Z is for Zzzzz

Tired? I’m pretty wiped out. It’s been an intense month for blogging. I started off doing one or two posts a week in February and now I’ve done 26 in 30 days. That’s quite a leap. I had planned to do them in advance and have them scheduled ahead of time, but you know how that goes. 

It was a great experience, and I’m very pleased with what I managed to scrape together — although, if I had planned things better I would have edited my posts to be more concise and focused.

I doubled the amount of followers and most of my posts got a fair amount of comments, leading to some interesting debates. Those of you that stopped by on a regular basis, thank you for responding to my thoughts and ideas. I’m sure traffic will fall off after the challenge finishes, but I hope some of you will continue to drop by. I tried to visit as many blogs as I could, I hope to keep that up as much as possible.

So what next? 

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Y is for YA FTW!

I have been roaming around the blogosphere for the last three months, and there are two things that have stood out for me when encountering other blogging writers.

Firstly, the vast majority of these writers are female. There’s no one particular kind of woman, it goes from school age through to young mothers, to frazzled soccer moms, to silver haired retirees. But it is very, very definitely not a man's world (we’re outnumbered Little Big Horn style).

The other striking thing is the genre most women choose to write in: Fantasy. I found this quite odd, I don’t recall girls reading much of this sort of thing when I was a kid. Not many D&D girls crossed my path (oh, if only...). But from princes and faeries, to werewolves and witches, it is very much the genre of the moment. And with a strong tendency towards the Young Adult end of the market.

This is my impression. I don’t have any stats to corroborate it with. Am I way off? Allow me to dig myself a little deeper.

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X is for X-Rated Expletives

Swearing — it isn't big and it isn't clever. Not unless you do it properly (then it's fantastic). There's a joy to swearing that is undeliable. The words feel good. And they can feel bad. It's all in the delivery. And it's also in the predisposition of the recipient. Some people have issues with the words in whatever context they may appear, and that's understandable. But in order to look at their use (and abuse) I will be using them freely, in widescreen and technicolor, so fair warning.

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W is for Write What You Know?

I think this proclamation is often misunderstood, certainly in this form. A better way to put it, I feel, is ‘Use what you know.’

Obviously if you know a lot about the subject that you're writing about then you will bring an authenticity to it. Your words will carry authority. The confidence you feel in the words you put on the page will transfer to the reader. One of the biggest issues for aspiring writers is feeling their story is going to be doubted. People will say, ‘You said she was going to a cool party. I wouldn’t want to go to a party like the one you’ve described. How can you think this is cool?’ 

This kind of insecurity is at the root of a lot of the vague, detail withholding, coy writing at the start of stories. If I don’t say exactly what I mean, no one can judge me. I may not have proved I’m right, but nobody can prove I’m wrong.

One of the ways to get round this 'retreat into the comfortably obscure' is to write what you know to be true. I went to a party like this, it was damn cool, and I don’t care who thinks otherwise. That confidence from experience can get you over that initial hurdle of self-doubt.

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V is for the Value of a Vader

When somebody gets famous for something, sports or movies or whatever, they become admired and respected. Sometimes adored. People want to see them, write to them, stare at photographs of them. If they appear in an advert saying how refreshing they find Pepsi, people who have tried Pepsi before and found it sweet and sickly, will suddenly decide it’s their favourite beverage.

It’s a strange thing, but fine. We as people influence each other and affect each other’s view of the world, and some people have a greater influence than others. But the one area I find most perplexing is the collecting of autographs. What does it mean to have someone sign their name on a piece of paper and give it to you?

In my whole life there was only one time I got a famous person to write their signature for me. That person was Darth Vader.

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U is for Unexpected Delivery

Within a story the plot will go in various directions and surprises and revelations will occur. But in between all that people will move around and interact, and that’s where writers can come undone. Informing readers of ordinary activities in ordinary ways is going to slide through their heads without really registering. Even if a story is true, if the events are described accurately and with authentic touches, that won’t necessarily make it interesting.

Giving a character goal, even a simple one like making a coffee, and then showing them achieving that goal, is dull. But some writers think if they show the process in great detail it implants meaning and resonance to the mundane. And sometimes it does (but not automatically — you have to know what you’re doing and what effect it will have on the reader). If I think I know what’s going on, and it turns out it’s exactly what I thought, whether it was a big plot twist or some tiny incidental moment, it will deaden my curiosity. Even if there’s plenty of exciting things to come, I will detach from the story, skim or skip bits or give up altogether, because my desire to know what happens next isn’t being stimulated. And dammit, it’s the writer's job to stimulate me.

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T is for Toil and Trouble

Looking for trouble? You better be, because story is all about conflict and tension. Trouble needs to be in the rear view mirror or on the horizon or next to you in the passenger seat, or all three. If it's happening right now then you should have the reader gripped. Of course, you don't always want to be in the middle of it. But even when you're in between moments of high drama there should still be a sense of it around.

If trouble is approaching then it needs to be foreshadowed. A man sunbathing on the beach feeling relaxed and happy is not very interesting. Even if it is intended as the lull before the storm and a few paragraphs later an aeroplane falls out of the sky into the ocean in front of him, that section of him catching rays needs to have something about it that suggests the approaching catastrophe. 

You can do that in many ways (and I will go into that little later) but if you don't, if you decide you want the contrast of a relaxed easygoing moment before things go haywire, the problem is people will skim it and there's nothing you can do to stop that if you don't add some kind of tension.

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S is for Sympathy for the Devil

Make your MC likeable, right? Give the reader something to relate to. Give the bad boy a soft spot. Show he has his heart in the right place. A moment of selflessness. Save a cat. Rescue a turtle. Lend money to a chimp.

Which would you rather read about, a dull, tedious, sympathetic character, or an exciting, daring, son of a bitch?

Obviously you don’t have to make it one or the other, but I would suggest when choosing between interesting and  sympathetic, the primary area of concern is how entertaining your character is, not how much they give to charitable causes.

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R is for Reading Writing Out Loud

You should read your work aloud. Definitely. When you’re alone, when you can’t be overheard, speak the whole thing. Don't mumble or whisper it under your breath. As though you were reading it to someone, which you are (yourself). It will help. It is a little tedious, maybe even excruciating. It will help. 

But there are some drawbacks you need to be aware of.

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Q is for Questions, Questions, Questions

For this post I thought I would answer any questions people have on writing, about their own wip or just in general. I can’t promise the answer will be useful, or interesting or correct, but I can guarantee every question will get an answer of some kind.

Leave questions in the comments section and I will repost it in the main body of the post along with a link to your blog, so a bit of promotion for you also.

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