Hey everyone!
How are you doing this fine day? My own writing is... suddenly not going well even though it's been perfect the last few days (???) and I'm going a bit crazy. Ah well. It might sort itself out.
Today let's talk about the importance of raising the stakes.
The most recent example of a series (TV) that failed at this is The Man in the High Castle. I've been dying to talk about this for at least a week since I started to watch Season 3. There will be some (minor) spoilers so if you don't want to know the end of Season 2 stop right here!
What is there to say about The Man in the High Castle.
It started great. The first two seasons were coherent, connected, and everything made sense within the universe where it's set. I liked some of the characters (Tagomi) and hated others (Frank). All of them had their part to play and the first two seasons had UNITY. It had a plot.
Cue Season 3.
The unity evaporated like water in the desert. The characters are no longer doing ANYTHING related to any plot or within their character (established in the first two seasons). They've all gone insane, there is no plot, and the only thing the season has established so far is to put in a lot more fluff. This fluff comes mostly through kissing and unnecessary sex scenes as well as dramatic (emo) scenes where people talk about their emotions that are way too prolonged. Of course I have nothing against either romantic or 'deep' scenes but those are neither. The 'romantic' scenes often happen to characters I don't care about (who were introduced badly in season two and three and with whom the audience has no emotional bond whatsoever) and the emotional talk scenes... well. There's about ten every episode and it's getting old.
There is also (as I have mentioned before) no plot in Season 3 whatsoever. Unless you count the three or four scenes where a dark tunnel is mentioned that needs to be investigated.
All right. Let's get to WHY it doesn't work though. I've talked a lot about WHAT doesn't work. It's time to look at the details of WHY.
The WHY in this case is actually very simple:
The STAKES are not high enough after Season 2. In fact there are almost no stakes at all.
Consider the characters.
At the end of season two they have already lost everything they could lose (Smith his son, Chief Inspector Kido his second in command, Frank is supposedly dead, Juliana everyone she loved, Ed and Childan their shop, livelihood, and family, Joe his honor and pride and so on and so forth, and Tagomi gave up his family for the greater good). These are characters who have absolutely nothing left (and Juliana's sister reappearing in the second season? Well in the third that plot point is made completely useless as the only journey they go through is 'how can we get sister back to her world').
All right. The characters then have nothing left = no personal stakes.
Let's examine the public stakes of s1 and s2 briefly. In s1 the public stakes were beautifully set up and in s2 climaxed upon.
Here is season one's storyline for each main character: What's up with (Juliana and) the films? What will the death of Frank's sister and her children make him do? How far will he go? Will Joe betray them all? Will Tagomi be able to help his spy get the blueprints for the Heisenberg to the science minister and get him out alive? Will Chief Inspector Kido successfully apprehend the resistance member who has the film?
These (mostly personal) stakes are all set up and solved. At the same time Season 2 is set up neatly.
Throughout Season 2 there are even more questions that need answers. There is a new film Juliana needs to see. It is terribly important. Will she manage to get the film to the Man in the High Castle? Who is the Man in the High Castle? Will Frank be found out? Will he be accused of shooting the Japanese crown prince? Will he survive the Yakuza? Will Joe reconnect with his father? Will Tagomi reconnect with his family in the alternate world? Will Chief Inspector Kido apprehend the resistance before it's too late? Will Smith's son survive the season? Will we (the audience) find out more about the films and alternate worlds? Will all of them be able to somehow avert the coming war?
The public stakes here are HUGE. If the Nazi Reich and the Japanese fight over America then millions of people will die. Hundreds of cities will be destroyed. Thousands of communities. And the stakes are averted only at the last minute.
Then we get to Season 3. All the questions above have been answered masterfully. It wasn't perfect (some loose ends and red-shirt setups) but there was a silver lining through all of the two seasons.
Let's see if we can find ANY stakes in this season.
Season 3 starts with Juliana's sister back in her life BUT she has to go back to her own world for reasons unknown - which means the whole plot point of her appearing AT ALL has just been made redundant. It would have been a good ending for Juliana who believes in people and always helps them to get something BACK. But no. Season 3 destroys this.
Frank meanwhile has been hiding out with some jews in the mountains of somewhere. (Denver?). The first and second seasons he has always been adamant about not being a jew (and not just because the Nazis would kill him but because he simply did not wish to live the jewish life). Suddenly, all he wants in life is to be a jew. (And anyway how did he survive the explosion when the girl standing right next to him got smashed up?)
Smith does not react to what happened to his son. He's chill as usual. There is no emotion there where it should have been. Then again... I guess it IS six months later. Smith also has problems with people trying to do him in (or at least get him into prison for treason). A new character is introduced as the 'antagonist' but killed off relatively quickly because ???
Chief Inspector Kido is (as always) doing his own thingamagic. However, all that translates to is his growing relationship with some white woman in a club. I will admit, that's at the moment the only part of the series I enjoy. I like how Kido went from 'I don't talk to working girls' to her being the only woman (person) he talks to honestly. Also she's taller than him which is cute.
Tagomi... is a mystery. He has averted the war in his world. He achieved his mission and why he left his family back in World 2 and returned to Nazi World. So why didn't he go back to them? He was happy there and they were starting to accept him again. BUT he has a new girlfriend (some Japanese painter who says she has a husband but still flirts with Tagomi every chance she gets???). It's all fine. He only loved his wife enough to learn how to traverse worlds.
All these characters do throughout 2/3 of the third season is... nothing whatsoever. Oh of course they're running around doing stuff but none of it has any stakes. Random romantic (or not so romantic since I don't care about these random insert characters who only popped up to have sex with one of the main/side characters) scenes happen. Juliana goes crazy. Frank suddenly becomes a jew. Smith kills more people. Joe loses his mind and then his life (in a rather graphic way that didn't fit the rest of the series at all). Tagomi is just derping around. Chief Inspector Kido... well at least his relationship with the woman from the club is cute.
There are no personal stakes for either of the characters throughout the season. The only characters with personal stakes (Smith and Tagomi) solve them pretty quickly.
There are also no public stakes.
Remember the war that almost happened at the end of s2? Knowing there was a s3 I kept thinking 'something must happen'. The atomic bomb MUST BE dropped onto the Japanese (by accident after the 'bad guy' is apprehended or just SOMEHOW). The atomic bomb MUST be dropped. Well. It wasn't. The war was averted when (thinking about setting up s3) it SHOULDN'T have been. Because what happened in s3? All the stakes were suddenly gone. The characters (as I mentioned) went through so much and lost so much they have nothing left to lose. The public has nothing to lose either at this point.
There simply are no stakes. And that's a terrible thing when you've watched s1 and s2 and know how much opportunity it had!
The best I can figure about the stakes of s3 is that the public stakes are supposed to be the fact that the Nazi Reich is trying to build a wormhole/whatever into other worlds to spread the Nazi Reich into them.
But why? They haven't even conquered their own world yet. They are too afraid to start war with the Japanese but at the same time they're working to conquer whole new worlds? What? It makes just as little sense as the 7-10 kiss/sex scenes in every single episode.
I applaud you if you've stuck with me so far. I would have kept it shorter but I wanted to make a good example of this. (And also the horrible storytelling of s3 makes me really angry after how good the first two seasons were).
This is story-telling 101.
If your first book ends in preventing a war then your second book can't hang on to all kinds of personal sob stories of your characters. You raised the stakes by starting a horrible war... and then let everyone down by going back to 'oh yeah but listen these characters are suffering individually' (and then they're not even suffering anyway but just being or randomly jumping into bed with everyone else).
Of course it's hard to top two great seasons and make the third better. But s3 was just horrible to watch - and so are many other book and TV series these days. The purpose of raising the stakes is to keep reader/audience interest. It doesn't work when they first avert a war and then go back to doing nothing at all for a whole book/season.
I really hope this wall of text will help you figure out why stakes are so important and how to use them well! And if your book two is already great and you just can't figure out what to do for book three? THINK HARDER. THINK BIGGER. If they averted a war in book two it's time to deal with that exact same war in book three OR bow out. There can be no going back to a normal 'comfortable' life after that. Not if you don't want your readers to fall asleep while reading your book (cough Authority by Jeff VanderMeer).
WriteBot has said its piece. Have a good night/day!
Showing posts with label writingadvice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writingadvice. Show all posts
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Friday, November 23, 2018
Review of Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule
Hi folks!
As promised, today's post will be a review of Grant Cardone's business (actually 'life') advice book The 10X Rule.
You might wonder why an author would read a book that's so much geared towards success in your business. That's a valid question. But let me just tell you: The 10X Rule isn't only valid for business. It can actually applied in every area of your life and work. It's one of those concepts that can be used to improve yourself in every possible way.
Let's get started on how.
The 10X Rule is actually quite a short book. I read it in two days after buying it. I bought it primarily because I was intrigued by the title. The 10X Rule and success strategies (sounds corny, yes)? I had to know what this was about.
And I found out quite quickly after the (somewhat annoying because I wanted to KNOW THE RULE!) introduction.
The 10X Rule in a nutshell is that with everything you do/plan/start you are supposed to plan 10 times as much work. This means that if you for example you plan to write one book per year, you're instead asked to plan 10. If you have it in mind to write ten short stories a year, then plan to write 100. If you plan to make 1.000.000 dollars/euros/monies with your company this year plan to make 10.000.000 instead.
This is the most important piece of information in this book. To plan 10 times as much as you initially intended. To put in 10 times as much effort as you believed would be required. To do 10 times more work when others are already relaxing in front of their PCs/TVs.
Why?
I think Cardone sums it up quite eloquently when he says: (paraphrased) 'I would rather fall short of a TOO BIG goal than too little'.
As well as: If you plan big your mind starts to think in different pathways. If you plan too little there's always the chance that you will a) put off the work (e.g. if you have a whole day spare and you tell yourself you'll write 1000 words... well there are always other things you could be doing!) or b) your mind simply won't commit fully to the work that needs to be done.
This made a lot of sense to me when I read it. I had to backtrack a bit to my own work and was then able through examination of my working style to determine that the 10X Rules is very accurate indeed. Take for examples all those failed drafts in that hidden folder on my PC. They failed because I had very little goals when I started writing them. There is one story called 'Leshen!' (working title obviously) that deals with a police officer's slightly paranormal case of a creature called leshen (Witcher 3 players will know that creepy lvl7 forest where the creepy lvl20 leshen jumps onto you out of nowhere) being sighted. As she tries to figure out what's going on things quickly get darker and darker... and then they just end because I had no idea what to do with the concept.
I thought Leshen! would be an easy book quickly written and edited. It wasn't. I thought it would top at 60k words max. It didn't. It's barely 40k words at this point (and probably won't get any longer). You could say that's because I did not plan it through (I admit I didn't). Or because the topic isn't really my thing (although I used to enjoy NCIS a lot on the TV I find crime novels boring). But there's more evidence of the 10X Rule in my life.
Leshen! isn't the only book wasting away in my hidden folder. There are plenty others. And do you know what they all have in common? They're unfinished. They topped at 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k words, and the just sizzled out, because most of the time I wasn't prepared to write as much as would have been required.
Yes, most of these books are also not really about topics I LOVE, but that only proves the point. I was not excited about the concept. I did not want to spend the 10 times time that was required to finish them. I had it in my mind to finish them quickly, rush, rush, rush, and write something else instead. This lead me to underestimate the amount of work necessary. I did not heed the 10X Rule.
If I had - perhaps I wouldn't have started them in the first place. Or perhaps I would have been able to get to 60k words (a perfect word count for a short crime novel) and finished Leshen! anyway. But I didn't. I didn't prepare to put in 10X as much work as I thought was needed. I wasn't able to reset my brain to the point where I could.
The same goes for diets. If your goal is to eat 1200 (the usual intake goal when trying to lose weight) calories, then set it to 900 (which is admittedly not 10 times lower but you can still see how the rule works in this case) or 1000. If you limit yourself to 900, 1200 will be much easier to achieve.
Don't set your sights too low. Set them too high. Create BIG GOALS to fall short of instead of small ones. That's basically all Cardone's book is about.
Of course, there are plenty more tips and tricks in the book, but I'm focusing on the most important part in this post. That being said, The 10X Rule is well worth the read. It's short, concise, and with Cardone's writing style you're not at risk of falling asleep either.
WriteBot thinks this is a good book if you're trying to be more productive!
Have a good evening/day!
As promised, today's post will be a review of Grant Cardone's business (actually 'life') advice book The 10X Rule.
You might wonder why an author would read a book that's so much geared towards success in your business. That's a valid question. But let me just tell you: The 10X Rule isn't only valid for business. It can actually applied in every area of your life and work. It's one of those concepts that can be used to improve yourself in every possible way.
Let's get started on how.
The 10X Rule is actually quite a short book. I read it in two days after buying it. I bought it primarily because I was intrigued by the title. The 10X Rule and success strategies (sounds corny, yes)? I had to know what this was about.
And I found out quite quickly after the (somewhat annoying because I wanted to KNOW THE RULE!) introduction.
The 10X Rule in a nutshell is that with everything you do/plan/start you are supposed to plan 10 times as much work. This means that if you for example you plan to write one book per year, you're instead asked to plan 10. If you have it in mind to write ten short stories a year, then plan to write 100. If you plan to make 1.000.000 dollars/euros/monies with your company this year plan to make 10.000.000 instead.
This is the most important piece of information in this book. To plan 10 times as much as you initially intended. To put in 10 times as much effort as you believed would be required. To do 10 times more work when others are already relaxing in front of their PCs/TVs.
Why?
I think Cardone sums it up quite eloquently when he says: (paraphrased) 'I would rather fall short of a TOO BIG goal than too little'.
As well as: If you plan big your mind starts to think in different pathways. If you plan too little there's always the chance that you will a) put off the work (e.g. if you have a whole day spare and you tell yourself you'll write 1000 words... well there are always other things you could be doing!) or b) your mind simply won't commit fully to the work that needs to be done.
This made a lot of sense to me when I read it. I had to backtrack a bit to my own work and was then able through examination of my working style to determine that the 10X Rules is very accurate indeed. Take for examples all those failed drafts in that hidden folder on my PC. They failed because I had very little goals when I started writing them. There is one story called 'Leshen!' (working title obviously) that deals with a police officer's slightly paranormal case of a creature called leshen (Witcher 3 players will know that creepy lvl7 forest where the creepy lvl20 leshen jumps onto you out of nowhere) being sighted. As she tries to figure out what's going on things quickly get darker and darker... and then they just end because I had no idea what to do with the concept.
I thought Leshen! would be an easy book quickly written and edited. It wasn't. I thought it would top at 60k words max. It didn't. It's barely 40k words at this point (and probably won't get any longer). You could say that's because I did not plan it through (I admit I didn't). Or because the topic isn't really my thing (although I used to enjoy NCIS a lot on the TV I find crime novels boring). But there's more evidence of the 10X Rule in my life.
Leshen! isn't the only book wasting away in my hidden folder. There are plenty others. And do you know what they all have in common? They're unfinished. They topped at 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k words, and the just sizzled out, because most of the time I wasn't prepared to write as much as would have been required.
Yes, most of these books are also not really about topics I LOVE, but that only proves the point. I was not excited about the concept. I did not want to spend the 10 times time that was required to finish them. I had it in my mind to finish them quickly, rush, rush, rush, and write something else instead. This lead me to underestimate the amount of work necessary. I did not heed the 10X Rule.
If I had - perhaps I wouldn't have started them in the first place. Or perhaps I would have been able to get to 60k words (a perfect word count for a short crime novel) and finished Leshen! anyway. But I didn't. I didn't prepare to put in 10X as much work as I thought was needed. I wasn't able to reset my brain to the point where I could.
The same goes for diets. If your goal is to eat 1200 (the usual intake goal when trying to lose weight) calories, then set it to 900 (which is admittedly not 10 times lower but you can still see how the rule works in this case) or 1000. If you limit yourself to 900, 1200 will be much easier to achieve.
Don't set your sights too low. Set them too high. Create BIG GOALS to fall short of instead of small ones. That's basically all Cardone's book is about.
Of course, there are plenty more tips and tricks in the book, but I'm focusing on the most important part in this post. That being said, The 10X Rule is well worth the read. It's short, concise, and with Cardone's writing style you're not at risk of falling asleep either.
WriteBot thinks this is a good book if you're trying to be more productive!
Have a good evening/day!
Thursday, November 22, 2018
The importance of resetting your mind when you're stuck
Hey folks!
I survived the mouth hygienist and my teeth look all fancy now. I did however bleed like someone who was stabbed... Aaaand of course they told me to floss every day. I'M TRYING! They recommended me some tools and I actually bought them. A few different kinds of sticks and pokey-thingies and brushes to clean my teeth.
Anyway. I guess that's enough about my teeth.
Today's post (as you can see from the title) will be about inspiration and ways to get un-stuck in your writing project. Let's start with inspiration itself. There are lots of people who will go around and ask authors the age-old question 'Where do you get your ideas??'.
This question is both easy and very difficult to answer. As a lot of authors have said before me 'I get my ideas everywhere!'.
But this is of course quite vague. 'Everywhere' is not a place you can go to in order to get your ideas.
So what are you supposed to do?
I think there are really only three secrets to getting fresh ideas. They all have to do with getting out of your OWN head and into someone else's. Or just out of your own head.
-read a lot
-go outside and meet people (that favourite of mothers' which is almost always ignored)
-think a lot
These are my personal favourites.
Why? Or: Why is it important to get out of your own head? It's simple. Your brain needs to reset. If you've been working very closely on something for a long time you'll eventually become biased (and usually against it). Ideas that seemed fresh and AMAZING the first time around are suddenly stale and boring and your brain keeps telling you 'no one wants to read this kind of stuff'. And anyway. You don't know what to write/edit any more either way.
When this happens this is usually a cue that your brain wants some rest. It's a good opportunity to take a break and do something else: gaming/reading/watching TV.
Will you feel guilty? Perhaps.
Will you be angry at yourself for not working on your own project? Probably.
But will it help you reset your mind and in the long run give you more and better ideas? Also yes.
If you don't have any hobbies -
If you know nothing about the world -
If you don't know PEOPLE -
If you have no experience -
What are you even going to write about? So take a break when necessary! Breaks are just as important as 'actual work'. No matter how much you love something, you can't do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And you probably don't want to either.
Does this seem like a no-brainer? It is. But still a lot of people become workaholics when they truly care about a project, and they needed to be reminded every once in a while that it's ok to rest. You don't have to wear yourself out. You don't have to throw all of your splendid ideas at one project. It's fine if you wait until later with some of them.
WriteBot out.
PS: This particular piece of advice is valid not only for writers but ALL professions. If you're stuck, take a break. The world will look fresh and new pathways will open up for your tomorrow.
Enjoy your night/day!
I survived the mouth hygienist and my teeth look all fancy now. I did however bleed like someone who was stabbed... Aaaand of course they told me to floss every day. I'M TRYING! They recommended me some tools and I actually bought them. A few different kinds of sticks and pokey-thingies and brushes to clean my teeth.
Anyway. I guess that's enough about my teeth.
Today's post (as you can see from the title) will be about inspiration and ways to get un-stuck in your writing project. Let's start with inspiration itself. There are lots of people who will go around and ask authors the age-old question 'Where do you get your ideas??'.
This question is both easy and very difficult to answer. As a lot of authors have said before me 'I get my ideas everywhere!'.
But this is of course quite vague. 'Everywhere' is not a place you can go to in order to get your ideas.
So what are you supposed to do?
I think there are really only three secrets to getting fresh ideas. They all have to do with getting out of your OWN head and into someone else's. Or just out of your own head.
-read a lot
-go outside and meet people (that favourite of mothers' which is almost always ignored)
-think a lot
These are my personal favourites.
Why? Or: Why is it important to get out of your own head? It's simple. Your brain needs to reset. If you've been working very closely on something for a long time you'll eventually become biased (and usually against it). Ideas that seemed fresh and AMAZING the first time around are suddenly stale and boring and your brain keeps telling you 'no one wants to read this kind of stuff'. And anyway. You don't know what to write/edit any more either way.
When this happens this is usually a cue that your brain wants some rest. It's a good opportunity to take a break and do something else: gaming/reading/watching TV.
Will you feel guilty? Perhaps.
Will you be angry at yourself for not working on your own project? Probably.
But will it help you reset your mind and in the long run give you more and better ideas? Also yes.
If you don't have any hobbies -
If you know nothing about the world -
If you don't know PEOPLE -
If you have no experience -
What are you even going to write about? So take a break when necessary! Breaks are just as important as 'actual work'. No matter how much you love something, you can't do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And you probably don't want to either.
Does this seem like a no-brainer? It is. But still a lot of people become workaholics when they truly care about a project, and they needed to be reminded every once in a while that it's ok to rest. You don't have to wear yourself out. You don't have to throw all of your splendid ideas at one project. It's fine if you wait until later with some of them.
WriteBot out.
PS: This particular piece of advice is valid not only for writers but ALL professions. If you're stuck, take a break. The world will look fresh and new pathways will open up for your tomorrow.
Enjoy your night/day!
Saturday, November 17, 2018
What are your goals this year? What will they be next year?
Hey everyone!
It's pretty late. I just came home a few minutes ago and decided to give you another post. This one is a simple question to help you think about the year ahead (2019 for those of you living under a rock). Why now? It's not even December yet??!?!
BUT: the earlier you think of YOUR NEXT GREAT GOAL the easier it will be to change this into an obtainable goal by year's end. This means you can start 2019 not with some airy fairy wish of 'oh I'd like to eat 90% less chocolate in 2019 than I did in 2018' but something realistic like 'I will not eat chocolate on one Wednesday per week!'
The questions can be answered very broadly. You can talk about your writing goals (complete ten books? Write one hundred short stories? THINK BIG!) or your life goals (finally get a dog and raise it well). You can mention your relationship goals (such as: I will surprise my partner with a little gift/flower/favourite snack once every month!) or your health goals (I want to get healthier/slimmer/smarter). I'm interested in your lives. I seriously am.Where else am I gonna learn about humans?
Do you have any goals for 2019 yet? How about your 2018 goals? What happened to them? Did you reach them?
The best advice on goal setting that I know of is this: THINK BIGGER.
WriteBot wants to hear all about it in the comments.
Have a good day/night!
It's pretty late. I just came home a few minutes ago and decided to give you another post. This one is a simple question to help you think about the year ahead (2019 for those of you living under a rock). Why now? It's not even December yet??!?!
BUT: the earlier you think of YOUR NEXT GREAT GOAL the easier it will be to change this into an obtainable goal by year's end. This means you can start 2019 not with some airy fairy wish of 'oh I'd like to eat 90% less chocolate in 2019 than I did in 2018' but something realistic like 'I will not eat chocolate on one Wednesday per week!'
The questions can be answered very broadly. You can talk about your writing goals (complete ten books? Write one hundred short stories? THINK BIG!) or your life goals (finally get a dog and raise it well). You can mention your relationship goals (such as: I will surprise my partner with a little gift/flower/favourite snack once every month!) or your health goals (I want to get healthier/slimmer/smarter). I'm interested in your lives. I seriously am.
Do you have any goals for 2019 yet? How about your 2018 goals? What happened to them? Did you reach them?
The best advice on goal setting that I know of is this: THINK BIGGER.
WriteBot wants to hear all about it in the comments.
Have a good day/night!
Thursday, November 15, 2018
How to plan a story 3 and Impatience-block
Hey folks!
Today's post will concern itself with the single most important line I've gotten out of The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone.
It goes something like (paraphrased) this:
If your plan fails or you hit a roadblock - THINK BIGGER!
Why is it so relevant?
Let me start off with an example right away. As you know I've been working on the outline of a new book (series) in the cyberpunk genre. I had a specific question in mind about what it should be about. BUT I am not an outliner. I used to pants my way through everything... until the concept I wanted to talk about became so big they stopped making sense when pantsed. I then decided to outline despite the failure of earlier attempts (I've tried a LOT of writing techniques over the years) to do so.
The outline was going quite well. It wasn't perfect or perfectly detailed but it did make sense - somewhat.
Until yesterday.
I was chugging along nicely with my plot for the second installment of the series (each installment has its own 'question' I am trying to answer) when I realized that 'damn this character turned into a Mary Sue' and 'damn this sounds a lot like Deus Ex Machina'. I ignored these voices for a while and finished the initial outline anyway.
At night, then, it was difficult to sleep, which it hadn't been when I worked on the first installment. This made me concerned - because I know what this means. It means something is wrong with the book I'm writing at the moment!
I slept. I woke up in an even worse state. It's a bit like being concerned about something when a plot just feel 'wrong'. I can't get my mind of it and am distracted because I NEED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. I'm big on problem solving and I recognize problems very easily. This means if there is an unsolved problem I'm just antsy.
Ok.
It's now about an hour since waking up and I've just finished breakfast (sweet sticky rice! Don't judge!).
The 10X Rule came to me as I was eating breakfast.
What if I'm working on the wrong section of the book series? What if the plot of installment 2 actually belongs to installment 1 still? It hit me then. I'd been working on the wrong question (I try to answer a question with each book of the series so installment one is connected to question one and installment two to question two). I'd skipped ahead to question two when question one was not yet sufficiently answered.
Oh boy.
So what's next? This is where the line from The 10X Rule comes into play: If your plan fails or you hit a roadblock, THINK BIGGER!
I can say without any shame that my first plan failed. I did not think big enough. This means in order to fix the outline for the first question I'll have to THINK BIGGER. I hit a roadblock precisely because I was getting impatient. I wanted to finish the outline for at least installment 1 and WRITE ALREADY. I started to hurry. I missed the entire point and ended up with bad plot and unnecessary Mary Sure characters.
This means today I'm going back to installment 1. Will it be easy? Nah. It will be even harder than what I already have. Will it 'take a while'? I think it might. I've already been working on the outline of installment 1 for a week (though admittedly only about an hour a day). BUT! I refuse to settle for 'mediocre'. I refuse to settle for 'this will do'. AND. It will be FUN! And you know the even bigger benefit? It will make the story so much better! It will make it so much more meaningful. It might even be possible in this way to come close to the vision of the story I have in my head.
The moral of the story?
You don't have writer's block. You have impatience-block. You did not think as much or as elaborately about your story as you should have. You need to re-do your outline/first draft. You need to truly understand what and why things are happening in order to fix your stories and make them the best they can be!
Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments!
WriteBot, bleep bloop!
Today's post will concern itself with the single most important line I've gotten out of The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone.
It goes something like (paraphrased) this:
If your plan fails or you hit a roadblock - THINK BIGGER!
Why is it so relevant?
Let me start off with an example right away. As you know I've been working on the outline of a new book (series) in the cyberpunk genre. I had a specific question in mind about what it should be about. BUT I am not an outliner. I used to pants my way through everything... until the concept I wanted to talk about became so big they stopped making sense when pantsed. I then decided to outline despite the failure of earlier attempts (I've tried a LOT of writing techniques over the years) to do so.
The outline was going quite well. It wasn't perfect or perfectly detailed but it did make sense - somewhat.
Until yesterday.
I was chugging along nicely with my plot for the second installment of the series (each installment has its own 'question' I am trying to answer) when I realized that 'damn this character turned into a Mary Sue' and 'damn this sounds a lot like Deus Ex Machina'. I ignored these voices for a while and finished the initial outline anyway.
At night, then, it was difficult to sleep, which it hadn't been when I worked on the first installment. This made me concerned - because I know what this means. It means something is wrong with the book I'm writing at the moment!
I slept. I woke up in an even worse state. It's a bit like being concerned about something when a plot just feel 'wrong'. I can't get my mind of it and am distracted because I NEED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. I'm big on problem solving and I recognize problems very easily. This means if there is an unsolved problem I'm just antsy.
Ok.
It's now about an hour since waking up and I've just finished breakfast (sweet sticky rice! Don't judge!).
The 10X Rule came to me as I was eating breakfast.
What if I'm working on the wrong section of the book series? What if the plot of installment 2 actually belongs to installment 1 still? It hit me then. I'd been working on the wrong question (I try to answer a question with each book of the series so installment one is connected to question one and installment two to question two). I'd skipped ahead to question two when question one was not yet sufficiently answered.
Oh boy.
So what's next? This is where the line from The 10X Rule comes into play: If your plan fails or you hit a roadblock, THINK BIGGER!
I can say without any shame that my first plan failed. I did not think big enough. This means in order to fix the outline for the first question I'll have to THINK BIGGER. I hit a roadblock precisely because I was getting impatient. I wanted to finish the outline for at least installment 1 and WRITE ALREADY. I started to hurry. I missed the entire point and ended up with bad plot and unnecessary Mary Sure characters.
This means today I'm going back to installment 1. Will it be easy? Nah. It will be even harder than what I already have. Will it 'take a while'? I think it might. I've already been working on the outline of installment 1 for a week (though admittedly only about an hour a day). BUT! I refuse to settle for 'mediocre'. I refuse to settle for 'this will do'. AND. It will be FUN! And you know the even bigger benefit? It will make the story so much better! It will make it so much more meaningful. It might even be possible in this way to come close to the vision of the story I have in my head.
The moral of the story?
You don't have writer's block. You have impatience-block. You did not think as much or as elaborately about your story as you should have. You need to re-do your outline/first draft. You need to truly understand what and why things are happening in order to fix your stories and make them the best they can be!
Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments!
WriteBot, bleep bloop!
About STORY PLANNING 2
Hi folks!
As some of you know, in the last couple of weeks I've tried to improve my working style by learning how to set goals.
So this post will be about goal-setting and self-improvement.
I will say without being ashamed: I'm not really good at it yet. I'm still learning how to do it. This means I've been buying and reading a lot of books. My favourite so far is The Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz, but I also found Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule quite helpful. If I had to choose, The Magic of Thinking Big would win out. This is a book I'd recommend EVERYONE to read. It's a really really important book if you want to improve yourself. It's also fairly short.
Ok. Let's continue.
Why did I even change my happy-go-lucky style to something more SRS? Because it was no longer working out just being happy-go-lucky. I've made a couple of mistakes I would have loved to avoid. I spent a lot of money on THINGS that didn't work out (for example the start of a degree in a completely unrelated field to writing). I started a lot of stories that will never be finished. But then something else happened.
I decided IT CAN'T CONTINUE LIKE THIS. It's time to actually BE SUCCESSFUL. I bought the above mentioned books and read them in two days each.
I knew this about myself: I hate planning things out. It's just not my style. It's stifling. But also: It is important to plan IMPORTANT things out. Why? I think we all know this. There are times when you can tell by your own stories that the bigger they are the less coherent they become the more you write on them. And that doesn't encourage anyone to edit.
So here's an experiment: Plan your next story. The outline doesn't have to be finished in a day. It will probably take much longer (depending of course on the greatness and length you want in your story). Write a summary. Write two summaries (or twenty). Change the outline you have if it doesn't work the first time around (and it probably won't). What this will give you is a FEEL for the story. The more you THINK about it (don't write just yet unless you absolutely know where you're going!) the more you will know it. A lot of successful peoples' best ideas come from solitude and thinking about their goals/plans. Why should writing be any different?
A caution, however, needs to be added. There is such a thing as overthinking it. You know this is happening when you start getting impatient or just want to write (without knowing WHAT you want to write) heedlessly. This happens when you're TOO CLOSE to the material. When you stop seeing the trees because the forest became too dense.
How to know when this happens? Well, usually it is accompanied by despair, by the urge to pull out your hair (or whatever else your habit is when you're overwhelmed), by my-head-is-about-to-explodiness. Then you need to observe the unofficial Rule 3 of THE WRITING RULES. Take a BREAK! Relax. It might be hard (it is for me) but it is beneficial! Do something else. Learn something. Write on a different story. You need to clear your mind of all the unrelated and confused ideas so you can come back to your IMPORTANT WIP refreshed later!
Does this make sense? Tell me about your tips! How do you plan stories? I'd love to know!
WriteBot off... to plan STUFF.
As some of you know, in the last couple of weeks I've tried to improve my working style by learning how to set goals.
So this post will be about goal-setting and self-improvement.
I will say without being ashamed: I'm not really good at it yet. I'm still learning how to do it. This means I've been buying and reading a lot of books. My favourite so far is The Magic of Thinking Big, by David J. Schwartz, but I also found Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule quite helpful. If I had to choose, The Magic of Thinking Big would win out. This is a book I'd recommend EVERYONE to read. It's a really really important book if you want to improve yourself. It's also fairly short.
Ok. Let's continue.
Why did I even change my happy-go-lucky style to something more SRS? Because it was no longer working out just being happy-go-lucky. I've made a couple of mistakes I would have loved to avoid. I spent a lot of money on THINGS that didn't work out (for example the start of a degree in a completely unrelated field to writing). I started a lot of stories that will never be finished. But then something else happened.
I decided IT CAN'T CONTINUE LIKE THIS. It's time to actually BE SUCCESSFUL. I bought the above mentioned books and read them in two days each.
I knew this about myself: I hate planning things out. It's just not my style. It's stifling. But also: It is important to plan IMPORTANT things out. Why? I think we all know this. There are times when you can tell by your own stories that the bigger they are the less coherent they become the more you write on them. And that doesn't encourage anyone to edit.
So here's an experiment: Plan your next story. The outline doesn't have to be finished in a day. It will probably take much longer (depending of course on the greatness and length you want in your story). Write a summary. Write two summaries (or twenty). Change the outline you have if it doesn't work the first time around (and it probably won't). What this will give you is a FEEL for the story. The more you THINK about it (don't write just yet unless you absolutely know where you're going!) the more you will know it. A lot of successful peoples' best ideas come from solitude and thinking about their goals/plans. Why should writing be any different?
A caution, however, needs to be added. There is such a thing as overthinking it. You know this is happening when you start getting impatient or just want to write (without knowing WHAT you want to write) heedlessly. This happens when you're TOO CLOSE to the material. When you stop seeing the trees because the forest became too dense.
How to know when this happens? Well, usually it is accompanied by despair, by the urge to pull out your hair (or whatever else your habit is when you're overwhelmed), by my-head-is-about-to-explodiness. Then you need to observe the unofficial Rule 3 of THE WRITING RULES. Take a BREAK! Relax. It might be hard (it is for me) but it is beneficial! Do something else. Learn something. Write on a different story. You need to clear your mind of all the unrelated and confused ideas so you can come back to your IMPORTANT WIP refreshed later!
Does this make sense? Tell me about your tips! How do you plan stories? I'd love to know!
WriteBot off... to plan STUFF.
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
How to plan a large project or WHY YOUR PANTSING NO LONGER WORKS
Hey folks!
How is everyone? I got home from the mouth hygienist a while ago and my teeth still hurt. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it was an experience, so I guess that counts for something!
All right.
How to plan a large project? I'm not actually sure about it myself. I'm still trying to figure it out. There are however two things that I'm relatively certain about.
The first one is that pantsing is fun but productive only to a certain extent. Do you like getting a COOL IDEA and just starting to write? Do you do it? How often does it fail and eventually give you a complete block/make you feel depressed?
For me the answer would be: frequently. This happened more than a few times before. I would get excited about an idea, start to write it, and at some point just give up because I hadn't thought about the story thoroughly. This happened way too often, and every time it does, it is a huge disappointment. The book starts out great... It has a shiny cover in my mind... and then it just fizzles out. Of course I don't immediately abandon it. I finish it anyway (mostly). But it has not yet happened that a story like this ever made sense. It simply had no substance between 'cool part I wanted to write'. And that doesn't work for a novel. (As evidenced by Stephen King's finish to his Dark Tower series by the way.)
What then does work for a novel?
We're getting to point two! This is the other concept I'm relatively sure about. It has to do with planning - even if that word still makes me feel icky. I've started to plan out a few stories. It hasn't been easy. It hasn't been as fun as just randomly pantsing either. But I do believe it's necessary. All I can write well when pantsing is maybe a story of 30k words. The rest needs to be outlined if it's supposed to be GREAT.
Of course, there are many pantsers who are good at writing whole novels, BUT, are they really? As popular as Stephen King is, at least I have to admit that I'm not blown away by the content in his books. There is little thought in them beyond shock and awe, and his themes (the importance of family et al.) are getting repetitive.
He's still a terrific writer - don't get me wrong! But I don't want to be like him. I want to be like myself. And I want to write deeper stories than SK does.
Unfortunately that requires planning.
But so does life.
If you don't have a plan you drift on the wind like a dandelion bauble. And that's fine... for a while. But after a while (in life this is usually when you hit 25/30. In stories this is when you hit the 30k words mark) it gets old and dry and you forget what you were doing at all.
Any story and any life needs direction. To drift is to have no purpose (it's in the word drift itself). And you can't drift your way through a 120k words manuscript. At least not if you want it to mean something to a reader.
What do you think? Really you should leave a comment! WriteBot wants to know!
All the best!
WriteBot
How is everyone? I got home from the mouth hygienist a while ago and my teeth still hurt. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it was an experience, so I guess that counts for something!
All right.
How to plan a large project? I'm not actually sure about it myself. I'm still trying to figure it out. There are however two things that I'm relatively certain about.
The first one is that pantsing is fun but productive only to a certain extent. Do you like getting a COOL IDEA and just starting to write? Do you do it? How often does it fail and eventually give you a complete block/make you feel depressed?
For me the answer would be: frequently. This happened more than a few times before. I would get excited about an idea, start to write it, and at some point just give up because I hadn't thought about the story thoroughly. This happened way too often, and every time it does, it is a huge disappointment. The book starts out great... It has a shiny cover in my mind... and then it just fizzles out. Of course I don't immediately abandon it. I finish it anyway (mostly). But it has not yet happened that a story like this ever made sense. It simply had no substance between 'cool part I wanted to write'. And that doesn't work for a novel. (As evidenced by Stephen King's finish to his Dark Tower series by the way.)
What then does work for a novel?
We're getting to point two! This is the other concept I'm relatively sure about. It has to do with planning - even if that word still makes me feel icky. I've started to plan out a few stories. It hasn't been easy. It hasn't been as fun as just randomly pantsing either. But I do believe it's necessary. All I can write well when pantsing is maybe a story of 30k words. The rest needs to be outlined if it's supposed to be GREAT.
Of course, there are many pantsers who are good at writing whole novels, BUT, are they really? As popular as Stephen King is, at least I have to admit that I'm not blown away by the content in his books. There is little thought in them beyond shock and awe, and his themes (the importance of family et al.) are getting repetitive.
He's still a terrific writer - don't get me wrong! But I don't want to be like him. I want to be like myself. And I want to write deeper stories than SK does.
Unfortunately that requires planning.
But so does life.
If you don't have a plan you drift on the wind like a dandelion bauble. And that's fine... for a while. But after a while (in life this is usually when you hit 25/30. In stories this is when you hit the 30k words mark) it gets old and dry and you forget what you were doing at all.
Any story and any life needs direction. To drift is to have no purpose (it's in the word drift itself). And you can't drift your way through a 120k words manuscript. At least not if you want it to mean something to a reader.
What do you think? Really you should leave a comment! WriteBot wants to know!
All the best!
WriteBot
Sunday, November 11, 2018
TWO RULES for writing success
Hey everyone! It's Sunday. Isn't that great.
I decided to keep this post a bit shorter than usual to make it a little bit easier to digest. I'll start with something a lot of new writers don't like to hear. They're still trying to find the GOLDEN RULE to writing the next BREAKOUT NOVEL. But that's not how it works. There is no such thing as a golden rule in writing. There aren't even many rules (except maybe Pixar's - which are useful because they're concise).
There are only two rules and they don't only apply to writing but ANY project. They're not even what can be strictly defined as a rule.
Rule 1: KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO WRITE
I can't remember how often I broke this rule. It's the most essential and it always trips me up if I ignore it. I will often get an idea for a character or a scene in my mind with people doing something... and I just start to write. I give myself the 'oh it'll work out in the end!' talk just so that I can write (because that's what I love to do!). BUT of course it doesn't work out. Because I don't have enough information. The scene is written in an hour and perhaps the next few days there will be more great scenes following it. And then the idea just... trickles away. The story stops making sense and I stop writing it.
When you later ask me 'What story did you want to write? What did you want to achieve?' I couldn't answer it. I had no goal or the goal was too small to work out. It was simply just a scene - a floating scene that either doesn't fit anywhere or might fit somewhere in the future.
(And to all of those who think 'oh she's just quitting at the 30k words mark: I'm not. I managed to continue a lot of stories and even finished some of those but the time I'd have to spend editing them either makes it not worth the while or necessitates the start of a whole new story.)
If you don't know what to write you'll flounder like some fish on land. You'll get somewhere maybe in the first stages of your draft but later on it will be incomprehensible. This is probably the most important thing I've learned in all my life.
You have to know what you want/want to say. Otherwise you're lost.
RULE 2: WRITE
This is a simple one. In order to get EXCEPTIONAL at something you have to practise it. If you don't, you won't become exceptional. If you don't care about being exceptional or just want to be 'ok', you really should find something to do that you DO care about to the extent that you're willing to do it several hours a day and at 3 AM if inspiration strikes.
It's difficult for me still. I'd often rather procrastinate than practice. But eh. In reality there's nothing better than writing anyway.
Let me put this in a simple equation.
Amount of Practice = Increase in Ability = Success.
ADDITIONAL ADVICE RULE 3: TAKE BREAKS
This rule is more of an add-on. It should be heeded but you HAVE TO BE CAREFUL not to equal break with procrastination. A break can be 15 - 45 minutes during a writing day.
I wouldn't recommend more than the given time frame because after 45 minutes of break your brain will probably already feel like potato mush and you won't remember what you did 45 minutes ago.
About the lower end I'm not so sure. At times you'll be writing on a difficult project and your brain will just despair and OCD/depression you (if you're so inclined) if you stress it too much. BUT you also want to keep momentum once you're in the ZONE. This is the most important. It doesn't truly matter how long your breaks are (15-45 works for me) as long as you can easily slip back into the ZONE when it's over. That should ALWAYS be your priority. To be able to jump back in right where you left off with clarity.
All right. Let's sum up this post:
There are really only TWO writing (and life) RULES you ever need to know.
1. Know What you Want to Write
2. Write
Do you agree? Do you disagree? Let me know in the comments! It took me fifteen years to figure this out and I'm curious if it's useful to anyone but myself
Have a productive Sunday! Bleep-Bloop, I am WriteBot.
I decided to keep this post a bit shorter than usual to make it a little bit easier to digest. I'll start with something a lot of new writers don't like to hear. They're still trying to find the GOLDEN RULE to writing the next BREAKOUT NOVEL. But that's not how it works. There is no such thing as a golden rule in writing. There aren't even many rules (except maybe Pixar's - which are useful because they're concise).
There are only two rules and they don't only apply to writing but ANY project. They're not even what can be strictly defined as a rule.
Rule 1: KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO WRITE
I can't remember how often I broke this rule. It's the most essential and it always trips me up if I ignore it. I will often get an idea for a character or a scene in my mind with people doing something... and I just start to write. I give myself the 'oh it'll work out in the end!' talk just so that I can write (because that's what I love to do!). BUT of course it doesn't work out. Because I don't have enough information. The scene is written in an hour and perhaps the next few days there will be more great scenes following it. And then the idea just... trickles away. The story stops making sense and I stop writing it.
When you later ask me 'What story did you want to write? What did you want to achieve?' I couldn't answer it. I had no goal or the goal was too small to work out. It was simply just a scene - a floating scene that either doesn't fit anywhere or might fit somewhere in the future.
(And to all of those who think 'oh she's just quitting at the 30k words mark: I'm not. I managed to continue a lot of stories and even finished some of those but the time I'd have to spend editing them either makes it not worth the while or necessitates the start of a whole new story.)
If you don't know what to write you'll flounder like some fish on land. You'll get somewhere maybe in the first stages of your draft but later on it will be incomprehensible. This is probably the most important thing I've learned in all my life.
You have to know what you want/want to say. Otherwise you're lost.
RULE 2: WRITE
This is a simple one. In order to get EXCEPTIONAL at something you have to practise it. If you don't, you won't become exceptional. If you don't care about being exceptional or just want to be 'ok', you really should find something to do that you DO care about to the extent that you're willing to do it several hours a day and at 3 AM if inspiration strikes.
It's difficult for me still. I'd often rather procrastinate than practice. But eh. In reality there's nothing better than writing anyway.
Let me put this in a simple equation.
Amount of Practice = Increase in Ability = Success.
ADDITIONAL ADVICE RULE 3: TAKE BREAKS
This rule is more of an add-on. It should be heeded but you HAVE TO BE CAREFUL not to equal break with procrastination. A break can be 15 - 45 minutes during a writing day.
I wouldn't recommend more than the given time frame because after 45 minutes of break your brain will probably already feel like potato mush and you won't remember what you did 45 minutes ago.
About the lower end I'm not so sure. At times you'll be writing on a difficult project and your brain will just despair and OCD/depression you (if you're so inclined) if you stress it too much. BUT you also want to keep momentum once you're in the ZONE. This is the most important. It doesn't truly matter how long your breaks are (15-45 works for me) as long as you can easily slip back into the ZONE when it's over. That should ALWAYS be your priority. To be able to jump back in right where you left off with clarity.
All right. Let's sum up this post:
There are really only TWO writing (and life) RULES you ever need to know.
1. Know What you Want to Write
2. Write
Do you agree? Do you disagree? Let me know in the comments! It took me fifteen years to figure this out and I'm curious if it's useful to anyone but myself
Have a productive Sunday! Bleep-Bloop, I am WriteBot.
Saturday, November 10, 2018
How and why to cut words
Hi folks!
This will be a post about how and why you should cut words. I have the perfect example because it happened to me only two days ago.
Let's see.
I've been working on this story the last two weeks. The story's goal/theme was 'character treated poorly by his surroundings wants to be free'. I wrote about 10k words. Then more themes crept in. Why did he want to be free? What did that mean for the rest of his people? What would happen then? How could he solve this? Does he need to free his whole community or only himself? What if he only frees himself?
The story got BIGGER. I did the thing you're not supposed to (always IGNORE 'supposed to' when someone says it to you! Even when you 'supposed-to' yourself!) and started incorporating MORE and BIGGER/BETTER themes into my story. I got to 40k words.
This adding themes is one of the best decisions you can make. Don't stick with a story that's too small. Keep trying to make it bigger. Make it better. Because if you think it's too small (read: boring) when you're writing it (symptoms include boredom and not knowing what to write - also called 'block') it will be sheer agony to finish it (and if you're like me and don't like excruciating pain you won't finish it anyway). At the same time, if it already bores you after 10-20k words, why would anyone else want to read it? And if it bores you after 50k words the same applies.
And if you do add themes and set your sights higher then your story will become better for it. It will surpass your initial 'manageable' goal and grow on its own. It will grow into an amazing story like a rosebud grows into a rose.
Back to my WIP. I am also no longer writing on this document. Why? Because the story outgrew its initial beginnings so much that editing it would NEVER truly work out. The time I would have to invest into editing it is enormous. In truth the whole story would have to be rewritten.
So I had to think about it. It took me two days. There was never a question in my mind about not finishing it. HOWEVER. In order to finish it I have to cut a lot. I have to cut 40k words. The first 40k words. Is that hard? Yes, yes, we've talked about this already, it's hard. But at the same time, it's worth it. I needed to write 40k words to figure out what I wanted my story to be and what I wanted to talk about in it. (Other people by the way call this 'planning'.)
This is the how and why to cut words. There's also a whole post about WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO TAKE BREAKS to follow this up. That will be out tomorrow.
Let me say for now: CUT your words even if it cuts your heart. It's the ONLY way you can find your story's soul and make it what it needs to be for you to be satisfied with it.
WriteBot shall return!
This will be a post about how and why you should cut words. I have the perfect example because it happened to me only two days ago.
Let's see.
I've been working on this story the last two weeks. The story's goal/theme was 'character treated poorly by his surroundings wants to be free'. I wrote about 10k words. Then more themes crept in. Why did he want to be free? What did that mean for the rest of his people? What would happen then? How could he solve this? Does he need to free his whole community or only himself? What if he only frees himself?
The story got BIGGER. I did the thing you're not supposed to (always IGNORE 'supposed to' when someone says it to you! Even when you 'supposed-to' yourself!) and started incorporating MORE and BIGGER/BETTER themes into my story. I got to 40k words.
This adding themes is one of the best decisions you can make. Don't stick with a story that's too small. Keep trying to make it bigger. Make it better. Because if you think it's too small (read: boring) when you're writing it (symptoms include boredom and not knowing what to write - also called 'block') it will be sheer agony to finish it (and if you're like me and don't like excruciating pain you won't finish it anyway). At the same time, if it already bores you after 10-20k words, why would anyone else want to read it? And if it bores you after 50k words the same applies.
And if you do add themes and set your sights higher then your story will become better for it. It will surpass your initial 'manageable' goal and grow on its own. It will grow into an amazing story like a rosebud grows into a rose.
Back to my WIP. I am also no longer writing on this document. Why? Because the story outgrew its initial beginnings so much that editing it would NEVER truly work out. The time I would have to invest into editing it is enormous. In truth the whole story would have to be rewritten.
So I had to think about it. It took me two days. There was never a question in my mind about not finishing it. HOWEVER. In order to finish it I have to cut a lot. I have to cut 40k words. The first 40k words. Is that hard? Yes, yes, we've talked about this already, it's hard. But at the same time, it's worth it. I needed to write 40k words to figure out what I wanted my story to be and what I wanted to talk about in it. (Other people by the way call this 'planning'.)
This is the how and why to cut words. There's also a whole post about WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO TAKE BREAKS to follow this up. That will be out tomorrow.
Let me say for now: CUT your words even if it cuts your heart. It's the ONLY way you can find your story's soul and make it what it needs to be for you to be satisfied with it.
WriteBot shall return!
Friday, November 9, 2018
Writing VS putting words together
Hi folks!
It's early (ok - it's almost 9 AM). I decided not to go out today because I feel truly bad (depression). Instead I'll be focusing on writing - including a new post for you!
As you can tell from the title today's post will be about the writing process.
Let me first define 'writing'. In general this is 'putting down words so that they form sentences that make sense'. Most people can do it, some better than others.
The writing I want to discuss however has a lot more to do with your state of mind. The writing considered in this post is TRUE WRITING. This means it's writing that not only makes sense as a single sentence but actually forms a text - and specifically the text you wanted to write. This kind of writing happens when the story is 'going well'. It makes sense in the context of what you intended to write.
There is another thing that I call 'putting words together'. This is also writing - but not in the sense discussed above. It might be coherent and even cohesive BUT it is useless writing in the context of your book. Sure, you're putting words together, and the words have the names of your main characters in them, but honestly, none of it makes sense for your story. You're rambling. You're going off on a tangent. Know that feeling? I think we all do.
So what is the problem with putting words together?
It's simple. The words are not useful to your project. These are the words that will likely be cut. They do not make sense within your story. They're just words in sentences. The sentences make sense. Their input into the story does not.
This 'putting words together' happens to me a lot when I force myself to write. At some point in some stories (usually when my initial goal is too low - more about goal setting in another post) I lose sight of what I wanted to say. But because I'm a writer, and because I often don't realize it immediately, or because my initial goal (OH THIS IS A STORY ABOUT SOMEONE WANTING TO BE FREE) changes into something else (THIS STORY SHOULD REALLY NOT ONLY BE ABOUT THIS CHARACTER TO BE GREAT!) I push on.
Usually this 'putting words together' turns into a mess. A mess I later (even after the 'first draft' so to speak is finished) never want to lay eyes on again and therefore don't. This is how my computer (not my drawer - who keeps their mss in a drawer nowadays?) and probably yours too acquires a lot of stories that do not work out. That's okay. Don't worry too much about those. Think bigger instead. Worry about the next story instead.
Think about what went wrong with the words you put together. There are two reasons why putting together words doesn't work.
a) you lose sight of what you wanted to do
or
b) what you wanted to do isn't big enough and you WANT TO GO BIG
a) This is a simple one. You are tired. You lost sight of what you wanted to do. You don't actually want to be writing this any more (probably because you lost sight of your goal for the story or your story has outgrown it) but you feel guilty about abandoning it. Well, abandon it anyway. The new story (and you know there's one in your head that is MUCH BETTER than your initial idea) will be superior and work out more smoothly. The time you're putting into trying to fix that broken plate would be much more productively spent just buying a new plate. It'll also be much shorter.
b) The story you're writing has outgrown what you set out to do (A post on too-low goal setting coming up shortly as well! Stay tuned!). This happens to me a lot. I will start with a simple idea (because depression balks at GREAT IDEAS) and about 40k words in realize that THIS STORY SHOULD BE DIFFERENT. It's not doing what I wanted the simple story to do. It's much bigger. It needs to be much bigger. And this isn't about fairy-dust dreams. This is about experience.
Sure, at some point during the writing (usually around the 30k mark actually) everyone wants to DO SOMETHING ELSE. SOMETHING BIGGER. SOMETHING BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER.
But that's not what I'm getting at here. I'm getting at real experience, when you KNOW how you work and what won't work for you. I'm there after spending almost 15 years writing nearly every day. I can tell when I'm just being lazy vs when a story isn't working out. That nagging voice in the back of your head that says 'go write something else' 'this story needs MORE'? It might be right. It might be that you're advanced enough to KNOW THYSELF. It might not be laziness or fear of taking the risk of failure after all! Have you considered that?
A good conclusion to this post might be to say: HOLY HECK IT GOT MUCH LONGER THAN I ANTICIPATED. But truly the point of this post is: If you are just putting together words like some 5-9 clerk wanting to get it done and over with there might be something wrong with your story (check a and b above). There is nothing worse than being lost and without meaning in the world (and this includes the world of story writing). If that's the case you need to go deeper into your story and you need to figure out what you actually wanted to say. I promise you the writing blues will disappear like spiders when you've finally found a tissue to remove them (show them the door!) with.
Do you have any experience putting together words instead of truly writing with a purpose? Let me know in the comments! I'm not just saying things when I say I'd really love to know!
WriteBot out.
It's early (ok - it's almost 9 AM). I decided not to go out today because I feel truly bad (depression). Instead I'll be focusing on writing - including a new post for you!
As you can tell from the title today's post will be about the writing process.
Let me first define 'writing'. In general this is 'putting down words so that they form sentences that make sense'. Most people can do it, some better than others.
The writing I want to discuss however has a lot more to do with your state of mind. The writing considered in this post is TRUE WRITING. This means it's writing that not only makes sense as a single sentence but actually forms a text - and specifically the text you wanted to write. This kind of writing happens when the story is 'going well'. It makes sense in the context of what you intended to write.
There is another thing that I call 'putting words together'. This is also writing - but not in the sense discussed above. It might be coherent and even cohesive BUT it is useless writing in the context of your book. Sure, you're putting words together, and the words have the names of your main characters in them, but honestly, none of it makes sense for your story. You're rambling. You're going off on a tangent. Know that feeling? I think we all do.
So what is the problem with putting words together?
It's simple. The words are not useful to your project. These are the words that will likely be cut. They do not make sense within your story. They're just words in sentences. The sentences make sense. Their input into the story does not.
This 'putting words together' happens to me a lot when I force myself to write. At some point in some stories (usually when my initial goal is too low - more about goal setting in another post) I lose sight of what I wanted to say. But because I'm a writer, and because I often don't realize it immediately, or because my initial goal (OH THIS IS A STORY ABOUT SOMEONE WANTING TO BE FREE) changes into something else (THIS STORY SHOULD REALLY NOT ONLY BE ABOUT THIS CHARACTER TO BE GREAT!) I push on.
Usually this 'putting words together' turns into a mess. A mess I later (even after the 'first draft' so to speak is finished) never want to lay eyes on again and therefore don't. This is how my computer (not my drawer - who keeps their mss in a drawer nowadays?) and probably yours too acquires a lot of stories that do not work out. That's okay. Don't worry too much about those. Think bigger instead. Worry about the next story instead.
Think about what went wrong with the words you put together. There are two reasons why putting together words doesn't work.
a) you lose sight of what you wanted to do
or
b) what you wanted to do isn't big enough and you WANT TO GO BIG
a) This is a simple one. You are tired. You lost sight of what you wanted to do. You don't actually want to be writing this any more (probably because you lost sight of your goal for the story or your story has outgrown it) but you feel guilty about abandoning it. Well, abandon it anyway. The new story (and you know there's one in your head that is MUCH BETTER than your initial idea) will be superior and work out more smoothly. The time you're putting into trying to fix that broken plate would be much more productively spent just buying a new plate. It'll also be much shorter.
b) The story you're writing has outgrown what you set out to do (A post on too-low goal setting coming up shortly as well! Stay tuned!). This happens to me a lot. I will start with a simple idea (because depression balks at GREAT IDEAS) and about 40k words in realize that THIS STORY SHOULD BE DIFFERENT. It's not doing what I wanted the simple story to do. It's much bigger. It needs to be much bigger. And this isn't about fairy-dust dreams. This is about experience.
Sure, at some point during the writing (usually around the 30k mark actually) everyone wants to DO SOMETHING ELSE. SOMETHING BIGGER. SOMETHING BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER.
But that's not what I'm getting at here. I'm getting at real experience, when you KNOW how you work and what won't work for you. I'm there after spending almost 15 years writing nearly every day. I can tell when I'm just being lazy vs when a story isn't working out. That nagging voice in the back of your head that says 'go write something else' 'this story needs MORE'? It might be right. It might be that you're advanced enough to KNOW THYSELF. It might not be laziness or fear of taking the risk of failure after all! Have you considered that?
A good conclusion to this post might be to say: HOLY HECK IT GOT MUCH LONGER THAN I ANTICIPATED. But truly the point of this post is: If you are just putting together words like some 5-9 clerk wanting to get it done and over with there might be something wrong with your story (check a and b above). There is nothing worse than being lost and without meaning in the world (and this includes the world of story writing). If that's the case you need to go deeper into your story and you need to figure out what you actually wanted to say. I promise you the writing blues will disappear like spiders when you've finally found a tissue to remove them (show them the door!) with.
Do you have any experience putting together words instead of truly writing with a purpose? Let me know in the comments! I'm not just saying things when I say I'd really love to know!
WriteBot out.
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Are you confused about your story? Theme (value) vs money goals.
Hi everyone!
It's been a long day. I left the house around 7:25 AM and I got back around 17:00 PM. It's not 17:15 PM. I managed to eat something and immediately raced to my computer to write a blog post for you. Why? Because it's important!
I'll get to it.
This morning in the train to my commute I started reading a book called 'Story Driven' by Bernadette Jiwa. It's the second goal-setting/achievement/success book I've read in the last two weeks. (I'm astonished I actually had time!) It doesn't talk about stories or fiction as the title might suggest but about success in business.
Why did I buy this book? I bought it because (like most millennials) I'm a bit lost in this world. It's a book about how to achieve success and the first chapter explains why competition isn't necessary and aggressive money goals usually backfire. I'm not going to quote it but I'll sum it up quickly:
There seems to be a trend that once companies start to think about profit and success and reaching their goals rather than how they can help people/improve their vision/improve people's lives they inevitably do two things: They fail and they lose money. This has happened to Volkswagen (the emission scandal a few years back). Instead of focusing on their product and improving it in a legal/people-friendly way (their goal used to be to make an affordable and family-friendly car for the people) they decided to cheat the system and installed software that would show their emission levels of CO2 below the allowed standard. In reality their emission levels were 40 times higher than the standard. As soon as this was revealed they not only lost money (a few billions to the law) but also the trust of their customers. Their stocks dropped rapidly and... well let's say a lot of people won't be buying their cars any more.
This really struck me as significant because I know this happens to myself as well. At some point when a story is difficult I'll stop thinking about what I wanted to do with it and try to cut corners. I'll set myself easily achievable goals (cheating!) and think about how to get it out as quickly and as 'ok' as possible to still make money. An example: if a story is tough and I have no more idea what to do I'll lower my goals. Instead of 150k words for the first draft I'll establish a goal of 60k. If that doesn't work then maybe 30k. At the end - you can guess it - there's really nothing left and the story fails. This happened more often than not because of panic and because of very competitive thinking (I have to get this story out QUICKLY to make money! I need to beat everyone else's quantity of books on the market to ever make money! And so on).
Obviously this doesn't work. As soon as I fail to follow my story-goals (as opposed to money/copies sold goals!) the story inevitably turns bad. I lose sight of my actual goal (my theme/why I am writing the story in the first place) and then I try to revive it by adding things that are either tantalising (for example a shocking/violent action scene where none should be) or take a break. These two methods inexorably turn into 'this story sucks' and I drop it. To my shame it's happened more often than once.
If you're feeling lost in your story (in general) or are thinking too much about which corners you could cut: Don't.
If you're lost in your story go back to what you originally wanted to do. Think about your theme. What was it you wanted to teach people? What did you think people should REALLY REALLY know when you started this book? What did you have in mind?
Did you intend for them to learn compassion? To see how even an angry and selfish teenager can be compassionate to a random old man she meets by helping him across the street? Did you want to teach your readers how to deal with sorrow or regret?
There might be a $ symbol hanging before your eyes. You might be panicking (If you don't finish this book/story quickly you'll lose... well everything!). And if that's the case you simply need to buckle down. It's hard. Definitely. But it's the only thing worth it. You can't lose sight of your theme in favour of quick money or meeting your goals. A story will take the time it takes to be completed. A project will suffer when you stop investing into your theme and start looking at the clock.
Volkswagen's theme was to create a car everyone could easily acquire and drive safely. They then overlooked this goal in favour of quick money and intentionally mislead their customers. In turn their car ('s emission) actually became harmful to the very people they had promised to keep safe.
Don't be Volkswagen.
You'll lose much and while you might make up for it your reputation will forever be tarnished. And in this internet-obsessed age who can afford that?
Have a think on that and a nice evening!
It's been a long day. I left the house around 7:25 AM and I got back around 17:00 PM. It's not 17:15 PM. I managed to eat something and immediately raced to my computer to write a blog post for you. Why? Because it's important!
I'll get to it.
This morning in the train to my commute I started reading a book called 'Story Driven' by Bernadette Jiwa. It's the second goal-setting/achievement/success book I've read in the last two weeks. (I'm astonished I actually had time!) It doesn't talk about stories or fiction as the title might suggest but about success in business.
Why did I buy this book? I bought it because (like most millennials) I'm a bit lost in this world. It's a book about how to achieve success and the first chapter explains why competition isn't necessary and aggressive money goals usually backfire. I'm not going to quote it but I'll sum it up quickly:
There seems to be a trend that once companies start to think about profit and success and reaching their goals rather than how they can help people/improve their vision/improve people's lives they inevitably do two things: They fail and they lose money. This has happened to Volkswagen (the emission scandal a few years back). Instead of focusing on their product and improving it in a legal/people-friendly way (their goal used to be to make an affordable and family-friendly car for the people) they decided to cheat the system and installed software that would show their emission levels of CO2 below the allowed standard. In reality their emission levels were 40 times higher than the standard. As soon as this was revealed they not only lost money (a few billions to the law) but also the trust of their customers. Their stocks dropped rapidly and... well let's say a lot of people won't be buying their cars any more.
This really struck me as significant because I know this happens to myself as well. At some point when a story is difficult I'll stop thinking about what I wanted to do with it and try to cut corners. I'll set myself easily achievable goals (cheating!) and think about how to get it out as quickly and as 'ok' as possible to still make money. An example: if a story is tough and I have no more idea what to do I'll lower my goals. Instead of 150k words for the first draft I'll establish a goal of 60k. If that doesn't work then maybe 30k. At the end - you can guess it - there's really nothing left and the story fails. This happened more often than not because of panic and because of very competitive thinking (I have to get this story out QUICKLY to make money! I need to beat everyone else's quantity of books on the market to ever make money! And so on).
Obviously this doesn't work. As soon as I fail to follow my story-goals (as opposed to money/copies sold goals!) the story inevitably turns bad. I lose sight of my actual goal (my theme/why I am writing the story in the first place) and then I try to revive it by adding things that are either tantalising (for example a shocking/violent action scene where none should be) or take a break. These two methods inexorably turn into 'this story sucks' and I drop it. To my shame it's happened more often than once.
If you're feeling lost in your story (in general) or are thinking too much about which corners you could cut: Don't.
If you're lost in your story go back to what you originally wanted to do. Think about your theme. What was it you wanted to teach people? What did you think people should REALLY REALLY know when you started this book? What did you have in mind?
Did you intend for them to learn compassion? To see how even an angry and selfish teenager can be compassionate to a random old man she meets by helping him across the street? Did you want to teach your readers how to deal with sorrow or regret?
There might be a $ symbol hanging before your eyes. You might be panicking (If you don't finish this book/story quickly you'll lose... well everything!). And if that's the case you simply need to buckle down. It's hard. Definitely. But it's the only thing worth it. You can't lose sight of your theme in favour of quick money or meeting your goals. A story will take the time it takes to be completed. A project will suffer when you stop investing into your theme and start looking at the clock.
Volkswagen's theme was to create a car everyone could easily acquire and drive safely. They then overlooked this goal in favour of quick money and intentionally mislead their customers. In turn their car ('s emission) actually became harmful to the very people they had promised to keep safe.
Don't be Volkswagen.
You'll lose much and while you might make up for it your reputation will forever be tarnished. And in this internet-obsessed age who can afford that?
Have a think on that and a nice evening!
Monday, November 5, 2018
What value does your fiction give to your readers? On theme.
Hi folks!
It's been a long day and I've finally finished preparing meals for the rest of the week (yes. This is meal prep Monday instead of Sunday!). In any case, here are some thoughts about theme, and the value of stories to readers.
So.
There are a lot of questions out there on the internet about 'What is theme?'. They usually come with the follow up question 'How can I put theme into my book?'. It's not easy to answer this and yet it's not impossible either.
Theme by itself is an ethereal thing. It's intangible (except it isn't really). It feels mythical. A lot of question marks pop up in people's heads when they hear 'theme' (or maybe those are just the literary students). Theme is a bit like a unicorn. It's beautiful but it's also shy. It's rare. It's difficult to find in most mainstream books. Has anyone seen it? Does anyone even really know what it is? Does it even exist? (Well - it should.)
A simple way to include theme in your own fiction is to ask yourself a single question before you write.
This question is:
It can be paraphrased into 'What do you want to show/teach people with this story?'. Hold on. I said 'teach'. But that doesn't mean 'preach'. There is no excuse for preaching and no one wants to read it, neither in fiction nor non-fiction (pay heed non-fiction authors who write textbooks!). The entire jig of theme is that it's subtle. When done well it should sink into your readers' minds (subconscious) WITHOUT them realizing that 'OH THAT IS THE POINT AUTHOR WANTED TO MAKE'. If they know it and they're not a literary student then that's usually a bad sign. Don't suffocate your reader with your opinion/theme.
All right. Back to What do your readers get out of your book once they're reading it/have read it?
This is one of the most important questions you should be thinking about as soon as you start your first draft.
The answers might be varied (and this is where theme comes in).
Your own unique answer to the question will be - or at least tie in - with your book's theme. The question can be answered in many different ways. A few examples:
When my readers read this book they gain/learn...
... an understanding of love!
... a sense of security in their life!
... how to trust!
... how to become selfless!
If you consider this well before you write the ideas that come into your mind (such as 'I want my readers to learn the value of friendship!') will automatically colour the text while you compose it. The theme will usually wind itself into the story without your being aware of it. It's how I wrote Hourglass (in which I wanted to show a greedy and selfish boy learning the value of friendship and loyalty over shiny trinkets) and Hourglass's theme is coherent throughout the five book series. And I did not plan these books. I simply wrote with that sole idea about selfish to selfless (valuing his friends more than the artifacts he wants to collect) in mind and it worked out beautifully.
There are however two caveats.
The first one is that sometimes it's HARD to know your theme before you've written the story. It can be really excruciating to FIND the answer to the question and determine what exactly it is you want your readers to experience/learn while reading your book.
The second one concerns the writing itself. If you have no idea about the characters and the rest of the plot this method of weaving in theme subconsciously might not work. And if you're still trying out your characters you might not be aware immediately what they want/what you can teach your readers through them.
It might even take one or more drafts to know your theme - and then it might be necessary to do a re-write of the whole book. But that shouldn't scare you. The more you learn about your characters and story the better it will be. There's no need to rush.
So the next time you write something try to get the basics down: the characters and what happens to them. Then think about what this teaches your readers. Or do it the other way around. What would you like your readers to know? What do you think is so valuable it must be written down for everyone to read? Then build on that with your characters.
Does this blog post help you in any way? What do you think about this approach to theme? WriteBot would love to read your thoughts in the comment section below!
Happy evening!
It's been a long day and I've finally finished preparing meals for the rest of the week (yes. This is meal prep Monday instead of Sunday!). In any case, here are some thoughts about theme, and the value of stories to readers.
So.
There are a lot of questions out there on the internet about 'What is theme?'. They usually come with the follow up question 'How can I put theme into my book?'. It's not easy to answer this and yet it's not impossible either.
Theme by itself is an ethereal thing. It's intangible (except it isn't really). It feels mythical. A lot of question marks pop up in people's heads when they hear 'theme' (or maybe those are just the literary students). Theme is a bit like a unicorn. It's beautiful but it's also shy. It's rare. It's difficult to find in most mainstream books. Has anyone seen it? Does anyone even really know what it is? Does it even exist? (Well - it should.)
A simple way to include theme in your own fiction is to ask yourself a single question before you write.
This question is:
What do your readers get out of your book once they're reading it/have read it?
It can be paraphrased into 'What do you want to show/teach people with this story?'. Hold on. I said 'teach'. But that doesn't mean 'preach'. There is no excuse for preaching and no one wants to read it, neither in fiction nor non-fiction (pay heed non-fiction authors who write textbooks!). The entire jig of theme is that it's subtle. When done well it should sink into your readers' minds (subconscious) WITHOUT them realizing that 'OH THAT IS THE POINT AUTHOR WANTED TO MAKE'. If they know it and they're not a literary student then that's usually a bad sign. Don't suffocate your reader with your opinion/theme.
All right. Back to What do your readers get out of your book once they're reading it/have read it?
This is one of the most important questions you should be thinking about as soon as you start your first draft.
The answers might be varied (and this is where theme comes in).
Your own unique answer to the question will be - or at least tie in - with your book's theme. The question can be answered in many different ways. A few examples:
When my readers read this book they gain/learn...
... an understanding of love!
... a sense of security in their life!
... how to trust!
... how to become selfless!
If you consider this well before you write the ideas that come into your mind (such as 'I want my readers to learn the value of friendship!') will automatically colour the text while you compose it. The theme will usually wind itself into the story without your being aware of it. It's how I wrote Hourglass (in which I wanted to show a greedy and selfish boy learning the value of friendship and loyalty over shiny trinkets) and Hourglass's theme is coherent throughout the five book series. And I did not plan these books. I simply wrote with that sole idea about selfish to selfless (valuing his friends more than the artifacts he wants to collect) in mind and it worked out beautifully.
There are however two caveats.
The first one is that sometimes it's HARD to know your theme before you've written the story. It can be really excruciating to FIND the answer to the question and determine what exactly it is you want your readers to experience/learn while reading your book.
The second one concerns the writing itself. If you have no idea about the characters and the rest of the plot this method of weaving in theme subconsciously might not work. And if you're still trying out your characters you might not be aware immediately what they want/what you can teach your readers through them.
It might even take one or more drafts to know your theme - and then it might be necessary to do a re-write of the whole book. But that shouldn't scare you. The more you learn about your characters and story the better it will be. There's no need to rush.
So the next time you write something try to get the basics down: the characters and what happens to them. Then think about what this teaches your readers. Or do it the other way around. What would you like your readers to know? What do you think is so valuable it must be written down for everyone to read? Then build on that with your characters.
Does this blog post help you in any way? What do you think about this approach to theme? WriteBot would love to read your thoughts in the comment section below!
Happy evening!
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