When I notice fellow authors winning prestigious writing awards and getting great reviews in Publishers Weekly and other influencing book review magazines, I realize what makes their work noticed. They think outside the box and take a chance on writing an unusual and meaningful novel. I then ask myself what can I do—what can you do—to bring you work to the light and set your book title on the Best Seller list.
I believe a major factor is creativity. Recently I read an article on the Internet called 10 Tips for Creativity, I reviewed it and asked myself how this could apply to writers. So many of us face deadlines that drive us forward and doesn’t leave us time to be unique. We think inside the box because it’s easier. Getting our books into the bookstores is prime. Though we certainly use original ideas to create our story, we excuse ourselves by saying there are only so many ideas in the world, and we accept that statement rather than challenge ourselves to delve into our deep creativity.
Below is a list of 10 things to remember about creativity:
1. No one is exempt - research shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work.
2. No guilt and give yourself permission to think - Don’t feel guilty about using your time to sit, to think, and to surf. This is part of writing and research. Read books on creativity for writers and experiment. Don’t assume someone is not working if they are sitting idle.
3. Make time for creative thought - Find places that are relaxing and comfortable for you to take time for uninterrupted and focused creative thought. People produce creative work when they are focused, not when they are scattered and interrupted. While time pressure can stifle creativity, research supports that it is not the deadline that stifles; it’s the distractions.
4. Capture ideas - Good ones often come before or after work—in the shower, in your car, before you go to bed, etc. Find ways to remember them without logging on or extending your work day. I keep paper and a pen with a lighted tip on my bed table. Many times I awaken to jot down an idea that came to me before falling asleep. Walking and exercising is another place that stimulates ideas for me.
5. Collaborate - The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas. If you don’t want to write as a team, use each other to brainstorm, and don’t toss out ridiculous ideas. Sometimes these ideas can stimulate others or can be toned down to become useable.
6. Be patient - The first draft of a novel is not saleable. Allow time for several ideas, iterations, and drafts before picking one. Then use that idea and expand it. Challenge it.
7. Be tenacious — Creativity depends on the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Manage your energy and find ways to renew.
8. Be curious - Explore, experiment, and find different ways to approach the novel. If you usually write in third person, experiment and give first person a try. It’s more difficult, but it might be the best way to approach your novel. Ask others how they do it.
9. Get out of your comfort zone - Try something you’ve never tried. From third person to first person is one POV, but you can find others. Perhaps you write in longer chapters. Try shortening them which means having a hook at the end of each will challenge you to write more creatively.
10. Be happy - Creativity is should give you a sense of joy. If you’re struggling with it, then you will lose the freshness of your story. You’ll put yourself back in the old box. Approach creativity like vacationing in a place you’ve always wanted to go. When you get off the plane or ship, everything is new and exciting. Writing should arouse the same feeling kinds of feeling in you. Smile and get creative.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Michael Hague's Screenwriting Tips
As I've mentioned so often, knowing something about screenplay writing is a great help in fiction writing. Michael Hauge is a screenplay writer in Hollywood and presented a full day workshop at a writers retreat I attended in Denver. Michael Hauge's Screenplay Mastery Newsletter is filled with great information for fiction writers so you might want to check it out by signing up. You can always unsubscribe if you don't find it helpful.
Sign up at http://www.screenplaymastery.com/subscribe.htm
One article in his newsletter deals with WRITING MISDEMEANORS and here is an example of another great article:
SIMPLICITY
Whenever I lecture, I ask participants to share their story ideas, so I can answer their questions, provide examples and offer suggestions. And whenever I hear the reply, "Well, it's complicated..." I know that this writer's work is not going to sell.
Successful scripts and novels (meaning commercially successful, and likely to be bought by studios and publishers) are simple. They can easily be described in a single sentence, or at the most, two. Just look at any list of current movies or novels, and read the blurbs that accompany the titles. Almost without exception, those thumbnail descriptions of the plots tell you who we're rooting for, what they want, and what they're up against.
Here are some recent examples from the New York Times bestseller lists for trade fiction (all of these titles have been made into movies as well): "A girl sues her parents after learning they want her to donate a kidney to her sibling," (My Sister's Keeper); "A hacker and a journalist investigate the disappearance of a Swedish heiress," (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo); "An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to rescue the son of his childhood friend," (The Kite Runner).
Clearly, that last blurb doesn't begin to convey the breadth, or depth, or wonderfully deep emotional experience provided by The Kite Runner. But that's not what it's designed to do. The goal of a story concept is to reduce what might be a very involved plot down to the simplest possible statement of what we're going to read or see on the screen - to tell the potential buyer of the manuscript or screenplay or book or movie who they're going to root for, what that protagonist wants, and why that desire sounds impossible to achieve.
Stories are built on a foundation of character, desire and conflict. So if a description of your own story can’t simply, easily and succinctly convey those three elements, getting it read will become nearly impossible; getting it produced or published, even more so. Because buyers of screenplays and manuscripts must always consider how they will sell your story to the mass audience – to the millions of moviegoers, TV-watchers or book readers your story will need in order to turn a profit.
If you’re writing for Hollywood, or writing genre fiction (romance novels, mysteries, thrillers, westerns, sci-fi or fantasy), the desire your hero is pursuing must have a clearly defined finish line. Your hero must want to win the love of another character, win the big game, stop the serial killer or monster or demon, find the buried treasure, or save the world. So when you’re asked what your story is about, and you begin a complicated speech detailing backstory, inner conflict, multiple plot lines and epic scope, you clearly haven’t defined or streamlined your concept enough to make it commercial – or saleable.
Don’t confuse complicated with complexity. Lots of great movies and books have original, complex, layered characters, and plots that surprise and enthrall us with unexpected twists and turns. But these qualities must emerge from a story that is, at its core, simple and easy to envision.
LA Confidential is a wonderfully complex novel and film, with multiple heroes, a compelling mystery, a rich, conflicted love story, and a vividly drawn backdrop. But if you ask what it’s about, it’s very simple: three LA cops in the 1950s must risk their lives to solve a multiple homicide at a downtown café, which forces them to confront widespread corruption in the police department. A second sentence could describe the love story and the conflict between two of the cops. But the basic story concept would remain simple, and much easier to sell.
So as you formulate any new idea for a novel or movie, before committing months or years of your life to writing and marketing it, try describing it in a single sentence. Create the blurb for the back cover or the TV listing. State, as simply as possible, who we’re rooting for, what goal she’s pursuing, how we will know when she’s achieved it, and what’s stopping her.
This simple sentence or two won’t capture all of your story’s richness, or its depth, or the theme, or the wonderful twists and turns and prose and dialogue you envision. But it will tell you if you’ve got a chance of getting it read – and sold.
-- approval to forward from Michael Hauge
Hauge points out an important issue. If you can't define your plot in simple terms you could get run over by the complex plot and miss the main point of the novel. It is easy to let a plot runaway with a story that seems to be buckshot, splattering in many directions and never hitting anything with a big impact. You want to write novels or screenplays that make an impact on readers or viewers. Keep this important tip in mind when developing a plot.
Don't forget to subscribe to Michael Hauge's Screenplay Mastery Newsletter at: http://www.screenplaymastery.com/subscribe.htm
Sign up at http://www.screenplaymastery.com/subscribe.htm
One article in his newsletter deals with WRITING MISDEMEANORS and here is an example of another great article:
SIMPLICITY
Whenever I lecture, I ask participants to share their story ideas, so I can answer their questions, provide examples and offer suggestions. And whenever I hear the reply, "Well, it's complicated..." I know that this writer's work is not going to sell.
Successful scripts and novels (meaning commercially successful, and likely to be bought by studios and publishers) are simple. They can easily be described in a single sentence, or at the most, two. Just look at any list of current movies or novels, and read the blurbs that accompany the titles. Almost without exception, those thumbnail descriptions of the plots tell you who we're rooting for, what they want, and what they're up against.
Here are some recent examples from the New York Times bestseller lists for trade fiction (all of these titles have been made into movies as well): "A girl sues her parents after learning they want her to donate a kidney to her sibling," (My Sister's Keeper); "A hacker and a journalist investigate the disappearance of a Swedish heiress," (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo); "An Afghan-American returns to Kabul to rescue the son of his childhood friend," (The Kite Runner).
Clearly, that last blurb doesn't begin to convey the breadth, or depth, or wonderfully deep emotional experience provided by The Kite Runner. But that's not what it's designed to do. The goal of a story concept is to reduce what might be a very involved plot down to the simplest possible statement of what we're going to read or see on the screen - to tell the potential buyer of the manuscript or screenplay or book or movie who they're going to root for, what that protagonist wants, and why that desire sounds impossible to achieve.
Stories are built on a foundation of character, desire and conflict. So if a description of your own story can’t simply, easily and succinctly convey those three elements, getting it read will become nearly impossible; getting it produced or published, even more so. Because buyers of screenplays and manuscripts must always consider how they will sell your story to the mass audience – to the millions of moviegoers, TV-watchers or book readers your story will need in order to turn a profit.
If you’re writing for Hollywood, or writing genre fiction (romance novels, mysteries, thrillers, westerns, sci-fi or fantasy), the desire your hero is pursuing must have a clearly defined finish line. Your hero must want to win the love of another character, win the big game, stop the serial killer or monster or demon, find the buried treasure, or save the world. So when you’re asked what your story is about, and you begin a complicated speech detailing backstory, inner conflict, multiple plot lines and epic scope, you clearly haven’t defined or streamlined your concept enough to make it commercial – or saleable.
Don’t confuse complicated with complexity. Lots of great movies and books have original, complex, layered characters, and plots that surprise and enthrall us with unexpected twists and turns. But these qualities must emerge from a story that is, at its core, simple and easy to envision.
LA Confidential is a wonderfully complex novel and film, with multiple heroes, a compelling mystery, a rich, conflicted love story, and a vividly drawn backdrop. But if you ask what it’s about, it’s very simple: three LA cops in the 1950s must risk their lives to solve a multiple homicide at a downtown café, which forces them to confront widespread corruption in the police department. A second sentence could describe the love story and the conflict between two of the cops. But the basic story concept would remain simple, and much easier to sell.
So as you formulate any new idea for a novel or movie, before committing months or years of your life to writing and marketing it, try describing it in a single sentence. Create the blurb for the back cover or the TV listing. State, as simply as possible, who we’re rooting for, what goal she’s pursuing, how we will know when she’s achieved it, and what’s stopping her.
This simple sentence or two won’t capture all of your story’s richness, or its depth, or the theme, or the wonderful twists and turns and prose and dialogue you envision. But it will tell you if you’ve got a chance of getting it read – and sold.
-- approval to forward from Michael Hauge
Hauge points out an important issue. If you can't define your plot in simple terms you could get run over by the complex plot and miss the main point of the novel. It is easy to let a plot runaway with a story that seems to be buckshot, splattering in many directions and never hitting anything with a big impact. You want to write novels or screenplays that make an impact on readers or viewers. Keep this important tip in mind when developing a plot.
Don't forget to subscribe to Michael Hauge's Screenplay Mastery Newsletter at: http://www.screenplaymastery.com/subscribe.htm
Monday, July 13, 2009
Outlining #5 – Pacing Needs Planning
The screenwriting outline article I shared with you lists a fifth and final major point for creating a dynamic story—pacing. Pacing is not only important for screenwriting. It is vital for plotting a novel. I’ve stressed this before in other articles on writing, but this will be a good review.
5. Pacing needs to flow like a river with all its hidden dangers. Through outlining the author can visual pacing before writing the book. He can see the river's calm and the turbulence and then place these scenes in the most meaningful way to impact the story.
I use the analogy of climbing into a canoe and heading down a river to a specific destination. This would be your story. It begins when your character steps into a new life event, experience or awareness. Once on a journey, it ends somewhere, and most people know their final destination. A novel must have one.
So let’s say, you’re going on a canoe trip. You climb into the boat and know you’re heading five miles down the river, but you have no idea what awaits you on your journey. The river begins calm, perhaps a few riffles in the water, but then things happen. You begin to struggles with the current. It draws you into rocks or into the trees near the shore. You battle your way out of that and then find rough water ahead, a whirlpool that’s drawing you in, another struggle to bring you back to calmer water. Then a new trial awaits you. Ahead you a towering boulder and you fight the current that sucks you in. Safe again, but then you see white water and the current picks up. Your job is to make it through the rocks to reach the calm by manipulating the canoe, fighting the current, and staying in the boat. The trip continues from one set of white water to another, each more powerful and more frightening, until you see a waterfall ahead. What can you do? Give in and go over, jump out and swim to a boulder (if that’s even possible), or be strong enough to land the canoe on shore. These are choices you must make and then achieve.
In your novels, pacing is that same kind of troubled journey. Making your character face choices creates tension, and each choice causes your characters to deal with challenges and conflicts. As the author you must decide which conflict comes first, which challenge, which danger. If you begin your novel at the waterfall, everything after it seems easy. You must decide which event adds tension to the story yet leaves room for more dangerous or more emotion conflicts to follow.
Making these decisions and organizing your plot events to build greater disasters and controversy as your story proceeds is pacing.
5. Pacing needs to flow like a river with all its hidden dangers. Through outlining the author can visual pacing before writing the book. He can see the river's calm and the turbulence and then place these scenes in the most meaningful way to impact the story.
I use the analogy of climbing into a canoe and heading down a river to a specific destination. This would be your story. It begins when your character steps into a new life event, experience or awareness. Once on a journey, it ends somewhere, and most people know their final destination. A novel must have one.
So let’s say, you’re going on a canoe trip. You climb into the boat and know you’re heading five miles down the river, but you have no idea what awaits you on your journey. The river begins calm, perhaps a few riffles in the water, but then things happen. You begin to struggles with the current. It draws you into rocks or into the trees near the shore. You battle your way out of that and then find rough water ahead, a whirlpool that’s drawing you in, another struggle to bring you back to calmer water. Then a new trial awaits you. Ahead you a towering boulder and you fight the current that sucks you in. Safe again, but then you see white water and the current picks up. Your job is to make it through the rocks to reach the calm by manipulating the canoe, fighting the current, and staying in the boat. The trip continues from one set of white water to another, each more powerful and more frightening, until you see a waterfall ahead. What can you do? Give in and go over, jump out and swim to a boulder (if that’s even possible), or be strong enough to land the canoe on shore. These are choices you must make and then achieve.
In your novels, pacing is that same kind of troubled journey. Making your character face choices creates tension, and each choice causes your characters to deal with challenges and conflicts. As the author you must decide which conflict comes first, which challenge, which danger. If you begin your novel at the waterfall, everything after it seems easy. You must decide which event adds tension to the story yet leaves room for more dangerous or more emotion conflicts to follow.
Making these decisions and organizing your plot events to build greater disasters and controversy as your story proceeds is pacing.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Outline #4 – Developing Subplot Arcs
The Gideon conference offered me some interesting concepts to think about, and one of the topics was outlining plot elements for a dynamic film or book. The fourth point under outlining dealt with developing subplot arcs.
4. Develop subplot arcs affect the main plot. Weave these subplot arcs through the novel rather than dropping them into the story and then resolving them early. A subplot must make an impact on the main story and change it in a meaningful way by adding conflict.
Perhaps the word “arc” is a concept not well known to some writers. An arc in fiction is the journey with its ups and downs. It’s the rise of conflicts and the resolving and the next rise to a new conflict. The arc, then, shows the effect of change. To see it visually, picture the pattern of a stock market’s journey from month to month. This pattern is seen in all the arcs: characters and story, but in this case I’m talking about subplots.
Subplots are subordinate plots, woven throughout the story, that relate to the main plot and affect the story’s outcome. In a story where a detective is searching for a serial killer, a subplot might be that the detective learns his wife wants a divorce. Obviously this affects the detective's mood, concentration, contentment, lifestyle and many other life aspects. It will obviously add stressto his life and draw on his energy.
When adding a subplot, authors must create an arc for it just as they do for the total plot. This means organizing the various subplot points with growing conflict and then deciding where they can fall within the main plot to create the greatest stress and conflict to the main story. In the Detective plot, you might decide the first step would involve the detective’s suspicion that something isn’t right at home. Should this be revealed through introspection or dialogue? You would make that decision. When will this happen in the major plot?
These decisions create the subplot’s arc, creating its own plot points and then weaving it through the main spot in the most effective way.
Creating powerful stories means adding complexities to the plot and subplots is one way to do this. It makes the story real, since real people have numerous "subplots" in their lives from dealing with children, spouse, work environment, social life, temptations, finances, and friends or familiy who have issues that affect the person. Life is complex, and subplots make our stories like real life.
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