Tag Archives: improve your writing

3 Crucial Steps That Will Improve Bad Writing

Today’s post is written by Jeff Goins. Jeff is the best-selling author of four books, including The Art of Work. His award-winning blog, Goinswriter.com, is visited by millions of people every year.

Deliberate writing practice is the foundation of The Write Practice. Deliberate practice writing can take your writing process to the next level.

If you want to meet your writing potential in life, you have to write. Just like basketball players spend hours shooting free throws so that they don’t choke when it counts in a game, writers need to ingrain a type of practice that works for their writing process into their DNA.

In this article, you’ll learn a writing practice that will help you develop a regular routine of practice to improve your creative writing skills.

Bad Practice—and the Illusion of Practice—Don’t Create Expert-Level Performance

Stephanie Fisher had come a long way from her hometown of Jamestown, New York, to Augusta, Georgia, but this was her dream and she wouldn’t give it up. The year was 2010, and it was her seventh time auditioning for American Idol.

She had never made it this far in the singing talent show, but this time, things were going to be different. This time, she would see the judges.

Dressed in a silvery sequined top, donning pearls around her neck and fishnet stockings, Stephanie stepped onto the platform of America’s most popular talent show, smiling nervously before the judges.

“Wow,” a couple of them said, remarking on her outfit.

“I almost wore the same thing,” Randy joked.

Simon rolled his eyes, obviously annoyed.

“Okay,” Kara said, “let’s hear it.”

In her black and white oxfords, Stephanie spread her feet apart as if to ready herself, and she opened with Peggy Lee’s “Fever.”

At this point, Stephanie was snapping her fingers and provocatively staring down the judges, who were audibly groaning. Her rhythm was off, the notes were wrong, and everyone on the set knew it, including Stephanie. They told her to stop. She frowned.

“Thank you, Stephanie,” Simon said.

“What did you think?” Kara asked.

“Terrible. Honestly, you can’t sing, sweetheart.”

Stephanie admitted to being a little starstruck in the presence of Victoria Beckham, who was a guest judge that day. Later she told a reporter this was something the producers told her to say. Victoria offered to turn around in hopes that it would make the contestant feel more at ease. Stephanie accepted the offer, which felt forced and a little too theatrical for me.

The young grad student started again, a little more awkwardly, this time singing “Baby Love” by The Supremes. It wasn’t any better. After a measure or two, Victoria turned back around. This time Kara added to the critical jabs, saying it was better when she was looking. Another burst of laughter erupted from the judges.

“With the greatest respect,” Simon said in a proper British accent, pausing for dramatic effect, “you have a horrible voice.”

“Really?” Stephanie said, looking stunned but still smiling nervously. All the preparation, all those long years of dreaming, had led to this?

“Yeah,” Randy chimed sympathetically. “You ain’t got it goin’ on.”

“You can’t give me a few minutes to get un-nervous?” she pleaded.

“We’d need years, Stephanie,” Simon said, and the judges again all laughed in unison. And as I watched the YouTube video recounting this painful story years after the fact, I realized how true that was.

It’s Not Just About Trying

Our parents told us to try our best. Whether at school or Little League, we were encouraged to give it our all, and that was enough to make them proud.

But the truth is there are different kinds of trying. Anders Ericsson has been studying this for years and in his book Peak, he’s come to a surprising conclusion: not all effort is equal.

Stephanie Fisher had been practicing singing for years. She’d been trying. But the 10,000-hour rule, at least as far as she understood it, had not worked. What was she doing wrong?

The answer, according to Ericsson, lies in what he calls deliberate practice.

In his recent book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, he says that when you embrace the deliberate-practice mindset,

. . . anyone can improve, but it requires the right approach. If you are not improving, it’s not because you lack innate talent; it’s because you’re not practicing the right way.

So what is the right way to practice? Deliberate practice requires the following:

You must push yourself past your comfort zone and attempt things that are not easy for you.
You must get immediate feedback on the activity you are practicing and on what you can do to improve it.
You must identify the best people in your field and find out what sets them apart, then practice like they do.

If you’re not doing these things, you’re not really practicing. At least, not in the way that is going to lead to excellence.

If you’re not engaging in deliberate practice, you’re not practicing in the way that leads to excellence.
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The Secrets to Writing Like Hemingway

When Ernest Hemingway was living in Paris in the 1920s, he received an exceptional education in writing, a unique opportunity he may not have even been aware of.

Every day, he would get up and go to a cafe, where he would write for a few hours. First, he’d edit the previous day’s work, a discipline he developed that influenced his style for the rest of his life. Unlike many other authors at the time, he was constantly tightening his prose, trying to make it cleaner, shorter, better.

In the afternoons, he would visit his friends in the Latin Quarter, people like Gertrude Stein, Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound. They would critique his writing, give him feedback on what he was doing right and what he was doing wrong. Then he would apply what he learned.

This was an incredible opportunity, but it wasn’t an accident. Hemingway was born in Chicago, and after a brief stint in the Red Cross during WWI, he wandered for a while, trying to find his way in life. It was author Sherwood Anderson who encouraged him to move to Paris where “the most interesting people in the world lived.”

So he did, and nearly seven years later, when his informal apprenticeship was over, he had learned the discipline of deliberate practice.

Challenge Yourself to Deliberate Practice

If you want to do the same, you must:

Push yourself in your practice. In my book The Art of Work, I call this painful practice, because it might hurt a little. That’s what happens every time we go outside our comfort zone.
Seek out critical feedback. We live in the age of inflated egos when most people are afraid to give their honest opinions. But in order to become a truly great writer, you will need people in your life to tell you, “you can do better.”
Seek out the greats and learn their secrets. You don’t have to move to Paris, but you need to find prominent writers in your genre, living or dead, and find out how they do what they do.

The truth is there are people who have a natural ability when it comes to writing, but this is incredibly rare. If you want to get better at writing, you need to construct some writing goals for you this year, and then develop some practice plans that will help you develop good, deliberate practice writing habits.

More and more, science is proving that what we used to call talent is really just hard work that pushes you to a level of performance that you hadn’t previously attained.

What makes a writer great is not the talent, but the practice.
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When was the last time you practiced something deliberately? What did you learn? Share in the comments!

By Jeff Goins

Source: thewritepractice.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

Leslie Malin on Nonfiction Writing and Why Your Ideas Are Worth Sharing

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Nonfiction writing seems like a completely different bear than writing fiction. How do you gather your ideas and present them in a coherent, interesting way? And if someone else has written on the same topic before, should you even bother?

Nonfiction, to me, seems way more intimidating to write and, quite frankly, seems like dry work. It reminds me of textbooks and yawning through late nights in college.

In today’s article, Leslie Malin gives us some great insight into how she came around to writing her first nonfiction book and the lessons she had to learn along the way. And she reminds us that writing nonfiction requires some of the same skills as writing fiction: storytelling.

Nonfiction writing isn’t that different

After talking with this month’s interviewee, I realized fiction and nonfiction writing have a lot in common. Neither are boring to write (or read!) if you are passionate about the subject matter. Both require knowledge of story arc and characterization. Both are born from a passion for the topic and an urge to let others see your words.

And, arguably most important, both are written to provide something to the reader, whether that be an escape or a solution to a problem.

Today we’re talking with Leslie K Malin, LCSW, author of Cracked Open and the forthcoming The Work-Life Principle, about writing nonfiction.

Leslie has a forty-year professional career as a psychotherapist, Career-Life Transition Coach, human resources training and development specialist, non-profit executive in mental health and social service agencies, public speaker, entrepreneur, author, and painter.

You can find Leslie online on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or her current website. And stay tuned for her upcoming website dedicated to her second book!

Here’s how Leslie came about writing nonfiction:

Tell me a little about Cracked Open and what inspired you to write it.

This book emerged rather like a dream. I didn’t begin it with the intention of it becoming a book. I love quotations and found myself drawn to collecting quotations about failure, loss, doubt, hope, and overcoming challenges.

As my collection grew, it suddenly called to become a book. I don’t know how else to explain it. I reread each quotation and found myself writing a one-page “reflection” of each one, and kept adding. They became a meditation, a musing, a sharing of myself, a memoir of sorts.

This book became a calling for me to show-up authentically, honestly, and sometimes with a rawness that is not typical of me!

That sounds like an amazing experience with writing. Since this is so personal to you, how did you decide you wanted to publish it? What do you hope your readers will come away with after reading it?

This is an interesting question. Once it began to unfold more like a book I began sending out new sections to five friends who would read them and respond to assess if they found the writing and way of presenting the material interesting. I also joined The Write Practice and began posting my writings weekly to see how they fared in an environment of mostly fiction writers.

While, in truth, I didn’t get lots of feedback, what I did receive from three or so writers so more than encouraging and supportive. Ruthanne Reid, whom I had really grown to respect, wrote to me, insisting that I finish this book. The feedback showed me that my experience, while personal, was also meaningful and motivating for others.

What did I want my readers to come away with after reading it? As a psychotherapist and life-career transition coach and other roles I’ve had, I knew firsthand how devastated people can feel post-failure, how self-doubt can be crippling, and how fear to move forward can envelop one’s soul.

Cracked Open is for everyone. Its message is that being human guarantees failure, fear, and doubt and, rather than shrinking us, they can become the portal to discover an expanded awareness, an opportunity for unanticipated growth, and a gift of immeasurable value.

We have a lot of advice for fiction writers on this blog, but a lot of writers don’t realize writing nonfiction can be very similar to writing fiction. For instance, you have to have a problem in both types of books, and that problem must ultimately be solved. Can you talk a bit about the similarities between writing nonfiction and fiction?

I’ve never written fiction — although I’d love to one day. However, I’ve read a ton of fiction from the masters to summer beach reading. Given my professional orientation as a psychotherapist and career-life coach, writing about life, work, the highs of success, and the depths of failure, writing nonfiction seemed like a natural genre for me.

Actually, I have become far more familiar with the similarities between fiction and nonfiction as I am writing my newest book, The Work-Life Principle: Pathways to Purpose, Passion, Authenticity and Wisdom. I workshopped the first draft by joining the 100 Day Challenge. This structure created the discipline to finally write the first draft which has been inhabiting my mind for years!

After the Challenge was over, I opted to work with a fabulous Story Grid coach (still in process). She is teaching me that nonfiction also has characters that play an enormously important role in “telling the story” of the mountain climb to purpose, passion, authenticity, and wisdom.

These characters are real people whom I have worked with individually and in groups as well as conducting a number of interviews to go deeper into people’s journey, challenges, struggles, and arriving at meaning. Then, in the writing I can share their experiences, thoughts, feelings, disappointments and successes.

They make the nonfiction come alive. They are the essence of nonfiction, aren’t they!

I am also learning that the structure of nonfiction shares another common ground with fiction. It has to have an arc which builds, crests, and then resolves. While the reader knows from the beginning where we are heading, they have no idea of how we will get there, what successes and allies we will find along the way nor where the shadows and cautions to proceeding will appear. And, finally, how the entire “story” will resolve.

This learning has been significant. I can look at my work in an entirely new way. I now see it as a Dorothy in OZ journey — a hero’s journey.

Even though you don’t write fiction, do you think there’s anything inherent to nonfiction that’s harder to write than fiction? Or vice versa?

I am actually a bit frightened of writing fiction! I am not sure that I have ever believed that I have the imaginative capacity to develop a compelling storyline with meaningful characters.

Yet, there is this longing to try my hand at it, just to see what it will call forth from me. What I might discover about myself, to push through the “FEAR” and practice what I preach! Stay tuned.

What do you think is the hardest thing about writing nonfiction?

To me, writing nonfiction has to have a specific issue or subject matter that matters to me and about which I have the experience, a point of view, and knowledge that can provide value to the reader.

Also, gaining clarity about who your audience is, forming an avatar of the perfect person who you are aiming your book towards can keep you on target and focused on the information that can most benefit as well as attract them. I have found that defining that avatar can be the most challenging piece of the process.

While I may believe that what I have to share could be valuable to many, it is definitely more compelling and relevant to some who may share an age or gender category, are at a particular stage in their lives and/or work, are in a similar socio-economic situation. It determines what kind of assumptions you may make, the kind of language you use, the stories you tell, etc. It doesn’t exclude others but it feels more of a fit for some.

You’ve mentioned before that you wrote your second book, The Work-Life Principle, in our 100 Day Book program. In that program, we focus on getting the first draft out on paper as fast as possible. Do you think that’s a beneficial process for writing nonfiction?

As I mentioned briefly above, one of the best decisions I made was to join the 100 Day Book program. Without that challenge, I wonder if this book would still be looping around in my brain!

The Challenge not only “forced” me to assign time to write, deadline and word counts to be accountable for, and helped me to just “put it down” on paper as rough and unstructured as it might be. The program taught me to let go of trying to be perfect and embrace what was to emerge.

It was a sort of brain-drain that would have time and space to be sorted out in the future. Once there is a first draft, there is a trajectory, a path, a distance and increased objectivity that I find to be invaluable.

You went into your second book with the full intention of it being a book, unlike the spontaneous emergence of your first. How was this different for you? Was the process more stressful?

The subject matter for The Work-Life Principle has been in my mind, some already written chapters, presented in an online seminar as well as in public speaking for many years. Its original title was “Finding Yourself on the Way to Work” as that is the essence of the book’s teaching.

When the 100 Day Challenge was announced, I was thinking of doing another book in the series of Reflections of Cracked Open. However, The Work-Life Principle wouldn’t let go of me and I felt that until I tackled that and finally put it down as a book that I couldn’t move onto something else. It was unfinished business and the fact that its substance has been a companion for so long meant that it demanded to be birthed.

The process has been more arduous — still is as I haven’t yet finished it, because it required more research, reading scholarly papers on the topics of work-life satisfaction, changes in needs as people reach mid-career and beyond, neuroscience and its discoveries about the brain and changes over time, and the like.

During the Challenge I only wrote down what I already knew and had thought through so that I could nail down a first draft. The research continues as does my evolving clarity about how to present the material to have impact and clarity, as well as a story-line.

I’ve conducted many interviews with people in different professions and stages in their lives to enrich the book with real-life stories and feedback from others about Purpose, Passion, Authenticity, and Wisdom in their work and careers. The interviews have been rich and rewarding but have thrown me off track from the writing.

I am on the return to writing phase now as well as working with my Story Grid editor which imposes an important but new demand.

What is the most difficult thing about writing for you? Have you overcome that obstacle and, if so, how?

Stay consistent in showing up to write.

I have a sizeable private psychotherapy and coaching practice that takes three full days of my time. Often, on my first day off I feel that I need to down-shift and do chores, etc. I also paint one day a week.

My challenge now is to take the deep dive and finish what I have begun. That means re-establishing disciple and scheduled times to write. I am returning to my editor with some set accountability dates to move forward and to perhaps take a week off from my practice and just write.

I am thinking about checking into a retreat house where there is enforced quiet and just settling in. I’m hoping that will recharge my batteries!

What advice would you give to other nonfiction writers just starting out?

Let yourself lay down that first rough, often messy, or gap filled draft. That can become the foundation of what follows. It’s a brain drain and allows you to get the material out of your head and looping thoughts and become a concrete, if unfinished, reality.

Maybe you’ll decide to publish it, perhaps you won’t — it doesn’t matter as much as working through it and building your author chops at the same time.

It’s all about the story

Whether you’re writing fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, remember that you’re telling a story. Your narrative must build, crest, and resolve, no matter the subject. This arc is what people are used to and expect. Most importantly it’s what keeps your readers turning pages!

Thanks to Leslie for agreeing to talk with me!

You can find Leslie’s first book, Cracked Open, on Kindle or in paperback now! The Work-Life Principle will be available winter 2019. Be sure to sign up for Leslie’s newsletter or follow her on social media to stay in the loop with publication news!

If you were to write a nonfiction book, what would you write about? Let me know in the comments!

By Sarah Gribble

Source: thewritepractice.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

The Hero’s Journey: How to Leverage the World’s Most Powerful Story Structure

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From Moses to Star Wars, the Hero’s Journey is the foundation of millennia of storytelling. How can you leverage it in your own writing?

Do you want your stories to “work?”

Writers work hard at their craft. They struggle to build a story that makes sense and delivers the goods on emotion and thrills.

And so often, even after months and years of labor, a writer can’t get their story to “work.”

There are a lot of reasons why a story might not work — why it confuses readers or fails to engage them emotionally — but one major reason a story doesn’t work is structure.

Thankfully there’s a structure you can use that has a proven track record of success. This successful record is so long, in fact, that we don’t know when it started.

That structure is called the Hero’s Journey, and it’s going to transform your writing.

What Is the “Hero’s Journey”?

Our understanding of this classic structure begins with American literature professor Joseph Campbell. Campbell was interested in the way mythology affects our lives today and began digging into myths — lots of myths.

In 1949 he published The Hero With a Thousand Faces outlining what has come to be known as his “monomyth,” a theory that all stories are, in fact, the same. That “same story” is the Hero’s Journey.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before:

A girl from the middle of nowhere wakes up one day to find that things are horrible, and someone has to do something about it. But she’s scared, and can’t bring herself to stand up and fight back . . . until the village elder arrives and teaches our young protagonist the ropes.

The girl sets out to find the source of her society’s problems, forcing her to leave. Along the way she encounters new faces, some of whom join her as companions, others of whom try to kill her or steal her valuables. She suffers some loses along the way, learning some truly difficult lessons.

Then, she and her companions find the source of evil: some kind of mighty fortress. The heroes storm the fortress and come face-to-face with the villain. The hero and the villain square off and the hero is killed or mortally wounded . . . only to use her resources to recover and vanquish the bad guy for good.

The hero and her surviving companions return home triumphant and bestow some kind of blessing, like food, rain, or peace, on the community.

If you’ve heard a story like that, then you know the Hero’s Journey.

Here are some examples.

“I Know This Story . . .”

Have you heard the story of the orphan boy living in the cupboard under the stairs?

Or perhaps the story of the girl in District 12 (the crappiest District) who would not only survive an unwinnable deathmatch, but become a symbol of liberty?

Maybe you’ve heard of the baby boy who was going to die in a mass genocide, but whose mother put him in a basket and sent him down the Nile River . . .

If you didn’t catch those, here they are in order: Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games), and . . . Moses.

There are also variations of it, like the Anti-Hero’s Journey, a story arc for characters like Tony Soprano and Walter White. Either way, it’s still based off Joseph Campbell’s foundational research in The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

So here’s the big question: Now that you know what it is, what do you do with it?

Hero’s Journey Step #1: Start Ordinary

We have Hollywood screenwriter and executive Christopher Vogler to thank for our condensed version of the Hero’s Journey. If you’re curious, his most notable credit is a film that makes explicit use of the Hero’s Journey: The Lion King.

Fun sidebar: The Lion King and the story of Moses in Exodus have the exact same structure. Attempted rise to power, failure and flight, return and victory.

In Vogler’s simplification of Campbell’s theory, there are twelve steps to the Hero’s Journey (and I’m going to cover each one in-depth in this series, of which this post is the first).

The first step of the Hero’s Journey: The Ordinary World.

6 Common Features of the Ordinary World

Let’s take a look at the elements of the Ordinary World. Some of these are essentials, while others aren’t necessarily essential, but are common in the vast majority of Hero’s Journey stories you’ll encounter.

1. The Average Joe

Every story begins with an “Average Joe.” He or she is someone you could be, or could be near to.

Think about how simple or average Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen are, at least at first. Yes, they both have something interesting about them (Harry’s scar, Katniss’s hunting skill), but neither of these things are earth-shattering . . . yet.

2. No Parents

Another notable trope of this step is a lack of proper parents. Think about it: How many heroes do you know of whose parents are either missing, dead, or nonexistent? Orphans abound in heroic journeys.

Harry Potter’s an orphan, and Katniss has to play the mother role. Moses’s father is a mystery and he is given up as an orphan. Luke Skywalker’s parents are . . . well, you know. And Rey, in the newer Star Wars movies, is obsessed with finding out the truth of her family. More on that to come in December 2020.

3. A Disadvantageous Beginning

This has a powerful effect of bringing these heroes low. They begin at a disadvantage. How many heroes do you know of with a rock-solid family and support structure in place? There are some, but they are few and far between.

Take Peter Parker/Spider-Man, another classic orphan. He’s been adopted by his aunt and uncle (RIP Uncle Ben) because his parents are dead/missing/who knows. Even Superman, with his adopted Earth parents, feels like a stranger because his true parents died during the explosion of his home planet, Krypton. Even these mighty superheroes suffer from a trauma that human beings know all too well: the destruction of family and community.

4. A Simple, Mundane, Boring Life

Many elements of the Ordinary World are obvious. Your hero’s life is simple, mundane, even boring. He or she is often from the countryside, or lives as a stranger in the crowded, soulless metropolitan bustle.

5. Low Expectations

Other elements are less obvious. One is that no one expects anything of the hero. He is assumed to probably amount to nothing. That is, by everyone except the Mentor character (coming soon in Step #4!). It will be the Mentor who recognizes the hero’s potential heroism and talent and coaches him into that role.

6. A False Sense of Security

Another element of the Ordinary World is a false sense of security. Everything should seem, at least on the surface, peaceful and well. But in the underbelly of this world — or lingering outside its boundaries — conflict and injustice rages.

I’m reminded of the tranquil peace of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings, embodied by the jovial mood at Bilbo’s birthday party. Yet that mirthful spirit is erased once Bilbo uses his magic ring — the One Ring of Evil, we soon learn — to play a trick on everyone. From that point forward, the Shire is no longer peaceful and safe, but a fragile domain whose borders are penetrated by wraiths and wild creatures in search of Sauron’s Ring.

This, of course, is the Inciting Incident, the step where you SHOULD begin your story (for the sake of hooking your reader). But that Inciting Incident, or “Call to Adventure,” must happen in the context of a quiet, seemingly peaceful world where your hero is a nobody who isn’t expected to do much at all.

3 Ways to Create Your Ordinary World

How does this apply to the stories you’re telling? Here are elements of the Ordinary World you can use to bring your hero low before they begin the climb to greatness.

1. Upset the parent structure

To keep things fresh, don’t just “kill them off.” Maybe one is missing. Maybe the parents are divorced and mom/dad remarried, while the other is off on some adventure.

A great example of innovation within this element is Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2, where Peter Quill’s journey (as an orphan, mind you) takes him back to his father with plenty of twists along the way.

2. Lower the expectations

In the beginning, no one can know how heroic your protagonist will be. Don’t fall victim to cheesy irony or heavy-handed foreshadowing. Keep your hero low, and bury him/her in the judgment of the community.

If you’ve ever lived in a small town, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The same can be said for the community, or “World,” itself. Often a community will expect nothing of itself because no one expects anything of it.

Think about that town you grew up near that was “trash.” Maybe it was your town. What effect does that have on its people?

3. Create a false sense of security

As the writer, you know conflict is coming. It has to come, either from within or without.

But the community, and possibly your hero, can’t know it yet. Everything needs to seem happy and fine. Remember that the effect of this false sense of security is suspense, a priceless effect you want to provide your readers whenever possible.

Let’s Get Ordinary

It’s time to start spicing and seasoning your storytelling with elements of this timeless and beloved story structure.

What are you working on now that could benefit from some of these archetypal elements? Why not try adding some elements to your current work-in-progress, or to a finished draft you’re struggling to revise?

And be sure to keep an eye out for my next article on Step Two of the Hero’s Journey!

What Ordinary Worlds can you think of in stories you’ve read and watched? Let us know in the comments.

By David Safford

Source: thewritepractice.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

How to Refine Your Raw Writing Talent – by Jerry B. Jenkins

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Discouraging, isn’t it?

You write a few blog posts and friends sing your praises. You dream, Maybe I’ve got what it takes to score a publishing deal.

But then you run your idea and your samples past an agent, an editor, or a published author, and the music screeches to a halt. You interpret their “meh” as a scathing critique and you’re rudely awakened from your dream.

Special Note: This is a guest post by New York Times Bestselling author, Jerry B. Jenkins. Jerry’s one of the most successful authors of our time with over 70 million copies of his books sold. Visit: jerryjenkins.com

Unfortunately, I’ve seen it over and over.

Writers ask me for feedback. I believe they want real input, but when they see my suggested edits, their faces fall.

I know they were dreaming I would say, “Where have you been? How has a major publishing house not found you yet?”

They weren’t really looking for input—they were looking to be discovered.

You might have a boatload of talent—enough to tell compelling stories in fresh ways. But if you can’t accept criticism from those in the business, you’re not going to succeed.

I’ve written and published 195 books, including 21 New York Times bestsellers, yet I still need fresh eyes on my work. And I’ve had to become a ferocious self-editor.

Writing is a craft.

That means you must build your writing muscles and learn the skills.

Writing is a craft. That means you must build your writing muscles and learn the skills.

Regardless how talented you think you are, writing takes work. Many talented athletes never become pros because they believed raw talent alone would carry them.

That doesn’t have to be you, as long as you cultivate your skills.

3 Ways to Hone Your Talent

1. Read, Read, Read

Writers are readers. Good writers are good readers. Great writers are great readers.

Writing in your favorite genre? You should have read at least 200 titles in it. Learn the conventions. Know the rules you plan to break.

You’ll become aware of what works and what doesn’t. And you’ll likely see a vast difference in your writing.

2. Write, Write, Write

Dreamers talk about writing. Writers write.

Don’t expect to grow unless you’re in the chair doing it.

Write short stuff first. Articles, blogs. Learn to work with an editor. Learn the business. Get a quarter million cliches out of your system.

3. Welcome Brutally Honest Feedback

The fastest way to shave years off your learning curve is to seek real input from someone who knows.

But be prepared. Your ego may take a bruising.

Yes—the red ink hurts. During my early years in the newspaper and magazine business, editors tore my work apart.

But it made me the writer I am today. Without that scrutiny I don’t know where I’d be, but it wouldn’t be on any bestseller lists.

Expect to be heavily edited and learn to aggressively self-edit.

Take advantage of every opportunity to grow. Assume there is always room for improvement.

I am still learning and trying to sharpen my skills, after over 50 years in this game.

By Bryan Hutchinson

Source: positivewriter.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

The Ultimate Guide to Editing a Book

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Congratulations! You’ve finished your first (or second, or fourteenth) draft, and now your baby is ready for those polishing touches that will make it truly shine. It’s time to edit your novel.

Ah, self-editing. Some writers swear by it, some writers swear it will kill them first. Either way, it must be done. Or mustn’t it?

Should I Bother Self-Editing My Book?

If you plan to self-publish, the answer is, absolutely.

If you plan to publish traditionally, the answer is, definitely.

Here’s why.

Self-publishers:
No one can truly edit their own work. Spare yourself the 1-star reviews, and have your novel edited professionally before you publish it. However, self-editing your book first helps cut down on rates. The more you do yourself, the better quote you’ll receive.

Submitters:
Yes, you will likely be assigned an editor before publication. But in order to get there, you have to catch the publisher or agent’s attention. To that end, your manuscript has to be as clean as you can make it on your own.

Before we sit down to work, let’s go over the different types of editing a book might require.

Types of Editing

A lot of work falls under the word “editing” or “revising,” but it all comes down to three types: developmental editing, line editing (also known as copyediting), and proofreading.

It’s important to identify the types of editing your novel needs–and do them in the right order. Developmental editing, for example, will probably make you revise huge blocks of text. There’s no point proofreading before you do that, because all your effort and time will go to waste.

The correct order is as listed above: developmental editing first, then copyediting, and finally proofreading.

If you’re self-publishing, you’ll need all three. If you’re submitting your manuscript, all three should be provided to you at no cost by the publishing house.

Here’s what each of them means.

Developmental Editing

Developmental editors take a deep look at the novel structure. They look for plot holes, character development, pace and suspense, tight scenes, and other story-level details.

Self-editing on this level is almost impossible. It’s the Curse of Knowledge: you’re too close to the narrative, you know the facts too well, and you can’t imagine how new readers would perceive the story. Is it clear enough? Entertaining? Suspenseful? Engaging? You’re the wrong person to answer these questions.

You can find professional, hand-vetted developmental editors over at Reedsy.

If that option for editing your book is a bit too pricey for you, you can find developmental editors on non-vetted platforms such as Guru, Upwork, and Fiverr.

Either way, be careful to interview your candidates and make sure they are masters of your genre.

Developmental editing rates for fiction manuscripts run anywhere from $0.03/word to $0.90/word. Some editors quote by page. The standard page has 250 words, so costs are usually $7.50 to $22.50 per page.

For example, a YA Fantasy manuscript usually runs about 60,000 words. Be prepared to spend at least $1800 on developmental edits.

Pricey? Yes. Worth it? Oh yes. The right developmental editor can make or break your novel.

Line Editing / Copyediting

At this level of editing the manuscript, story is no longer an issue. Language is. But not usage and spelling issues. Copywriters look at your voice, word-choice, paragraph and sentence structure, readability, and so on.

This is something you can and should do on your own! Do it before you send your book to be professionally edited, and all the more before you submit your novel anywhere.

Expect to pay $0.012/word to $0.02/word. Per page, the cost will be $3 to $5.

For a 60,000-word manuscript, that’s about $1,020.

Proofreading

The last but not least editing pass will weed out grammar and spelling errors, typos, inconsistency in names, and the likes. It’s a language-only pass.

Expect to pay about $0.01/word to $0.015/word. That would be $2.50 to $3.75 per page.

The same 60,000-word manuscript would cost about $720.

Some professional editors will lump line editing and proofreading under the same service. This combined service should cost about $0.02/word to $0.03/word. That would be $5 to $7.5 per page.

Getting Ready to Edit a Novel

Four more steps before we tackle the checklists.

Let your manuscript breathe. Put it aside once you finish writing it (Stephen King recommends 6 weeks). This pause will let you come back to it with a clearer view. Instead of remembering what each word should say, you’ll be more able to see what each word actually says. Then you can judge if it works or not.
Arm your vision. Install Grammarly, ProWritingAid, or a similar piece of software to help you catch grammar and spelling issues. They’re not enough, but they’re absolutely a good beginning. (Both Grammarly and ProWritingAid have free versions, but ProWritingAid’s is more limited.)
Arm your ears. Install or bookmark a text-to-speech service to help you catch spelling errors, typos, repetitive sentence structure, overly long sentences, and so on. Natural Reader is a good free choice, for example.
Pace yourself. Don’t attempt to edit huge blocks of text every day. The more tired you are, the more issues you’ll miss. Then you’ll just have to re-edit your work on the next day. Take frequent breaks to stretch, close your eyes, or do some deep breathing. This will boost your efficiency.

Now that you’re ready, let’s get to editing!

Self-Editing Checklist for Line Editing (Copyediting)

In every scene, make sure the reader knows who the POV character is, what characters are present, and where the characters are situated in relation to each other. Don’t dump this information in bulk. Instead, sprinkle it over some dialog and action.
If you’re writing a limited POV (first person or third-person limited), stop after every sentence and ask yourself: Can my POV character know/hear/think/see these details? For example, a character cannot see the color of its own eyes or the expression on its own face. Edit out whatever your POV character can’t perceive.
When you write a description, make sure it plays on all five senses (unless your character can’t sense that way). Go for the unusual details: the smell of dust in the air of a construction site; the cool, dry air of a well-maintained library; the explosive taste of sun sugar tomatoes on a pizza.
For limited POV, ask yourself after every description: Would my POV character notice these details? Would my POV character care about these details? Edit out or downplay whatever your POV character won’t bother focusing on. For example, if your POV character is fashion-blind, he probably won’t notice someone’s blazer cut—he might not even know it’s a blazer rather than a jacket.
Also for limited POV, make sure you describe objects and places not the way they are, but the way your POV character would perceive them. For example, if someone at a café is working on a new laptop, a poor character wouldn’t describe its model and maker. She’d describe it as a sleek laptop she could never afford herself.
Make sure each paragraph has a single key idea. If there’s more than one idea in a paragraph, break it into as many paragraphs as needed.
Generally speaking, keep the page “airy” with white space. Huge blocks of text scare away readers. To avoid that, vary your paragraph length, and use large paragraphs sparingly.
In dialog, start a new paragraph whenever someone begins speaking. Different speakers should not be in the same paragraph unless they’re talking at the same time, kind of like this: “I know what you did,” Jeremy said at the same moment that Louisa said, “I don’t care.”
If your dialog runs long, break it up with action that reconnects the characters with their environment. Otherwise, you’ll get the “floating head” syndrome, where the reader loses all sense of the scene except for the dialog itself. Have your characters interact with objects around them as they talk. We humans rarely remain at complete rest during conversation.
Destroy all exclamation points outside of dialog. An exclamation point, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, is like laughing at your own joke.
Use varying sentence lengths. Keep most of your sentences short-to-medium, with only the occasional long, winding sentence in between.
Use varying grammatical structures. “He verbed” can only get you so far. But steer clear of the “Verbing, he verbed” structure (for example, “Sitting, he looked at…”). For one, it sounds amateurish. For another, if you use it a few times, it sounds conspicuously repetitive.
If you do use “Verbing, he verbed,” only do it when the two actions are supposed to happen at the same time. That’s what this structure means. If one action is supposed to take place before the other, use a different structure.
In 99% of all cases, use the active voice: “I ate the cookies,” rather than, “the cookies were eaten.” Apply the Zombie Test if you’re not sure—try adding “by zombies!” after the action. If it sounds right (albeit hilarious), that’s the passive voice. Change it to the active.
Use a word frequency counter to weed out overused words. Readers will start noticing these after a while, and it will throw them off. You can use a free online counter such as Word Counter.
Weed out most adverbs and replace them with stronger verbs. If he talked loudly, he shouted or called out. If she walked quickly, she strode. If he ate fast, he gobbled down the food. In addition to manually catching adverbs, run a search for “ly” and double-check those words.
Weed out weak words such as very, almost, nearly, suddenly, started to, began to, really. They add little to the narrative.
Weed out weak sentence structures. Watch out especially for sentences that begin with “There was,” “There is,” “It was,” “It is,” etc. Use them sparingly.
Weed out filter words, such as “think,” “see,” “hear,” etc. when they are outside of dialog. Instead of “Johnny heard her scream,” use simply, “She screamed.” The fact that you mention it implies that Johnny is hearing it.
Weed out 99% of “that,” “things,” and “stuff.” Use precise words instead, unless you deliberately want to sound vague.
Watch out for “Saidism,” the excessive use of “said” synonyms. Use “said” or action tags most of the time. Only when the tone cannot be inferred from the words, consider using a different verb. For example, Nicky can say, “To hell with you!” There’s no need to shout it, because the exclamation mark is enough of a shout.

Self-Editing Checklist for Proofreading

Start by running your manuscript through Grammarly, ProWritingAid, or the like. Don’t automatically accept every suggestion, but do consider every suggestion to see what’s unclear about your phrasing.
Next, run your manuscript through the text-to-voice software of your choice. Listen to the narrator closely. If you find it hard to focus on sounds while you read, put away the manuscript and just listen. If there’s anything that sounds even a bit off, pause the narrator and check your manuscript. Keep an ear out for overly long sentences, too.
Search for known trouble-makers:
- - Their (belonging to them) / they’re (short for “they are”) / there (that way, in that location)
  - Farther (more distant) / further (more advanced)
  - Affect (a verb meaning “to influence”) / effect (a noun meaning “a result”)
  - Who (like “he”) / whom (like “him”) / whose (like “his”) / who’s (short for “who is”)
  - Its (belonging to it) / it’s (short for “it is”)
  - That (refers to inanimate objects) / who (refers to people)
  - Then (“at that time,” or “next”) / than (used for comparison)
  - Lose (the opposite of “to win”) / loose (the opposite of “tight”)
  - There are no such things as “alot” (it’s “a lot”) and “infact” (it’s “in fact”).
  - There are many more. If you’re unsure about any word in your manuscript, look it up in the context of a sentence example to make sure you get it right.
Search and replace all double spaces. They are relics of a publishing world long-gone. In your word-processing software, start a new “Search and Replace.” In the search phrase box, hit the spacebar twice. In the replace phrase box, hit the spacebar once. Select “Replace All.”
Print out the manuscript and read it carefully. Highlight errors and typos. Write comments on post-it notes and stick them directly onto the relevant page.
Mind how you capitalize and punctuate dialog.
Keep your tenses consistent. If you’re writing the story in the past tense, present-tense verbs have no place in it.
Scene break? Use an extra empty line, or centered asterisks (* * *), or a single centered pound sign (#).

A Note on Editing a Book

Remember, no one can completely self-edit his or her own manuscript. You’re bound to miss things. That’s okay. Self-editing is not meant to replace professional editing by a fresh set of eyes. Its job is to increase your chances with traditional publishers–or to save money when hiring a professional editor for self-publishing.

And finally, learn to enjoy, or even love, editing. Think of it as a golden opportunity to squeeze the most juice out of every word you use in your novel, or to sharpen the arrow which you will fire into your readers’ hearts. Make the most of it, and it will make the most of your novel.

By Tal Valante

Source: refiction.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

How to Unleash the Writing Genius Inside You

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The biggest enemy any writer faces is one’s self and often appears as writer’s block.

If left untreated, it can be devastating to your output and your writing career. Nobody wants that, so let’s solve this problem!

Maybe you’ve heard of writers who get up every morning and put paws to the keyboard for an hour or two before breakfast. These are the people who churn out three or four novels a year like it was nothing (it’s not, of course). If you’re not doing the same, your gut reaction is likely to be jealous – crazy jealous.

How do they do that anyway? Do they add a magic potion to their morning coffee? Do the writing gods live in the spare bedroom of these high producers? Are they directly related to King Midas so every book they publish turns to gold?

It’s an entertaining notion to think successful people are born with innate talent that you don’t have. That lets you off the hook and justifies your complaining.

But it doesn’t get your book written.

If you suffer from any kind of writer’s block, you know all too well it’s a real thing. Sometimes it feels like a writer’s wall that is so high all the ideas on the other side are trapped there, forever out of your reach.

Unleash the genius one block at a time

Writer’s block doesn’t have to be forever.

Seth Godin makes the bold assertion that he never has writer’s block. To him, writing is another form of talking, and he is never at a loss for words.

If you’re an introvert, that might not comfort you much.

The truth is, words are readily available. You just have to reach out and grab them. The Muse loves the chase, and you can’t catch her by complaining about not being able to catch her.

In this post, you’ll learn how to hunt her down and make her do your bidding.

First, let’s identify the common blocks we writers face every time we sit at our desks.

Perfectionism. “If it’s not perfect, it’s not worth doing,” you might say to yourself.

Really? What is “perfect” anyway? Compared to what?

Everybody’s definition of perfect is different.

Aim to be effective instead.

Procrastination. “I’ll get started writing the moment this episode of Game of Thrones is over.” Or right after you unload the dryer. Or as soon as you wake up tomorrow.

The longer you wait, the easier it is not to start at all.

When you finish reading this post, you’ll face every blank page with confidence.

Fear. Someone might criticize you. Someone else might leave a nasty comment. Or worse, nobody will read your work at all.

Fear makes you freeze. Breathing is hard, and thinking becomes impossible. Except for worst case scenarios. Amazingly, you can come up with an endless supply of those.

What if you could blast past all your fears and tap into the writing genius inside you? What would that do for your production? Your confidence? How would the quality of your writing improve?

Forget about fear for 30 minutes a day

When we don’t want to do something, we do something else.

The dishes are piled up in the sink. But it’s been a long day and you’re tired. So you watch an episode or two of Black Mirror on Netflix. After that, you’ll feel more like dealing with the dirty dishes.

But you fall asleep on the couch instead.

What if you just went into the kitchen right after dinner and loaded the dishwasher before you plop onto the couch? Sure, it’s not fun dealing with the dishes. But it won’t be later either. Just get it over with.

When you’re done, you can rest in peace.

Dorothea Brande taught writers to get up and spend the first 30 minutes of the day writing “as fast as you can.” She gave that advice in 1934 and it as sound today as it was then.

Why did she recommend writers do this?

Because for those 30 minutes, you’re focusing on writing and nothing else. You’re ignoring everything in the universe besides putting words on paper. Call it freewriting, a stream of consciousness, a brain dump, or whatever you want.

How to make freewriting work for you today

It might sound crazy to have rules for “free” writing. But there are a few important ones.

And don’t worry, they won’t hamper your creativity at all.

First, set a timer. It can be for 5 minutes or 5 hours. You choose. If you’re just starting out, 5-10 minutes is plenty of time.

You might want to use the first 5 minutes to warm up your writing muscles. You can write about anything you want:

What you dreamed about last night.
The weather yesterday, today, or tomorrow.
How sleepy you still feel.
How stupid this seems.
How much you enjoyed watching Black Mirror last night.

The point is you’ll be putting words on paper. Set the timer again for 10 or 20 minutes and you can get more focused. Start with a prompt and write whatever comes to mind about it.

Second, don’t edit as you go. Please. You’ll be using both sides of your brain at once. That’s like drawing a picture, and erasing it at the same time.

The main reason you don’t want to edit while you write is that you risk wiping the flavor out of it. Try this instead. Write for 30 minutes or an hour. Take a break. Go walk. Load the dishwasher. Watch an episode of Breaking Bad. After you’ve put some space between you and your writing, then come back with a less critical eye.

Maybe you can even pretend your best friend wrote it.

Third, make sure you’re totally isolated when you write. Turn off the internet. Don’t answer the phone. Turn off the TV. Let your loved ones know not to bother you because it’s “writing time.”

If you need noise, listen to your favorite music. Just make sure it puts you into a peak state so you write something awesome.

When the timer stops, you have to stop, too.

If you can’t, I say keep going until you exhaust your idea mill.

If there’s one rule you can break, this is it.

Fourth, set a time limit for editing, too. Why edit forever? The more you slice away, the blander your writing becomes. Decide what you want to achieve and edit for that. Leave the spice in.

Proofreading doesn’t count as editing. Of course, you should do that, too. Fix the typos and read your work aloud. Does it sound human and conversational?

Perfect.

And I mean perfect by anyone’s standard.

Especially the reader’s.

In the end, the reader’s opinion is the most important one.

Now go pour out your soul on paper

We don’t want another “me, too” writer. We want you at your gloriously imperfect best. Entertain us with your wit. Dazzle us with your insights. Be bold in your creativity and share the story only you can tell.

If you’re not freewriting already, today is the day to begin.

If you are, share your experience in the comments. Pass this post to your friends who struggle with writer’s block. Let’s start a movement of creative geniuses changing the world with their words!

By Frank McKinley

Source: positivewriter.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

5 Super Powerful Ways to Mine Your Own Life for Writing Inspiration

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One of the most challenging parts of being a writer is keeping things fresh. You always need new ideas and new things to write about.

Staying inspired can be tough.

Thankfully, you have access to unlimited writing inspiration when you look to your own life. Your life is full of inspiration, you just have to know how to uncover it.

Before you read the rest of this post, I highly recommend you grab a notebook and a pen. You’re going to start digging right now.

Ready?

Here are 5 ways to mine your life for writing inspiration:

1) Write A Sentence A Day

You’ve heard of keeping a scrapbook or photo book of memories, right? Well this is a similar thing, only you write the memory down.

Grab a notebook or journal and put it by your bed. Then right before you go to sleep every night, write one to two sentences about your day. Be sure to add the date for reference purposes.

This is an opportunity for you to reflect on your day and keep track of key moments in your life.

Here are some ideas for what to write down:

The best thing that happened to you that day
The worst thing that happened
What you learned
Your favorite moment of the day
A memory from that day you want to remember
What you did that was fun
Something that inspired you

Do this consistently for several months and when you look back you’ll have a collection of memories you can expand on for your writing.

2) Keep Track of Your “Most” Moments

You know your “most” moments? Everyone has them.

The most inspiring thing that’s ever happened to you. The most fun you’ve ever had. The most afraid you’ve ever been. The most happy. The most loved you’ve ever felt.

I can keep going, but I think you get my point. We all have “most” moments in our lives and these moments are ripe for writing inspiration.

Grab your notebook and write “My Most Moments” at the top of the page. Then make a list of all the “most” moments you can think of from your life.

Add to the list when another “most” moment happens or when something bumps another “most” moment from its spot on the list.

Refer back to this list anytime you need writing inspiration.

3) Recall the Transformations You’ve Made

If you’re alive, you’ve grown at some point in your life. Growth is the basis of making a transformation.

And transformations are perfect inspiration for your writing.

When you make a transformation, there’s always something you learned or got out of it, and that’s what makes good writing. There’s also a potential “how to” in there.

Get your notebook out, open to a new page and then divide the page into three columns, vertically.

At the top of the left column write, “Transformations I’ve made.” At the top of the middle column, write, “How I did it.” At the top of the right column, write, “What I learned.”

For example, did you lose 100 pounds? What specific steps did you take to do that? What did you learn from making that transformation? Write that all down in the designated columns.

Readers want to be inspired, entertained, educated or all three. Writing about a transformation you’ve made, how you did it and what you learned is a great way to deliver all three of those things.

4) List Out the Lessons You’ve Learned

Piggybacking off the transformations you’ve made, I’m sure there are all kinds of lessons you’ve learned over the course of your life from what you’ve experienced and been through. Well, that’s all writing inspiration too.

Grab your notebook again. Open to a new page and then draw a line down the center of the page, vertically.

At the top of the left column, write “Lessons I’ve Learned.” At the top of the right column, write “How I Learned This Lesson.”

Take some time to brainstorm the lessons you’ve learned, along with how you learned them.

For example, did you learn that “you have to stand up for yourself” after being in a relationship where you never stood up for yourself? Write that lesson in the left column and the specifics about “how you learned it” in the right column. Now you have a lesson along with a story you can write to inspire your reader.

I recommend spending some serious time on this one. We often forget how much we’ve learned in our lives and how we learned it. This is a simple way to keep track of that stuff and have a well of inspiration for your writing.

5) Think Back On Experiences You’ve Had

The final way to mine your life for writing inspiration is to think back on the things you’ve experienced. You’ve done things, been places and met people who are worth writing about.

Grab your notebook one more time. At the top of the page, write: “Experiences I’ve Had.” Then make a list of all the experiences you’ve had that stand out to you.

For example, maybe you met the love of your life while standing in line for coffee. Write that down. Maybe you traveled the world for a month and experienced a wide array of places and cultures. Write that down.

We often discount our experiences and consider them “normal” or “average” because we’re the ones experiencing them. Yet so many people have never done what you have, which means your experiences are worth writing about and sharing with others.

Whether you’re writing a blog post, a memoir, a personal essay or even fiction, mining your life for inspiration is the perfect way to always have something to write about.

Now that you have a few ideas on how to mine your life for writing inspiration, well, then, let’s get to it!

By Bryan Hutchinson

Source: positivewriter.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

Nail Your Literary Voice with Powerful Word Choices

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“It was a pleasure to burn.” The first line of Fahrenheit 451 is a zinger, and it sets the tone for the entire piece of dystopian fiction. It gives us, in five words, all we need to know about Montag, our protagonist turned unlikely hero.

Understanding Tone, Mood, and Literary Voice

The concept of tone, and its sister element mood, can be hard for new writers to capture, and this often can lead to inauthentic writing, i.e. It was a dark and stormy night. Mastering these elements allows writers to develop their own personal style or literary voice.

Word Search: Learn about Tone and Mood from Good Writers

I often tell my students (who range from 6th graders just beginning their writing journey in a middle school reader/writer workshop, to adults in the creative writing workshops I teach) to look at the words and phrases an author uses. This is where we’ll find the tone. How do those words and phrases make you feel? That’s mood. These elements join together to create an atmosphere. Atmosphere becomes part of the author’s literary voice, or personal style.

Let’s dissect Bradbury’s opening line, “It was a pleasure to burn.”

The key words here:
#1 – Pleasure
#2 – Burn

Holy smokes, no pun intended, but let’s just let those key words sink in. Say the key words out loud, paying attention to where your mind goes.

This is what happens for me:
Pleasure – I see images of contentment, happiness, even rapture.
Burn – I see fire, smoke, destruction.

In this short line, I am momentarily content, then quickly drawn toward imagery of flames; a pull that leaves me feeling conflicted, maybe a little icky.

This, for me, is how a writer gets tone and mood right. Bradbury both intrigues and disturbs his reader in one sentence, which is just perfect.

Bradbury continues: “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”

At this point, I would ask my students to underline the words or phrases that evoke the tone. Answers may vary here, but generally, their work should look something like this:

“It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”

Again, Bradbury starts with the word “pleasure,” and not just any old pleasure, but a special pleasure. Then he jumps back to a dark place; destruction and danger, images of snakes and pounding blood, but also power, with the choice of the words “conductor” and “ruins of history.” I read this passage, and I feel like I’ve had a shot of espresso.

Let’s look at another author. This passage is from Marie-Helene Bertino’s 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas:

“Madeleine stares through the window into the courtyard. On most days she feels something staring back: a God or a mother-shaped benevolent force. Today, nothing reciprocates. The streamers on the chained bicycles lift in the indifferent breeze. She is alone in old stockings she’s repaired twice but still run. Life will be nothing but errands and gray nights.”

Bertino’s somber tone brings us inside the mind of her lonely protagonist. Though Madeleine often sees comforting images when she stares out the window, through the key words I’ve underlined in the second half of the passage, we feel her utter loneliness, and in the final key words, her hopelessness about the future.

Finally, Tim O’Brien expertly captures the secrets and deceit of a troubled marriage in In the Lake of the Woods:

“All around them, the fog moved in low and fat off the lake, and their voices would seem to flow away for a time and then returned to them from somewhere in the woods beyond the porch. It was an echo. partly. But inside the echo there was also a voice not quite their own – like a whisper or a nearby breathing, something feathery and alive.”

Something is coming for this couple; it’s wrapped in fog and echo, and it’s not going to be good.

Use Your Words: Applying What We’ve Learned

Try these exercises to strengthen tone and mood in your own fiction.

Exercise 1:

Select a short passage from something you’ve written. Read it over. What words and phrases jump out to you? Circle or highlight them. What tone is evoked? What feeling do you get from this tone?

If you prefer not to analyze your own writing, you can complete this exercise with a peer.

Exercise 2:

Listen to a piece of atmospheric music of your choice and jot down 5-10 words or phrases that come to mind. Then use one of the words or phrases to create an opening sentence. Write a few paragraphs, trying to incorporate your chosen words/phrases into your writing.

You might also add a photo. I paired a photo with a piece of music in order to introduce tone and mood to my sixth graders. The photo prompt I gave them featured three pre-teen boys skipping rocks on the surface of a pond. I asked students to look at the photo while listening to a happy instrumental tune I found randomly on Spotify, a piece with jingling piano keys playing high notes.

One student wrote down the following words: “calming, relaxing, damp, trickle, water.” Check out the opening paragraph from her story about bird brothers, Perry and Stu:

“The leaves were still damp from the morning dew as Perry awoke from his nest bed high in the treetops. He leapt from branch to branch until he reached his brother, Stu. Stu was sleeping peacefully. Perry and his brother Stu lived with both parents in the depths of a rainforest, but it wasn’t always as relaxing as it sounds. There was always the hustle and bustle of everyone trying to get where they needed to go before the morning downpour, and every animal had to learn their place. Today was the students’ turn to earn their wings. Perry flew his little brother down to a clearing in the forest where all the other birds had gathered. ‘Settle down now. Settle down,’ said their teacher Mr. Cloud. ‘You’re all here to earn your place in the rainforest by graduating from flying school. Today you’ll be flying around this forest. Our volunteers will show you the way. Good luck! On your mark. Get Set. Fly!’”

Two things I’ll point out about this student’s writing: the first is that the story doesn’t have anything to do with the photo prompt. This isn’t the intention of the exercise; the students use the words that come to mind to create the story. If the photo were to creep into their subconscious, that’s fine too, but in this case the story took a whimsical turn. The second point I’ll make is that this student recreated the lighthearted atmosphere of the photo and the jovial piece of music just by incorporating the words she’d written down. Other words she used, like “peacefully,” “leapt,” and “fly” contribute to the tone she’s set.

Exercise 3:

Watch a no-dialogue short film like this one and recreate it in short story form. Pay special attention to the background music, props, setting and the movements of the character. How do these elements come together to create the tone? How can you capture that tone and the overall mood of the piece?

Final Word: How Is This Going to Make You a Better Writer?

The act of being aware of your words is what gives the words power. I’m not saying that you have to write this way all the time, hyper-aware of your feelings and anticipating the readers’ reactions. Not at all. But atmospheric writing comes with practice, and will often happen in the revision process; this is all part of how you develop your distinctive literary voice.

By Kristen Falso-Capaldi

Source: refiction.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

How Characters Change in Stories (And How to Write Believable Change)

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You’ve probably heard this one before: Your character must change throughout the course of your story.

I see a lot of confusion over this concept. Writers can normally nail the change (weak to strong; bad to good; cynical to optimistic) but it often comes from a weird place that doesn’t sit quite right with what we know about the protagonist. Or it’s too big of a change (or too much of a “fairy tale ending”) to be believable.

Let’s take a look at how writers should deal with character change.

No one likes change

In real life, people change in small ways, but they’re resistant to that change. Change happens slowly, in a sort of cocooned metamorphosis, like a caterpillar to a butterfly. It doesn’t happen overnight, it rarely happens without lapses into previous behavior, and there better be a good reason for it to happen to begin with.

The thing that makes change in stories so fascinating for people is that, despite loathing change, humans want to believe we’re capable of changing, preferably for the better.

So your characters must change in order for the story to be worth reading. But they don’t have to like it.

Think of this: Your character changes because of the things happening around him/her. Not because they want to. Your character is forced to change by circumstances they can’t control. To survive and/or thrive, they must change to combat those circumstances.

Events trigger change

Character change is triggered by an event. A big one. It doesn’t have to be “big” as in a death or massive explosion (but it definitely can be!). It can be something smaller, like hearing your friend’s parents are getting divorced or your oldest child graduating from preschool.

Note that your character doesn’t choose this event. It’s an outside force that’s thrust upon them.

Then more events happen throughout the second act that force your character forward in a struggle toward transformation.

The triggering event is proportional to your character’s change. Something small shouldn’t send your character completely overboard. Something large shouldn’t have them shrugging and going back to normal.

Change should be believable

Do I really believe Scrooge woke up with a personality completely opposite from the one he had when he went to sleep? Not quite. I tend to think ole Scrooge went back to his miserly ways right after the shock of the ghosts wore off. Maybe not quite as miserly, but still.

That’s why aiming for a more subtle change often makes more sense within the confines of your character’s personality.

If a timid man is forced to defend his friends and family, that doesn’t mean he’s going to start playing a superhero all over town. That means he now knows he’s capable of stepping up with the going gets tough.

A grumpy teen might change her attitude and treat people with a little more respect, but that doesn’t mean she’ll suddenly become a do-good saint. It most likely means she’ll just stop snapping at her parents.

Of course, maybe the opposite is true. Maybe your timid man becomes the new Batman. Maybe your surly teen goes off to build houses in Haiti. It’s possible. But remember, the more massive the change in your character, the more important and life-altering the triggering event must be to them.

You should know your character better than anyone, so make sure their change happens in a way that’s realistic for them and proportional to the size of the trigger.

Realistic is better than drastic

You know your character has to change, but your readers aren’t going to empathize with that change if you step outside of bounds. Keep your change realistic and in line with your protagonist’s personality. And be sure to check out this article for details on moving your character through each step of change throughout your story.

What’s the protagonist’s change in the story you’re currently working on? Let me know in the comments!

By Sarah Gribble

Source: thewritepractice.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

My No-BS Guide to Confidence

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f I had to pinpoint one trait that all successful freelancers have in common, can you guess what it’d be?

It’s not intelligence… Or experience… Or a high degree of skill… Or even education.

The one trait I’m talking about is: Confidence.

It’s incredibly simple: If you think you can’t do something — you can’t.

Without confidence, you may be able to make some headway, but it’s like paddling upstream… At best you end up working too hard to achieve too little — and at worst you end up exhausting yourself and going backwards.

Ultimately, no amount of effort or skill can fully compensate for not believing in yourself. Your subconscious mind — the director of the “movie” you call life — will find ways to help you sabotage yourself and turn those deeply held negative beliefs into reality.

This is what Carl Jung meant when he said, “Until you take what’s in your subconscious, and make it conscious, it will rule your life, and you will call it ‘fate.’”

As someone who’s been on both sides of the fence — having gone from having very little confidence, to understanding how to feel confident in many situations (even if that confidence sometimes seems “unwarranted”) — I’m in a unique position to give you a good insider’s perspective that might help you turn things around.

1. You don’t need to reprogram yourself

A lot of people put time and energy into trying to “reprogram” their brain to be more confident.

But you don’t need to do that.

You just need to deprogram it.

You came into this world pre-equipped with an enormous amount of confidence. You don’t need to add any — you just need to remove the mental junk that’s currently blocking it.

This is great news! Instead of rewriting the code in your brain, you just need to delete some, which is infinitely easier.

Think of when you first learned to walk…

You had no “proof” you’d be successful.

In fact most of the evidence pointed in the opposite direction of success — you’d spent weeks or months crawling on your hands and knees, even falling right on your ass.

Did you beat yourself up about it?

Did you hire a coach? Do affirmations?

Did you think about quitting because it wouldn’t work?

Obviously you didn’t do any of those things. You kept on smiling and having a good time because you knew it was going to work.

As you got older, the people around you helped condition you to be less and less confident over time through criticism, presenting their opinions as “facts” you needed to abide by, and even pushing their preferences onto you as the “right” way to be, do, or live.

In spite of everything that’s gotten in the way before now, it’s still relatively easy to get your inborn confidence back any time you want to. You can probably even do it fairly quickly if you’re focused about it.

You just need to erase, and from now on tune out, the critical noise that started blocking it in the first place.

2. Choose to be responsible for your own confidence

Let’s start off with a simple decision you can choose right now, this minute.

It’s just a choice — I’m not asking you to suddenly be confident, or even to picture yourself as confident — only to decide that you are going to take responsibility for your own confidence.

Allowing your confidence to be dictated by other people’s behavior towards you, or by the circumstances and events that happen around you, ultimately leads to misery (usually sooner than later).

That’s because you have no control over those things — you’re reduced to being a helpless passenger along for the ride (which usually doesn’t go where you want it to).

If you want strong, lasting confidence, you need to decide that it will come from you, and only you.

That way, it’s no longer at the mercy of what’s going on around you. You are always in control of your own fate.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what to do to get your confidence up and running again just yet. All you need to do right now is take responsibility for it. By doing so, you’re giving yourself a solid foundation to build on.

3. Realize confidence (or lack of it) comes from your thoughts

People sometimes say to me, “But Danny, how can I be confident when my boss is a jerk? Or when my spouse yells at me right before a big presentation? What then?”

If you look for reasons to not be confident, you will always find them.

But the opposite is also true: If you seek out evidence of your own awesomeness and personal power — regardless of what others are doing — then that is what you’ll find.

For example, imagine if, after being yelled at by your spouse right before a big presentation, you decided that their lashing out was just a result of them having a stressful week at work and a few sleepless nights.

In other words, it had nothing whatsoever to do with you.

Notice how nothing has changed, other than your own thoughts.

Yet if you consistently practice reframing techniques in the way I just showed you, over time you’ll notice that instead of taking other people’s behavior personally and letting it decimate your confidence, you become impervious to it and let it all roll right off your back.

If this seems like some sort of mind trick, or intellectual dishonesty, consider this: I promise you that there is nothing more dishonest — and no bigger piece of mental trickery — than letting someone else’s mistreatment of you make you feel bad about yourself.

4. Give yourself more credit

There’s a reason I’m always telling people “my story” — that I have no college degree, held menial dead-end jobs until I was 34, and so on: If I could be a total screw up for decades and still turn it all around, why not YOU?

But even though I tell these stories all the time, people still email me in disbelief, arguing that I must have had experience, must be exceptionally organized, must have been born with a high IQ, etc — even though none of those things are true.

This is a weird thing that humans do. We project advantages and amazing qualities onto people we see as “experts,” even when we have no idea if those observations are real or imagined. Psychologists even have a name for this behavior: the halo effect.

The truth is, even the smartest people know surprisingly little.

For example, I once watched two Harvard law professors arguing about whether something was illegal.

Just think about that! Two of the smartest legal minds in the world — from the same Ivy League school, no less — holding literally opposite views on whether something is legal or against the law.

Do you realize what that means? It means that the world’s dumbest person can choose either side of that debate, and still have the exact same chance of being right as both of the two legal geniuses who are arguing about it!

The line between average and great is much, much thinner than you think. It’s mostly just a choice you make.

5. Be nice to yourself

Imagine having one or more employees working under you… Would you expect them to do amazing work if you were verbally beating them up all the time?

Not only would they be miserable, and produce poor work — they’d probably walk out on you.

Yet we beat ourselves up all the time … and then we wonder why we’re not getting to where we want to be in our careers, our fitness, our relationships, or our finances.

The key to stopping this self-defeating behavior is to realize that doing it doesn’t just feel bad… it’s also standing in your way of making progress.

It might seem like you can beat yourself into being better, but I’ve never found that to work, especially in the long term.

You can absolutely succeed regardless of what others do to you, but you cannot succeed without YOU in your own corner. If you want to be confident and successful, constant self-criticism is a behavior you cannot afford to keep.

6. Starve what you want to die

Sometimes a negative thought pattern has picked up so much momentum over time that it’s hard to stop.

It’s a lot like putting the brakes on a train that’s been moving full-steam ahead for a while — it takes some time and effort to bring it to a full halt.

Similarly, if you’ve been beating yourself up about something for months or years, it’s hard to change your thoughts about it on a dime.

If you find yourself in that kind of situation, you can at least distract yourself from the negative mental loop

In other words, while you may not be able to change the negative thought into a positive one right away, you can at least “starve” it by not giving it as much attention.

You can do that by adjusting your thoughts about it a little at a time, or even distracting yourself from it completely.

For example, if you’ve been struggling to lose weight, you can adjust your mental story from “I’ll never lose weight” to “Maybe I’ve just been too down on myself — I think I can make this work if I start small and build up my confidence. This week I’ll take the stairs instead of the elevator…”

There’s also nothing wrong with avoiding the mirror or the scale for a while, if those things only seem to lead to negative thoughts that keep you programmed for failure.

Over time, that negative thought pattern will become weaker and weaker, and you’ll be able to notice a negative thought and change it to a positive one with very little effort. And if you keep practicing that habit, you can even eliminate the negativity completely.

7. Don’t listen to “realists”

People love to try to convince you you can’t do something because it’s not “realistic.”

But have you ever thought about what reality actually is?

The word “reality” is just a way of describing what has been true up until this point.

It says little — or nothing — about the future.

By definition, growing and improving means that you’re doing something you’ve either never done before, or that no one else has ever done before.

If everyone listened to the “realists” about what’s possible, everything would always stay the same.

We probably wouldn’t even be here since the world as we know it likely would not have developed. Nothing good in this world was created by a “realist.”

Steve Jobs explained this very well in a short video that completely changed my life when I watched it for the first time about 7 years ago — I suggest you check it out too:

8. What you say is as important as — and maybe more important than — what you do

This is controversial, but in my experience it’s absolutely true.

In the Netflix special Miracle, Derren Brown coaches a woman through her first time eating glass.

His advice to her would shock most people: He spent a few seconds on the technical instructions of how to chew up the glass — and the rest of the time focusing on positive self-talk.

This scene illustrates a fascinating phenomenon: When you say something to yourself (whether out loud, or even in your thoughts), your subconscious mind can take it as a sort of “command.”

If the glass-eater had “prepared” by telling herself it would hurt, do you know what would have happened? It would have hurt.

Whenever, and I mean whenever I get an email from someone who has repeatedly failed at freelancing, despite having “tried everything,” I always look for — and virtually always find — sentences like this within their email:

“I’m very frustrated…”

“I’m so overwhelmed…”

“It seems like nothing works for me…”

“I can’t make it work…”

Feeling this way is understandable. And everyone needs to vent sometimes.

But I’m telling you right now that talking this way repeatedly for prolonged periods of time — whether out loud to others or in your own head — is the same as asking for more failure.

I know it doesn’t feel that way, but that’s what’s happening.

You need — need — to find a way to start to turn those thoughts around.

I’m not suggesting you outright lie to yourself, since pure denial can backfire.

For example, waking up one morning and saying to yourself “My confidence is soaring, I’m sure I’ll get a promotion today!” — after years of telling yourself you’re the worst employee at the company — probably won’t work.

Your subconscious mind is a tricky thing, and it can reject ideas that are too far off from what you’ve been telling it for so long.

However, you can start to soften these thoughts, and over time you can replace them completely.

It’s a lot like taking a blow torch to metal: First you have to heat the metal up, then you can bend it, and eventually you can mold it into whatever you want it to be.

I’ll leave you with a few examples of how you might start to soften your thought pattern:

“This has worked for others. Maybe it can work for me too.”

“I can find a way to do it.”

“I’m worthy of success and I deserve good things to happen in my life.”

“I’m sure there’s a better way to do things I haven’t thought of yet. I’ll read some blogs to see what I might be missing.”

“Maybe my negative attitude has been affecting me more than I realize. A good night’s sleep can help me feel more confident in the morning.”

These are just a few examples off the top of my head — you can use whatever thoughts feel good to you.

More importantly, do you feel the relief in those statements?

That relief is your original self-confidence — the same amazing confidence you were born with — starting to reset to its original factory setting.

If you re-create this confident state of mind by making a habit out of being nice to yourself, before you know it you will feel damn near invincible.

By Danny Margulies

Source: freelancetowin.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

Bad Practice—and the Illusion of Practice—Don’t Create Expert-Level Performance

It’s Not Just About Trying

The Secrets to Writing Like Hemingway

Challenge Yourself to Deliberate Practice

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Nonfiction writing isn’t that different

Tell me a little about Cracked Open and what inspired you to write it.

That sounds like an amazing experience with writing. Since this is so personal to you, how did you decide you wanted to publish it? What do you hope your readers will come away with after reading it?

Even though you don’t write fiction, do you think there’s anything inherent to nonfiction that’s harder to write than fiction? Or vice versa?

What do you think is the hardest thing about writing nonfiction?

You’ve mentioned before that you wrote your second book, The Work-Life Principle, in our 100 Day Book program. In that program, we focus on getting the first draft out on paper as fast as possible. Do you think that’s a beneficial process for writing nonfiction?

You went into your second book with the full intention of it being a book, unlike the spontaneous emergence of your first. How was this different for you? Was the process more stressful?

What is the most difficult thing about writing for you? Have you overcome that obstacle and, if so, how?

What advice would you give to other nonfiction writers just starting out?

It’s all about the story

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What Is the “Hero’s Journey”?

“I Know This Story . . .”

Hero’s Journey Step #1: Start Ordinary

6 Common Features of the Ordinary World

1. The Average Joe

2. No Parents

3. A Disadvantageous Beginning

4. A Simple, Mundane, Boring Life

5. Low Expectations

6. A False Sense of Security

3 Ways to Create Your Ordinary World

1. Upset the parent structure

2. Lower the expectations

3. Create a false sense of security

Let’s Get Ordinary

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Unfortunately, I’ve seen it over and over.

3 Ways to Hone Your Talent

1. Read, Read, Read

2. Write, Write, Write

3. Welcome Brutally Honest Feedback

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Should I Bother Self-Editing My Book?

Types of Editing

Developmental Editing

Line Editing / Copyediting

Proofreading

Getting Ready to Edit a Novel

Self-Editing Checklist for Line Editing (Copyediting)

Self-Editing Checklist for Proofreading

A Note on Editing a Book

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Unleash the genius one block at a time

Forget about fear for 30 minutes a day

How to make freewriting work for you today

Now go pour out your soul on paper

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1) Write A Sentence A Day

3) Recall the Transformations You’ve Made

4) List Out the Lessons You’ve Learned

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Understanding Tone, Mood, and Literary Voice

Word Search: Learn about Tone and Mood from Good Writers

Use Your Words: Applying What We’ve Learned

Exercise 1:

Exercise 2:

Exercise 3:

Final Word: How Is This Going to Make You a Better Writer?

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No one likes change

Events trigger change

Change should be believable

Realistic is better than drastic

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1. You don’t need to reprogram yourself