story-writing – Penstricken

What’s On Your Writer’s Utility Belt?

Posted on 02/06/201901/06/2019 by Ndrw

You might have seen that Batman has been trending on Twitter lately. Naturally when I saw it, I thought the time was ripe to do Super Snappy Speed Reviews: Batman Edition... Until I remembered I still haven’t seen Batman v. Superman and so, couldn’t possibly offer a complete review of all the Batman flicks. Not content to let the Batman theme pass me by, however, I decided instead to write about my Writer’s Utility Belt.

‘Your writer’s… what?’ I hear you cry, somewhat bemused.

You know! My writer’s utility belt! Just like Batman has a utility belt which is loaded with all deus ex machina gadgets he needs to help him save the day, so we writers all have our (figurative) utility belts loaded with all the tools (mostly apps, these days) we rely on to help us whenever we sit down to write.

… Don’t we? 😶

… No?

Well… just humour me for a couple of minutes while I tell you what I keep on mine anyway:

Physical Notebooks and a Bic Four-Colour Ballpoint Pen

It all starts with paper and pen for me. Specifically a generously sized notebook with plenty of space for scribbles, doodles and general nonsense and a Bic Four-Colour Ballpoint Pen for effective brainstorming.

I usually move onto the computer pretty quickly once I get past the initial stages of coming up with and refining ideas but in the early days of a new story, physical honest-to-goodness paper and pen are a must for me.

Jotterpad

I’ve got to be honest here: despite the fact I’ve written manifold positive reviews about various mobile writing apps, I don’t actually use them very much for writing. Don’t ask me why, but I just find them really awkward to write with, no matter how good they might be.

That being said, if you’re sitting on the bus, on your way into work with no hope of getting home to your precious notebooks, you might want a quick and easy way to write down ideas (or whole chapters) that suddenly pop into your head. For me, Jotterpad for Android does the job nicely.

Scapple

For me, one of the toughest parts of writing a story is bringing order to the chaos of my original ideas. Even once I’ve got my basic plot and characters figured out, there were still be a lot of plot holes and other loose ends to tie up before I can create a functioning chapter outline.

When I’m deep in the throes of figuring all this out, I can easily lose track of where I am. There is often too much material to sift through for me to simply write it out in a linear fashion. That’s when Scapple by Literature and Latte, the virtual corkboard comes into its own. You can spread out all your thoughts in whatever order you like, linking them together (or not) as you see fit. Ideal for mind-mapping and general idea sifting, it’s helped me out of more than one bout of writers’ block and plays a key role in all my writing projects.

Typewriter

I’ve spoken before about free writing; a pre-writing technique in which the writer takes a few minutes to write anything and everything that comes to mind without pausing to edit. It’s a technique I swear by to get me started in the morning, and yet it’s also a technique I found almost impossible to master given my tendency to edit as I go…

Until I discovered Typewriter – Minimal Text Editor. This simple ASCII text editor has no editing functionality whatsoever. No deleting, no copying, no pasting, nothing. All you can do is add text and once you’ve added it, you’re stuck with it. It can probably serve quite a few functions, but for me, it’s my go-to app for free writing.

Scrivener

Well of course, it had to be here. Scrivener is the app that I, along with many of my writer colleagues, use to create my story bibles and to write my actual manuscript. I also use it to keep my daily writer’s journal.

It’s powerful. It’s popular. It’s surprisingly affordable. I can’t remember the last time I ever considered writing a manuscript with any other app and I doubt I ever will.

What about you? What’s on your writer’s utility belt? Are there any particular apps or tools you rely on to help you write? Share it with us in the comments below!

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. If you enjoyed it, don’t forget to ‘like’ this post and also follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter and like Penstricken on Facebook, if that’s what reaches your utility belt.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

5 Elements of a Great Story

Posted on 19/05/201918/05/2019 by Ndrw

Writing is like baking a cake. You need just the right ingredients in just the right measure, or else you’ll just end up with an unappetising mess. In the same way that a tasty cake should be soft but firm, sweet but not overly so, moist but not wet and ~~covered in lots of chocolate~~ tastefully decorated, so too, a good story will stimulate the audience emotionally and intellectually; it will thrill them as well as make them think; frighten them as well as make them laugh and it will take them on a journey which is both meaningful and enjoyable.

To accomplish this, there’s a few key ingredients you just can’t do without:

Characters

Stories don’t just have characters. Characters are the story. Therefore, well developed characters, each with their own motives and goals which the audience sympathise with and care about, are essential for a good story. A few key players you might want to include in your story are:

A protagonist [2]. This is your main character, that key individual whom the story is actually about and with whom the audience should sympathise the most deeply (this one is mandatory. You don’t have a story without a protagonist).
An antagonist [2]. This is your protagonist’s main opponent throughout the story. He’s not necessarily evil, or even plotting evil (though he can be). He might simply be a rival competitor in the World Tiddlywinks Championships that your protagonist needs to defeat to become the World Tiddlywink Champion. Just as long as there is a direct conflict between your antagonist and your protagonist; one which the audience cares about.
A love interest is another common feature in much fiction. Usually there is a bit of sexual tension between your love interest and your protagonist from the outset (alternatively, unrequited attraction is a common motif). The love interest may also have some chemistry with your antagonist, thus creating the ever popular love triangle (a common motif in romance fiction). But if you are creating a love interest, just remember: no character should exist solely for the benefit another. Make sure your love interest has goals and motives of their own and a purpose for existing beyond making the protagonist swoon.

Conflict

So you’ve got a strong protagonist with firmly established goals and motives. Good for you.

Now… what’s stopping him achieving his goals? Your story will largely pivot on this question. Your character wants to do something, realises he can’t for some reason (this is your conflict!), struggles to overcome whatever it is that’s hindering him and finally succeeds.

It may be an antagonist whose goals bring them into direct conflict with the protagonist (for instance, a murderer might deliberately hide evidence from a detective, thus making it difficult for your protagonist to solve the mystery) but it could also be an inner struggle with illness, crippling self-doubt or the natural forces of nature. Whatever it is, there must be something standing between your protagonist and his ultimate goal. That’s your conflict.

Plot

This is arguably the most frustrating part of writing a story (but also one of the most important). Your plot is your basic sequence of events which form the skeleton of your story. There are lots of different approaches to plot structuring which you can Google at your leisure and decide which approach works best for you and your story.

Nevertheless, all good plots have this in common: that they progress in a logical manner from beginning to end. Something happens early on in the story to disrupt the ordinary life of your character, forcing him to do something to achieve his goal(s). This action leads to another event, leading to another action, leading to another event, progressing in a rational, cause-and-effect manner which finally concludes in a final climactic crisis event which resolves the main conflict and allows life to return to normal (though it may not be the same ‘normal’ as at the beginning of the story. e.g.: Aladdin’s ‘normal’ life started out as a single poor boy; his new ‘normal’ at the end is being married to a princess as a logical conclusion of the events that went before).

Pacing

As the author, your job is to blend fast bits and slow bits to create just the right feel for your story. This will be largely dependant on your genre, but even the most fast paced stories will still need slow bits to give the audience a chance to fully assimilate what is going on and to build a sense of anticipation. Equally, fast paced scenes (such as a good fight) are important to give the audience a bit of excitement and to relieve some of that tension you’ve been building up in the slow bits.

Some scenes can be fast paced or slow paced, depending on the effect you’re trying to create and the purpose they serve in your story. Love scenes are a good example. Fast paced narrative would make a slow and sensual love scene seem rushed (‘Jim and Jane made slow passionate love’ doesn’t quite capture the feel you’re trying to create); equally if you’re writing a moment of wild abandon between two lovers, you don’t want to bog the pacing down with talk and introspection. Use language in such a way to make the audience feel the urgency (or lack thereof) of what is happening.

Theme

I’ve spoken at some length about theme before but at the risk of repeating myself let me just say this: that an awareness of your story’s key themes will allow you to create a story with a bit of substance. All stories contain themes. They’re a natural byproduct of fiction, but they grow wild like weeds, accomplishing nothing. As an author, you have the power to cultivate your themes, to structure them and to make a really clear statement about real life through your work of fiction.

Do so, and your work will echo in the minds and the hearts of audience, challenging them, troubling them, encouraging them and stirring up their feelings long after they’ve finished reading it.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

Idea Generators: Are They Any Use?

Posted on 12/05/201912/05/2019 by Ndrw

If you’re struggling to come up with even the meanest idea for your story, you might be tempted to Google story idea generators to help you out. If you do, you’ll find there are bazillions out there: random plot generators, title generators, character generators, motive generators, setting generators, first line generators and everything else besides. If all that feels a bit too much like stealing, you can also use story dice, random image generators or random word generators or character trait generators to help lubricate the imagination.

But wait a minute…

Do these little miracle makers really deliver the goods?

Most of these random plot generators tend to work by simply throwing up a random selection of story elements, such as a random theme, a couple of randomly generated characters, a randomly generated setting and maybe a randomly generated conflict. Once in a while these might be helpful, but nine times out of ten, they tend to throw up results which are so completely random that I just end up despairing over my failure to write a story about drug addiction in which a pole dancer and an astronaut get locked in the Tower of London.

Story Plot Generator Pro (A.K.A Plot Gen Pro) by Arc Apps is probably the best random generator of this kind that I’ve come across. You have to pay for the full version but even the trial version is pretty decent and produces random elements within a chosen genre. Thus, the results are not quite as bizzare as they might otherwise have been. For instance, when I asked for sci-fi/space story I got:

Location: You are on a small civillian colony that shares the planet with a native species.
Complication: A ship of alien origin approaches: attempting to communicate proves challenging.
Character: Your character has taken someone else’s identity.
Detail: Cloning technology was recently perfected but has not been revealed to the public.

Story Plot Generator Pro

I mean, heck… with a bit of effort, that might actually be usable.

There are, of course, some idea generators out there which produce slightly more refined ideas. My personal favourite is the Story Idea Generator at thejohnfox.com. Instead of vomiting up a meaningless jumble of events, half-baked characters and opening lines, this little beauty presents you with a meaningful scenario and a relevant question to stimulate your own imagination. For example:

A heartbroken husband chases his cheating wife through a child’s playground at night. What does he keep shouting at her, and why doesn’t she want to be with him?

https://thejohnfox.com/2016/05/story-idea-generator/

If used correctly, this kind of prompt should make for a far richer story, as you are forced to think your way through the details of who your characters are and why they do what they do. Rather than giving you a pre-made story (or, to be more accurate, a sequence of meaningless events, as most generators give you), this generator essentially gives you suggestions for what to write about and a couple of questions to get you started but doesn’t actually attempt to write it for you. The specific events that happen, why they happen and the outcome of it all are left very much to the author’s imagination, as indeed, it should be.

Depending on how your brain works, I can see generators of this type working really well for a lot of people. For me personally, however, I find that I don’t usually need someone to tell me what to write about. I often think I do, but whenever I do use a plot generator which produces something sensible, I end up just feeling like I’ve been asked to finish writing someone else’s story. I seldom feel confident enough, or even interested enough, to write it. What I really need is simple stimulation, and usually the vaguer it is, the better. I am, in fact, quite capable of coming up with story ideas myself and a simple word, catchphrase or picture will usually be enough to stimulate my sleeping imagination whereas a plot generator (no matter how good it is) feels a little too restrictive. Thankfully, there are plenty of places on the internet where you can find nice vague stimuli too.

Title generators are my personal favourite. A simple adjective/noun style title generator like this one, will throw up all sorts of interesting concepts that you can take in almost direction. I just tried it out and I got The Incredible Flute, The Last Cottage and The Evil Crow. There is so much potential in those simple ideas that I bet most writers could come up with something unique for every one of them (in fact, please do! Write a story called The Incredible Flute and tell us all about it in the comments. I dares ya).

There are, of course, more complex title generators out there which are mostly tailored to specific genres. For instance, Fantasy Name Generators gave me some really interesting titles such as Wife of Dreams, Faith of Earth and Boy Without Flaws simply by pressing a button (I might actually try writing some of those myself). These can also be refined by genre and there is the option to specify key words you want to include (incidentally and in passing, Fantasy Name Generators boasts one of the largest collections of random generators I’ve ever seen on the internet; everything from story title generators to Quetzalcoatl name generators. Lose yourself on that website for a while).

Whatever kind of idea generator you like to use (including good old fashioned writing prompts), the important thing to remember is this: even the best prompts are no substitute for the imagination. By all means, let them stimulate your imagination (if you find them helpful) but don’t fall into the trap of thinking they’ll do the imagining for you. They cannot and they should not. This also means that you needn’t be enslaved to the details of whatever prompt you use. You might not be able to contrive a realistic scenario where a pole dancer and an astronaut end up in the Tower, but perhaps you can write a piece of historical fiction about someone else being locked in the Tower, or perhaps you can write about an astronaut who does a bit of pole dancing on the side. The possibilities are endless for a fertile imagination.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

App Review: Character Story Planner 2

Posted on 05/05/201927/04/2019 by Ndrw

Search for ‘writing apps’ on Google Play Store and you will be spoilt for choice by the results. Everyone and their granny seems to have produced an app to help writers draft or plan their stories, most of which I personally don’t find very helpful. Nevertheless there are a few diamonds in the rough to be found and today I want to tell you all about another one I recently discovered: Character Story Planner 2 for Android by Ifantasia.

In fact, the name of the app is somewhat misleading. This app is much more then a simple character planner. You can use it to work out pretty much all of the little details that go into creating a world for your story: characters, settings, magic systems, scenes, timelines, the works. Everything short of actually drafting your story.

One of the best things about this app is the generous supply of preset templates for creating character bios, relationships, settings, groups, objects etc. Most of these are pretty detailed and, with a bit of work, can help you to knock together all the essential details you need to build your world and your characters. You can also easily download templates created by other users. While none of these templates can be customised, you can create and modify your own templates from scratch. This can be time consuming, but is probably worth the effort if you’re not satisfied with the default templates.

At first glance, the timeline function may appear to be a good way to plan out your chapter outline, but don’t be deceived. Whenever you create a scene on this app, you include the date the events take place on. So far, so good. This information is then used to automatically compile a timeline, which also includes key dates from character bios etc, such as characters’ birthdays. However there is no way to organise what order scenes will be actually presented in, making it a pretty poor substitute for a proper chapter outline. It works best simply as a means of organising the history of your fictional world (as I suspect it was really intended for),

If you really, really, really want to use this app to draft your story, there is a ‘script’ function tucked away under the ‘story’ tab of your project. Each script you create is essentially just a block of free text without any bells or whistles whatsoever, which could possibly suffice as a place to draft your story if it weren’t for one glaring problem: there is no obvious way to export the text or to compile it into a single manuscript. Personally, I only use the script function for taking notes, not for writing my actual story.

The general layout seems to assume the author is writing fantasy. Under the ‘world’ tab of each project, there are specific sections for detailing magic systems, deities, creatures, flora and so forth. Of course, if these are irrelevant to your story, you can just ignore them and use the other sections to write any genre you like so it’s not really a problem.

There are ads, though these can be easily avoided by turning off your data/WiFi when you use the app. I haven’t personally found any obvious bugs so far, though I feel compelled to point out that there are a lot of reviews on Play Store by other users complaining about some pretty annoying sounding bugs, including ones which delete most of your work. Perhaps these bugs have been fixed or perhaps I’m yet to encounter them. Only time will tell (I’ll maybe let you know!).

All in all, a useful tool with bucket loads of potential. There is, perhaps, a bit of scope for development but when it comes to world building, this app is still well worth a look.

My rating:🌟🌟🌟🌟

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

5 Writing Laws I Just Can’t Keep

Posted on 28/04/201920/04/2019 by Ndrw

Google it, and you’ll see that the internet (to say nothing of books and formal writing courses) is simply teeming with lists of rules on how to write fiction. I’ve been known to knock out a list of rules or two myself; rules I generally believe make for a better writer if they are carefully adhered to and applied with a little wisdom.

Nevertheless, it is human nature to rebel against the rules. If the Writing Police ever do raid my house at four in the morning and drag me before the Fiction Judge, I’m pretty sure the list of charges will be a long one and he’ll throw the book at me for every one of them.

And so, today I’m here to confess my crimes. I know that some of these things are wrong, and I am ashamed of them. Other laws, I break with pride. And so without further ado, here are my crimes:

Using adverbs

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
Stephen King

I confess it ashamedly. Sometimes when I’m writing, especially when I’m writing dialogue, I use adverbs liberally to describe the way people said things.

And I will proudly confess that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with very occasional adverbs. My real crime is that I don’t just use them ‘very occasionally.’ I use them all over the place and wait until the editing process to come back and replace them all with stronger verbs.

It’s the only way I know to get anything done.

Long-Windedness

Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can.

Ernest Hemingway

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might have already noticed that I have a tendency to say things in a verbose fashion; using an excess of words (with little side notes in brackets) to say even the simplest things and breaking it up with more commas and semi-colons than you can shake a stick at, when all I really need to say is something along the lines of: ‘I can be quite long-winded’ (or something like that).

It makes for a tedious narrative and a painstaking editing process.

having holidays

Just write every day of your life…
Ray Bradbury

I tried that, Ray. I really did. But I’m a firm believer that a regular day off is healthy and makes me a better writer, provided I am diligent about my writing schedule for the rest of the week. I also give myself a set amount of ‘annual leave’ (a maximum of 33 days per year, the exact same as my day job gives me) to allow for holidays and so forth.

On a related note…

Writing is not the sum total of my life

For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
Eugene Ionesco

I know they’ll throw the book at me just for saying this, but my life consists of more than writing. I will go further: I believe that a life which consists of nothing but writing will produce very limited writing. I say that with the greatest of reverence to Ionesco, who was clearly a superior writer to myself. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion Ionesco’s own life probably consisted of more than writing. After all, to quote another great writer, ‘in order to write about life, you must first live it’ (E. Hemingway). Believing things, doing things, experiencing things and feeling things, all fill your mind with the raw material to create good stories.

Don’t misunderstand me. Writing is very important to me. I write diligently every Monday-Saturday and I do spend an excessive amount of my non-writing time thinking about writing. But I also think about my wife and daughter. I think about God and I think about the state of the world. I think about my day job and I think about how I want to reward myself at the end of a hard day’s work. I think about tidying up my death-trap of a back garden and I think about what I want to read, watch or listen to. Writing is not my life, but all my life goes into writing.

Self-doubt and arrogant pride

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like.
Neil Gaiman

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly…
Romans 12:3 (KJV)

We writers walk a fine line between vain conceit and abject self-abasement: a line called ‘sober judgement’. Most of the time (though not always!), I tend to struggle with the latter rather than the former. I doubt my writing to such an extent that I shy away from boldly writing the things I want to write. As a result, my progress is slowed to a crawl as I sit at the computer and try to convince myself that what I’m writing isn’t a crime against literature.

However, I won’t lie to you. There have been some occasions where I’ve fallen down on the other side of ‘sober judgement’ and began to sing my own praises. This, too, is crippling, because (apart from being annoying to others) when the inevitable dry spell comes, where I struggle to write well, it makes that feeling of self-doubt all the more devastating.

What about you? What writing rules do you struggle (or outright refuse) to keep? Confession is good for the soul, so tell us all about it in the comments below!

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

Game Review: Toonstruck

Posted on 21/04/201913/04/2019 by Ndrw

SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers in this post, anyone who has not played Toonstruck (1996) is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

Back in the ’90s, point and click adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Broken Sword were far more popular than they are today. Nevertheless, they still retain a devoted fan-base who enjoy the pain of walking around the same level for hours or days at a time without making any progress and then falling off their seats with delight when they discover a ‘pickupable’ object they don’t know what they’re supposed to do with.

I count myself as one of them. I guess one of the things I like about them is that they are so heavily story driven. They’re not like first person shooters where you can pretty much ignore the story (though I do love a good first person shooter after a hard day at the office). The game is the story, and you have to engage with what’s going on in order to move the story forward.

So today, I’m going to review an often overlooked gem of the genre: Toonstruck (1996).

The game begins in the ‘real world’, where a successful but despondent cartoon animator by the name of Drew Blanc (I know) has been assigned the task of creating new characters for his immensely successful Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show; a cartoon filled with cute bunny rabbits. Despite the show’s success, he despises those sickly sweet rabbits and is struggling to complete the job he’s been assigned. While he is sitting there, despairing of his life, his eye alights on a picture on the wall of a not remotely cute rabbit: Flux Wildly. Wild, irreverent and sarcastic, The Flux Wildly Show was Drew’s first creation, one that he believed would bring him fame and success but never saw the light of day.

Suddenly, just as morning is breaking, he finds himself sucked into a cartoon world, populated with characters from The Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show and of course, his old pal, Flux Wildly. But this is a world divided. The innocent cartoons of Cutopia, where everything is insufferably cute and child friendly, are being threatened by Count Nefarious, ruler of the Malevolands, where everything is weird, dark and sinister. The evil Count has developed a weapon (the Malevolator) which allows him to transform cute cartoons into ugly and nasty cartoons, thus giving him the ability to conquer Cutopia and turn it into one big Malevoland. To stop that from happening, the King of Cutopia hires Drew and Flux to find the parts to build a counter-weapon (the Cutifier) and so begins your adventure in this surreal and colourful cartoon world.

All in all, the story works well. A lot of critics have accused the dialogue, humour and characters of being dated and unoriginal but I personally feel that they may have missed the point. It strikes me that this game was meant as a homage to a classic ‘Loony Tunes’ style of cartoon which is now little more than a distant memory and which was probably already on its way out by the late ’90s; and if this is the case, it has accomplished it masterfully.

This game boasts a wide cast of diverse characters (many of whom are voiced by surprisingly famous actors including Christopher Lloyd, Ben Stein, Dan Castellaneta and Tim Curry), none of whom feel under cooked in any way– not even the minor characters.

If I have one criticism of the overall story, it is this: that towards the end of the game, the story seems to unravel a little bit, which may be owing to the fact it was originally intended to be a much longer game. For instance, Drew is injected with a chemical to turn him into a cartoon, but this doesn’t really come to anything. The story would have worked just fine without it. It would have also been nice to see him succeed with The Flux Wildly Show (the game ends with him pitching Flux to his boss as a companion for Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun, only for his boss to talk him down and angrily reject the idea). It’s not enough to spoil the game, but it feels like the loose ends were tied up a bit hastily.

One more thing: I would suggest to anyone considering buying this game for their children (because it’s been rereleased on Steam) that it might not be quite as child friendly as it first appears. There is quite a bit of adult humour which, although reasonably subtle, might not be suitable for children of a certain age. The most blatantly adult scene is one in which a perfectly cute cow (Marge) and a perfectly adorable sheep (Polly) are struck by the Malevolator. When you visit them after this, you find that ‘Mistress’ Marge is now chained to a ‘Wheel O’ Luv’ and ‘Punisher’ Polly (all dressed up in a tight fitting corset) is now whipping the cow. The puzzle which follows consists mainly of trying to find a form of torture which can satiated Mistress Marge’s lust for pain more than Polly’s whip. You might have a hard time explaining this to your child so I recommend playing the game yourself to decide if it’s suitable.

All in all, it’s a great fun game to play. I like it a lot and it’s a shame that it was such a commercial flop. Give it a go. I think you’ll enjoy it.

My rating:🌟🌟🌟🌟

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

10 Great Book Reviews

Posted on 14/04/201914/04/2019 by Ndrw

As you might have guessed by now, when I’m not writing, I’m reading; and when I’m not blogging, I’m reading other people’s blogs. One of my favourite things to read is book reviews (what better way to find new books to read?), and so today I’ve decided to share a few book reviews I’ve read from my fellow bloggers over the last few days.

None of these posts have necessarily got anything in common, save for the fact that they are all novel reviews I enjoyed reading. Some of these reviews are quite short; others longer and more detailed. They don’t necessarily deal with novels in the same genre or by the same author. As ever, this is simply a selection of my personal favourite reviews, not an exhaustive list; and as ever, this list is in no particular order.

And so, without further ado:

K DeMers Dowdall: ‘Book Review: Catling’s Bane’

Shalini’s Books and Reviews: ‘Book Review – Sleep by C. L. Taylor’

Stephanie’s Book Reviews: ‘Review: Summer by the Tides by Denise Hunter’

This Is My Truth Now: ‘Book Review: Endgame by Patrick Hodges’

FictionFan’s Book Reviews: ‘Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison’

Suzy Approved Book Reviews: ‘In The Neighborhood Of True by Susan Kaplan Carlton’

Keeper of Pages: ‘Book Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides’

Lifesfinewhine: ‘The Dioramist by Eric Keegan (Book Review)’

KayCKay Book Reviews: ‘If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura ★★★★★ #BookReview’

Beetleypete: ‘Book Review: The Summer of Madness’

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

Are You Making The Best Use Of Your Writing Time?

Posted on 07/04/201930/03/2019 by Ndrw

Writing takes time. Lots of time, especially if you’re writing a novel. If you’re writing a novel and maintaining a weekly blog, you have to devote even more time to writing; and even then, you might still have that niggling feeling in the back of your mind that you should be writing a few short stories here and there.

That pretty much describes my situation, along with juggling a wife, a daughter and a full time job that has nothing to with writing. And so, I’ve recently made a few more changes to my weekly writing schedule which I hope will allow me to make better use of my limited time. I know I’ve spoken about this before [2], but I’m always trying to think of new ways to make the most efficient use of my limited writing time and while I’m sure your writing schedule won’t be exactly the same as mine, I thought I’d tell you about it anyway to provide you with a bit of food for thought.

On the average week, my writing time looks something like this:

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
19:30 – 21:00	19:30-21:00	19:30-21:00	19:30-21:00	19:30-21:00	07:00-11:30	Day off

Note that the evening slots are very approximate, depending on how long it takes to get my toddler into bed. Also note that my Saturday session, while longer, is subject to regular interruptions and is therefore not always the best quality writing time.

I think you’ll agree, that’s not a huge amount of time, but it should be adequate. The big killer, as I mentioned in previous posts, is this blog. Because I publish a post every week (a deadline I don’t have with my novel), it seemed only natural to prioritise the blog. And so, I would sit down at 19:30 every Monday and write my blog. Once the blog was finished, I would use the rest of the week to work on my novel. If I managed to smash the blog on Monday, that gave me Tuesday-Saturday to write my novel. If I was still struggling with it on Friday, I probably wouldn’t get much novel done at all that week. While I had taken a few steps to try and redress the balance between my blog and story writing time, the fact remains that my fiction writing was still very much at the mercy of my blog. If the blog was going well, my novel got written. If progress on the blog was slow, the novel ground to a halt.

The thing is, as much as I love doing this blog, I only ever really considered it a kind of hobby. What I really want is to publish my novel and send a few more of my short stories to magazines and writing competitions (my output in that department has been shockingly low) but I just didn’t know how I could make better use of my time– until recently when I did a time management course at my work. Then my eyes were opened.

I don’t have time to go over all the particulars of the course, but one of the lessons I took away from it was the importance of organising tasks by order of importance and urgency, giving priority to important tasks (that is, the ones that mattered to me the most) first, then urgent ones (ones that were simply time sensitive) second. Since my blog is urgent (it needs to be done every week) but not as important to me as establishing a career as an author, it is clearly wrong for me to slave my novel to the progress of my blog. It’s also important to me to submit shorter works to magazines, but this is something that I’ve been completely neglecting as the blog has taken up so much of my time.

And so, I have reorganised my writing schedule. Now it looks like this:

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
Novel	Novel	Novel	Shorts	Shorts	Blog	Day off

If you think about it, you’ll realise my novel now gets a guaranteed four and a half hours a week of my time with very few interruptions; short stories get three hours and my blog gets a still very generous four and a half hours (with more regular interruptions). This means that my blog has got just as much time as it always did, but now my novel is free of restrictions. It will get the same four and a half hours of quality time every week come hell or high water with the blog. Not only that, but I’ve even managed to make time to work on my short stories. In addition, by making Saturday my blog day, I remove the temptation to ‘borrow’ time from other days, as my blog is published on Sundays. Thus my novel and short story writing productivity is increased with little or no loss to my blog.

What about you? Do you struggle to make time to juggle life with multiple writing projects? How do you prioritise your time? Share your wisdom and experience with us in the comments below!

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

6 Things I’ve Learned About Writing Fiction

Posted on 31/03/201928/03/2019 by Ndrw

Writing is an art. Like any art form, it’s something you learn as you go. Even those rare child prodigies who are born excellent writers will still undoubtedly pick up a few nuggets of wisdom as they practice and hone their craft. It’s only natural. The longer you do a thing, the better you get at it.

Most of the writing tips I’ve shared on this website over the last few years have been things I have simply learned by experience, and so today I’ve decided to share a brief selection of some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years which I think have helped to make me a better writer. And so without further ado and in no particular order:

Lesson #1: You Can’t edit a blank page

Although it may go against the grain, the best way to write is to write boldly without stopping to worry about how good or bad it is. In fact, even if you know it sucks, you should still just plough on with your story until it’s finished and come back to fix it later. Heck, you’re going to do a few drafts anyway (aren’t you?).

This is no new commandment but an old one. Although it can be tempting to fix bits you’re unsatisfied with (or worse still, refuse to write them in the first place), editing as you go is ultimately crippling. You will not get anything finished writing that way.

lesson #2: Characters are the beating heart of any good story

Regular readers of this blog (God bless you kind people) will know I’ve said this a billion times before so it’s only right that I say it again: characters can make or break any story. I don’t care how clever, imaginative or well researched the rest of your story is, half-baked characters will ruin your story while excellent characters can make even the most simple of stories a joy to read.

Moreover a plot can emerge from a good cast of characters in a way which feels natural (to the reader at least; writers must sweat blood no matter what). After all, in real life events happen to people; people don’t happen to events. So too, it is better to make your characters the focus of your story and ask what happens to them, rather than creating a plot first and then populating it with characters whom you have contrived to suit it.

lesson #3: CONSISTENCY and Persistence are essential

It can be tempting for inexperienced writers to imagine inspiration is the key to being a good story writer. Such writers will only be inclined to write when they are overcome with a wave of inspiration or when they are feeling particularly ‘in the zone.’

Experienced writers know what folly that is. It might sound less exciting (in fact, it often is less exciting) but the real secret to producing a steady flow of work is to be consistent with your writing routine, regardless of how you feel and to persist with your story even when you hate it.

lesson #4: There Are No Bad Ideas; Only Bad Executions

Whenever you have an idea for a story, it can be tempting to immediately judge it in one of two ways:

This is the best idea ever! I can’t wait to sit down and write this masterpiece!
That’s a terrible idea. I’ll just pretend I didn’t have it…

In my experience, judging the quality of an idea in this way is a mistake. The fact is, ideas are a pound a dozen and have very little bearing on the quality of the final story. Even the stupidest ideas can yield a good story, if the story is well planned with characters whose goals and motives we care about; and the reverse is also true.

Lesson #5: In the early stages, only handwriting will do

Maybe this doesn’t apply to you, but I find that when I’m trying to come up with new material, I just can’t seem to get the creative juices flowing using a computer, tablet or phone. It has to be pen and paper. I have to be able to scribble freely. Even Scapple is a poor substitute for pen and paper at the earliest stages of brainstorming new ideas.

Once I have a rough idea of my basic plot and who the main players in my story will be, I quickly transfer to working with apps like Scapple, Scrivener or FocusWriter but until I reach that stage, it’s paper and pen all the way. Nothing else works. While this might not be the case for you, I still think it’s worthwhile having a think about what helps you to work most effectively at each stage.

Lesson #6: Like It Or Lump It, Your Intended Audience Matters

No story, no matter how well written, appeals to everybody. However, most reasonably well written stories will appeal to somebody. If you try to please everyone, you are doomed to fail but knowing your intended audience in advance will allow you to determine exactly what kind of themes, characters and adult elements are appropriate for your story. Discussed in more detail here.

What about you? What nuggets of writerly wisdom have you picked up over the years? Be sure to share them in the comments below so we can all benefit from your wisdom!

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]

Why Your Fantastic Story Idea Has To Die

Posted on 03/03/201903/03/2019 by Ndrw

So you’ve had a fantastic idea for a new story: something really original, really clever and just plain brilliant. Well, bully for you, I say! It’s a wonderful feeling not only knowing what you’re next story is going to be about, but actually knowing that it’s a real cracker of an idea.

Enjoy your good feelings while you can but don’t fall in love with your idea. If you do, you’ll only end up languishing in Inspiration Hell the moment you try to put your idea into action. If you want my advice, you’ll treat your idea as a profane thing from the very moment it’s conceived. It is not sacred. It is not too beautiful to die. Frankly, it’s probably not as clever as you thought. Unless you’ve laid a real golden egg of an idea, you’ll probably have to kill it– and the sooner the better.

‘Now wait a minute there, old bean!’ I hear you cry. ‘That seems a bit harsh!’

Maybe it is, but I still think it will save you a lot of heartache in the long run if you take it to heart now. No element of your story should ever be safe from being tweaked, twisted or downright axed. This includes the original premise of your story, however clever it might be.

This is no new commandment. We all know how important it is to ‘kill your darlings’ when you write. You know what I mean: those glorious, beautiful little bits of narrative you’ve written that you think are so wonderful, but they ultimately do nothing for your story and have to go.

However, unlike most darlings on the headsman’s block, the original idea is not something you can simply come back to at the editing stage. If you write a dodgy sentence, an unnecessary scene or even several chapters of pointless drivel, you can still plod along quite the thing until you finish the draft. Not so with your original idea! If you fall too hard in love with it, you’ll never make it past the first draft (assuming you ever get the first draft started), because you will be unprepared to take whatever ruthless steps are required to fix the glaring weaknesses in your plot. If your original idea isn’t working, you must be prepared to kill it without mercy.

‘But if I kill my original idea, won’t I be right back at square one, with no idea whatsoever?’ I hear you cry.

No, of course not. Your original idea still serves a purpose: a new idea will be born from its ashes. Almost every story idea has at least a million possible alternative directions you can work in and I would encourage you to experiment with all of these (Scapple is my app of choice for organising my thoughts in this regard, though a good old fashioned pen and paper also does the trick). Perhaps your love interest should really be the protagonist? Perhaps your protagonist should be a pixie instead of a wizard? Heck, perhaps we should forget about pixies and wizards and go for cowboys instead? One of the best decisions I ever made in one of my old fantasy stories was to change from a medieval fantasy setting to a post-industrial fantasy. The basic themes, conflict and characters were essentially the same but by letting go of my determination to have knights on horses, my mind suddenly exploded with a whole bunch of material that yielded a much better story.

Even if your original idea is working, you will still need to be prepared to develop it, and that involves making changes, both big and small, so even if you stick with the same core idea, it will still require painful surgery to make it function. It is better, therefore, to simply have the attitude that your idea is profane and eligible for the chop from the very beginning. The fact is, no story idea ever comes to you fully formed. Ideas are like clumps of marble used in sculpting. Some clumps might be easier to work with than others and some might be utterly useless, but none of them can become Discobolus or David until someone first takes a hammer and chisel to it.

ATTENTION AUTHORS:

You can check out our previous interviews here:

Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]