Several wonderful people have registered for this web site and I’m very grateful for your interest. Please let me know your thoughts!
I’m thinking about starting up a monthly newsletter on writing. Over the past year or so I’ve been attending some writer’s group meetings and learning all sorts of interesting tips on “how to write” I want to share. I’d also like to hear what works for you.
What do you find helpful as a writer? What do you look for as a reader? I can sometimes tell that a writer was getting close to the end and hurried up to finish it. Maybe they got bored with it and wanted it off their plate? Could it be the editor was pointing to their watch? Time’s up! Deadline!
Then there are the books where you wish the editor had been bolder about what to cut and what to leave. I’m a huge Game of Thrones fan and I’ve read all the books available. It just seems that each book is really two or three books interwoven and sometimes it’s hard to follow the threads. Mostly, right now, I’m getting really antsy about the supposed last book for the series. When will George R. R. Martin finally sit down and write it?
Right now I’m looking at the pre-steps to writing a book. How do you start? Do you just write and let it take you where it will? Do you sit down with a legal pad and plot it carefully out so you know how it starts, how it ends and how to get from one point to the other? Jess Lowery was saying at a writer’s workshop I attended, that she starts with a sentence and expands it to a paragraph. Then she takes each sentence of the paragraph and expands it to a page. She also creates a character bible that includes all the details about each character in the book. Information the reader doesn’t necessarily need to know but she as the author does to maintain consistency. She will draw the settings so she knows where everything in a room is located.
I can just start writing and let it take me where it will until I run out of gas. Somehow this seems to be a recipe for failure for me. It seems to work up to a point with short stories but then I need some kind of guide to keep me focused for books. Squirrel!
Another person at the workshop was saying to ask questions – why would the character do that? How does the character feel about what is happening to him or her?
Well if you have something to add to this please do!