Helpful Tips To Writing

[Lady Serenity]

Tip # 1 - Overcoming Writer’s Block

Works best to work on the bad days, when nothing seems to come right, as well as the good productive ones. At such times, your professional attitude must see you through – with some help from your outline. If you hit a block, it often means that you have not given thought to that particular part of the story. Don’t freak or get mad – unproductively. Instead, consult your outline and think constructively, confident that the solution will come to you. Check over the outline, the characters and their problems, the opposition, the complications. Use the “What if…” method until the right answer comes to you – and then the words will flow again.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip #2 - Do Your Research!

There are many authors who will argue 'it's my story! so my characters can do whatever they want!' That kind of attitude is bound to turn off readers in an instant.

If you're writing a story that's based in a certain decade/era, do your best to find out as much information as you can in regards to that. If your story is set in the 70s, you know they definitely did not have cell phones or could not text each other, neither would their slang be what we use today. Same goes for the 80s, 90s and so on.

It's the same goes for your characters too. If they belong in a fandom, it's good to see what they are like in that fandom.
Example 1: Pokemon - Pikachu always says 'pika' or 'pikachu'. Can't have him talking like a normal person
Example 2: Stargate SG-1 - Colonel Jack O'Neill is a smart ass and doesn't undestand much of science. Can't make him serious like Teal'C or smart as Daniel Jackson

No one is asking you to write out an encyclopedia of information in your story - after all it's written to keep us (the readers) entertained. However, if you really want to draw your reader in, keep things as authentic as possible and you'll get positive results in the end!

[Lady Serenity]

Tip # 3 - Making the reader Feel...Emotion...Mood...Atmosphere

To be moved - to "get a feeling" or an emotional experience - is the reader's chief goal in reading fiction; though he or she may not realize it, you must! Any book or story that leaves the reader unmoved is not likely to be a success. It is the magic of fiction that allows the reader to "escape" from ordinary day-to-day doings and to live more fully in a heightened, highlighted version of life, with the adventures possible at every turn of the page. The reader's emotional involvement in a story effects this escape because to feel it is to experience. Your job is to make the reader feel, but not in a free-fall tumble into any emotion. The readers must feel what you want them to feel, where you want them to feel it, and when. Their emotions must be under your control, and that control is exercised by the choice of words you use. This choice, in turn, is governed by what you know about human emotion, and what you know of your craft. As a writer you are not concerned with the clinical aspects of emotion. You do not analyze it for the reader, you dramatize it. What you need is a practical understanding of children and grownups, an awareness of how they are apt to feel appear under the stress of varying circumstances. For this understanding you have the best possible source of observation: yourself and the people around you; brothers, sisters, parents, friends, your children, your own childhood

[Lady Serenity]

Plotting Your Novel
by Lee Masterson


"By failing to plan, you are planning to fail."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)


A good story is made up of a logical beginning, a bumpy middle and a satisfying end. But a good plot is made up of more than just these three basics.

Plotting an entire novel is a complex task, best summed up by saying it is the author's way of showing the reader the events as they are unfolding. A successful plot depends largely on how the author chooses to display those events as they unfold.

A carefully crafted plot-line, interwoven with clever characterizations, tightly written dialogue and enough action to hold a reader's attention are only some of the factors which determine whether a book is a memorable journey, or merely a story moving through the motions from start to finish.

Let's look at some of the ingredients you will need to include into a successful plot-line.


The Hook

Beginning a long story, such as a novel-length work, with a detailed description of the surroundings, the setting and the people who will be involved in the rest of the story is no fun for a reader. The author has offered his reader no real temptation to continue turning pages to find out what happens next.

You must lure the reader into wanting to continue deeper into your fictional world by introducing some form of action at the outset. This will throw your audience into the thick of things, and tempt them to keep turning pages to find out what happens next. All the creatively-crafted description in the world won't hold a reader's interest as well as a strong opening action scene.

Action, in this instance, does not specifically mean a wild car chase, or a shoot-out. But it should involve some aspect of conflict, difficulty or obstacle which will entice a reader into wanting to find out how your character got himself into that predicament in the first place.


Characters

The best stories are usually about interesting, likeable people facing extraordinary situations. Heroes are never perfect. In fact, it is usually because of his or her flaws that a hero becomes more endearing.

Work on displaying your protagonist's strengths and weaknesses through his actions and dialogue. Showing your reader how a character reacts to a situation tells more about that person than a lengthy, boring chunk of narrative can. Similarly, how your hero reacts to the characters around him can highlight much about his personality.

Villains should be no exception to this rule. Allowing your protagonist to defeat the 'bad guy' just because he is a bad guy will make your villain appear weak and one-dimensional. Creating a worthy opponent capable of defeating your hero, complete with intelligence, skill and charm, will make your story more engaging because of its realism.

It will also force your audience to care more about what happens to your hero, especially when you make it clear that your hero could possibly be beaten by this worthy opponent.

Introducing strong leading characters during your 'hook' will involve your reader with their situation immediately, but it is ultimately the characters themselves, and how they handle their predicament, that will remain fixed in the memory of a reader long after the book has been finished.


Conflict

Once you have your reader firmly hooked, and you have him caring about what happens to your characters, you must step up the tension by creating conflict.

This could be a conflict between the characters you have already introduced, or it could be an inner conflict within the thought processes of your protagonist. Perhaps your plot involves an adversary or an obstacle for your hero to overcome.

Whatever type of conflict you choose to insert into your story, it must be clearly drawn so that the reader is left in no doubt as to the difficulty facing your hero. Reversals are a relatively simple way to introduce conflict and tension to a plot line.

Introduce a reversal of events, which stops your protagonist from reaching her goal. Your heroine will be surprised by the change in events, and forced to act upon the new situation at hand.

Just as you bring this first conflict to a satisfying resolution, step up the tension another notch, and introduce another, more demanding obstacle to impede your hero.

The obstacles you insert should become increasingly more difficult, building toward one major climactic scene.


Sub-Plots ("plot-bunnies", "mini-plots")

As in real life, no person ever lives their life focused on one solitary event. The same should be true for your characters.

Your hero will not be single-mindedly consumed by the obstacle you have placed in his path. He will still have family, friends, a job, romantic involvements, responsibilities, a social life, and many other things, although none of these outside things should over-shadow the main point of your story. They are simply the mundane trivialities of life that will make your story more believable, because your hero will still have to face these, no matter what other horrors he might be facing.

But be warned. A sub-plot is not a good excuse to add a lengthy romantic interlude (unless, of course, you are writing romance!). Nor is it a place to 'pad' your novel to increase the word count.


Climax

This is often the hardest part of a novel-length work to plan for, and even harder to write. You may know in your mind that the hero beats the bad guy, the girl gets her man, and they live happily ever after, but what about the details behind your characters getting all these things?

Have you created a believable build-up to this final pay-off? Having a great showdown scene without explaining why it is a necessary step for your characters to take can make your reader feel cheated, and make your story seem contrived.

Are there any reasons why this conflict couldn't be resolved another way? If there is any other possible outcome, you can be sure that your audience will think of it, and wonder why you didn't. Set up your obstacles so that the only possible remaining outcome is the big final climactic showdown you have planned. Your readers will probably see it coming, but at least they won't feel cheated.


Denouement

A 'denouement' is the 'wrapping up' of all the little loose ends of your story.
It is almost like the epilogue in a film, or the "They lived happily ever after" portion of a story.

After such an intense climactic scene, it is often necessary to include a wrap-up. This has the dual effect of tying up all of the sub-plots to a satisfying conclusion, and also showing your audience that life after the big showdown is still continuing, although with some very apparent changes.



Remembering to include all of these things into a novel can seem daunting, but if you spend a little time in the planning stage, your story will benefit from it in the end.

[Lady Serenity]

TIP # 4 - IMPORTANCE OF AN OUTLINE

An outline is basically a list of events that occur in your story in subsequent order. This can help eliminate or minimize your writer's block and increase your creativity. An outline can be changed endlessly once you are sure you have better ideas than the first. You can start with three simple steps:

1. Beginning
2. Middle
3. End

Once you have that established then it's time to move onto the 'sub-plots' and where to place them in at which section of the story. This way you'll know which idea is to come first . Also having an outline helps so you don't forget your ideas.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip # 5 - When Your Characters Speak

Good dialogue, can capture the reader's attention, thus making the dialogue become so real that the author seems to vanish and the characters move under their own power. The reader hears them and believes in their reality. Dialogue is the breath of life for your story people.

It is good practice to read your dialogue aloud when your scene or story is complete. This is the acid test: Do your words sound natural on the tongue? If slow or stilted, the fault will show up. It you are too close to your creation, perhaps you can ask someone else to read the material to you. It may be easier for you then to be more critical. Often, brainchild seems to develop a serpent's tooth. The author writes - and draws a step closer to a professional attitude toward his or her work. When you can recognize the flaws, you can learn to correct them.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip #6 - The Importance of Grammar

With an exception of those of you who's english is not your first language, this is a topic that should be stressed.

Format is mainly the order and style of which you present your work. You may have great content within your story, but it also needs to be legible and fit for a reader's eyes. To catch the eye of more readers, you'd want to do three things:

1. Proper sizing. If you the author, wear glasses then you might be prone to wanting smaller print in your work. The glasses you wear are more likely to amplify what you write. But other readers would have to squint to see what you have written if it's not the average size.

2. Proper spacing. Spacing between words, that's a given. Noonewriteslikethis.
But of course before each paragraph indenting is required to inform the reader when a new idea or thought is taking place or a different person is speaking. Because we can't indent here on the forum, the most you can do is create space between lines and paragraphs by clicking the "enter" button. Simple.

3. Punctuation is a key factor in writing. It may seem trite to you, but this also is part of good format. Make sure when writing a character's thoughts, you italicize it. And also instead of writing: "I love your cat." said Marcy, you should write "I love your cat," said Marcy. A comma is placed right before the closing quotation mark in dialogue. Why? Because by placing a period instead of a comma in the middle of a sentence you'd be splitting the clause into two sentences. A period ends a sentence. (Remember back to your English high school classes days)

With these tips in mind you will find it even easier to read your own work once you are all done with your story.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip #7 - Take the time to proof read your work!

I know we're all excited to get our works out there and yours truly is also guilty of doing that many times. In our haste, we sometimes forget to do a simple check of spelling errors or (as mentioned above) formatting and grammar mistakes.

In whatever writing program you use (Notepad or Word or Wordperfect or Office etc.), there is definitely an option for grammar and spell checkers. As you type, the program is able to capture the errors and fix them for you.

Take the time to read through your work again....and again...and again. Even after posting up a story, I go back and look through it and cringe at some of the typos I notice. No one's work is ever perfect, but you can only hope to achieve that as you go along.

It might seem like hard work, but some readers do notice and you do not want to come across as a 'lazy' writer, who is only concerned about putting out the work, but making no effort to make it worth reading all over again.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip# - 8 SUSPENSE - HOW TO KEEP THE READER READING

Life without adversities may be pleasant to contemplate, but it makes dull reading. It's not the kind of "living" a reader looks for in a story. The course of fictional life must never run smoothly. This advice has come to us from the greatest and oldest story tellers. "There is nothing better fitted to delight the reader than changes of circumstances and varieties of fortune," said the Roman philosopher Cicero, sometime between 106 and 43 B.C. - and the rule was ancient even then!

No trouble - no story. Without problems, conflicts, opposition, there is no suspense; and without suspense a reader won't keep reading. It is this important element that you must build into a story once you have created a leading character so interesting and appealing that the reader cares what happens to this person.

Conflict is the struggle of your leading character against opposition. The outcome of this struggle should never seem to be a "sure thing." Despite the reader's assurance from previous experiences that the hero usually wins in the end, there must be a lack of absolute certainty to keep the reader turning pages.


I've always been a sucker for drama even before I learned about this point. It's so true, no story whether non-fiction or fictional, ever keeps your attention unless it's contains emotional drama in one form or the other. Whether is it's murder or divorce or scandal or whatever.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip #9 - And then...? Problems of Your Story's Middle

Now you must begin to fulfill the promises of your story opening as you clarify the why (motivation) of your main character and reveal how he or she copes with his situations.

The moment the character leaves the safety island of "they've been" he or she must be confront by barrier of opposition. Each obstacle, whatever its form presents a problem to be solved, a disaster to be averted, or an opponent to be overcome. But such is the nature of successful storytelling that the solving of one problem must immediately bring on more difficulties. The hero or heroine must leap from the frying pan into the fire. In your story middle you must have a course of ups and downs - or "furtherances" toward the character's ultimate goal, and of "hindrances" that thwart and frustrate attempts to succeed in his or her purpose. These must occur at irregular intervals, so that the reader will not be able to anticipate success or failure on your character's part and will all come out. He or she will never stop reading as long as there is an incompleted situation present.

One simple device that will keep him or her reading from chapter to chapter is never to end a chapter on a completed incident. Break it off at crucial, suspenseful moment, and pick it up again in the next chapter.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip# 10 - The Beginning - Getting Your Story Off to a Running Start
How you begin depends on the kind of story you want to tell.

If it is to be an action tale - an adventure - think up an arresting incident with which to start it off. If you are going to rely heavily on the mood, then play up the interesting or exotic setting. Should yours be a character story, present the main character in a fresh, exciting way. Make this person sound like someone around whom things happen.

The beginning is your chance to catch the interest of the reader, at a moment when there is the most curiosity about what you have to offer. At the same time, your reader is not yet involved with your story people, or what happens to them. Before the reader's attention strays to something else, you must seize and hold it.

No matter what exciting things you know are going to happen on page five or ten or fifty, your readers will not stay with you that long unless you snag them on page one and lure them into reading on.

Here are 7 pointers to get you started:

1. Catch the interest of your reader
2. Introduce the characters
3. Set the Stage - Reader must know, time, place, setting, and social atmosphere
4. Introduce Problem
5. Set the mood - Kind of emotional tone - comedic, tragical, romantic
6. Suggest the complication
7. Hint at the solution - Even in the beginning, the final solution of your hero's or heroine's dilemma must be prepared for, so that when it comes, it will be convincing

[Lady Serenity]

Tip# 11 - Climax and Ending

Every scene in your story should lead up to the dramatic final climax. Your main character's path should become increasingly difficult - with the main problem or goal still out of reach - when he or she arrives at the point where a decision must be made. Depending on what your story is about, the decision might be to fight or flee; to abandon a goal or press on. Under certain circumstances it might even involve the sacrifice of some hard-won prize.

The necessity to make a fateful decision should bring on a crisis in the main character's affairs - "life or death" for all his or her desires. The person is plunged into the blackest of black moments. Success or failure hangs in the balance, and only the leading player can take the decisive step. What will he or she do?

Here must come the most intense struggle for the main character - and the highest point of interest in the story - the climax. The reader should want the hero to succeed, to make the right decision. Sometimes the reader knows what that should be. But will the hero know? The eagerness to find out should make the reader take a firmer grip on the book. A good climax will not allow him or her to let go and do something else. How often have you delayed some task because you just had to finish a story you were reading? That's the sort of climax you should try to write!

[Lady Serenity]

Tip# 12 - How to Revise...and Polish

What may seem flawless to you in the heat of creation can turn out to be anything but - in the cool of reason a month or so later. Never send out anything that is not your absolute best.

It's not writing but rewriting that makes a smooth-flowing tale. And although many writers groan over revision, it is easier than creation. You have something to work on; you are not pulling a story out of imagination's skein. And you are not working marble, but on paper.Words can be easily changed.

The mind works faster than the hand; that's why the brilliant passages we compose in our heads are often disappointing when we view them on paper. Something gets lost in the transcription to type - but in revision we have a second chance to recapture the magic of the original concept, and improve upon it.

With a long story, however, there's no need to wait. By the time the project is finished, you should be able to read it from the beginning with a fairly level head.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip# 13 - FLAT AND ROUNDED CHARACTERS

Your total character is the combination of all the qualities or traits that distinguish him as an individual. Short story limitations allow only for the flat delineation of a type. The character exhibits a single trait or perhaps two, which are distinct and make him different from his story fellows. (He or she might be timid, but have a strong sense of responsibility that causes him to overcome his fears in the end.)

The rounded character is for book lengths. This character should have a number of traits, and these may even be somewhat inconsistent - as in real life; brave - but not always; loyal - but perhaps a bit envious; honest - most of the time. He or she maybe rather relaxed when it comes to causes that excite his or her young friends. Yet when goaded into action (perhaps by injustice) he or she leaps in the fray. If the character is your hero or heroine, he or she can be richly endowed with character traits. But if the role is a minor one, the traits must be trimmed down to bare essentials.

Remember, character traits make possible the variety of personalities and the contrasts that lend color and interest to a story. If one character is careful, make another careless. If one is loud, make another soft-spoken. Lively-sad, cruel-kind; thoughtful-thoughtless; ambitious-lazy; brave-timid; neat-sloppy; wildly imaginative or earthbound-practical.

[Lady Serenity]

Tip # 14 - What is the Climax?

(I know many people have a trouble with this part of the story. Some stories can contain more than one climax, depending one what type of story it is.)

The Climax is the moment of decision, the point of no return, where intensity and interest in the story have reached their highest pitch. The main character must decide which way to go because of the kind of person you have made him or her.