oi!

This forum is for writing tips of your own or some from somebody else.

Here are the 13 tips my favorite author Chuch Palahniuk has:


Number One: Two years ago, when I wrote the first of these essays it was about my "egg timer method" of writing. You never saw that essay, but here's the method: When you don't want to write, set an egg timer for one hour (or half hour) and sit down to write until the timer rings. If you still hate writing, you're free in an hour. But usually, by the time that alarm rings, you'll be so involved in your work, enjoying it so much, you'll keep going. Instead of an egg timer, you can put a load of clothes in the washer or dryer and use them to time your work. Alternating the thoughtful task of writing with the mindless work of laundry or dish washing will give you the breaks you need for new ideas and insights to occur. If you don't know what comes next in the story… clean your toilet. Change the bed sheets. For Christ sakes, dust the computer. A better idea will come.

Number Two: Your audience is smarter than you imagine. Don't be afraid to experiment with story forms and time shifts. My personal theory is that younger readers distain most books - not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today's reader is smarter. Movies have made us very sophisticated about storytelling. And your audience is much harder to shock than you can ever imagine.

Number Three: Before you sit down to write a scene, mull it over in your mind and know the purpose of that scene. What earlier set-ups will this scene pay off? What will it set up for later scenes? How will this scene further your plot? As you work, drive, exercise, hold only this question in your mind. Take a few notes as you have ideas. And only when you've decided on the bones of the scene - then, sit and write it. Don't go to that boring, dusty computer without something in mind. And don't make your reader slog through a scene in which little or nothing happens.

Number Four: Surprise yourself. If you can bring the story - or let it bring you - to a place that amazes you, then you can surprise your reader. The moment you can see any well-planned surprise, chances are, so will your sophisticated reader.

Number Five: When you get stuck, go back and read your earlier scenes, looking for dropped characters or details that you can resurrect as "buried guns." At the end of writing Fight Club, I had no idea what to do with the office building. But re-reading the first scene, I found the throw-away comment about mixing nitro with paraffin and how it was an iffy method for making plastic explosives. That silly aside (… paraffin has never worked for me…) made the perfect "buried gun" to resurrect at the end and save my storytelling ass.

Number Six: Use writing as your excuse to throw a party each week - even if you call that party a "workshop." Any time you can spend time among other people who value and support writing, that will balance those hours you spend alone, writing. Even if someday you sell your work, no amount of money will compensate you for your time spent alone. So, take your "paycheck" up front, make writing an excuse to be around people. When you reach the end of your life - trust me, you won't look back and savor the moments you spent alone.

Number Seven: Let yourself be with Not Knowing. This bit of advice comes through a hundred famous people, through Tom Spanbauer to me and now, you. The longer you can allow a story to take shape, the better that final shape will be. Don't rush or force the ending of a story or book. All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes. You don't have to know every moment up to the end, in fact, if you do it'll be boring as hell to execute.

Number Eight: If you need more freedom around the story, draft to draft, change the character names. Characters aren't real, and they aren't you. By arbitrarily changing their names, you get the distance you need to really torture a character. Or worse, delete a character, if that's what the story really needs.

Number Nine: There are three types of speech - I don't know if this is TRUE, but I heard it in a seminar and it made sense. The three types are: Descriptive, Instructive, and Expressive. Descriptive: "The sun rose high…" Instructive: "Walk, don't run…" Expressive: "Ouch!" Most fiction writers will only use one - at most, two - of these forms. So use all three. Mix them up. It's how people talk.

Number Ten: Write the book you want to read.

Number Eleven: Get author book jacket photos taken now, while you're young. And get the negatives and copyright on those photos.

Number Twelve: Write about the issues that really upset you. Those are the only things worth writing about. In his course, called "Dangerous Writing," Tom Spanbauer stresses that life is too precious to spend it writing tame, conventional stories to which you have no personal attachment. There are so many things that Tom talked about but that I only half remember: the art of "manumission," which I can't spell, but I understood to mean the care you use in moving a reader through the moments of a story. And "sous conversation," which I took to mean the hidden, buried message within the obvious story. Because I'm not comfortable describing topics I only half-understand, Tom's agreed to write a book about his workshop and the ideas he teaches. The working title is "A Hole In The Heart," and he plans to have a draft ready by June 2006, with a publishing date set in early 2007.

Number Thirteen: Another Christmas window story. Almost every morning, I eat breakfast in the same diner, and this morning a man was painting the windows with Christmas designs. Snowmen. Snowflakes. Bells. Santa Claus. He stood outside on the sidewalk, painting in the freezing cold, his breath steaming, alternating brushes and rollers with different colors of paint. Inside the diner, the customers and servers watched as he layered red and white and blue paint on the outside of the big windows. Behind him the rain changed to snow, falling sideways in the wind.

The painter's hair was all different colors of gray, and his face was slack and wrinkled as the empty ass of his jeans. Between colors, he'd stop to drink something out of a paper cup.

Watching him from inside, eating eggs and toast, somebody said it was sad. This customer said the man was probably a failed artist. It was probably whiskey in the cup. He probably had a studio full of failed paintings and now made his living decorating cheesy restaurant and grocery store windows. Just sad, sad, sad.

This painter guy kept putting up the colors. All the white "snow," first. Then some fields of red and green. Then some black outlines that made the color shapes into Xmas stockings and trees.

A server walked around, pouring coffee for people, and said, "That's so neat. I wish I could do that…"

And whether we envied or pitied this guy in the cold, he kept painting. Adding details and layers of color. And I'm not sure when it happened, but at some moment he wasn't there. The pictures themselves were so rich, they filled the windows so well, the colors so bright, that the painter had left. Whether he was a failure or a hero. He'd disappeared, gone off to wherever, and all we were seeing was his work.

Here's a few things I've learned along the way... if I think of more or learn more, I'll come back.

1. Don't limit yourself to one good idea. Don't come up with one idea that is solid, because you'll find yourself stretching it to fill the pages. Instead, come up with as many solid ideas as you can, then learn to combine the ones that can be combined. You'll learn to tell what is a good generic idea (or plot) and what is a good specific (or plot element/occurrence). Alfred Hitchcock did similar things, he would think of something fantastic (say, filming a murder mystery in San Fransisco-"Vertigo"-then he'd add more). A story is better if it combines lots of good ideas. And yes, it's hard sometimes to make that decision to combine ideas, because sometimes it feels like you're losing something that could have been bigger by itself. If this is the case, you can come back to it later and develop it by itself.

2. If you have difficulty with completing long projects, like a novel for example, learn a method for writing in spurts. For me, instead of writing chapters that bleed into each other, I treat each chapter as a short story. So, I can start a thought and finish a thought. If I don't come back to my story in a year, it makes it easier to pick back up without disrupting the flow. I also try to find a song or collection of songs for long-term projects. I'll listen to these tunes to help take me back to the project and the proper frame of mind for it.

3. Create a Word document on your computer and call it Brainstorming (or in my case, "Brainstew". Every time you have an idea, no matter how small, write it in. Eventually, this will make blending ideas easier and this will also ensure that you won't forget your good ideas. As I write the ideas, I go back and write in the title of the story and whether I have completed the idea or still in progress with it.


That's all I can think of for now. Peace out, peeps. Happy writing.

Ingest.

I like King's saying: you need to be reading 4 hours a day if you want to be a good writer.

How do you know what to write if you don't know what is written?

Or as my favorite David Robinson poster said at my school library: Readers Become Leaders. Of course it helps when you are 7 feet tall like he was.

The Admiral! Hook shots make you a better writer.

Vonneguts ten:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

According to Vonny, this is the important point when it comes to writing. Add value for your readers by providing them with a great reading experience or by giving them free information they can use in their professional or personal life.

It’s not about under-promising and over-delivering. It’s about making sure that your audience comes away with something after visiting your website. Don’t just sell. Provide experiences that help you sell.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Be more open about yourself. Readers can’t completely relate to your content, product or service if the author was nameless, faceless and bio-less. Fatten up your ‘About’ Page and welcome your reader. Remember, familiarity breeds comfort. And comfort leads to reader and consumer loyalty.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

You need to have an opinion or a voice. Sitting on the fence is safe but safe isn’t attractive. Declare your opinions on how you want something to be changed or different, even if your thoughts are different from many others.

Ambition and a strong authorial persona are powerful motivational magnets which attract readers and buyers.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

Your content should reflect your authentic opinion on a topic or show more of the persona you have created for your blog. Each sentence must persuasively pre-sell the ultimate meaning or objective of your content. Write to the point and don’t meander around by wasting words on irrelevant topics.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

Write with a goal in mind. What do you want your reader to get out of the post they are reading? What is your thesis or argument? What are you trying to explain or push/sell/promote? Keeping these factors in mind makes your article and website purposeful and relevant.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

This is about building reader and customer empathy. Easiest way to do this is to share life experiences (especially the horrid ones) with others.

Creating emotional bonds with your audience is the easiest way to build a longterm relationship with your readers and a consistent consumer base.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Don’t write in order to make everyone happy. It’s a futile effort which makes your writing feel stunted and forced. Don’t even try to manage the myriad number of different reader expectations, all of which are fickle or susceptible to change.

What Vonnegut means is that if you can just relate to one reader, you can relate to the entire world. Write in first person to evoke trust and build direct relationships with your audience. Use “yours” and “you” instead of “his” and “hers”.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Make your website as complete a resource as possible in order to encourage bookmarking, blogrolling and return visits. Don’t make your readers search elsewhere on the internet when you can easily provide one or two extra links that’ll enrich their understanding of the topic.

You want to empower them so they’ll share your vision or perspective as much as possible. This is crucial when your success is very much dependable on their level of involvement or active support.

when I'm writing I like not knowing the ending. It's more fun that way and it keeps you on your toes so to speak. If you already know everything that is going to happen in your story then you may get bored with it and abandoned it. I mean, whats the fun in predictable?

Zombie Punk wrote:

QUOTE:
when I'm writing I like not knowing the ending. It's more fun that way and it keeps you on your toes so to speak. If you already know everything that is going to happen in your story then you may get bored with it and abandoned it. I mean, whats the fun in predictable?

So true. Though my stories get to random sometimes, I think..

I found what works best for me, is:

1: Sleep deprivation.

2: Coffee.

3: Alcohol.

4: Mixing and matching the above listed. Get some interesting results. All my best stories come from when I'm tired though. Which is good I guess, as I'm always tired