Beth Greenslade's Blog, page 56

Is There Such A Thing As A Writing Formula?

It is generally agreed that writing is a skill, which means that it can be taught, and those who commit themselves to understand the craft fully can hope to improve. That’s not to say that raw talent doesn’t play a part, as it does in most things. However, good writers take many forms; some may be effortlessly (and a little annoyingly) blessed with genes that make them good writers without even trying. Others can apply themselves to learning, practicing, and refining and get good at writing that way.

However, when it comes to using formulas to write, can this really produce results that readers will love? The answer to this is somewhat complicated. 

Some writers would argue that within every genre, you can see formulas being used. Indeed, the rules of a genre combined with the expectations of the reader have led there to be almost mathematical ways of presenting stories. But can these ensure readers remain interested and do those who choose not to employ these formulas put themselves at a disadvantage? Successful crime fiction authors, for example, often create stories using a pattern, to ensure that all critical points of tension and revelation are hit, but it is not all they have to do to guarantee success.

Other writers would say that more generic writing formulas also work, and of course, there are many out there. The three-act formula is a well-known example. The first act is the setup, where the main characters are introduced, and the setting is revealed. Then in the second act comes the confrontation. This makes up the central part of the story and is where the protagonist meets the obstacles that could prevent them from achieving their goal, and these obstacles will get tougher and the stakes higher as the story progresses. In the third act comes the resolution where the obstacles will usually be overcome, and the main character achieves their goal but has changed significantly because of the journey they took to get there. 

The hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell, is a 17-step formula that many writers use to break down the events in their book and carefully map out each stage of the adventure. Campbell's formula helps them better understand how the story will develop while ensuring they are meeting key milestones along the way. 

 Freytag’s Pyramid: Five-Act Structure arose after a 19th Century German novelist analyzed stories from greek mythology and Shakespeare and saw consistent patterns in them. 

There are too many writing formulas that a writer could choose to follow to go into detail about in this post. The point, however, is that while methods do exist and can be employed in any story, it cannot be by following a formula alone that a novel will be great. Formulas must be used to guide writers who need guidance. Still, it is through creativity, excellent writing, understanding the reader, and studying the craft of writing in its entirety that a writer can hope to produce a great book. Formulas are helpful, yes, but they are not shortcuts, and writers mustn’t view them as such.

Do you use formulas to help you write? Share your experiences below!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post Is There Such A Thing As A Writing Formula? appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Conduct Your End Of Year Writing Round-Up

As the year draws to a close, it’s a good idea to take stock of what you have achieved in terms of your writing this year, and do a round-up of the successes and failures, the goals you met and the ones you didn’t quite manage, how you feel about your progress, how much money you made, and so on.

Conducting an end of year writing round-up is helpful because often writers don’t have any way to judge their progress apart from to do it themselves. If you haven’t got a book out, or aren’t ready to write professionally, you may not have clear milestones to hit, and you won’t have a boss to do a review of your performance with you, so it’s up to you to create one yourself.

So how do you do this? Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself to create a robust and useful end of year writing review.

What were the key things you hoped to achieve this year?

Write down or look back over all the goals you set for yourself in 2019. Were they realistic? Do you feel you could have pushed yourself more?

Did you achieve them?

Here you should assess how well you did in terms of each goal and whether you managed to reach your targets, and if you fell short, by how much.

Which things did you find particularly easy or difficult this year?

Understanding the things that you found easy as well as the challenges you faced and the obstacles that you had to overcome will give you a much better idea of where your strengths and weaknesses lie. You can also determine whether there are external factors outside your control that influenced your progress.

What could you put in place to overcome these difficulties?

Understanding how you can prevent repetitive mistakes and tackle areas where you have performed less successfully will ensure that you achieve greater things in the coming year.

How was your attitude toward writing this year?

Analyzing your attitude to your writing is also useful. If you felt positive determined and optimistic at certain times and frustrated, disappointed, and lacking in motivation at others, it will be helpful to examine these emotions and the circumstances that catalyzed them further to understand why. 

In what ways could you improve?

Make a list of the things you want to do better and how you plan to improve, learn and grow after the new year. 

What do you hope to accomplish in the coming year?

Work out some challenging and exciting goals that will help you progress in the coming year. What quantitive measurements could you put in place to determine whether you’ll achieve these future goals? Make sure that your future goals are clearly defined, that they are challenging and that you are fully committed to realizing them within the timeframe you’ve set for yourself. Being able to measure your goals, being realistic about what you can achieve, and having mechanisms in place to measure your progress will help ensure that you stay on track. 

By using the above as a guide, you should be able to conduct a helpful end of year writing review and start the new year feeling confident, motivated, and assured that you could do great things. Good luck!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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How To Build Character Relationships

If you want your book to be successful, you not only have to write great characters but also understand how to make your characters interact with one another authentically and excitingly.

A standalone hero or heroine won't get very far, and it is through the process of conversation, action, and reaction that all your characters come to life and resonate with your readers.

It can be all too easy for writers to focus on developing characters in isolation of one another that we do not spend nearly enough time thinking about how to build upon the relationships between them. 

So what are the secrets to building strong character relationships? Let's examine some of them.

Characterization

You can create a much more vivid image of a character or convey their personality more strongly by describing them through the eyes of another. This technique draws readers into the world and creates immediacy and shows the reader rather than telling them. Using actions and reactions to describe a character is so much more useful than listing measurements or generic adjectives. 

Setting

Rather than tell a character what they are seeing, let them experience the world through the way characters behave, their mood, and how they interact with it and each other. Setting can be used metaphorically or reflectively to show readers how strong the relationship is, how warm it is, whether it will last or if it is damaged in some way. Pathetic fallacy, for example, if a great way of using inanimate objects to convey human emotions and can help readers more fully engage with what's happening and how the characters are thinking and feeling. Using evocative phrases helps the reader understand the mood and emotion that exists between the characters, and can be very powerful.

Dialogue

Naturally, the way characters talk to one another and how they react to what another has (or hasn't) said is a great way to build relationships between them and drive your story forward.

Stephen King describes dialogue as a way of "bring[ing] characters to life through their speech." Dialogue should be authentic, have purpose and act as fuel for your plot. Don't be tempted to use it for spewing information, nor should you try to imitate 'real life' speech accurately. The way that characters talk should indicate to the reader how they feel about one another but can also be layered and subtle - for example, if one character always mocks the other, perhaps this infers he has a secret crush on her, and so on. 

Backstories

All characters have vast stretches of history that went before them before they arrived in your story. You should know your characters' backstories inside out, but do you need to share every last detail with your readers? Probably not. Backstory can be a great way of revealing how character relationships have formed, but be selective with your information and use your words wisely. 

Motivations

The harmonious and conflicting motivations of each of your characters play a significant part in how their relationships will play out. By revealing each character's motivation, you can allow your reader to understand what drives them, and in doing so, why they behave or speak in a particular way to another character. Explore how they clash and interlink, and you'll strengthen those relationships and keep your reader engaged at the same time.

By following the above, you can make sure that each encounter between characters is significant, propelling your story forward and taking the reader along, fully engaged, and immersed until the very last page. 

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post How To Build Character Relationships appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Philosophical Questions All Writer's Should Ask Themselve...

Philosophical Questions All Writer's Should Ask Themselves

Writers are philosophical creatures at heart. In creating entirely new worlds and entirely new existences they can’t help but be. When creating a story, writer’s need to consider different philosophical questions to help build a world that resonates with them on a deeper level.

So what are some of the questions writers should ask themselves to help them think in this way and engage in a deeper understanding of people, behaviour, belief systems and the world around them?

Here are some you could consider:

What does it mean to be happy?

How can you have a good life?

Is the ego a negative or positive thing?

Can you be happy if you don’t achieve anything?

Is evil innate in a person or does it brew from circumstance?

Nature or nurture?

Is any fact of kindness truly selfless?

Is there a perfect life?

What does it mean to be a friend?

What does it mean to make a sacrifice?

How can we use our time wisely?

Is it important to be spiritual?

Does money breed happiness?

How can a person live their fullest life?

Does fate exist?

Is there a reason for life?

Does an ideal government exist?

Does free will exist?

Is there other life out there?

Are humans capable of anything?

Could anything happen?

What is the difference between a belief and a superstition?

How can a person find purpose in life?

Why do we respect the dead more than the living?

Who has supreme power?

Are we destined to destroy?

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Should humans be free?

Why do we think humans are more important than animals?

Would understanding the meaning of life lead to happiness?

Why do people change when given power?

Are there patterns in the universe?

Would the world be better without money? 

Why are some people cleverer than others?

What do dreams mean?

Is it possible to have a good death?

Of course, there are so many more philosophical questions out there, that could be used as a way to think about how we present our worlds and the characters that live within them to the reader. Thinking in this way can help us create meaningful worlds, and give us ideas for the kind of worlds that we want to build and the questions that we could propose to our readers through our writing.

Do you have any philosophical questions to add to the list? Share them with us here!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Why An Organized Workspace Can Help You Write

If you want to be a more productive writer, you need to take stock of how organized you are. Being highly organized might not suit your creative self, but without investing some time into making your workspace a more practical, efficient and streamlined place to work you could actually be blocking your creativity with clutter and distractions that prohibit you from working your best.

So what should you get organized and clear out your workspace today?

You’ll know where everything is

Writers need several tools nearby to help make it easier to write. There is nothing more annoying than being in the ‘writing zone and finding you don’t have your notebook/ journal/pen to hand that you need to create the next bit of your story. By making sure that you free yourself from clutter and by finding a place for everything, you can ensure that you won’t end up spending the majority of your writing time looking for those necessary items that you ‘had just a moment ago.’

You’ll reduce distractions

It’s very very easy for writers to find reasons to procrastinate and the more distracted by clutter you are, the easier it will be to find excuses not to write. By cleaning your workspace and keep your desk tidy you’ll find it much easier to focus and will probably get a lot more done as a result. Try tidying your workspace and see if it has a positive effect on the number of words you manage to get out and onto the page!

You’ll become more business-minded

If you don’t treat your writing seriously then you can’t expect to improve at it, or to have confidence in it. Think about it, what would happen if you turned up to you'd day job in your pajamas, spreading toast crumbs everywhere, with post-it notes and pieces of crumpled paper and old coffee cups all around you? It just wouldn’t be acceptable. So get into a more business0like mindset and keep your workspace tidy, actually show up for your writing and take yourself seriously when you do and you’ll soon find that your confidence and positivity soar and your writing productivity increases as a result.

You’ll feel more positive

Talking about positivity, it has actually been scientifically proven that a clear workspace can help promote positivity and leave you with a clear, calm mind. Being able to focus, feeling productive and inspired are all so important and all interlinked. So the more prolific and effective a writer you become, the more you’ll enjoy it and the more positive you feel, which will make you want to do it more. A organized workspace will keep you focused on your goals, in a positive mindset and able to achieve so much more.

Do you believe in keeping your workspace organized? Share your thoughts with us here!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post Why An Organized Workspace Can Help You Write appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

How To Find Your Ideal Writing Partner

Having a writing partner can be positive for many reasons. A writing partner is someone you can bounce ideas off, someone who can keep you motivated, can offer honest feedback on your work and help give you support when you need it the most.

It all sounds pretty good right?

Well, it is, but as with all good things, this means that it’s not always easy to come by. Finding a writing partner who can offer all the above isn’t as easy as it sounds, and it’s all about searching for someone who you gel with and who can bring out the best in you and your writing.

Writing can be a solitary pursuit, and while that may be fine for many, once you find someone who you can team up with, even collaborate with, you may find that the writing experience is a wholly more enjoyable and satisfying one.

So how do you go about finding your perfect writing partner? It’s all about understanding the criteria that makes one great.

You need someone you can trust

Trust is so important. If you want to have an effective writing relationship with the other person, you’ll have certain expectations of one another, and will need to trust that they won’t let you down. Not just in terms of practical aspects such as agreeing to dedicate a certain amount of time to your writing pursuits together, but also in terms of how they deliver feedback and support to you. If the trust is broken it can end up not only damaging your relationship but your confidence as a writer altogether. So being certain that you can trust in your writing partner and that they will meet your agreed expectations of one another is hugely critical. 

You need someone who has time

If you want your writing partner to enhance your experience of writing, you need to ensure that you are both on the same page when it comes to commitment. If you enter the relationship thinking that you’ll spend every waking moment working on projects together, when your partner only has a spare hour every couple of weeks, the relationship will turn sour very quickly. Make sure you discuss how you will spend your time, and how much of it you can reasonably dedicate to this before you go ahead. 

You need someone who has talent 

While you might be tempted to just find someone who you think will give you a positive critique or just a friend you have fun with, if you want to form a productive working relationship with someone, it’s better to find a fellow writer who is at a similar stage in the writing process and has similar experience to you. This way you can both help one another in the best possible way. If you choose someone who has much less experience than you, their feedback may not be particularly worthwhile. If you choose someone who is much advanced to you, you may end up feeling overwhelmed and as though you can’t keep up. 

There are lots of places you could search for a writing partner. Writing groups, online forums and social networks are a great place to start. Alternatively signing up for a writing course or workshop could help you find likeminded writers who are at a similar stage. 

Writing partners aren’t for everyone. However, lots of writers do find they benefit greatly, providing they can find a good match. So if it’s something you are considering, use the above tips to help ensure you find your ideal writing partner and start a productive, fruitful working relationship in no time!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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How To Handle Difficult Topics

As a writer, there may be times where you are required to write about difficult topics. This may be for a particular writing assignment or through your own creative writing where you want to address painful feelings or revisit troubling experiences to help you work through them or share them with others.

Writing about tough topics can make your writing feel more authentic, and help you to create characters that are believable and relatable.

So how do you do so?

Use your personal experiences

Leaning on your personal experiences can be the best way to tap into those raw emotions and explore the feelings that are catalyzed when difficult situations arise. Use your insights into these dark and challenging topics to help write your character's actions and reactions when they occur in your story. 

Make sure you do your research

If you don't have personal experience, then make sure you do your research. Books and the internet provide a wealth of information on every topic. If your character is suffering abuse, contemplating suicide, dealing with loss, dealing with an eating disorder, and so on, make sure you understand as thoroughly as you can what might happen to them, both physically and mentally to help inform how you write about these situations in your story. Research the more practical aspects as well; for example, if your character ends up hospitalized, understand what the process might be for recovery, and so on. Doing so will help build authenticity and reader engagement with it.

Interview people who've lived it

You could also try a different tactic and ask people who have lived through the events you are hoping to recreate in your story to gain a better understanding of what details and insights you should include. Doing so can also help to capture the genuine and real feelings from a person who has had a first-hand experience.

Be empathetic

Empathy is essential. If you want to understand someone or something, you must try to see things from their point of view. By really trying to put yourself in another person's shoes, genuinely listening to them, and trying to understand their thoughts and feelings, you can hope to recreate them through your writing in a way that will feel real to your readers. 

Prepare yourself to face your feelings

While you are researching and writing about difficult topics, you must prepare yourself. Sometimes doing so can bring up unexpected emotions or memories which can be distressing. Preparing yourself for this and seeking help where necessary can ensure that you can successfully translate these emotions onto the page in a way that is helpful and cathartic and will leave you feeling unburdened and free. 

By following the above, you can handle difficult topics with sensitivity, intelligence, and empathy. By getting to the heart of the emotion, by truly understanding how difficult situations arise and how different people react to them, you can use this as fuel to write persuasive, engaging emotionally gripping stories that will give your story life, depth, and general awesomeness!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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How To Collect Story Ideas

As a writer, you may often find that you are overwhelmed with story ideas at times, and during others, you might discover that no matter how hard you try, you can't come up with anything good. You might also find that a lot of your ideas, which seemed initially so brilliant, sort of fade away to nothing a soon as you sit down to write. 

While not devastating, it can be frustrating, especially when going through a creative drought, and despite our desire to write, if the ideas aren't coming or they aren't any good, it can be challenging to keep on track.

So what can we do to help keep our creative muscles pumped and primed and our imaginations flowing and free? Try the following:

Reinvent well-known scenes

Take some of your favorite scenes from books and plays and TV shows and movies and re-write them entirely so that they unfold differently. Doing so can help you see many possibilities and outcomes which could spark your imagination once more.

Write a different ending

Similarly, with books and stories you've written in the past, or those of writers you admire, take the ending and re-write it in a completely different way. Again this will open your mind up to all the possibilities, twists and turns, and pasts and futures that are out there, and this should give you the motivation to explore new story ideas and paths for your work.

Scour your mail for ideas

What comes through your letterbox could be a great source of inspiration. All those flyers, notes, bits of junk mail, leaflets from politicians, and so on could be the key to your next great story. Just looking at the words and language used or the faces and characters you 'meet' through your mail could end up being a starting point for a story you never knew you had in you. 

Write a backstory for a long lost friend

Always think about the one that got away or that old friend who you sadly lost touch with? Well, why not daydream about what they might have been up to all this time and write them their very own backstory?

Keep your eyes and ears open

Story ideas are all around us, and it's by keeping our eyes and ears open that we can hope to capture them. Listen to conversations and carefully observe the world, and you'll soon find that when you are tuned in this way, you'll start to find sources of inspiration everywhere. 

Change someone's fortune

If you know the outcome of a story or someone that's down on their luck, or just are intrigued by that homeless guy who you pass by every morning, why not change their fortune? Re-writing their story will show you that in fiction, even the direst circumstances can turn around, and it will put you in a pretty positive mindset too. 

By using the above as a guide any time you are struggling with creating or organizing your story ideas, you can ensure you always have a good bank of them to keep you inspired and motivated to write. Doing so means you'll stay on track with your writing goals and keep the dreaded writer's block at arm's length too!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post How To Collect Story Ideas appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

Exercises To Help You Develop Your Story

Sometimes you have an initially fantastic idea for a new story, but when it comes to mapping out the details and developing the plot, you suddenly find that you can’t quite work out what will happen.

Rather than giving up on your idea, it might just be that you need to get those creative cogs turning once more, and need to loosen up your imagination with some helpful exercises to see if you can’t work out where your story needs to go.

Developing your book idea can be tricky, but it is so vital to ensure that you don’t end up getting halfway through and realizing that it doesn’t have legs. So here are some helpful exercises that you can try before you start writing to help make sure that your great idea is really going somewhere. 

Try to create a longline for your story

It might seem counterintuitive to ask you to write fewer words when you are trying to expand on your idea. However, by forcing yourself to sum up the central ideas and themes of your story in a line or two, you’ll naturally have to think about them, helping you to focus on the essential details and explore your ideal further.

Ask yourself the 5 W’s

Who, what, where, why, and when are important questions that you should be able to answer before you sit down to write. By asking yourself these questions, you’ll end up exploring all the critical aspects such as characters, location, journey, timelines, and so on. 

Create an imaginative mind map

A mind map is ideal for more visual learners who like to be able to see what’s going on and move things around. A mind map allows you to be super creative and to get all your ideas out of your head and on paper, create connections and start to build your story to see where it might lead.

Get to know your characters

Before you start writing, you should try to get to know your characters as well as possible. You can create a list of questions to ask them; you can start keeping journals as them. The more in-depth your knowledge of your characters becomes, the easier it will be to create unique and distinctive voices that your reader can resonate with.

Create a buyer persona

Developing your story is also about considering your reader. Why not create an ideal buyer persona to help you think about who your reader might be, what they want, and why they should choose your book. 

Develop your timeline

Creating a timeline for your book is another fantastic way to help build upon your initial idea. It will also help you to consider how events will unfold throughout your writing and can help ensure you don’t make huge inconsistencies or get muddled later down the line too. 

By following the above processes, you can make sure that you feel confident that you have a full, workable story idea before you start writing it. This can give you the confidence and motivation to keep going even when new obstacles appear. So next time you have an excellent idea for a book, wait before you start writing and develop your story first. 

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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Exploring Scenarios To Build Your Plot

Working out the plot of your story can be the hardest part, but by exploring different scenarios, you can help to get a much better understanding of where your plot is going and eke out those finer details that bring your book to life.

But how exactly do you go about doing this? Below are some helpful ways that you can explore what might happen in any given scenario, which can provide you with fuel for your book and help you understand the path that your protagonist and other characters need to take to help them on their journey and get them to the end. 

Consider the best and worst possible outcome

In any given scenario of your novel, it’s helpful to start with extremes. Think about what the very best outcome would be, the one that would satisfy your characters, fill them with happiness, and let your readers know that everything is going to be okay. Then deliberate on what the very worst outcome could be. The one that means your characters are left broken, despairing, and devoid of hope. You don’t have to necessarily choose either of these as the path to take, but by doing so you can get a feel of the spectrum and then decide which side your plot should fall on at this particular point in the story.

Discover plot points that deliver outcomes

By exploring scenarios, you will better understand the parts of your plots that deliver outcomes, and when you are providing outcomes, you are moving the story forward. If a particular scenario comes to a head, but there are no consequences or changes or actions that occur as a result of this scenario, it may be that you have to rethink this particular part of the story so that the plot points that have led you to the scenario will result in some action being taken.

Use competing scenarios to work out the best course of action

If you aren’t sure where your story should go next, why not write out all the different possible scenarios that could take place at any given point? By coming up with competing scenarios that would set the story on entirely different paths, you can better understand what will work best, and engage your readers more successfully. 

Don’t forget about your subplots!

Remember, your subplots are essential too, and by contemplating the best and worst scenarios for your subplots you can again ensure that they are relevant, vital to the story, complement the main plot and keep your reader turning those pages.

By contemplating scenarios in this way you can really learn about the different options and paths that your story could take, and discover which one will be the most exciting way to tell your story.

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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