There comes a day when you pause reading long enough to mutter to yourself ‘maybe I should right one’. You believe you can do a good job, and rightly so. After all, you have done your research in the form of countless sleepless nights and novels hidden under textbooks. You know the gig and you go for it. But then the breaks hit and you can’t seem to move again. You have the ‘feels’ and ‘vibes’ and the ideas, but how and where do you start? How in the literary hell are you supposed to continue? Well, I am here to help you.
This is a list of tips, tricks, and cheat codes I have compiled over the years from many troubled writers by ear and of course, over the social media.
General tips
If you as a reader would skip over something in a book, skip it from your writing as well.
Never, ever, use ‘said’ to attribute a dialogue.
Do not go overboard with character, place, or object descriptions. There should be a play on subtle information that would help your reader know all about your characters, without it being shoved down their throats. On a similar note, descriptions of clothes comforts, and food might be used to hint at the warmness or coolness of the temperature (For example, Hot Cocoa and Fuzzy socks says its Winter). Trust your judgement and use one to describe the other. Don’t explain every single thing.
Know your ending. Do not build up to something you have no clue about, this will help you avoid coincidences. Knowing your ending will help you plant easter eggs in the story that we all love.
We all go through a ‘brain fart’ where we forget what a certain something is called. When you encounter something like this, just insert an obviously bizarre word like ‘JOKER’. You can replace these words during editing, and your writing spree won’t be halted because of your brain misfiring.
Understand the difference between a villain and an antagonist. This is very important as it will shape your story. A villain’s motives are important to the plot, whereas antagonist actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something.
Use your own story structure. Your story is unique and yours to tell, it doesn’t have to match a best seller you admire. Have trust in your process.
Breakdown your book into different tasks by weeks or months and thus make a schedule for the year.
Chekhov’s Gun: This comes from Anton Chekhov’s alleged famous book writing advice: “If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.” This means that every element you introduce to your story should have a function.
Where to start
Worldbuilding
Decide your time period.
Think of city and town names.
Finalise the living conditions and trade systems in your story.
Characters
Decide on key personality traits your characters start with, and what those develop into towards the end.
At the very beginning, have a good idea of how the protagonists surroundings wiold be like. Would they have a troubled domestic life, or would they be an orphan surrounded by quirky friends?
Governing body
Decide what kind of political system your literary world would have. For example,
Democracy
Monarchy
Dictatorship
Communism
…and so on.
Plan whether your political system will be affected by the decisions or actions of your characters.
First Sentence – How to Open
Introduce a cool concept and surprise the reader. Make the reader ask questions. Have a unique voice, that would intrigue the reader into turning the page.
My favourite opening is from The Restaurant at The End Of the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Do’s and Don’ts
Emotions
Do not just say “he was heartbroken.” Instead make the readers visualise it, using something like: “His trembling hands set the coffee down before he could spill it over his wrinkled sweatpants, his quivering lips made it impossible for him to maintain a smile and pretend that everything was alright”.
I should point it out that while it is great to create a visualisation of the emotions experienced by a character, it’s always a drawl when it goes longer than two to three sentences. So steer clear of that.
Info-dumps
For those who haven’t heard of this before, an info-dump refers to areas of writing where the author gives a long expository description. This can be either in narrative or dialogue. Avoid-info dumps at all costs! We all love Kate Daniels, but while she is on point when it comes to mythology, you end up feeling like its a scroll down the wikipedia page instead.
Here is how to detect an info-dump, and how to avoid it from happening according to Bucket Siler of The Literary Architect.
Read your paragraph out loud, if you get bored or think that others might get bored, you probably have info-dumped.
Are your characters telling each other things they already know? This could be info dumpling, and cringe as well.
Stories call for some information, and incorporating those might end up looking like a block of unnecessary information. The way you can avoid that is by sprinkling your worldbuilding information, that you need your readers to have, throughout the story in short clusters of two to three sentences. Also, this can be genre specific; readers of ‘fantasy’ will be much more tolerant towards a bunch of information that’d help the world building.
Sentences
Do not stick to similar sentence lengths. It makes your story sound monotonous. Just like this paragraph.
This does not mean making long elaborate illustration of your story is anything but a drag that is slowly making your readers lose focus, enabling them to skip part and miss out on something important in your literary world. Just like this.
Your texts should be a random mix of short, long, and medium sentences. It shouldn’t sound rushed. Or boring. Your writing should essentially make music.
When stuck
Now that you have somehow typed your way to the middle of the story, how do you continue? I have listed few cheap tricks you could do to get going.
Think of what could possibly go wrong in your story and do exactly that. You may have more than one mishaps in your hands, but you can always remove the extras. Also, they could come in handy in your future projects.
Switch point of view to another character.
Take a break and read someone else’s writing to refresh your mind.
Pull a Cassandra Clare and kill a character of importance.
Outline your ending.
Some apps that will help you write
(By Ryland)
Young Authors – Author’s social media.
Freewrite – A writing timer.
Character Generator -Build your people.
Name Generator – No more baby name ideas books.
Go forth my future Sarah J Maases and conquer!