Kevin Wright's Blog: SaberPunk - Posts Tagged "writing-tips"

What’s the most difficult stage of the writing process for you? First draft? Beta read? Structural edit? Copy edit? Proofread? I suppose the question is a sort of Rorschach test for each individual writer, particularly the indie writer who often is not in a position to shop out any portion of the process and therefore must do it all by themselves.

For me, the most difficult—as well as the most important portion—is the copy editing stage. The copy editing stage is the stage that adds the polish necessary to truly elevate a work. Without solid copy editing, even the most engaging story will put many readers off due to typos and grammatical issues.

So how do you get someone to copyedit your work? Simple: you pay them a fairly large sum of money. Now typically, I don’t have a large sum of money that I could just throw at some copyeditor. Hell, I wish I could because copy editing, alongside with being the most important stage, is also the most mind numbingly boring stage. The most difficult stage. The least fun stage. And on top of that, it seems there is never any way to truly rid your manuscript of all those little errors you just can’t see anymore.

But you know all of this already.

So here’s a little trick I’ve used on my books: print out your manuscript and then use text-reader software to read it to you as you skim over it. Set the reader to a speed that’s in the Goldilocks range for you and then sit back and listen, finger hovering above the pause button, waiting for mistakes. You will find them.

One of my English teachers in high school taught me to read my work out loud when editing. It was a great tip and still is. However, if you have the attention span of a six-year-old, as I do, you invariably read over the mistakes because you just don’t see them anymore.

Having the text reader read to you provides some clinical detachment. Like regular copy editing, do it in small chunks. I find one chapter per sitting works best.
You’ll detect grammatical errors. You’ll hear misspells. You’ll find it highlights the repetition of words in short spans. Bottom line: if you take the time to go through your entire manuscript this way, you’re sure to find many of those nagging little errors that have eluded you up until this point.

So give it a try and happy hunting,

Kevin Wright
-Amazon Author Page http://amzn.to/2noAXKj

I’ve been a world builder for about thirty years now. I started when I was around nine or ten. I’m not exactly sure. My first worlds were populated by gods and monsters and two-dimensional heroes. Quite often, they all did not get along.

Nerds and geeks know what I’m talking about. Role-playing games. Dungeons and Dragons specifically.

I was born a few years after D&D was first released and on a Christmas Eve in Winthrop, Massachusetts, I received the first edition boxed expert set with the dragon rising up over a horse-borne warrior(my older brother received the basic set that same day). Back then I didn’t know what D&D was, but the artwork on the box had me before I even opened it.

I see articles nowadays on world building. On the internet. In magazines. You can buy innumerable books and eBooks on the subject on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Some of them look great. Some of them maybe not so much. Either way, I’ve never been tempted to make a purchase. And I’ve bought books on virtually every aspect of writing. I have a problem. But it’s never occurred to me to do so with world building because that’s something that was ingrained in me at a young age through D&D(#Iwasnotcool).

You see, I had the luck to be one of those kids that enjoyed being a dungeon master, or DM for short. For those of you who don’t know what a DM is, it makes you as valuable to nerds as a kid who likes to play goalie is to a hockey team. Which is to say quite (but still not cool).

The ultimate goal of any good DM, or guy who runs the game, is to run a string of adventures together into a campaign and tell an awesome story in the process. Characters live. They breathe. They triumph. And sometimes they die. Just like in books.

In fact, the process of writing a campaign is very much like writing a book. The only difference is that in D&D the overall story is ultimately a collaborative effort that can be occasionally derailed, often hilariously, by the roll of dice or the mad antics of your insane friends who just wanted to see what would happen if they summoned an earth elemental in the middle of a tavern. But I digress.

Now here is the crux of the title of this blog: are you a sandbox writer or a railroader?
When writing a story, do you provide a sandbox, or enclosed realm, for your characters to explore? This is an immersive experience that requires you to flesh out an entire world, including but not limited to: geography, sociology, races, river systems, trade agreements, wars, history, level of technology, existence of magic, etc…

Or, do you railroad them along a story that creates a path through your world that’s fleshed out just enough so that the characters don’t see that the buildings in town are merely facades?

Both are viable options.

But which is the more effective method? The answer to the question is, anticlimactically: it depends.

It depends mainly on how much time and effort you have and are willing to invest in the process. Generally speaking, sandboxing is more work up front. A lot more. You’re fleshing out cities and continents and places characters may never go, which means a lot of potentially wasted effort. The upside is it also means that you now have a treasure trove of story ideas for present and future use, which pays dividends. (I often find that when I encounter ‘writer’s block’ it’s that I haven’t fleshed out some aspect of my world enough to move past the ‘block.’)

Railroading seems like the easier method, it’s more streamlined with seemingly less wasted work, and depending on you as a writer, it may be. I have a friend who writes by the seat of his pants, and he writes damn fine books. He doesn’t outline or world build, he just goes and sees where it takes him.

Me? I’m a sandboxer (albeit a lazy one). And while I don’t outline, I find that I do need the rules and history and geography of a structured world to have the freedom to write uninhibited.

But as I said, I’m lazy.

So, my little trick is to set my fantasy/sci-fi in the real world and then just tweak it enough to satisfy my story needs. I read history for ideas and settings. Then I set rules for levels of technology and magic and create alternate histories, but only when and where needed.

Then I railroad the hell out of my characters and build only the cities and places they go.

Kevin Wright
-Amazon Author Page http://amzn.to/2noAXKj

I’ve said before that I don’t believe in writer’s block.

That being said, I’ve been experiencing it for roughly the past three months and have only this past week finally worked my way through it.

Let me explain.

With the first draft of my current project, a sequel to ‘Lords of Asylum,’I was moving right along for about four months when I began experiencing difficulties maintaining a good flow and most importantly, consistent forward momentum. I have various reasons/excuses/rationalizations for this loss of momentum, but I won’t bore you with them. I’ll bore you with something else.

My goal in first draft writing is maintaining consistent forward momentum. And that means pushing the story forward at all costs. Keep moving ahead. Forget about stuff that doesn’t make sense. Stuff that sucks. Stuff that I know is awful.

When I lose that momentum my goal is always getting it back. The trick is always finding out why I’ve lost it in the first place.

So I sat down and had a heart to heart with myself and through much cajoling and a little manly weeping I realized I had lost the thread of my story. I’d lost touch and needed to get reacquainted. I needed to get the magic back.

So here’s what I did: roughly 40,000 words in, I willfully ditched my quest for the all-important forward momentum. Instead of continuing on with the tip of the spear of my story, I decided to go back and reacquaint myself with the butt end. The beginning, in this case.

I did this by starting my second draft before my first was even done. Not my favorite move. In a perfect world, I’d have finished my first draft in a wave of inspired momentum before going back to work the nuts and bolts with a second draft. But that didn’t happen. Obviously. And drastic problems require drastic measures, and going back and reacquainting myself with my story was necessary. I was foundering in the doldrums. So I fashioned myself a paddle. And it’s working.

I started by moving my first chapter to a later position(I had started en media res) and then completely rewriting a new first chapter. Then I moved onto the second chapter, adding little touches here and there. The same with the third. The fourth chapter is completely new and adds a small but crucial element to the mix. I can see down the road how it’s going to affect the rest of the story.

That’s as far as I’ve traveled. A new chapter one and four along with some knick-knacky changes. I’ll start work on chapter five tomorrow then see where I stand, working my way through, adding, rearranging, doing whatever necessary. Part of me feels like I’m just retreading waters already discovered, but another part of me sees this as re-engaging my forward momentum. I’m not currently moving along at the tip of the spear, but any movement at the back also moves the fore. My word count is rising. My story’s filling out. And when I get back to the tip of the spear, I’ll be more informed and able to know where the story’s going rather than to hazard guesses.

It’s a long road, but writing a book always is.

Kevin Wright
-Amazon Author Page http://amzn.to/2noAXKj