Writing

Writing a plot for your story is like planning a road trip.

You start at point A and you map out how to get to point B.

A plot is not the story. It is the highway that must be traveled to get to the end. The story is how the character goes down that highway to get to the destination.

When writing your plot you must first decide what the ending is going to be. Then you work backwards, charting each point to reach the end. Every step should build to the final climax but have conflict that must be worked through to move the story along.

To make your plot more interesting than “got in car, drove to store, got bread,” you build in points of conflict that must be overcome. In a novel, there is usually one major plot line of conflict and a series of subplots.

The main conflicts basically fall […]

Chapter One:

It was a dark and stormy night…

Stuck in a rut? Can’t figure out how to get started with a bang for your opening chapter?

Try this copy-and-paste method:

Find an opening paragraph of a book that you like.

Copy it.

Then copy it again. One more time.

Now, close your work and write your own opening paragraph. It will have the flow and essence of what you just copied but be in your own words.

This is not plagiarism. The only copying you did was as a writing mental exercise.

For instance, let’s say you copied the opening sentence “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Naturally, you don’t want to use the same words, so you change.

In fact, you change quite a bit:

“It was another dark night with the wind blowing as if it determined to beat the hell out of someone.”

It’s quite different now, actually. It’s definitely a take of the “dark and stormy […]

Resistance.

No one quite cuts to the bone about writer’s block better than Steven Pressfield in his book, The War of Art. Published over ten years ago it still remains a popular, no-nonsense book for getting writers to write.

It’s not about whether you are good enough writer to call yourself a writer. If you write you are a writer. The more you write the better you will write.

It’s not about how good a writer you should be or want to be. It’s simply: Are you writing now?

While dreams of sitting at home and writing a bestselling book is a common American dream, the reality of it is much more painful.

It’s not about “Are we having fun yet?” so much as are we “Still sticking to it.”

Jodi Picoult, the bestselling author of 16 books (and counting) puts in a solid eight-hour day from 7:30 in the […]

Every writer suffers from blocks now and then. When no matter how hard you try to get your brain to function, come up with a creative idea, or solve a problem, nothing seems to work. In fact it seems that the harder you try the tougher the resistance.

Here are a few reasons that our brains may go into this catatonic state:

The inner critic has moved into the driver’s seat. This happens when we start thinking negatively about our writing. Remembering old criticisms from parents, teachers, or colleagues seem to take on a power greater than we can overcome.

Having too high an expectation can be just as deadly. In this case, we become our worst enemy by setting up goals that are impossible to reach. I found this quote recently by the American poet William Stafford who stated “There is no such thing as writer’s block for writers […]