Ian Dawson's Blog - Posts Tagged "energize-your-writing-routine"
Writing Tip of the Week: 5 Ways to Energize Your Writing Routine
Routines are a part of life. We all have our routines and rituals at home and work; most of the time, we’ve done them so often that we do them without thinking. While this is fine for many of our mundane daily activities, it’s always good to shake things up a bit and challenge yourself when it comes to your writing routine.
Here are five ideas you can play around with to energize your writing sessions.
#1 – How Fast in Five?
Set a five-minute timer, then write as fast as you can without stopping until the alarm sounds. Don’t worry about your writing's spelling, grammar, or even logic here. The key is to see how many words you can get on the page in five minutes.
Sometimes, we have a nasty habit of overthinking, preventing us from sitting down to write. This exercise shatters those barriers and allows you to write fast and furious in a short period.
Try this exercise a few times a month and see if you can increase your word count within the five-minute timeframe.
#2 – Changing Genres
It’s great if you have a genre specialty, but sometimes it’s fun to escape the familiar and dabble in the genre you’re not an expert in.
Take two characters from one of your stories and put them in a new genre. Keep their personalities and characteristics the same; the only change is the type of story they’re now a part of. Drop your romantic leads into a haunted house or zombie apocalypse if you write romance. Have a creepy kid in your story? Toss him into your world filled with knitting circles, bake-offs, and town fairs.
Write a chapter or two with them in this new genre and see where your creativity takes you. Who knows. You might discover a new genre you want to explore next!
#3 – The Missing Letter
Pick a commonly used letter from the alphabet and challenge yourself to write a paragraph or two without using that letter. You may have to dig out your thesaurus for this one.
Start with a consonant; then, if you want a more complex challenge, choose a vowel to exclude. For an even bigger challenge, exclude two letters!
We often get stuck using familiar words when we write, so this exercise will push you to seek out different terms and phrases.
#4 – Schedule Shakeup
Change when you write and for how long you write. If you write in the mornings for an hour, try writing in the evenings or at night for 90 minutes. If you write only on weekends, try to squeeze a weekday or two into your routine.
If you can change when you write, play around with how long you write. Write for less time, but try to write the same number of words or pages. Write for longer and increase your word count or page count.
This doesn’t have to be a permanent change, but you may find an extra time of day or block of writing time that increases your productivity. It’s never too late to try a new routine, and you never know how effective these small changes could be.
#5 – Take a Hike
Get out of your everyday writing space and spend that time writing somewhere else. Maybe there’s a café or park near you where you can sit down and write. Perhaps there’s a trail or museum you’ve wanted to explore. Take the day and enjoy the new surroundings, then sit down and write for a while.
Often, a venue change can stimulate new areas of creativity since you’re in a new place with new people and things surrounding you.
Consider doing this a couple of times a month in different locations and see how they impact your creativity.
Final Thoughts
It’s great when you’re in the creative zone and on the path to completing a new project. Sometimes, however, you can get stuck and need some energy to get back on track.
These five exercises are fun ways to stimulate your brain and imagination. Try one or try all five and see if they impact your creativity.
Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!
Here are five ideas you can play around with to energize your writing sessions.
#1 – How Fast in Five?
Set a five-minute timer, then write as fast as you can without stopping until the alarm sounds. Don’t worry about your writing's spelling, grammar, or even logic here. The key is to see how many words you can get on the page in five minutes.
Sometimes, we have a nasty habit of overthinking, preventing us from sitting down to write. This exercise shatters those barriers and allows you to write fast and furious in a short period.
Try this exercise a few times a month and see if you can increase your word count within the five-minute timeframe.
#2 – Changing Genres
It’s great if you have a genre specialty, but sometimes it’s fun to escape the familiar and dabble in the genre you’re not an expert in.
Take two characters from one of your stories and put them in a new genre. Keep their personalities and characteristics the same; the only change is the type of story they’re now a part of. Drop your romantic leads into a haunted house or zombie apocalypse if you write romance. Have a creepy kid in your story? Toss him into your world filled with knitting circles, bake-offs, and town fairs.
Write a chapter or two with them in this new genre and see where your creativity takes you. Who knows. You might discover a new genre you want to explore next!
#3 – The Missing Letter
Pick a commonly used letter from the alphabet and challenge yourself to write a paragraph or two without using that letter. You may have to dig out your thesaurus for this one.
Start with a consonant; then, if you want a more complex challenge, choose a vowel to exclude. For an even bigger challenge, exclude two letters!
We often get stuck using familiar words when we write, so this exercise will push you to seek out different terms and phrases.
#4 – Schedule Shakeup
Change when you write and for how long you write. If you write in the mornings for an hour, try writing in the evenings or at night for 90 minutes. If you write only on weekends, try to squeeze a weekday or two into your routine.
If you can change when you write, play around with how long you write. Write for less time, but try to write the same number of words or pages. Write for longer and increase your word count or page count.
This doesn’t have to be a permanent change, but you may find an extra time of day or block of writing time that increases your productivity. It’s never too late to try a new routine, and you never know how effective these small changes could be.
#5 – Take a Hike
Get out of your everyday writing space and spend that time writing somewhere else. Maybe there’s a café or park near you where you can sit down and write. Perhaps there’s a trail or museum you’ve wanted to explore. Take the day and enjoy the new surroundings, then sit down and write for a while.
Often, a venue change can stimulate new areas of creativity since you’re in a new place with new people and things surrounding you.
Consider doing this a couple of times a month in different locations and see how they impact your creativity.
Final Thoughts
It’s great when you’re in the creative zone and on the path to completing a new project. Sometimes, however, you can get stuck and need some energy to get back on track.
These five exercises are fun ways to stimulate your brain and imagination. Try one or try all five and see if they impact your creativity.
Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!
Writing Tip of the Week: Driving Your Story Forward
Every story has a unique momentum and pacing. Whether you’re writing a historical romance or a high-octane thriller, keeping the reader engaged and invested in the story and its characters should always be on your mind.
While it’s fun to experiment and go off on tangents and subplots during the drafting process, the final story should be streamlined and pared down to the essential elements so that readers can understand and enjoy your narrative work.
How can you effectively keep your story moving forward? Let’s talk about it!
What’s Relevant?
Every scene or chapter should be relevant and provide important information about the characters or plot. Even subplots should somehow tie into the main story, even if it’s tangentially.
Remember, irrelevant characters, scenes, and storylines should be removed. If they don’t contribute to the overarching story and the main character's goal, they’re unnecessary. By asking yourself, 'If I cut this out, would it be noticeable?' and being willing to let go, you'll maintain control over your story and keep your readers engaged.
Usually, as you read through your completed manuscript, you’ll be able to see these irrelevant aspects and cut them for the good of the story.
Conflict, Conflict, Conflict
Conflict drives a story forward. Whether it is direct or indirect, there should be some level of tension between characters. Even if it’s a minor disagreement, that can be enough to keep things interesting.
It’s okay for friends, lovers, and coworkers to disagree and have conflict. It doesn’t mean they must have a battle royale that results in burning cars and damaged buildings. Minor conflicts help propel the story and the main character forward, allowing the reader to see new dimensions of the protagonist and help us empathize or sympathize with them.
Ratchet Up That Tension!
Similarly, creating tension between two characters can also help drive the story forward. It’s like a rubber band being stretched slowly; anticipating when the tension will snap between two characters can keep the reader locked in to see what will happen when everything comes crashing down.
Rom-coms do this (Will they, or won’t they?). Action movies do this, too (Will they diffuse the bomb in time and save the Senator’s family?). Tension is a great way to keep the reader turning the page and staying up past when they should have gone to bed.
Nothing is a No-No
Have you ever watched a movie and a scene comes on where nothing happens? No conflict. No tension. Noting relevant to the story or characters in the story. It’s just there.
You have two options: 1) Cut it; 2) Fix it.
Ask yourself why the scene is in your story. Should something happen? Should the reader learn something about the main character that will matter later on? Maybe it’s a set-up scene for a payoff later in the story.
Sometimes, I write out a sequence to see how things play out based on an idea I had, and it won’t go anywhere that works in the story. I can quickly cut it out once I see it’s not working.
Remember, your goal is to ensure every chapter and moment in your story delivers important information about the story or the characters. If it does neither, it might be worth removing.
The Sidetrack Trap
Sometimes, you’ll be having so much fun living in the world of your story and its characters that you’ll take detours to see what might happen if they do X, Y, or Z. Since every story you write has unlimited possibilities – after all, you’re its creator – this can be an enticing exercise. But not all sidetracks and detours connect to the main road, and it’s even worse if you know your main character wouldn’t do what you are writing them to do.
Example? As I was drafting my latest novel, The Sexual Misadventures of Alicia Williams, Alpha Female, I thought it would be fun for Alicia and her love interest, Mitch, to go skydiving. Mitch would surprise Alicia with this exciting date, which she knew nothing about. I was writing the scene of them driving to the airfield, and I stopped dead. Based on what had already been established about Alicia, I realized there was no way she would ever get on that plane to jump out of it.
While this would lead to conflict between the two characters, it wasn’t the right place in the story for that to happen, so I dropped the whole sequence. Sometimes, you must take that detour to see if you’re potentially driving your story off a cliff. I definitely would have.
Final Thoughts
Writing a story is often about trial and error. Hundreds of ideas will pass through your imagination and onto the page as you write. Some will work, and some won’t. And that’s okay. The important thing is to get the ideas down on paper and cut out the irrelevant, pointless, and not-so-great ideas during the editing process.
You know your story better than anyone. As you read through your manuscript, you’ll sense where things work, where they lag, and where improvements or cuts need to be made. The key is to do what’s best for the story and its characters, make sure every moment counts, and move the story’s arc and the main character’s arc forward.
Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!
While it’s fun to experiment and go off on tangents and subplots during the drafting process, the final story should be streamlined and pared down to the essential elements so that readers can understand and enjoy your narrative work.
How can you effectively keep your story moving forward? Let’s talk about it!
What’s Relevant?
Every scene or chapter should be relevant and provide important information about the characters or plot. Even subplots should somehow tie into the main story, even if it’s tangentially.
Remember, irrelevant characters, scenes, and storylines should be removed. If they don’t contribute to the overarching story and the main character's goal, they’re unnecessary. By asking yourself, 'If I cut this out, would it be noticeable?' and being willing to let go, you'll maintain control over your story and keep your readers engaged.
Usually, as you read through your completed manuscript, you’ll be able to see these irrelevant aspects and cut them for the good of the story.
Conflict, Conflict, Conflict
Conflict drives a story forward. Whether it is direct or indirect, there should be some level of tension between characters. Even if it’s a minor disagreement, that can be enough to keep things interesting.
It’s okay for friends, lovers, and coworkers to disagree and have conflict. It doesn’t mean they must have a battle royale that results in burning cars and damaged buildings. Minor conflicts help propel the story and the main character forward, allowing the reader to see new dimensions of the protagonist and help us empathize or sympathize with them.
Ratchet Up That Tension!
Similarly, creating tension between two characters can also help drive the story forward. It’s like a rubber band being stretched slowly; anticipating when the tension will snap between two characters can keep the reader locked in to see what will happen when everything comes crashing down.
Rom-coms do this (Will they, or won’t they?). Action movies do this, too (Will they diffuse the bomb in time and save the Senator’s family?). Tension is a great way to keep the reader turning the page and staying up past when they should have gone to bed.
Nothing is a No-No
Have you ever watched a movie and a scene comes on where nothing happens? No conflict. No tension. Noting relevant to the story or characters in the story. It’s just there.
You have two options: 1) Cut it; 2) Fix it.
Ask yourself why the scene is in your story. Should something happen? Should the reader learn something about the main character that will matter later on? Maybe it’s a set-up scene for a payoff later in the story.
Sometimes, I write out a sequence to see how things play out based on an idea I had, and it won’t go anywhere that works in the story. I can quickly cut it out once I see it’s not working.
Remember, your goal is to ensure every chapter and moment in your story delivers important information about the story or the characters. If it does neither, it might be worth removing.
The Sidetrack Trap
Sometimes, you’ll be having so much fun living in the world of your story and its characters that you’ll take detours to see what might happen if they do X, Y, or Z. Since every story you write has unlimited possibilities – after all, you’re its creator – this can be an enticing exercise. But not all sidetracks and detours connect to the main road, and it’s even worse if you know your main character wouldn’t do what you are writing them to do.
Example? As I was drafting my latest novel, The Sexual Misadventures of Alicia Williams, Alpha Female, I thought it would be fun for Alicia and her love interest, Mitch, to go skydiving. Mitch would surprise Alicia with this exciting date, which she knew nothing about. I was writing the scene of them driving to the airfield, and I stopped dead. Based on what had already been established about Alicia, I realized there was no way she would ever get on that plane to jump out of it.
While this would lead to conflict between the two characters, it wasn’t the right place in the story for that to happen, so I dropped the whole sequence. Sometimes, you must take that detour to see if you’re potentially driving your story off a cliff. I definitely would have.
Final Thoughts
Writing a story is often about trial and error. Hundreds of ideas will pass through your imagination and onto the page as you write. Some will work, and some won’t. And that’s okay. The important thing is to get the ideas down on paper and cut out the irrelevant, pointless, and not-so-great ideas during the editing process.
You know your story better than anyone. As you read through your manuscript, you’ll sense where things work, where they lag, and where improvements or cuts need to be made. The key is to do what’s best for the story and its characters, make sure every moment counts, and move the story’s arc and the main character’s arc forward.
Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!
