspot.com/ There is a new trend for inspirational writers that now include the suspense and mystery genre. If that is the type of writing that you do, check out this information – it includes information about getting published even if you’re a new writer.

Beginnings

The beginning is important because you only have a limited amount of time to grab the attention of the readers. Sometimes I have a problem knowing the right place to start a story. So I’ve learned that for me, its best not to worry about it and go back and cut and change the beginning later. I’ve been tweaking the beginning of my current novel the last few days.

This is what I started with: “Detective Cade Jennings pulled up in front of the small track house. It appeared to have a fairly new face lift compared to the other homes on the street. This one was a goldenrod in color with a stone trim on the garage and around the entrance way. Two flower beds flanked the front door, both contained rose bushes with buds hinting of reds and pinks, marigolds and blue pansies filled the rest of the space. Getting out of the car he could smell the fresh mown grass, evidenced by the clippings that littered the sidewalk that led to the house. Typical suburbia, Cade thought. All that’s missing is the white picket fence.”

I changed it to: “She lay at his feet like a used tissue, crumpled and tossed aside. He could tell in life she had been beautiful. In death – she was just a body lying face down in a pool of her own blood. Nothing pretty. Nothing glamorous. Such a waste, Detective Cade Jennings thought. She can’t be more than twenty-five.”

I’m sure you can see the difference. Be mericiless and slash your beginning to grab that reader.

Something Interesting

There is a website that I enjoy, called Write a Book Now. Steve Manning has a free email program called How to Write a Book in 14 Days. Also if you poke around at the bottom of his pages you can find a list of articles that he’s written. The newest one is called Book Publishers, what you need to know.

How to Write a Book in 14 Days.

Good Article: Book Publishers What You Need to Know and Why!

77 articles about book writing

The Where of it All

We all know that settings are important to a storyline. It’s more than a backdrop. It can set the mood and atmosphere. It can give us a cold feeling or a warm fuzzy one. It can give us a sense of place so that it doesn’t feel like the characters are living in a vacuum. In other words, setting is like an anchor to the whole work.

Setting can be as simple as a few words, or it can almost be considered as another character. The feel of New York is going to be completely different than that of Fairbanks Alaska. The culture is different, the foods will be different, their social makeup is different. Where your characters live will determine a lot of who they are.

So use your setting to your advantage when you write. Think of it as a silent character that looms in the background affecting all of your story people. To give you an example, the hypothetical storyline I’m creating on the character page is set in a religious area of northern Indiana. That plays a lot on who my characters are and the choices that they make. Marlin Shrock wants everything to look good. He wants to be accepted. He does so in the confines of what his religion believes is correct.

Not always do we use real places for our stories. I have a totally fictious town that I’ve created for a series that I’m working on. It’s been helpful to flesh out the town before hand, just like I would with another character. I found a website that I’m going back to use to flesh it out even better. The website is: http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm Not all of it applies to my needs, so I’ll use what will. I figure who better to know how to build a fictional town than a fantasy writer.

More on Characters: The Victim

In mystery writing the victim is really the central character to the storyline. Everything that happens is because of this person. Even though the other characters give additional layers to the storyline and have their own stories, it all comes about because of their intersection with the victim. So the backstory that happens before the murder is essential.

In our example that we started on the Character page we decided that the victim was beat to death and it is assumed to have been her boyfriend, Gene Shrock.  Gene is seventeen, so we will make her about the same age. But she needs a name. So keeping in mind that this is a religious area and the age group she’s in…how about Bethany Miller? The name sounds contemporary and the last name is indicitive of the area.

So our victim is a seventeen-year-old high school student. We know that Gene didn’t really commit the murder or we wouldn’t have a story. So who did? Because she is young and a lot of readers will have children this age, you’ll really need to consider what type of person that she is carefully. Is she a young women that didn’t have a chance in life because of her upbringing? Maybe from a grifter family? Or could it be that she saw or knew something and wanted to do the right thing – and was killed to prevent her from telling? In a story, nothing can happen without a reason. Nothing random will work. That cheats your reader. It could be a case of mistaken identity, but never random.

So why was Bethany murdered? Being seventeen she would be at the age that she would want to explore the world and her options. It shows in Bethany’s choice of friends. Her best friend, Cathy, is clean cut and the kind that parents love. But Cathy is Bethany’s cover. Sometimes she would sneak out and go to a party or hang out on the fringes of a group that she saw as exciting and dangerous. And they are dangerous, but Bethany doesn’t have the life skills to understand that they can be dangerous to her. 

Gene knows some of these people, that’s how Bethany met them. But Gene doesn’t know how involved she was with them when he wasn’t around. So he doesn’t really suspect any of them.

Now we know that Bethany was murdered by someone in the fringe group that she hung with. She was beat to death. Maybe like a gang initiation? Or maybe instead of her jumping into the gang, killing her was the initiation for someone else.

So future characters to flesh out will be the gang leader and the person being initiated. Maybe the gang leader wanted to be with Bethany and she rejected him in a humiliating way in front of the other members. Having her killed would show his followers the result of disrespect. So now we have motive.

We have the who – the one being initiated, we have the how – beat to death, and we have the why – to make an example of her.

So now is the time to do any research you may need on gangs. It’s not an area where it would be full of organized gangs, so maybe make it a gang of wannabees. Then the rules aren’t quite as precise.

Now would be the time to write the backstory. Write about Bethany’s last twenty-four hours on earth. Start with the routine and work your way into everything that happened that lead to the murder. Including Cathy covering for her, humiliating the leader, and any other thing that you can think of that will help flesh out your story. This backstory will provide you will clues and help you to keep straight the reason things happened and who was there.

Family stories are great

Talk about ideas… I flew from Ft. Worth to where I’m from in Indiana. It started out a trip to go to a family reunion on my adopted dad’s side. At my father’s reunion the subject of my Grandfather usually comes up. He disappeared a little over fifty years ago. So that usually brings up stories and guesses.

Just before I went, my Grandmother on my mother’s side died. It wasn’t a surprise. She was 103 years old. She had broken her hip in December and was in a nursing home. She didn’t feel well for a couple of days and then passed on peacefully in her sleep. Well, anyway, everyone gathered from that side of the family to say their goodbyes. And the stories… Some were hilarious. Not only was my grandmother a humorous person, she was born deaf in a time when it really wasn’t accepted well. So that was even more stories. 

Sometimes ideas for stories are right there in our own families.