How to Get Story Ideas From Unexpected Headlines

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No, this is not a how-to for creating fake news. It’s a prompt that opens a never-ending well of ideas for any fiction writer. I’m talking about how to get story ideas from headlines in the news. Try it out today and see what happens!

How to Get Story Ideas From Headlines: 4 Steps

A few years ago, I read a startling headline in a back section of the Sunday newspaper. It said “Man Likely Padlocked Himself in Bag Found in Bathtub.” I blinked twice, sure I had misread something.

Even after I read the article, I still couldn’t believe it. I was grieved for his family and friends, but I couldn’t help but see the possibilities for inspiring fiction. I wondered how it could even be done?  As a claustrophobic, I wondered, why?

This situation and article were surely stranger than fiction, but it prompted so many questions. Turns out questions are at the heart of great fiction, and you can use headlines to develop ideas all day long. Here’s how to get story ideas from the strangest news headlines.

1. Find Headlines

The first step in how to get story ideas from headlines? Look for headlines.

Find a newspaper and scan through the headlines. You don’t have to read entire articles to find inspiration from their titles. I have found that for fiction, I prefer to search anywhere but the front page. I usually know too much already about the events that make the front page, and I’m after something that prompts new questions, ideas, and worlds.

Look until you find a headline that immediately floods your mind with questions. Headlines that prompt a “Why” and “What if . . .” response are best. Some from today’s headlines:

Workers Unearth Mystery Buried in SC School

Family Car Parked at Charlotte Douglas [Airport] Was Filled with Ants. They Want an Explanation.

Parents Brawl During Youth Football Handshake Line

I found all of these headlines in about five minutes by looking up regional or state newspapers and clicking on the “local” tab.

2. Ask Questions

Once I find a few headlines that scream for exploration, I make a list of the questions one prompts. Again, I spend no time reading the article; I’m only mining the headline for ideas. Here are some questions I wrote down for my headlines above.

Workers Unearth Mystery Buried in SC School: The wording of this headline fascinates me. Buried IN school? Like inside a wall? What were they digging up? Were children present? What is the mystery? Who will solve it? Is it valuable and might need protection? Is it linked to an old legend or cold case?

My only question for the ant-filled car was, Did you fumigate it and what did you use? (I can’t seem to get rid of some ants here, so I might be a little caught up in my own problems to fully explore this one.)

For the parent brawl, I want to know about the relationships. Who started it? Was it between parents on the same team? Was it a mixed group of men and women? Who broke it up? How much irony can you pack in one scene where adults fight while kids shake hands?

3. Flip the Genre

Once you have a good set of questions for several headlines, choose the one that is most compelling. Some of my example headlines lend themselves easily to certain genres.

The “mystery unearthed” might well be mystery, suspense, or horror. The ants could be science fiction or magical realism (Did anyone else think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ants from One Hundred Years of Solitude when you read that headline?). The parent brawl might be realistic fiction or the beginning of a crime fiction piece.

Identifying genre can be a short-cut to creating fresh ideas, simply because you can flip or twist what is expected.

What if the mystery unearthed isn’t suspense but a romance? What if the car full of ants becomes a witty children’s book instead of the horror story it appears to be? Maybe the parent brawl isn’t the beginning of a true crime tale but the opening to a space opera story where irony beams people into an antigravitational state. (I think I might have gone too far on that last one — I’m out of my depth).

4. Apply Story Principles and Write

Once you have those questions and a possible genre, identify your main character and give them a strong goal. Throw things in the way of getting what they want, and force them to act.

The story might go somewhere completely unexpected, but that’s the fun! I’ve had students write two to three stories in different genres using the same headline to show them how inspiration can go anywhere they want.

Stranger Than Fiction

Oh, and the guy in the duffle bag? Turns out he was a spy, but they reported he did indeed lock himself in the bag. Hmmm . . . I have a few questions.

(Yes, I apologize for my morbid insensitivity at reading about a man’s death and trying to spin fiction from it. I’m not fit for polite company. May he rest in peace.)

Real life might be stranger than fiction, but it certainly doesn’t disappoint when you are looking for story ideas.

Have you ever read any headlines that inspired a story? Share in the comments.

By Sue Weems
Source: thewritepractice.com

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6 Questions to Help Nonfiction Writers Find Their Niche

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Today’s guest post is by Erica Meltzer of The Critical Reader.

In 2008, I took a trip to the bookstore that altered the course of my career.

I was working as a freelance tutor and had recently been hired to help prepare a student for the Writing (grammar) portion of the SAT. In need of practice material, I went down to my local Barnes & Noble and began flipping through the standard prep books. As I read, I grew increasingly frustrated: in some, the questions were too easy, in others too hard. Some of them targeted concepts that were not tested, or omitted concepts that were tested. And overall, the tone and style seemed somehow…off.

I’d had a handful of gigs writing practice questions for various test-prep companies, but until that point, it had never occurred to me that I could publish my own materials. But as I stood in Barnes & Noble flipping through those books, I thought, “I can do so much better than this.”

Although it would be more than three years before my first book, The Ultimate Guide to SAT Grammar came out, I stumbled upon a couple of key lessons about the business of bookselling that day:

  • First, no matter how many books have been written about a topic, there is probably some important facet that has not yet been covered thoroughly or well.
  • Second, a key driver behind success is understanding how you fit into the existing landscape, what distinguishes your work, and why it is likely to appeal to a particular audience.

One of the downsides self-publishing is that you don’t receive support or feedback from publishers about how best to position yourself; as a result, you must be willing to devote time to investigating your market and analyzing your role within it. I write nonfiction, so that’s what I’m going to focus on here, but that said, much of what I discuss here can be applied to fiction as well.

Even if you do not go so far as to type up an actual document, you should be able to answer the following questions.

1. How saturated is your market?

You can get a good sense of the answer to this question with just an eyeball test: do the books on your topic cover a shelf in the bookstore? A couple of shelves? An entire bookcase? (Or, if you’re looking online, how many pages of titles come up when you type in the category?)

If there are already dozens of books available, you’ll need to spend some time reading through them in order to understand what’s been done. As a general rule, the more that’s been written, the more specifically you’ll need to define yourself. For me, this happened to be a straightforward matter: as someone whose verbal score was more than 200 points points higher than her math, I had never been able to tutor all sections of the exam and was in no position to author a general SAT book. If I wanted to write a halfway decent guide, I would have to focus on the verbal portion only.

2. Where are the niches?

Unless you are capable of offering a truly unique perspective, you should avoid aspects of your subject that have already been written about extensively. Instead, try to tailor your expertise to important but neglected sub-topics or sectors of your market. Grateful readers become loyal readers (and are more likely to leave glowing reviews).

For my first book, I deliberately chose to focus on a relatively overlooked portion of the SAT. Although there were several combined reading/writing guides available, there was not one guide that dealt exclusively with grammar in an in-depth way. Having spent years mastering everything from relative pronouns to the subjunctive in various foreign language classes, and then teaching those same concepts over and over again in context of the SAT, I was exceptionally well positioned to write a serious grammar book aligned with the exam.

In addition, there was almost no material designed specifically for students aiming for top scores. Even if they made up only a small percentage of the 1.5 or so million annual test-takers, they still numbered in the tens of thousands and, as I learned when they began contacting me via my blog, they were desperate for challenging material.

In fact, this group proved so enthusiastic that I barely needed to spend money on marketing: both students and parents discussed my books extensively on highly trafficked websites, allowing me to build readership naturally. I followed the same subject-specific approach for my following books, first moving to the more daunting SAT reading and then repeating the process for the English and reading portions of the ACT.

Note: If you’re not sure how to go about matching your expertise to your readers’ needs, spend some time reading through websites and blogs devoted to your topic in order to get a feel for what issues readers face and what questions aren’t being answered. While writing my books, for instance, I spent hours reading a popular test-prep forum so that I could address students’ questions and misconceptions directly.

3. Who are the major players in this genre? Is there a single title or set of titles that dominates the market?

Regardless of what you intend to write about or how many books have already been devoted to that topic, you need to understand your competition. Even if you do manage to suss out a neglected corner of the market, your book will almost certainly overlap with other titles, some highly successful.

The question is: why do the top-selling titles do well? Do they sell briskly because they have a devoted following (as evidenced by hundreds of enthusiastic reviews) or do people buy them merely because they are the only books available (as suggested by a smaller number of lukewarm or generic reviews)?

If the former, you shouldn’t expect to seriously compete, at least not right away; if the latter, you might have a better chance of breaking in. I was lucky in that most of the top-selling titles in my genre held that position simply because there were few alternatives; given the option, many readers were happy to try something new.

4. Are any successful titles self-published?

The appearance of self-published books among the more popular titles signals that readers are open to trying works by less established authors. While it isn’t always possible to tell whether a book is self-published, check the book’s copyright page to see if an established publisher is listed.

If your market is dominated by traditionally published titles, you are not necessarily at a disadvantage. Because traditional publishers are by necessity driven by their bottom line, they are less likely to take on potentially risky projects. As a result, there may be ample room for new voices or fresh takes on familiar material.

When I finished my first book in 2011, for example, the same few names had essentially defined the SAT/ACT market for decades, and there was plenty of room to shake thing up—even though the market appeared closed from the outside. The standard books were written either by tutors who knew the tests well but weren’t particularly well versed in the actual subjects, or by classroom teachers who knew their subjects well but had limited knowledge of the exams.

With the advent of platforms like CreateSpace, tutors who were also math or English experts could publish materials that had been extensively tested with students. Because those books did well, other tutors were encouraged to publish guides, fundamentally reshaping the market. Today, about 10 of these books typically rank among the top-selling SAT/ACT guides on Amazon.

It’s gratifying to know that I’ve played a role that shift: shortly after his first book was released, the author of the top-selling ACT Science guide informed me that my books had inspired him to go ahead and write his own. Like me, he had noticed a gaping hole in the market—there was not one guide devoted solely to that subject—and decided to plug it.

5. What do the existing books do well, and where do they fall short?

As you read, notice—and preferably jot down—what aspects you find most enjoyable and engaging, and which ones you find wanting. While it is important to consider obvious factors (content, tone, style, and flow), you should also consider subtler issues such as formatting and font. When I went through the existing SAT prep books, for example, I noticed that from a visual standpoint, their questions often looked nothing like those on the exam. As a tutor, I understood that students were frequently thrown off by deviations from the actual test and wanted to practice on material that felt authentic in form as well as content. As a result, I made sure that my practice questions were identical in terms of font, size, and spacing, to those on the real exam. That kind of subtle attention to detail helped reader feel that my books were preparing them for exactly what they’d face and made them more inclined to trust my work.

And finally…

6. What do you do better, or know more about, than anyone?

In other words, what specifically can you offer readers that will cause them to bypass other works and zero in on yours? Obviously, this isn’t a zero sum game—readers will often buy multiple books on a given topic—but you must know what sets you apart. All the market research in the world won’t matter unless you are genuinely invested in your topic and able to write about it with ease and (ideally) flair. Readers almost certainly won’t be passionate about your book unless you are as well. This is the biggest question you need to answer, preferably before you even write a word.

Source: janefriedman.com

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4 Steps to a Writing Routine You Won’t Want to Break

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Guest post by Emmanuel Nataf

You’ve wanted to write a novel for ages, but can’t seem to ever find the time to start writing. Or maybe you’ve started and just keep hitting walls. Why? For most of us, the answer is that commitments like family, jobs, and life keep getting in the way.

Or, it might be procrastination, and these obstacles are what you tell yourself are the issue. All you are missing is discipline. Every writer has a vision of being able to sit down and write a complete prize-winning chapter in one sitting, but this isn’t realistic. To get a flow going on a regular basis you will need to implement a writing routine.

Forming a regular writing habit builds stakes, holds you accountable to your goals, and keeps you on track as a result.

The reality is, you’re not going to feel like the muses of novel writing are hovering above you and guiding you every time you sit down to write. Building a solid, consistent routine will help you write, and write well, even when you’re not feeling motivated or inspired.

A writing routine will be different for everyone in terms of your environment, time availability, aims, goals — the lot. Even so, if you follow these tips for establishing and, more importantly, sticking to a routine, you can’t go far wrong.

 

1. Schedule your writing time

Try to choose a time and a place so that other things can work around your writing time, not vice versa. This way, you’ll be able to get into the habit of writing — even when you don’t feel like it.

If you wait for this time to come around naturally, especially in increasingly hectic lives, the hours required to achieve our goals of writing a novel or similar are not going to clock in.

We can draw on Stephen King’s wisdom here:

“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop, and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind … I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace.”

This time should be non-negotiable. Author and book coach Kevin Johns sees this as such a crucial part of creating a writing routine that he gives it its own acronym: NNWT, or non-negotiable writing time. Even if you can’t write every day like Stephen King, make sure you have time locked in multiple times a week.

Nothing is stopping you from starting right now: literally, open your phone and schedule writing time into your calendar — this will make you stick to it. Put in a realistic amount of time that you know you can afford, make sure it’s more than once a week, highlight it in something bright that you can’t ignore, and set an alarm to remind you.

2. Make this writing time sacred

J.K. Rowling, who knows a thing or two about writing successfully, advises writers to “be ruthless about protecting writing days.” She urges us to guard these moments that we set aside for writing and not to cave in to “distractions” such as meetings or social engagements.

Whether it’s every workday evening from 8 to 10, or three mornings a week starting at 7, don’t let anything get in the way of your writing. You’ve scheduled this time into your life, and it must be granted importance and gravitas.

This also means that writing time is for writing and writing only. Being lax with it will hold back your progress. If you set aside two hours to write, and in that time answer your emails, do a laundry load, and check Twitter, you’ll probably end up doing half an hour of writing, maximum. That would move the needle extremely slowly.

Research and planning should be done outside these hours. Writing time is just that: time to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

3. Quantify your progress

To know the progress you’re making, set yourself a word count goal per day or per week. The power of setting tiny, achievable goals cannot be overstated.

We as humans love having these little wins. Hitting daily goals (like Fitbit step-goals) gives us little boosts — spikes of dopamine — and makes us feel good about what we’re doing. Writing can be frustrating, so word count goals give you control over at least one of the factors of the writing process. That’s why daily word-counts are such a crucial part of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) competition.

If you have a particular goal, for example, “I want to have a first draft of my manuscript done in six months,” this would mean working out what this translates to in words per month, week, and day. Track this to stay in line with what you have set yourself.

The fun side of this is rewarding yourself. Crossing things off that calendar, physically printing off pages you’ve written and adding them to a done pile — anything that gives you a sense of public, visible achievement is worth it.

Writing something as long as a novel may often feel like working for a long time with no reward. As a writer, you have to reward yourself when you reach your goals, which is much easier when these goals are concrete and achievable.

4. Publicize it

Your public could just be your friends and loved ones. Purposefully use shame and disappointment for your own benefit by telling them that you’re writing a book. This puts pressure on you, as does publicizing your goals.

If you have something visible, like a calendar that shows your self-set deadlines or workloads, this can help keep you accountable to goals that would otherwise be easy to pretend you never made. Equally, you can tell your friend/fiance/fellow writer that you’re going to write 400 words every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday after work, and get them to check.

Starting a blog and publicizing your progress is another way to give you that extra incentive, as you don’t want to look bad in front of your followers by not meeting your goals .

You’ve got this!

Know what environment you work best in and use this to your advantage. Whether it’s the bustle of a coffee shop or a silent room at home, you know where and when you produce your best work.

Appreciate that these are all estimates, especially if you don’t have a contract yet. A writing routine will give you direction, even if you don’t have an actual deadline. It will help orient you, rather than just writing whenever you feel like it.

Writing is a challenge, but so rewarding. The key is to stick to it. Establishing and dedicating yourself to the process says that you believe in yourself, and that you can do it.

Source: jerryjenkins.com

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Overcoming Creativity Wounds

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Today’s guest post is by Grant Faulkner, executive director of Nanowrimo and author of Pep Talks for Writers.

For writers unaware, Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month, where writers around the world challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It starts November 1. Learn more.

Somewhere deep within most of us, there is a wound. For some, it’s vile and festering; for others, it’s scarred over. It’s the type of wound that doesn’t really heal at least not through any kind of stoic disregard or even the balm of time.

I’m not talking about a flesh wound, but a psychological wound—the kind that happens when someone told you in an elementary school art class that you didn’t draw well, or when you gave a story to a friend to read in the hopes they would shower you with encouragement, but they treated the story with disregard. We put our souls, the meaning of our lives, into the things we create, whether they are large or small works, and when the world rebuffs us, or is outright hostile, the pain is such that it might as well be a flesh wound. In fact, it sometimes might be better to have a flesh wound.

To be a creator is to invite others to load their slingshots with rocks of disparagement and try to shoot you down.

I’ve been hit with many such rocks. Perhaps the most devastating rock was slung by a renowned author who I took a writing class from. My hopes were ridiculously high, of course. I wanted her to recognize my talent, to affirm my prose. I wanted her to befriend me, to open up the doors of her mind and show me the captivating way she thought. I was young, and I walked into her class as if I was a puppy dog, my tongue wagging, expecting to play. My first day of class might as well have been the opening scene of a tragic play.

When I turned in my story for her feedback, not only did she not recognize my talent, but she eviscerated my story. She might as well have used shears. “No shit!” she wrote in the margins of one page. I met with her in her office hours to ask her questions and hopefully make a connection, but she was equally cold and cutting, offering nothing that resembled constructive critique, just the pure vitriol of negativity. She said my story was boring, pretentious. She said my dialogue, which others had previously praised, was limp and lifeless.

That was the only time in my writing life when I felt truly defeated. It was the only time in my life when I was utterly unable to pick up a pen to write anything. I’d been critiqued in many a writing workshop before—relatively severely even—so I wasn’t a naive innocent. But I’d never experienced such slashing and damning comments. I’d always been resilient and determined in the face of such negativity, but this time I lay on the couch watching TV for several days afterward, my brain looping through her scissoring comments again and again.

I hope you haven’t experienced anything like this, but, unfortunately, almost every writer I’ve talked to has a similar story. When something you’ve created—something that glows so brightly with the beauty of your spirit—meets with such an ill fate, it can create the type of wound that never truly closes. You can stitch it closed, but the swelling puss within it can still break the stitches back open. It’s always vulnerable to infections, resistant to salves. Time heals . . . a little, but not necessarily entirely.

The question is how to begin again, how to recover the very meaning and joy that we found in our first stories—to recover the reason we write. It’s difficult. I still see that “No shit!” in the margin and sometimes wonder if I have anything worthwhile to impart, or if the quality of my prose allows me to impart my stories and ideas in an interesting and engaging way. I’ve wondered this even after getting a story or essay published. I wonder if somehow the editor didn’t realize what an imposter I am. I wonder this even now, as I write this book on the subject of writing of all things, a book that has a publisher, a book that has been guided by a fine editor, a book that is sold in stores. Wounds can open when least expected, and from them self-doubt riles with a snarl.

To overcome is to write your story, to believe in it.

There’s no one recipe to overcome a creativity wound, but putting a pen between your fingers and then resting it on a piece of paper is a pretty good start to finding one. Start writing. Keep writing. And the wound will fade and even fuel your work, even if it might not truly go away.

Source: janefriedman.com

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Positive Writer The Contradictory Nature of Writing Advice: What to Do When You Get Conflicting Information

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I spent this past weekend at a creative non-fiction writer’s conference with my mom. We had such a great time spending our days attending lectures, panels, readings, and story slams, usually with a cup of tea or coffee in our hands. Creative non-fiction isn’t even my primary genre, but I thought it would be beneficial to branch out a little and explore some new things.

This post is by Positive Writer contributor The Magic Violinist.

And I was right; I received great advice from various memoirists and freelance writers about craft, the publishing industry, and marketing. But early on something became apparent: the knowledge I gained was contradictory.

What to do with conflicting information

In one lecture I was told to buy a planner, set strict deadlines for myself, and track my progress with steadfast determination. In another presentation, I heard that deadlines ruined the magic of a good story and that we writers shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves. In the morning, I was urged to write my first draft as quickly as possible and to churn out new work every day. By that afternoon, someone suggested to focus on quality instead of speed or quantity.

If you’ve been following enough websites on writing for as long as I have, you’ve probably faced a similar dilemma. The information flies at us at breakneck speed, giving us opposite instructions: “Edit as you write!/Don’t edit as you go!” “Share your work with others!/Don’t show anyone anything until it’s polished!” “Use semicolons!; Don’t use semicolons!” “Write every day!/Give yourself breaks!”

It can be a little overwhelming, especially for new writers trying to figure this whole thing out. So how are you supposed to sort through the information and find out what’s true? Do you look at the credentials of the author writing the article? Do you follow whatever advice is being told the most often? Do you ask your fellow writers for help?

Art is subjective

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what advice you follow, so long as it works for you. Writing, like all art, is subjective. While there may be certain writing styles that are held in high regard, it’s still all based in opinion. Sitting in a class on writing isn’t like taking a math class; there’s no one right answer.

Some authors will try to tell you that rising before the sun is a must if you’re ever going to get anything done. After all, aren’t the early hours the best ones for productivity? Shouldn’t you try to crank out 3,000 words before even shuffling to the kitchen for breakfast?

As a night owl, I’ll be the first to tell you that it is not necessary for you to drag yourself out of bed at some ungodly hour to blink bleary-eyed at the screen in front of you and try to coax your tired and clumsy fingers into typing out comprehensible sentences. If setting the alarm an hour earlier makes you more creative and productive, by all means, go for it. But it is not the only way, nor should it be.

Do what works for you

If there were one tried-and-true writing process, we would all be brilliant, bestselling authors and websites like “Positive Writer” would be useless. Thankfully, there is no one process and websites on writing live on because of it. The beauty of art is that we as the creators get to experiment all the time with different methods of getting words down on the page.

If you’re feeling stuck with your current routine, switch it up. Take some of that contradictory advice you received and try something new. What works for one writer will not work for another, so it’s up to you to test your options. Eventually, you’ll find something that helps.

Stay calm

Don’t be overwhelmed when you find yourself surrounded by articles that all tell you different things. Instead, view those opposing opinions as a writing buffet. Pick and choose whatever looks good to you until your plate is full, but don’t feel pressured to finish it all or go back for seconds. This is your chance to taste test and play. Trust me when I say, one day, something will stick.

What do you do with conflicting information? How do you decide what advice to follow? Leave a comment!

Source: positivewriter.com

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How to end a novel: Writing strong story endings

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Knowing how to end a novel is an essential skill for fiction writers. Story endings often stay with us as readers – especially when they’re satisfying, haunting, clever or profound. Here are 7 ways to end a novel. May they inspire you to find the best closing for your story:

1. Leave readers guessing: The open-ended story

2. Bring readers full circle: Ending where you began

3. Pull the rug from beneath their feet: Shocking twist endings

4. Create feel-good lingering: ‘Happily ever after’ endings

5. Build in ‘what next?’ – Cliffhanger endings

6. Create complex resolutions: Combining ending types

7. Avoid cliched and unsatisfying story endings: Ending ‘don’ts’

Let’s explore each of these story ending types in greater detail:

1. Leave readers guessing: The open-ended story

Leaving your story open-ended is an interesting but risky approach. Open-ended closing chapters may work in a literary novel. Yet in a genre romance novel, readers typically expect that lovers will be united.

What makes an open-ended story satisfying? It allows the reader to imagine, to fill in the blanks. Without a guide for how we should interpret the final scenes, we’re free to decide for ourselves what they mean.

An example of an open ending: An anti-hero killer ends up relocating and going incognito. This ending was used by the writer’s of the Showtime TV adaptation of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series. Not giving a final conflict or confrontation leaves room for future installments.

J.K. Rowling took a similar approach in the final book of her Harry Potter series. (Rowling however also advanced the timeline several years, with her characters shown as grown adults in her epilogue. This was interpreted as a way for the author to convince her devoted readers there would be no more stories involving her characters’ teenage years.)

Even though this type of story ending leaves some room for imagination and interpretation, make sure that you:

  1. Resolve secondary conflicts and arcs so that there is at least some sense of resolution. For example, even if a primary villain lives to fight another day, perhaps their henchmen get their just desserts.
  2. Don’t mistake an open ending for letting the story peter out – even if there is no decisive conclusion, maintain tension to the end.
  3. Know your reason for leaving your story open-ended. Perhaps you want to convey a specific message (in the case of the example above, it could be that sometimes ‘bad’ people get away with bad deeds).

Another type of story ending is the ‘full circle’ closing. Here, everything returns to how it all began:

2. Bring readers full circle: Ending where you began

If you prefer a stronger sense of an ending, the ‘full circle’ story ending can be highly satisfying. This is a particularly effective way to end a book if your story began with a mysterious, unresolved situation. [Brainstorm the starting and ending scenarios for your story using Now Novel’s step-by-step process.]

Example of a ‘full circle’ story ending

David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas is an excellent example of this type of novel ending.

In his sci-fi adventure novel, Mitchell hops between eras and locations from section to section. Each section ends on a cliffhanger or with an unknown unexplained. The author resolves each story arc in reverse order from the middle. This creates a sort of mirror structure around the central post-apocalyptic section.

Cloud Atlas ends with the resolution of the first interrupted story arc. We learn the fate of a character taken ill aboard a ship, and a shocking twist about a primary relationship for the character. Mitchell thus returns us to the first set of characters, and the novel’s first time setting and style (the first and last sections are written as journal entries at sea). This mirror or cyclical structure gives Mitchell’s novel a particularly satisfying sense of completion.

Shocking story endings that surprise us with a major twist are also effective:

3. Pull the rug from beneath their feet: Shocking twist endings

The plot twist is a typical ending for the short story. Famous short fiction authors such as O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe mastered the ‘twist in the tale’ ending. Yet this can also be a satisfying ending to a longer work of fiction. Masters of the surprise ending include the authors Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan.

Alec Worley, in his post ‘The 5 types of twist ending’, lists the following types of story twists:

How to end a novel with a reversal: the 5 types

  1. Identity reversal: In which ‘someone turns out to be someone else’. A character is not who we (or other characters) thought they were. This is a common ending type when there is an unreliable narrator.
  2. Motive reversal: In which the reader assumes a character is acting out of the desire for x when what they really want turns out to be y. For example, we think a character seeks a lover because they’re romantic, but they turn out to be controlling and power-seeking.
  3. Perception reversal: In this type of story ending, the protagonist realizes their world or their understanding of it is out of step with reality. This is a common ending type in Poe’s dark, Gothic stories.
  4. Fortune reversal: Here a character is brought low or elevated to new highs by a stroke of luck or unforeseen circumstances. Dickens’ Great Expectations is an example. The character Pip inherits a fortune from a mystery benefactor, who turns out not to be the person he thought.
  5. Fulfillment reversal: A character reaches the goal of their primary motivation. But another character’s actions undo their hard work.

An ending doesn’t have to be shocking or surprising. Yet surprising reversal endings give readers the uncanny feeling of having been duped. This sense of surprise can make your climax more dynamic and exciting.

Story endings - quote by Stephen King | Now Novel

4. Create feel-good lingering: ‘Happily ever after’ endings

A twist ending, especially a shocking, discomforting one, carries the risk of angering readers who were looking forward to an expected resolution. Sometimes you’ll simply want to give readers what they expect and desire of a novel in your genre.

A tidy wrap-up can be comforting and reassuring – it’s why most childhood tales end with ‘happily ever after’ (or simply the reassuring finality of ‘the end’).

Even if a tidy ending feels a little too predictable, there are ways to make the wrap-up more interesting:

5. Build in ‘What if?’ – Cliffhanger endings

If you want to explore your fictional world further over a series of books, cliffhangers are effective story endings.

Think of how screenwriters handle plot arcs in thriller TV series. While each major plot arc of each season is mostly resolved, there is something left over that leaves viewers hankering for the next season to start. The bodyguard’s ward may be killed and they fail in their main task, but they (and us) still need further answers. Who was the culprit? What was their motivation?

Think of each book in your series as a season. Building the ‘what next?’ into your closing chapter will keep readers on the lookout for your next installment. It also helps to stop your resolution from feeling too tidy and convenient.

6. Create complex resolutions: Combining ending types

There’s no reason why you should have to stick to just one of the story ending types listed above.

There’s no single correct answer for how to end a novel. A simple return to the beginning can be effective, but the way David Mitchell returns to the beginning in Cloud Atlas with new information is both complex and satisfying. It’s a combination of a ‘full circle’ ending and a final twist.

Explore ways you can combine different types of ending to provide some surprise and some satisfaction.

Writing story endings - John Irving quote | Now Novel

7. Avoid cliched and unsatisfying story endings: Ending ‘don’ts’

Some story endings feel hollow and unsatisfying. Here are novel endings to avoid in your writing:

  1. The deus ex machina

    A deus ex machina describes when an unlikely story event provides a quick, all-too-convenient resolution. It usually feels contrived. The term is derived from the ancient Greek for ‘God from the machine’. In the Greek theatre, actors playing Gods would be lowered onto the stage on a rope via a crane-like contraption, usually to resolve primary conflicts. Try to avoid lowering in convenient Gods near the end of your story on obvious rope.

  2. The abrupt ending

    The end of a novel serves multiple important functions: It resolves major questions raised by preceding plot events (or purposefully leaves some unanswered). It clarifies and rounds off important ideas or themes (reinforces the ‘point’ of the novel). It also shapes the lingering impression readers will have of your story as a whole.

    Avoid moving your story to an end without sufficient build-up and release. The best story endings weave together all the different threads that have been laid out before the reader. It’s often subtler to do this over several ending scenes or chapters. This is often smoother than hurriedly tying all your characters’ arcs up in a clumsy knot. This being said, there are no ‘rules’. Bret Easton Ellis ends The Rules of Attraction mid-sentence. However you choose to end your story, know your reasons.

Source: nownovel.com

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Even if it’s better than creative accountancy, creative writing still needs rules | Creative Writing 101

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Subtle but important differences

With an extreme simplification, creative writing can be considered any writing in which authors make things up. It’s sort of like creative accountancy, but with three important differences.

Firstly, your chances of becoming rich with creative writing are slim at best.

Secondly, also your chances of ending up in a jail if you pursue a career in creative writing are pretty slim.

Lastly, creative writing is aimed at a public as wide and eager as possible whereas the gurus, so to speak, of creative accountancy aim at being read by as few people as possible. And the more the reading is superficial and inattentive, the better.

I know, I know. From this point of view, creative accountancy seems a lot more thrilling than creative writing. I mean, with all that money, the ever-looming risk of imprisonment, and who knows what else…

                                       Creative writing and rules. This needs not to happen

 

But the truth isn’t always immediately obvious. And in fact, creative writing offers writers and readers alike the opportunity to experience sheer pleasurewithout having to resort to any illegal substance or activity—of course, apart for those unfortunate people living in parochial parts of the world where books still get banned.

The importance of being contextual

However, creative writing doesn’t mean we can write whatever we feel like without ever having to think about rules, guidelines, and principles.

Essentially the reasons for this are twofold.

First of all, to communicate effectively, we need a web of shared knowledge about how language works in the many different contexts in which we use it. Without this frame of reference, we would be just making noises. For example:

1) Golar sodamet gu luscius

2) Javier dijo asì

3) Jack ate your apple

In (1) I just wrote a phrase with invented words. But even so, these words are not entirely casual. In fact, for example, they follow some principles about ease of pronunciation. Besides, they are arranged in a way that, at least superficially, seems to reflect the English construction of (3).

In (2) we have another perfectly formed phrase. It only happens to be in Spanish–Javier said so. This makes it apparent that the first rule about communication is about which shared language we should use. And only then about the rules we should follow within that language.

3) Here we have a phrase we can process and understand. But only to a certain extent. In fact, Jack could be a horse. ‘Your’ could refer to the reader. Or maybe to an animal. Not necessarily to a human. And so on. This is to point out how a language can never fully express meaning if its users don’t know how it relates to the world.

Constraints who don’t constrain

The second reason we need guidelines and principles, and sometimes even rules, is that even if at times rules can be perceived as unwarranted constraints, they nonetheless spur creativity.

Just think of the way poetry works. Of how poets, who often follow strict rules of composition, manage nonetheless to come up with splendid poems all the time.

At first blush this seems idiosyncratic. But it’s perfectly natural. It’s like with training. If our body never has to face any kind of stress, it gets weaker and less healthy, not the other way around. This happens because even if too much stress can be dangerous, a moderate amount of it is essential to keep us in shape.

And principles and rules represent exactly the literary equivalent of a healthy dose of stress.

In fact, they can certainly be tiresome at times. But they exist for a reason. To help us make sense. And say what we really have to say.

This doesn’t mean rules have to be always observed fanatically. On the contrary, there are times rules must be broken. But we must know them perfectly if we want to know when they are no longer helping us, when they prevent us from saying exactly what we have on your mind.

Some rules are easy to follow. Others are difficult even to understand. Others still seem arbitrary. But if we invest time in learning them adequately, the payoff will be huge.

I mean, our daily word quota isn’t necessarily going to increase, but gradually we’ll acquire the ability to spot all those a passages where rules need to be followed instead of broken out of sheer ignorance. We’ll also get better at spotting those few passages where rules actually are a hindrance.

Source: peterrey.com

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Should Beginning Writers Imitate the Greats?

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Learning often begins with imitation or copying. As babies, we learn facial expressions and gestures by mimicking adults. Children learn to write their letters by copying them from workbooks. And can you imagine a musician learning their craft without first leaning to play other musicians’ songs?

But we rarely explore the question of whether writers should copy the work of great authors as a learning exercise.

Imitation Learning vs. Derivative Works

In the world of fine art and entertainment, imitation is sometimes viewed as flattery, but mostly it’s criticized for its lack of originality. Works that appear to be based in part or in full on other works are called derivative works. Some derivative works are celebrated — for example, writing a variation of an old fairy tale or writing a modernized version of an ancient text. Each work should be judged individually and on its own merit, and opinions will vary.

However, today we’re not talking about the writing that we publish for the world to see. We’re exploring the idea of using imitation strictly for the purpose of study, practice, and learning.

Using Imitation as a Learning Tool

When I was a kid, I often wrote down the lyrics to my favorite songs. I would play the song, pausing and rewinding it every few seconds to figure out the lyrics. Sometimes, I’d write my own lyrics to the tune. I believe this formed the foundation of learning musicality in writing, which I later applied to my poetry. As a young poet, I discovered Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman.” While I didn’t set out to imitate this amazing poem, I did set out to write a poem that was inspired by it (and somewhat modeled on it). All these years later, I suspect that if I shared that old poem of mine (which was titled “Woman One”), any knowledgeable poet would know that I’d read Maya’s work and was influenced by her.

All of these exercises helped shape my writing skills. When you copy the words that someone else has written, you study them more closely than you would by merely reading them. But notice that none of these exercises resulted in published works. It was a form of study and practice.

Who hasn’t buried themselves in a novel, only to put it down and find the voice of the narrative continuing inside their own mind? Copying a text can have the same effect, but it works faster. It’s a useful way to learn how different authors structure sentences or make word choices.

When I was in a college literature course, we took a test that required us to identify authors’ voices. We were given short excerpts from various authors’ works. We weren’t expected to memorize these authors’ repertoires, but we were expected to absorb their voice (style). A good way to do that is to copy passages from the authors’ writings. The act of typing (or handwriting) their texts helps us absorb it much faster and more thoroughly.

But that’s not all we can learn from imitation. Let’s say you’re a beginning writer with a favorite story. You don’t want to emulate the story or the author, but you want to gain a better understanding of how this author constructs language or how they developed such a distinct voice. Studying the work might not be enough. As an exercise, you might attempt to write a few pages of your own original text in the author’s voice. This would also be a useful exercise for developing voices and distinct dialogue for each of your characters. You could seek out writers and speakers whose style matches the voice you want for a character. Spend some time transcribing or copying the source material, and then practice writing your character’s dialogue in that person’s voice

The Necessity of Learning

There are many ways that authors borrow, build upon, and steal other writers’ ideas. There’s really nothing new under the sun — only old ideas remixed and rehashed into works that feel fresh and invigorating.

But however we gather our ideas or develop our craft, learning is a necessity. We must do the work to develop the skills we need to achieve our goals. For writers, that means studying language, mastering vocabulary, and learning structure and form. Not all writers need to learn through imitation. Each of us has a different learning style, but for those who would benefit from imitation as an exercise, it’s a worthwhile endeavor for skill-building.

Have you ever used imitation to develop your knowledge or skills? What did you imitate and why? Did it work for you? Share your thoughts about imitation as a learning tool for writers by leaving a comment, and keep writing.

By Melissa Donovan
Source: writingforward.com

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How to Break Through a Fiction Writing Block

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It happens to all writers. You’re cruising through a story, and all of a sudden you hit a wall. Your characters freeze up, your plot stops cold, and you’re stuck with nowhere to go.

You’ve hit a fiction writing roadblock.

All of your ideas have evaporated and you sit there staring at your screen with a blank look on your face. Where were you going? How did you write yourself into a corner? More importantly, how do you write yourself out?

Fortunately, there are techniques you can use to break through the creative blocks that arise in the middle of a storytelling project. Some of these techniques also come in handy when developing ideas for new fiction projects.

The main thing you need to remember is that hitting a roadblock does not have to mean the end of your story, your fiction writing, or your creativity. You just need to reboot and see your project from a fresh angle.

Breakthrough Techniques

The techniques explained here are sledgehammers. They’ll blast through walls, blow away obstacles, and create doorways that you can step through to reconnect with your story.

Pull Your Characters Out of the Story

Is your character stuck in a situation with no way out? Has your character gone on strike, refusing to take further action? Are secondary characters loitering around with nothing to do? Try removing the troubled character from the story you’re writing and placing them in a completely different situation. You don’t have to write a novel, but sketch some ideas about how your character would behave in various scenarios. Then bring them back to the story you were working on and see if your creative wall hasn’t cracked.

Try Fiction Writing Exercises

Fiction writing exercises provide a constant stream of ideas. You can find websites, magazines, and books that provide activities to kick your writing and your imagination into high gear. Look for exercises that are specific to the problems you’re having. If your plot isn’t going anywhere, find plot exercises. If you are having trouble with dialogue, look for dialogue exercises. I wrote Story Drills: Fiction Writing Exercises for storytellers who need guidance and inspiration — it has a little of everything and can knock down all kinds of creative walls.

Break it Down

Sometimes we get stuck because something’s wrong with the plot or structure. If you’re writing a manuscript, it will be difficult to see the bones of your story. Convert your manuscript into an outline that lists all major plot points. Then you can more easily see where the story took a wrong turn. If you’re having character problems, create outlines that show character arcs. Keep using these outlines to find and resolve problems in your plot and structure.

Go Deep

Sometimes the biggest problem with a story is that it’s flat. The characters are lackluster; the plot is boring. This is likely because these story elements are underdeveloped — there’s not enough detail or depth. Pause work on your manuscript to work on developmental projects like character sketches, plot outlines, world-building, and research that will add layers of detail to your creative vision, which will then get fleshed out in your writing when you resume work on the project.

Expand Your Vision

Sometimes what’s missing isn’t detail but entire chunks of a story; if your story feels thin, then you can add characters and subplots to plump it up. I had written multiple drafts of a novel when I was struck with a new character. I didn’t think much about it — I just started writing a chapter about her. It became the first chapter of the novel and she became the thread that tied the entire series together. Similarly, you might find that your plot lacks dimension; introducing new story threads and subplots can make your tale more dynamic.

Get a Second Opinion

We all grow blind to our own strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you’ve started to think your story isn’t as great as you originally envisioned. Maybe you have a nagging feeling that something is wrong with it, but you’re not sure what. This is often a good time to get a second opinion. A writer friend is ideal for this, but you can also work with a developmental editor or a writing coach. Find someone who you trust, who is knowledgeable about writing (and your genre), someone who will give you honest feedback and help you get back on track. Sometimes the mere act of discussing the project with another person will illuminate the problem and reveal a solution.

Don’t Give Up on Your Story

Storytelling is not an easy endeavor, and the best traits for writers to cultivate are patience and determination. Sure, some stories are destined for the recycling bin. Successful writers produce a lot of garbage before they eke out a gem. But don’t give up on a project when you hit your first roadblock. If you do that, you’ll never get anywhere.

Whether you write yourself into a corner, lose interest in your plot or characters, or get tempted by a newer, shinier idea, stick with your project and see it through to completion. Pay attention to what’s going on when you’re at your most creative and learn how to get into that state on command. Writers need to get to know how their minds work and what brings out the best ideas. This is how each writer develops a reliable set of techniques or a routine that produces good results.

Also, stock up on creativity resources. Look for books on creativity and expose yourself to plenty of art and entertainment. Also, try other creative outlets, such as painting, dancing, photography, or music. Remember that like attracts like, so the more creative you are, the more creative you’ll be.

How do you break through fiction writing blocks? Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment.

By Melissa Donovan
Source: writingforward.com

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How to Overcome Perfectionism to Boost Your Writing Productivity

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Do you want to boost your writing productivity?

Then ask yourself if any of the following apply to you:

  • You’re very hard on yourself, especially when things go wrong.
  • You spend more time than you should on a task because you want it to be done just right.
  • You have extremely high standards, and will sometimes sacrifice your own well-being to complete a project perfectly.
  • You’re the first to find errors and correct them, knowing that finding mistakes in a completed project will drive you nuts.
  • You tend to ruminate over past mistakes and always vow not to repeat them.

If you found that two or more of these described you, you tend toward perfectionism. If you related to more than that, you may be a full-blown perfectionist.

Now don’t panic. Perfectionists sometimes get a bad rap, but there are good as well as bad things about this trait. You are probably a determined, hard-working person, for example, who is always trying to improve. Your completed projects are most likely of high quality, and you’re probably good at editing your own writing, because you actually enjoy finding flaws and fixing them.

But there’s no doubt that your perfectionist personality is also likely to make it difficult for you to open up time in your schedule to write. Here’s why, and what you can do to boost your creative productivity.

3 Ways Perfectionism Kills Your Writing Productivity

Most writers struggle with time management these days—it’s just hard to find ways to squeeze in writing time with all the other things we have going on in our lives.

Perfectionists struggle more than most for three main reasons:

1. They spend too much time trying to get every project just right, which makes them less productive overall.
2. They fear failure, so they resist starting a project until they feel “ready.” The term for this is procrastination, and it will keep a perfectionist from ever completing a book or other creative project.
3. They are always critiquing. They edit their work as they’re writing it, which makes it difficult to get into a rhythm of creative output.

These three factors slow the perfectionist writer down at every turn. They not only stall his progress on his creative projects, they also slow him down on everything else he does in life, creating an unbearably long to-do list and the feeling of always being behind.

Perfectionist writers often compensate by working harder and longer to make sure everything is perfect, from their next novel to their next blog post to their next email to their children’s homemade lunches, to the point that they eventually buckle under the demanding load. The result can be exhaustion and depression or even a serious illness.

This side of perfectionism isn’t fun—ask those who suffer through it. If you’re one of them, you may be all too familiar with your own tendencies to grade yourself on everything, ruminate over even small mistakes, and resist letting a project go until you’ve beaten it to death.

None of us can really change our innate personalities, though, so what are perfectionist writers to do? Are they doomed, or can they adjust just enough to make more time for their creative work?

7 Tips to Help You Become a More Productive Perfectionist Writer

First, remember the positive side to being a perfectionist. You don’t have to feel badly about this trait. The important thing is to learn to work with it so you can get more writing done. To do that, try these seven tips:

1. Find areas where you can let up: Perfectionists tend to want everything to be perfect. Try to identify projects that don’t matter as much, and practice allowing them to be sub-par. Remember that you want to make time for writing and your other priority projects, so make a list of less important things that don’t need to be perfect and practice spending less time on them.

You’ll probably never feel comfortable letting some projects go before they’re “ready,” but you can get better at it.

2. Realize that your standards are super high: Step back for a moment and realize that it’s likely your standards are super high. There’s no real definition of “perfect” for most of the things you do in life. What’s the difference between a clean bathroom and a perfectly clean bathroom? You can probably tell, but most people can’t. Simply remembering that can help you go easier on yourself.

When you think something is “okay” but not yet “perfect,” realize that “okay” is probably good enough in most cases.

3. Practice being productive: Studies have actually shown that perfectionists are less productive than others. (Read more about productivity in C. S. Lakin’s post, “Boost Your Productivity: Getting to the Core of Your Distractions.”) When you’re agonizing over one project, you’re slowing yourself down and stealing time from the other things you planned to do (like writing).

Make productivity your goal instead, and let your perfectionism work on that for a while!

4. Carry a timer around: One way you can practice being more productive is to carry a timer around with you (or use an app on your cell phone). Give yourself a time limit for each project you take on during the day. Fifteen minutes to write that important email—when the timer goes off, send it! An hour for that work report. Thirty minutes to make dinner. An hour to clean the house.

Push yourself to work more quickly, and adhere to your allotted time. It will be painful, but the more you do it, the easier it will become. Go go go!

5. Forgive yourself: Perfectionists are super hard on themselves, ruminating over every mistake. This can create a stressed out mind, which is horrible for your creativity. What you need is to practice forgiving yourself. That typo in your query letter? It’s not the end of the world. That forgotten soccer game? Your child will forget about it (eventually). Your favorite phrase should become, “It’s okay!” Particularly when you’re writing, allow yourself to be just who are you are on the page, flaws and all. You may find it so freeing that your stories become even more imaginative.

(Find a fun way to get past your own perfectionism when writing in Mary Jaksch’s post, “How to Make Writing Easy: One Nifty Tip to Sneak Past Perfection.”

6. Practice fooling yourself: If your perfectionist tendencies make you likely to procrastinate, find ways to fool yourself into getting started. Tell yourself you’ll write for only five minutes, or that this isn’t the “real” draft, but just a “practice” one. Set a timer and don’t allow your fingers off the keyboard until it dings.

Do whatever you have to do to get past that internal editor and start writing.

7. Make failing a game: Perfectionists fear failure. They work to get everything just right so they don’t fail.  Make it a game to see how many mistakes you can commit. Not by faking it, but by trying new things more often. Send out more submissions. Query more agents. Try out more types of writing that are unfamiliar to you. Submit your work to more contests.

Gradually, you may start to have more fun with the whole thing, and failure won’t seem like such a big deal. You may also surprise yourself at the successes you experience!

Boost Your Writing Productivity

Managing Perfectionism is a Lifelong Process. Your perfectionism is probably not going to go away. Remember, it’s okay! In many ways, it can benefit your career. To limit its potential destructiveness on your writing time, try changing just one habit per day. Baby steps are key to gradually allowing yourself to step away from the need to be perfect, and get closer to “good enough.”

As American writer David Foster Wallace said:

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

Source: writetodone.com

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