creative writing

Writing Tool Box

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Here are some of the tools, articles, snippets I’ve come across this month which credit a mention, in my book at any rate…

A Cheat Sheet – do you struggle to describe body language, defaulting to the same old same old? Well this handy cheat sheet has to have a space in your resource file…

A Book – if you want even more help with describing emotions and how they affect your characters, The Emotional Thesaurus is a must for your book shelf. I’ve been using this a lot during the 2nd edit of Wolf Moon.

A List – of ideas for Facebook and Instagram Stories for Authors… apparently this is the way to go and this is a great checklist of things you can talk about for these short term posts.

A Tool– this article ‘How to Mind Map Your Novel‘ includes useful apps and software to achieve this but essentially all you need are pens and paper. I used this method to revise for exams, many years ago but hadn’t thought about using it for writing purposes!

Great Opening Lines

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Opening lines are important. Some stick in the mind longer than others and some will mean that short moment in which a reader decides to read on (that all important ‘hook’) … or not. Here are a few of mine.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must want for a wife.” Jane Austen:  Pride and Prejudice

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” Iain Banks:  The Crow Road

“124 was spiteful.” Toni Morrison:  Beloved

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were very normal, thank you very much.” J.K.Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

What are yours and why?

Planner or Panster – The Snowflake Method

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It is said that there are two kinds of writers in terms of approaching a project. The Pansters  and the Planners.

Pansters are the kind of fly by the seat of your pants (hence the name) kind of writers who don’t know where their story is going to start. Or finish for that matter. They go with the flow which ever way it may take them. One of the disadvantages reported of this approach is the danger of becoming stuck because there is no plan and the danger of having multiple unfinished projects gathering dust on the shelf.

Planners on the other hand, are the opposite, naturally. They have a plan, know where they are going, what’s going to happen when, and for that reason find it easier to deal with writers block. However, the disadvantage is that the plans can become too rigid and leave little room for change without a lot of work re-doing outlines.

If you had asked me several years ago which camp I fell in it would definitely be the first. And yes, I had in excess of six, yes 6, manuscripts all gathering that proverbial dust. But, I’m not a natural planner either, my brain is not that organised to know what I’m doing before I do it and I like to make diversions where I can.

So I guess I’m the third kind of writer (a Planster?) who falls between these two camps and with the help of the Snowflake method, I’ve learnt how to create a successful approach for my projects. Remember… I don’t profess to have any right answers. I just share what works for me. The Snowflake method allows me to combine both Pansting – I’m not sure that’s a verb 🙂 – and Planning.

It starts from the most simple premise possible, a one sentence story summary. From there nine more steps combine both plot and character development, each building on from the last step, making it very easy to go back and change things that will affect the final outcome, a detailed scene list. The system is essentially about growing your story so that you have a template from which to work from and discovers and identifies the plot holes, flat one dimensional characters and arcs before you start. So the flexibility of being a free spirit with the ability to easily re-trace your steps. What could be more perfect?

What’s more, Randy Ingermanson the creator of this method, helpfully recommends how much time you should spend on each step. This is helpful in understanding how long it will take you before you start writing the story but also will indicate if you are spending too much time on analysis and need to buckle down and start.

To find out more about the step and this method here are some resources you can consult and make up your own mind…

 

April Goals 2019

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Last Months Goals (March)

Now, I’ve had a month of two halves… the first part I spend sniffling and coughing away with a very heavy chest cold and the second half I put my back out pulling my leggings on! The pain has been excruciating (and I have a high pain threshold) and debilitating. And not to mention the distractions of another ‘B’ word I refuse to sully my blog with. So despite all that…

🙂 Publish four more parts of Wolf Moon on Wattpad – yep achieved this goal and managed to get ahead of myself as we will be away in the van May to early June.

😉 Publish Short Story – Ring of Fire this story is almost finished but needs some polishing and I’ve decided not to publish but offer as freebie to join my subscribers list…

🙁 Marketing Planner for Writer’s Journals this one got left on the back burner. It’s not one of my top priorities but I do plan to pick it up again this month if time.

🙂 Plan a Blog and Social Media Strategy for next 3 Months by the skin of my teeth and a useful filler for when Scooby had a little op and I was distracted by hourly supervised garden visits and lots of cuddles. All posts planned until end of June… feels good

😉 Complete Snowflake for Rainbow Books made a good start on this and so enjoying it, but priorities and time got the better of it… will pick it up again this month

So, what’s in store for this month?

Writing Toolbox: Four February Favourites

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We all have one don’t we? A box, a place, a file that we all store interesting stuff, useful articles, that piece of information we just have to look into one day? I can’t be the only one, surely? Every month I will share some of the things that I shove into my toolbox, it could be a useful blog post, a book I’ve read, a website or article… [Read more…] about Writing Toolbox: Four February Favourites