I get asked all of the time “why don’t I have my fire for writing anymore?”
It’s because you’ve 1. put so much pressure on yourself TO write 2. you’ve spent so much time putting down your writing and 3. you’ve made yourself feel inadequate anytime you couldn’t write
So now you’re over here, in this cycle of unhealthy mannerisms and thought processes about your writing when you should be having fun with it.
Ultimately, something about writing seemed fun to you when you started, right? Otherwise, why would you have started? Whether it was the idea of reading a story that didn’t exist yet, whether you thought the act of writing or worldbuilding or character creation was fun, something about writing seemed fun and enjoyable to you.
But you twisted it and twisted it until it became a pretzel of self-sabotaging insults and pressure until now you’ve popped and all of that expanding air of excitement and joy you used to get from writing has released from your brain and now you’re just mentally exhausted.
Take time to relax and to repair your bubble so that you can begin to expand and blow it up again.
You need rest after you’ve put yourself through so much. It’s okay to take a step back for a bit, revitalize your brain, your creativity… it’s okay. Take a little time away from writing.
You don’t have to be writing 24/7 to be valid or good or even great.
You simply being is enough. Allow your brain rest sometimes.
How do you deal with hecklers? Do you ignore them, do you take their advice?
Brandon Sanderson: So, it depends. Hecklers, I ignore. Criticism, I don’t. I am lucky in that I have a team, and I, these days, have my team watch. Like, “You read the one-star reviews. Tell me if there are things popping up that I need to pay attention to,” and things like that.
Reading one-star reviews is generally a bad experience, but reading three-star reviews is usually a really handy experience for you to do. That’s what you’re looking for, those three-stars, the people that could have loved the book– and if you give it three stars, you liked it, but there were things that bugged you.
And if you start seeing themes like that pop up, try to address them.
But also understand that art is about taste. Every type of art. And you are going to write things that are the right piece of art, but that somebody doesn’t like. Just like some people don’t like my favorite food. Some people hate it. I like mac and cheese, other people hate it. I have a friend who hates ice cream. I’m like, “What? Who hates ice cream?” But he hates ice cream. It’s okay.
So, learn to separate taste from things that are actually skill level problems. And as you’re a new writer, in particular, focusing on craft, just practicing, is more important than the feedback, often, on your first few books. ‘Cause you’ll know. You’ll figure it out. Your first couple books, you’ll be like, “They don’t have to tell me; I know what parts are not working.” But you can’t get better at that until you write them.
Things I wish I could tell my younger writer self…
Step away from the thesaurus. Put down that list of SAT words. Yes, those are all great words to know, I agree, but maybe they don’t ALL need to go in one story?
Because the perfect word isn’t always the right word. Sometimes the perfect word is exactly the wrong word and, actually, several not-quite right words can come together and create a better whole than that one perfect word ever could.
“It was like a conflagration lit in his chest, swallowing his heart. ”
“It was like a fire lit in his chest; one tiny spark that jumped to a bush, to a tree, to a second tree, to a third, and soon there was an entire goddamn forest fire blazing inside him, swallowing his heart.”
Writearound the perfect word. Look it up, figure out the etymology, the specifics, the nuance, and then write that into the story. Think of the perfect word, by all means, but then strap it down, slice it open, and show us its guts. Expose to the air and sunlight the places where it’s joined, where it’s been comfortable, where it’s been safe, and teasethat apart to your reader. (See? Instead of “dissect” which would have been perfect but it wouldn’t have been vivid or impactful or right)
SO, I LOVE fanfiction, it is my main source of entertainment and joy in life, especially in these troubled times.
And I read a variety of fandoms and pairings
I also WRITE fanfiction; usually inspired by an episode/part of the book/movie not going the way I would like it to (usually in respect of my OTP of choice)
Now, I don’t write for every fandom I read, but I have written something in most of the fandoms I have become invested in.
HOWEVER, whenever I start to write something that is getting lengthier, something I am really starting to feel proud of, its like I run out of steam. I, along with my readers, am DESPERATE to know what happens next (or sometimes, I have the end all mapped out but am stuck between here and there). BUT I AM TOTALLY BLOCKED AND HAVE NO WAY TO GET THERE!
Way back when, LJ used to be the place I would go to beg for assistance from the relevant community, but its so desolate and forgotten now. And although I LIVE on AO3, there is no facility on there (that I am aware of) to ask for assistance beyond maybe leaving a Note on the story itself (which I have done on some)
Currently, I have about a dozen fics of varying lengths in a variety of fandoms; some of which I don’t even read anymore, but I CAN’T bring myself t orphan or abandon the fics because I am proud of them and I really want to see them finished; I just need a little help and/or inspiration.
I am begging for assistance/guidance/ANYTHING. If anyone is interested in helping or has any ideas where I could/should go for help, please PLEASE let me know.
First of all: Deep breath. Most writers who work at longer lengths (here suggesting 40K+ as a general starter/target length) have been where you are right now. It’s not an inescapable dead end. At worst it’s like being a Roomba banging repeatedly head-first into a corner.
What needs to happen for you here is for you to get yourself un-cornered at least once, so that you’ll know by experience that it’s possible. After that you’ll be able to carry that certainty along with you to free up other stuck works.
So let’s take this step by step.
(1) First of all: assess the spread of works that you’re most desperate to get going on. Identify the one that you’re most desperate about; the one for the sake of which you’d gladly murder someone to get it going again and completed.
(2)Put that one aside. There’s too much energy bound up in it, and if the tactics to follow don’t work for you, you might lose heart.
(3) Pick the one that came up second to that work as the one you’re most desperate to complete. This is the one you’re going to operate on. I use the term both advisedly and with intent to indicate what’s going to happen.
(4) Identify, in advance, a period during which you’ll have a quiet… afternoon? (or similar period, judging by what you know to be a comfortable reading speed) to read through what you’ve got of that work in prose form (not your notes, but the actual written work). The pieces do not have to be connected.
(5) On the day you’ve chosen, take the work out and read it top to bottom. No rewriting. You can take notes if anything useful occurs to you, but otherwise, leave it alone.
(6) Now put it away for a week. NO PEEKING. Go do something else, be something else, read something else. Anything else. Lots of anything else but not,underanycircumstances,that.
(7) After a week, take it out again. Your dealings with the work in this pass are going to be strictly diagnostic. You have three questions to ask yourself about this work, and answer. If you can’t find answers to them all within a day or two, put the work aside and come back a week later and have at it again. The questions are these:
(a)What is this story about? (Boil it down to the most prominent trope. “Love will find a way.” “Sometimes you have to suffer.” “Your first choice could be wrong: don’t be afraid to change your mind.” Etc.)
(b) Regarding the overall arc of what story you’ve got: Who does it hurt? (Meaning: who is the person, and what is the situation, to or from whom/which most of the pain [and therefore the drama] in this story flows?
(9) Now comes the stage where so often the magic happens if you know what question(s) to ask next. …My experience with stoppages of this kind in the past has shown me that routinely there is a motivational element or plot problem that you haven’t sufficiently thought through. Most often of all, like 85% of the time or better, this takes the form of character business that hasn’t been sufficiently resolved. Once you get it resolved, the stoppage routinely comes undone.
So you need to find a couple of chairs. One of them is for you. One of them is for one of your characters. Because routinely there will be an important character who needs to have a conversation with you – one who has something important to share with you about why this isn’t working.
You get to “sit” that character down in that chair and say to them, “What do you have to tell me that you haven’t told me before?”
And then you wait.
You may not get anything back right away. This is normal, because this technique routinely freaks everybody out (including experienced psychiatric professionals, like yours truly). Keep your butt in the hot seat and keep theirs there too. Wait for an answer.
Routinely you’ll get something back within an hour or so. It may take longer. The exigencies of life do often impinge and you may have to get up and go do something else. But every day, you need to sit in the chair and sit them down and ask them again, “What have you got to tell me?”
The answer will routinely surprise you. It may turn up in the middle of the night. It may come to you in a dream. It may come up in conversation with someone real. But it will arrive.
When it does: (a) write it down, FFS. And then (b), consider what to do with it. But again, routinely, a way forward will suddenly appear. May indeed seem obvious. Resist the urge to bang your head against the wall.
Then start writing again.
So: give that a shot and see how it works for you. If you need more assistance, you know where to find me.
You don’t have to “raise the stakes” by perpetually making every villain supposedly Bigger and Badder and Stronger than the one before, you can raise the stakes just by steadily giving your hero more to potentially lose.
If your hero is a loner fighting a bad guy in order to stay alive or to protect innocents, those are good starting stakes! If your hero is fighting a villain of roughly the same caliber five years later, but now they have a spouse and a home and fire-forged friends who are ALSO involved and thus at risk from the conflict–then you have HIGHER STAKES.
Like, they don’t have to be objectively higher–the villain could be trying to kill a hundred people in both cases–but if we go from “one character and 99 strangers” to “a dozen characters who love each other and 88 people they more or less know,” those are NARRATIVELY higher stakes.
(Please also note that you do NOT have to keep up a certain consistent rate of loss in order to keep suspense. In fact, any formulaic rate of loss risks cutting off audience investment, because if they know someone is going to die every finale they’re not going to get attached.
But also, you can keep up a LOT of audience suspense without actual loss as long as you can make loss feel narratively plausible–look at the MP100 and Gravity Falls fandoms around their respective finales, for instance! People were freaking out because they loved these characters and could imagine narratively fitting endings where someone died, even though–looking at the medium–a main character is unlikely to die in something like a Disney cartoon.)
Hyper-specific advice because I don’t see enough of this!
make your characters have inaccurate perceptions of themselves. your character might think they’re selfish but at every opportunity they act selfless. we all have blind spots so give these to your characters too! (this works best with first person pov but I’m sure you can do it in third.)
make a character’s personality trait helpful sometimes and harmful other times. impulsivity that makes them act quickly in high-stress situations which is great but it also sometimes results in the wrongchoices.
make an excel/google sheets doc for your outline. for mine i have the chapter number, the date, the character pov (since mine is first person and switches between 5 characters), a summary column, and a continuity column. my story takes place in one setting but most stories have multiple locations, so you could include a column for that, the time of day, even the moon phase (one of my wips is from the perspective of animals so that is super important for that story).
you can also use excel/sheets for keeping track of your conlang. for my animal wip i have constructed a language called Vannro and I have 300 some-odd entries into my excel doc. i have columns for the Vannro word, the English translation, etymology and derived words (for some), the part of speech, and the subject. you can easily sort in alphabetical either in English or your conlang, and also sort by excluding all entries that aren’t under the subject “derogatory” or “places” etc. I always forget what my “be” verbs are so I sort through the part of speech column so I can find “is” “was” “are” etc.
use perspective to create tension for your reader. for example, in The Blackwater Anomaly in a chapter from Rainer’s pov, we experience his nightmare, however in a later chapter from Holly’s pov, when she asks him directly, he lies and says he hasn’t experienced any nightmares. Holly doesn’t know he is lying but the audience does. I also have characters who do notget chapters from their perspective, who may or may not be lying, and so both the audience and the characters experience that anxiety and uncertainty together.
consider using deep pov. you can read some articles about it but essentially you make the audience experience the story at the same time as the character and it makes your narration more active. this can also be done in third person. this has a lot to do with “show don’t tell” (although sometimes its better to just tell). remove some “telling” words like “thought/felt/saw” and just get directly into what’s happening. instead of “Ava saw a shadow fall across her shoulder” make it “a shadow fell across her shoulder”. your reader will know who you’re talking about. this even jumps into the unreliable narrator when you change “I felt like Isaiah was blowing me off” to “Isaiah blew me off.” the former has room for doubt and makes your character seem weaker. if she thinks she’s being blown off and she’s pissed about it, make her say that! you have to make the audience believe it’s true, it makes them more invested in the character’s experiences and emotions. and then if they later find out Isaiah wasn’t really blowing them off, there was an emergency or something, both the character and the audience can feel regretful together over misreading the situation and being pissed at Isaiah. if you leave room for doubt, then your reader will just feel unsurprised during the reveal and frustrated at your character for being stupid up until then.
you don’t have to “show” everything. sometimes there’s boring parts of a narrative that no one really cares about. you can either make a break in the text to show a time skip happened when your character was driving from point a to point b or you can give a paragraph or two about the drive, just telling what happened, even include an accident on the side of the road or an unexpected and frustrating road closure. its a very mundane and relatable aspect in our lives and we don’t need to be “shown” these, we can just be told. summarize the nonessential by telling or just skip it.
Reread your old writing. Especially those scenes you’re proud of
Write something silly. Doesn’t need to be logical, or included in your story. Write something dumb
Compare your old writing to your new writing. Seeing how much you’ve improved is a great way to get motivated
Explore different storylines. Those type of storylines that would never make it into your novel, but that you’d still like to explore
Choose one of your least favorite scenes, or a really old one, and rewrite it
Read old comments from people praising your work
Create a playlist of music that reminds you of your wip
Don’t push yourself to get back to what made you stop writing in the first place. Write something else
Write what you want to write, no matter how cliché it might be perceived as. It doesn’t matter. If you want to write it, write it.
Take a break and focus on another hobby of yours. Consume other pieces of media, or take a walk to clear your head
You don’t have to write in chronological order from the very beginning if it isn’t working for you! Sometimes a scene you aren’t interested in writing can become interesting after you’ve explored other scenes leading up to it/happening after it
Read one star reviews of “awful” books. As much as I hate to say it, you’ll unlock a newly appreciated view on your own writing
create a new storyline, or a new character. Anything that helps bring something fresh into your story. Could even be a completely new wip
Not writing everyday doesn’t make you a bad writer. If you feel you need a break, take one.
Remind yourself to have fun. Start writing and don’t focus all your attention on following every rule created for writing. You can get into the nitty-gritty when you’ve familiarized yourself with writing as an art. Or don’t. It’s fiction. You make your own rules.
Go to sleep, or take a nap. Sleep deprivation and writing does not go hand in hand (trust me)
Listen to music that reminds you of your characters/wip
Remember why you started. Know that you deserve to tell the story you want to tell regardless of the skill you possess
Writing should bring you joy. Start perceiving every writing session as an important meeting with your imagination. Stop overcomplicating the writing process, stop wondering whether you’re doing it correctly, whether it makes sense or not. You can always rewrite and edit it later. But in this moment, just allow yourself to feel the joy of writing.
Narrative Context: Set Up the story. In the first 20% - 25% of your novel, you will: Introduce the character (backstory, their stasis, their inner demons, their strengths), establish stakes (what the character has to lose), foreshadow the imminent conflict to come.
Hook:The hook happens in the first chapter of your novel, the earlier the better. It grabs the reader, makes us empathize with the protagonist, and gives the reader something to bite into before the protag’s quest really begins.
Example:(Black Panther) Freeing kidnapped women from warlords to call Nakia back to Wakanda.
Inciting Incident: Something happens to your character that incites the coming conflicts. This could happen as early as the hook, or could happen as late as Plot Point 1.
Example: Klaw and Killmonger steal vibranium from a British museum.
Plot Point 1: At 20% or 25% in your novel, something big happens that alters the protag’s plans/status/beliefs, forcing them to respond. The first plot point defines the nature of the hero’s quest, and everything you’ve set up (stakes, inner demons, foreshadowing) has led up to this point. Imagine the first quarter of the novel as pulling back the plunger in a pinball machine, and the first plot point is when you let the ball fly. The antagonist is introduced, but their true nature will not be fully revealed until the midpoint.
Example for Plot Point 1 from Black Panther: ~35m/123m (28%), Klaw’s whereabouts are known. T’Challa needs to go on a retrieval mission, putting his leadership as King to test for the first time.
Part 2 - Wanderer
Narrative Context: Reaction. 25% - 50% of your story. Something big has just happened (Plot Point 1) and the protagonist is reacting to it, running from it, pursuing it without knowing what it is. There is a sense of indecision, or lack of knowledge. We don’t have all the answers.
Example:T’Challa, Nakia, and Okoye are after Klaw, but they haven’t been fully introduced to the true antagonist, Killmonger.
Pinch Point 1: The first Pinch Point comes in the middle of Part 1. A pinch point is a big moment that reminds the reader of the power of the antagonist.
Example:59/123 min, 47%. Right when the gang thinks they’ve got Klaw, he escapes with the help of Killmonger. T’Challa sees Killmonger for the first time, taking notice of the ring he wears. Who is this man? T’Challa realises he doesn’t have all the answers, that there’s something bigger going on.
Midpoint:One of the biggest points in the story, and a huge plot twist that reveals the true nature of the antagonist. It is like a veil is lifted, and the character sees more clearly what they’re up against, on an external, internal, and thematic level.
Example of the Midpoint: InBlack Panther, the midpoint happens from 63 min - 67 min (~52%) in two scenes. First, we get a big plot twist. Killmonger reveals that he is of Wakandan blood, and that he’s going to the hidden nation. He kills Klaw and even his own girlfriend without hesitation. This lets the viewer know Killmonger’s goals and the danger he poses as an antagonist. In the second scene of the Midpoint, Zuri reveals what really happened to T’Challa’s uncle (and Killmonger’s father): he was killed by T’Chaka, leaving Killmonger fatherless. T’Challa realises that he’s going to have to pay the consequences for his father’s mistakes, and truly questions for the first time whether Wakanda’s tradition of secrecy is moral.
Part 3 - Warrior
Narrative Context: Action. 50% -75/80% of your story. Again, something game changing has just happened (the midpoint), which suddenly clarifies the nature of the antagonistic force. With this new insight, the protagonist is able to go on attack mode, actively trying to solve the issue at hand.
Example:Now that Killmonger has made himself known as the true antagonist, T’Challa has to face him and the mistakes T’Chaka made in the past.
Pinch Point 2: The second pinch point occurs halfway through the third quarter. Like the first pinch point, it is a reminder of the threat of the antagonistic force.
Example:81 min - 82 min in Black Panther, or 66% into the story, Killmonger overthrows T’Challa.
Plot Point 2: The second plot point happens around 75% or 80% into the novel. It may be a characters realisation of what they must do to defeat the antagonist or a piece of information that allows them to face the bad guy. Whatever it is, no new information may be introduced after this point unless it is heavily foreshadowed. This is to prevent a deux ex machina.
Example:(98 min, 80%) T’Challa speaks to his forebears and realises that their actions were immoral. He says, “I must take the mantle back” and regains his power as black panther. He is ready to face Killmonger, and there is a sense that he now has a chance of defeating him.
Part 4 - Martyr
Narrative Context: Martyr. 75/80% - 100% of your story. This is the final battle, the end game. Often in a self-sacrificial way, the protagonist faces the big baddies and defeats them one by one. They are heroic, they are active, and they defeat the antagonist by their own strength.
Example:T’Challa and his crew face Killmonger to stop him from sending Wakandan weaponry to other countries. Notice that each character, T’Challa, Shuri, Okoye, Nakia, and Ross do something heroic and self-sacrificing. Occasionally something comes in that turns the tides in the heroes’ favour (this must be heavily foreshadowed) like when M’Baku decides to join sides with T’Challa.
Climax:Close to the end, midway in Part 4, the antagonist is defeated and the theme is clearly splayed out.
InBlack Panther, this happens at 115 min - 118 min (or 94%) when T’Challa brings Killmonger out of the vibranium mines to see the Wakandan sunset. Killmonger chooses to die rather than live in bondage. After this point, we switch to the resolution.
Resolution Scene: Everything is wrapped up after the climax. This isn’t necessarily one scene, but can be many. May be one chapter or several depending on how many plot threads need to be tied up. Whatever happens, we enter into a new stasis and see the effect of the protagonist’s journey both physically (how the world changes around them) and psychologically (how they have changed internally).
Example:InBlack Panther, we find out that T’Challa has decided to make an outreach program for African-American youth. He learns from Killmonger and decides to use Wakandan technology and resources so that the future generation does not suffer like Killmonger did.
How to use the Four Act Story Structure
On a practical level, how can writers use the Four Act Structure? I would recommend using it both in reading and in writing:
When reading or watching a movie, look out for the major plot points and act breaks. Have you ever felt that a story feels unbalanced? Rushed in parts? It is likely because it does not follow the Four Act Structure.
You can also use this structure in outlining. It will prevent you from going, “What the hell is going to happen next?” and will help you create a story that is well structured. Another reason I like this structure is because it details how to plot the middle portion of a novel.
However, keep in mind that movies are paced differently than books, and that even all books aren’t paced the same. You will not die in writers hell if you don’t follow this structure exactly. Rather, it is good to understand why this structure works so that you can better structure your ownnovels.For instance, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone does not follow this structure like I’ve laid out (though many argue that the first book is unbalanced; Harry doesn’t get to Hogwarts until 40% into the book.)
If you’d like to read more in depth about the Four Act Structure, Larry Brooks writes about it in Story Engineering. But a word of warning: Brooks does seem to believe that you will die in writing hell if you don’t follow this structure, and he hates pantsers with a passion. It’s still an informative read, but please take everything he says with a grain of salt.
Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
Even the most observant character will only notice what they are already trained to observe. Even the smartest character can be blind to the most obvious answer. Sometimes plot is easy to write, but writing a realistic thought process requires acknowledging that brains are weird and individuals can’t always follow plot.
I had a few eye opening moments recently and i thought to compile a post about these thoughts
Motivation isn’t what keeps you going
Motivation makes you start. That feeling of energy and desire cannot last for days, weeks, months, years. It lasts a few hours at best. Then you have passion or interest. Once you pass this stage, you deal with the difficult part, the unknown and all the new.
That’s the middle stage where you either give up or you keep being persistent.
Persistence is built over time
This is a skill that you build. It’s the cousin of a feeling called “stubborn”.
However, unlike “stubborn”, you need to be flexible to be persistent. You fail, you learn, you change your way, you try again. You keep doing this until you achieve your goal.
Brains go places
You provide the directions for your thoughts. If you feed your body bad food, you’ll throw up. Unfortunately, your brain can’t do this. That’s why it’s important to realize what you’re thinking.
Expecting others to be able to change your own thoughts won’t work. You’re the one who can change things, others can give you suggestions only.
If you think you can change, then you can. If you think you’re doomed, then you are. What do you feed your brain with?
Think of excuses
I went to a job interview yesterday and i asked of the desire of the students to learn a new language. The manager of the studio told me “they always say they’re tired, they don’t see the point, they don’t have time, they don’t want to or that it’s boring”. After i left that place i realized that those students are very good at finding excuses but that’s very similar to people who actually achieve their goals.
If you can find excuses not to do something, imagine if you focus the other way, finding solutions to do something. That’s persistence, resilience, discipline, call it what you want.
For every excuse, you can find a solution if you try.
Analyze your actions and thoughts
The “I’m tired” excuse made me think of this. Taking breaks is important but not many think of the quality of the activities they do after they said that.
Instead of sleeping or having some self-care ritual, people tend to go for watching TV, scrolling through their feeds with hell knows what sort of content.
The “I’m tired” excuse is synonym with “I’ll do anything but invest into something important to me because that’s taxing”. If you need a break, take one that actually brings you some energy or helps you manage that tiredness better.
Being indiferent about what you do isn’t going to make you any less tired.
the good old fetch quest. when your characters realize that they need to get this one thing in order to move on, but also they are doing something else to further the main plot. fetch quest subplots are hard to put in without things feeling like they’re just traveling from point a to point b–take advantage of the space in between to explore your characters, the world, etc.
there’s some tension between character a and character b. it doesn’t need to be super obvious at first. maybe it’s been kind of growing at the edge of your mind this entire time, and it just explodes. regardless of what kind of tension it is, your story will have to pause to address it.
character a actually wants to stab character b. well, that’s a problem.
figure from a character’s past returns (and turns into a major plot point instead oops). a la jesper fahey and colm fahey. they just appear, and they bring a whole lot of baggage with them for the character to resolve before they can even think about moving on. perhaps they also help the main plot, or perhaps they’re just there to help develop your characters. either way, it’s a good way to get more insight on who your character is, how they are perceived by the people around them, and perhaps even a glimpse into a different part of the world.
put in a new pov for a side character, accidentally flesh them out and make them a main character with their own personal problems and motivations to further your main plot. yeah. sometimes it happens.
other notes about subplots
subplots should tie into the larger story–or be interwoven enough that when it gets resolved, it doesn’t feel as though there was no consequence to the bigger picture.
they don’t actually have to be that big of a deal! you can have smaller subplots littered throughout your story. maybe there’s this minor rivalry between two of your characters that always appears at certain moments. maybe there’s some development to that rivalry that the main characters notice (occasionally) but don’t comment on because that’s…just their thing. it seems like there’s no consequence to it, but it does serve to further flesh out what might have been minor, flat characters beforehand.
but if you do want to make them a big deal, integrate them well. drop some foreshadowing about the subplot to ensure that it doesn’t seem like it’s coming out of nowhere. how you want to do this is up to you.
Man i really have to kill that voice within me that insists that every story i write should be deep™ and meaningful™
if my story helped someone relax and unwind after a hard day
if my story made someone smile or chuckle as they rode the bus
if my story let time pass faster in the dentist’s waiting room
if my story made someone coo and feel shippy feels
if my story filled the boredom of a long train ride
then my story got the job done, then my story was worth writing and sharing, then my story had meaning. I have entertained!! sure it might be a cheesy cliché boring long-winded objectively bad story. But it doesn’t matter.
Stories don’t have to be good or grand to have worth. They have worth because we bothered to tell them.
Sometimes you want to work on your WIP when you don’t have much time (during school, work, out on errands, etc) so here are quick, easy, and little things you can do with it when you can’t actually write/plan in-depth. I’ve also included websites and links as jumping off points.
Create a playlist based on the WIP or a character/relationship
A great piece of writing advice I’ve heard (if not one of the greatest) is that you should always write what your characterswouldsay, not what you wantthem to say.
A concept that might sound confusing to new writers, since you’re the one who provide your characters with a voice (they wouldn’t exist without you), but creating a story based on what your characters would say/do, as opposed to what you want them to say/do, really just comes down to what you want to happen in your story, and what realistically would happen.
You might feel the need for a character of yours to talk about their feelings, trust the person standing in front of them. It might be beneficial, the right thing to do — but your character has trust issues, and don’t easily open up to people. Forcing your character to do so anyway, behaving in a way that doesn’t correlate with their personality, can lead to inauthentic storytelling, and characters who continuously contradict themselves.
Keep in mind — with life comes consequences, and your characters should face the consequences of their own actions. You can’t protect them from all things evil, or from making mistakes. Consequences is what drives your plot and your character arcs, and your audience are not looking for perfect characters who never do anything wrong.
So let your characters guide you through their lives — even if the story ends up going in a direction farfrom the one you initially had in mind — let that happen. Your characters will know what to do.
And eventually, the more you familiarize yourself with your characters, and their goals, fears and misbeliefs, the easier it’s going to be to distinguish your wishes from your characters needs, and writing them authentically becomes second nature.
I am absolutely not joking at all when I say that The Sixth Sense should be required as teaching material when you’re trying to get kids to learn about why color matters.
No, the red DOESN’T mean love or violence or passion, however the creators set it up so that in this particular work red means OH NO A SCARY GHOST IS HERE.
When I was in college (as a lit major) I ended up sitting down and talking to a returning student who was having trouble in one of our classes. He liked books, and he had GI bill money so he decided to be a lit major.
He was VERY confused about the “The Curtains Are Blue And It Means Something” approach to symbolism and I remember that he very seriously got out a notebook and a pen, sat down, and asked me “Okay so what to stars mean as a symbol?”
And I was at a loss because of course I was! Stars-as-a-symbol can mean a thousand things and are heavily dependent on context. Are you reading a book about sea travel? Stars mean a map. Are you reading Maus? Stars represent faith and community and the way that the Nazis dehumanized Jewish people. Are you reading something by a romantic author who has a thing for the classics? Stars probably have something to do with heroism and destiny. Are you reading science fiction? Stars are probably just stars but if you’re reading Whipping Star by Frank Herbert they are literally people and our entire conception of stars is reexamined.
So one one the things that I think a lot of people are missing in their high school English classes is that whether the curtains are blue matters or not depends on the work.
The fact that Hamlet is wearing black is an important part of the story and the antagonist commenting on it it is almost the first thing that happens in the play.
What color dress is Lizzy wearing at the first dance in Pride & Prejudice? It doesn’t matter, the curtains are just blue.
And that’s one of those things that it takes a lot of time and a lot of exposure to different kinds of stories to learn and when you’re in high school you just don’t have that experience and your teachers are just now telling you for the first time “sometimes it matters why the curtains are blue” and I know you’re going “okay, sounds fake” but the goal is to get you to look at blue curtains and ask if they do matter, which is why they hand you books with big obvious examples of the kind of shit they’re talking about. You read A Tale of Two Cities because it’s full of binaries and line motifs and it’s the perfect thing to teach a fifteen year old how to look for a motif because there are a shitload of them. You read The Scarlet Letter to look for color symbolism and to ferret out biblical allusions.
“The curtains are just blue” is just “yet another day has gone by and I haven’t needed algebra.” Most people aren’t going to need algebra in their day-to-day lives but it’s handy to know how to do a bit when you need it and it’s good to learn that the concept exists.
If you’re reading books just because they’re fun and you like them then that is cool and I’m glad you’re having a good time and you absolutely do not have to give a fuck about symbolism.
But I am going to laugh my ass off at you if you’re one of those folks who is like “the curtains are just blue it doesn’t matter” and then whines about why scifi and comics and cartoons and video games are all political these days. They were always political, you just couldn’t tell because the curtains were red.
(also because you were socialized to see certain things as apolitical and value neutral but if you’re going “WHY DO THEY PUT SERIOUS MORALS AND SHIT IN A KID’S SHOW, STEPHEN UNIVERSE IS FOR TEN YEAR OLDS IT’S NOT THAT DEEP, LOONEY TUNES WASN’T LIKE THIS” I’m afraid I’m going to have to refer you to all the actual war propaganda made by Disney and Warner Brothers.)
Sometimes suspense is worth it, even if it means serving your audience the entire plot on a silver platter:
In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet isn’t dead. Romeo does not. It’s a tragedy.
In the TV-show Breaking Bad, a DEA agent is looking for a crystal-meth producer who calls himself “Heisenberg,” not knowing that “Heisenberg” is his brother-in-law.
In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to expose the murderer of King Laius, not knowing that he himself is the murderer.
That my friends, is what we call dramatic irony. A literary device in which the audience’s understanding of certain events or individuals in a story surpasses that of its characters.
What I mean by that is simple — not every plot twist or plot line that occurs in your story has to come as a surprise to your audience.
It’s not in any way wrong to drop important information ahead of time. Sometimes the best way to tackle a twist is simply to let your audience in on what’s happening. Let them anticipate the emotional reactions of the characters. In certain cases, that can be torture. Which is a good thing. Storytelling wise.
You’ll still have your audience at the edge of their seats, not out of suspense of what’sgoing to happen, but out of fear, and excitement, of how the characters they’ve grown to love are going toreact to it.
For all they know, the plot twist, and I am using plot twist loosely, it can just as well be a secret big enough to destroy a relationship, but not something that is going to affect every character, could potentially ruin everything.
It can turn characters against each other, massive consequences to follow. Maybe a certain character is heading towards a certain death, maybe their partner is falling in love with someone else, unaware of their partner’s infidelity.
Maybe a character is enjoying a nice day out at the park, not knowing that previous night a herd of zombies marched through. Instantly alarm bells starts ringing — the apocalypse is upon us. When is the character gonna find out? How are they gonna to find out?
Worst part — a close family member of the character has already fallen victim to the undead, and now, having been missing for a couple days, is approaching said character from behind, reanimated as a zombie. We’ve already seen this person bitten and turned, but for the character, it’s a different story.
Your audience are emotionally invested in your characters. Use that to your advantage.
To haveyour audience sit on a a piece of information, not knowing how it’s going to affect their favorite characters and relationships, can have just as much of an emotional impact as a “regular” plot twist.
This is your friendly reminder that the last few years have been hard, and if your writing has taken a toll as a result, that doesn’t make you any less of a writer. Maybe you went on hiatus. Maybe you got burnout. Maybe life gave you shit and other things took priority. It doesn’t matter. Writing is hard, so when life is hard, you might end up slacking in the writing department. And that’s okay. There’s no rule that says you have to write even when life is shitting on you. You’re allowed to take a break, and you can start writing again when you feel ready.
Take the pressure off of yourself today. Let yourself just write. What words do you want to put on the page right now? What do you want to say? Don’t worry about word counts or deadlines or audiences. Let yourself sink into the story, even if all you can do is manage a few lines. Don’t forget to enjoy the process!
You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don’t even think about being a writer.
Your lack of motivation isn’t because the story isn’t good. It isn’t because it is boring or uninspired.
Your lack of motivation is due to 1. trying too hard to force yourself to create something you’re not in the mood mentally or physically to create or 2. you’re so busy insulting your story, you’re suffocating your flame for it.
When you go, tossing casual insults at your WIP, talking about what makes it imperfect, you are slowly choking off your passion for it. You’re slowly teaching your brain to associate negativity toward it instead of what makes it great.
Don’t forget: brains are genius, but even geniuses can be idiots about certain things. And the brain’s thing is being gullibleyour brain will believe whatever your lips tell it.
So next time you’re thinking about your writing or thinking about something you put a lot of time into, try saying something good, something you love about it.
It won’t change things immediately, but just like burnout came slowly, it will come eventually.
so i’ve been seeing a few posts on avoiding filter words, especially in third person pov, and i wanted to make a post about some of my own thoughts about it!
filter words are words like noticed, spotted, saw, realized, felt, heard, etc. they take an event and as the name suggests, they filter it through the perspective of the narrator.
filter words tend to slow down the pacing of whatever sentence they’re in, so they can clutter up action scenes or reduce the impact of certain moments. however, they’re also not something you should necessarily avoid altogether, and here are a few reasons why!
introspection
while writing a longer work, you don’t necessarily want to be going at 100% for 100% of the time. it’s good to pull back a little bit to give an opportunity for slower, more introspective moments. with no filter words, the rhythm of each sentence accelerates. there’s no moment for deliberation on either the reader or the character’s part, everything that happens simply is.
for example, let’s take a look at the sentence, “he knew he should have been there sooner.” “knew” is a filter word in this case, but it makes it seem like the narrator has had time to think things over and come to this conclusion.
this same introspective tone can work well with a character who’s withdrawn into themself for one reason or another. after a traumatic event, for example, the frequent use of filter words can suggest a character numb to their environment, barely registering what’s happening and even then only through a hazy filter.
unreliable narration
in third person in particular, using filter words can be a great way to hint at an unreliable narrator. “the sound of footsteps echoed down the hall” is what is really happening. the reader and the narrator have the exact same description given to them. “she heard the sound of footsteps echoing down the hall,” meanwhile, is filtering the sound through the pov character. for another level in unreliability, we can say “she thought she could hear the sound of footsteps echoing down the hall.” you can also use filter words to state things to the reader to imply unreliable narration, since as readers, people are primed to assume that a basic description is just that: a basic description.
in first person, the reader is already completely in the narrator’s head, and is already seeing everything through their eyes. in third person limited, meanwhile, filter words can be a good shorthand to mark someone as unreliable, and to create a distance between the reader and what’s actually happening in the text of the story.
filter words should not be used as a crutch, but they also don’t have to be completely removed from your writing! they have their own use cases, and are important to creating narrative distance, whether that be for the sake of internal deliberation or for establishing unreliability.
A lot of romance novels and love stories have the failing that the relationship relies on the the tension being some form of “he’s cruel to her, and then at some point he’s less cruel to her because he’s fallen in love with her”. Those often end up having a fair amount of domestic violence or sexual assault in them, but then he, I don’t know, gives her a consensual orgasm or something, so then it’s fine.
If you don’t want to rely on the character and relationship growth being him being less cruel to her and her being more willing to put up with cruelness, here are some other forms of romantic tension that you can have in romance novels:
Forbidden love - basically the oldest romance plot in the world, two people who are in love but can’t be for some reason. There’s the Romeo and Juliet version of this, but there are also a lot of forbidden or at least taboo relationships in the world right now: same-gender relationships, interracial relationships, interreligious relationships, etc.
I’d caution that you should be wary of writing the type of YA “this white girl’s relationship with this white boy is forbidden because society hates love” forbidden love because it’s a bit played out.
Danger- this is the basis of basically every romantic suspense novel: danger is chasing them, and they can’t focus on their relationship because they need to keep themselves and each other safe, but they’re falling in love anyway. This can have the advantage of forcing them alone for long periods of time.
Circumstances plotting against them - this can be two people who keep missing each other, or one of them is engaged to someone they don’t want to be engaged to, or they’re on opposite sides of a business deal. They want to be together, but something keeps getting in the way.
They love each other but have different priorities - think of every advice column where one person wants children and the other doesn’t. Maybe one wants adventure and the other wants to stay at home, or one wants fame while the other wants anonymity. The tension then is then figuring out if they can make it work despite their priorities, or if it will pull them apart.
A lot of little truths and one big lie - this is one of the tricky ones because it can lead into the sort of gaslighting that isn’t good for a healthy relationship. You can look at books like Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t for a good version of this, but basically what you want here is a situation where one character has a major secret, but everything else they share about themselves is as true as possible, so the love interest knows them even if they don’t know this secret about them. The tension them becomes about the stress of keeping the secret or the stress of what the secret is itself or the stress of the love interest finding out the secret.
Trust issues because they’ve been burned before - they may be in love, but one character (or both) has significant trust issues that keeps them from fully committing/believing in the other person’s love because they’ve been burned before–by hurtful parents, by a previous unhealthy or abusive relationship, by the loss of a love.
They think it has to be temporary - this is a love story with a set end date–one of them will move at the end, or the job will end, or one of them is dying. Whatever it is, they are going into any sort of relationship knowing that it can’t last, and so they are unwilling to commit fully because of it.
Some says something early on that leads to an ongoing misunderstanding - again, this is one of the potentially tricky ones, but this is one where someone says something stupid or misunderstood, and so they need to figure out their way around this misunderstanding.
They used to have an antagonistic relationship - another tricky one, because it can fall into the “one of them is cruel to the other and now they’re getting over it” or “one of them is a bigot but the other is learning to love them despite it”. There’s a certain level of antagonism that you can’t really get past, like abuse, but there are a lot of ways you can play with this. They could be sports rivals or people on opposites of a business deal or people who just never managed to get along, but now it’s later and they look at each other and think oh. This often goes in the direction of one pining before the other (see: Pride and Prejudice) but it can be them falling in love simultaneously.
As writers, we have the great benefit of understanding what makes stories work. What makes characters compelling? What moves the story forward?
When we deal with plot points and character arcs, it can be easy to forget that we’re writing our own story too. What will it look like? We throw our protagonists into unbelievable hardships and write their ways out. Through failure and misfortune, we let our protagonists grow into people that we ourselves aspire to be.
What would your protagonist do if they sat at the desk in your place? A pen in their hand, a page of crossed-out lines in front of them, not sure where to take the story next?
Storiesalways include some sort of conflict. Often, this takes the form of obstacles. A character wants something, but something else is in the way. And that pretty much sums up anyone’s life. We all want something.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably want to write more or even publish a book.
Of course, to get what we want, we have to get over whatever stands in the way. Overcoming obstacles is where good stories are. If I was writing the story of my life as a piece of fiction, what would happen next? What should happen next? What would make sense in the story?
The other crucial ingredient of any successful story is action. Action is what moves a story forward. Even in fiction, people won’t buy a plot where things come to the protagonist without trying much. Pretty much all good stories involve the character making decisions and taking action. They may not be able to make the right choices yet, but it’s better to move somewhere than to do nothing.
You don’t have to display heroic levels of bravery or do some crazy things like your characters. Sometimes, closing the YouTube video that you’re watching and writing some words is enough.
I like to remind myself of this once in a while. It helps me sanity-check whether what I’m doing can reasonably lead to wherever I’m trying to go.
One day, your life will be just a story. It may not be as glamorous or heroic as the stories of our protagonists, but it may often require similar levels of bravery and dedication and work. It’s not easy to look into yourself and write about things you see there. It’s not easy to show up and face the blank page day after day for many years.
It’s not easy, but you have to keep facing the obstacles that stand in your way. Otherwise, your story won’t be worth telling.
About the Author
Hi, I’m Radek . I’m a writer, software engineer and the founder of Writing Analytics — an editor and writing tracker designed to help you beat writer’s block and create a sustainable writing routine.
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create! create! even if it’s been a while. even if you don’t know what to write or draw or sing. connect with what once brought you joy and you will remember how. create in a new way, knit or dance or crochet. try spoken word or painting. poetry or pottery. the freedom in creating… it’s liberating
