Andrew Ferguson's Blog, page 24

5 Different Kinds of Writing Prompt

Sometimes when you're stuck trying to come up with a story, it helps to have a little nudge to spark off your creativity. The internet is, of course, bursting at the seams with all kinds of writing prompts and other creative stimuli and it can be difficult to know where to begin. So, today I've listed a selection of prompts for fiction writers (please, use them and abuse them; maybe even show us your efforts in the comments section below) but what I really want to do is explain how I like to use these kinds of prompts and what I feel their relative strengths and weaknesses are.

What To Do When You Hate Your Story

The worst possible thing that can happen to any writer is for them to look at their work (especially their half finished work) and decide that it's rubbish. Any idiot can overcome writer's block with just a little bit of perseverance, but despairing over your story can be crippling. Not only will it halt you in your tracks, but it will probably make you want to give up writing altogether. Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Quitting is NOT an option! That includes quitting your current story, as well as quitting writing altogether.

A Quick Review of Hemingway Editor v.3.0

You may recall (if you've got a photographic memory) that I published a post last year reviewing the Hemingway Editor. This snazzy little app analyses and grades the simplicity of your writing style and I've used it plenty over the last year to help edit my own writing. Well, it so happens that I got an e-mail this week informing me that v.3.0 is now available with a whole bunch of new features. These include...

Penstricken: Collected Stories by Andrew Ferguson – Out Now!

There are short stories, there are very short stories and then there is flash fiction: the delicate and often tricky art of telling a story in as few words as possible.The stories in this tiny little book (all originally published between 2015 and 2020 on the fiction blog, Penstricken) are deliberate exercises in brevity.In total, this book contains twelve flash fictions ranging from fifty to 2,000 words apiece, plus six collections of six word stories.While these stories vary in mood and genre, you will find in many that the author's tongue was firmly entrenched in his cheek; whether it be in the brief tale of a Martian liberating his 'kin' from the deep fat fryer of a Glasgow chip shop or the nightmarish tragedy of Santa Claus' true genesis, Penstricken: Collected Stories is a brief snapshot of one writer's meandering imagination.

Dear Authors, Size Does Matter

Best of all, you've had a story idea! A superb story idea that you're sure other people are going to love too! Well isn't that just fabulous? I'm made up for you. Really. You won't see the verdant steam of jealousy billowing from my ears at all. In fact, I'm so happy for you that I'm going to help you make sure you don't ruin it.'Ruin it?!' You cry, aghast and perturbed. 'What could possibly ruin this little gem of mine?!'Lots of things, but what I'm really thinking about today is the length of your story: writing a novel that should be a novella; a novella that should be a short story; a short story that should be a one hundred word story; a one hundred word story that should be fifty... or indeed, writing a fifty word story that should be a 550,000 word trilogy with a spin-off stage musical.

My Dead Darlings

A good writer must be able to look at his or her manuscript with a dispassionate eye and exorcise any superfluous passages, even if it is some of the most beautiful prose you have ever written.If you haven't had this problem yet as a writer, you will. Oh, brother, you will. It might be a clever turn of phrase, a vivid metaphor, a piercing line of dialogue or even an entire chapter (or more!) of narrative which you are immensely proud of... but it does nothing to advance the story and therefore, it has to go.None of us are immune to this phenomenon. I, myself, find myself doing it on almost everything I try to write. So for your enjoyment, I have preserved a few dead darlings from the last few Penstricken posts here, in the hopes that I might also encourage you to kill your darlings without mercy. Your story will thank you for it.

On Titles

Titles are hard but you can't very well avoid giving your story one. Most depressingly of all, there's a good chance your publisher will throw out your snazzy title that you agonised over and replace it with some other, more marketable title ('Confessions of a Philistine Publisher, or something like that). Still, they won't even look at your story if you don't give it a title first so there's nothing else for it, I'm afraid. Your story needs a title.

A Colourful Approach to Brainstorming

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, The Bic 4-Colour Ballpoint Pen.Four colours in one pen!I know what you're thinking. Ancient technology. Humble. Boring. Run of the mill ... But trust me on this, it's proven a great help to me whenever I've been trying to come up with new story ideas on my own (and you can use it during a power cut!).It's quite a simple technique really. First, grab a notebook that you don't mind scribbling all your loose ideas into (seriously, we are not interested in presentation here). Second, grab your Pen of Many Colours. From now on, each colour represents a person in your 'group', and these will interact with one another. There are four members in my imaginary group because there are four colours on my pen....

How To Make a Spin-Off That Doesn’t Suck

This week, I had planned to write a blog about my favourite TV spin-offs; '5 Spin-Offs That Are Actually Worth Watching', or something to that effect. I don't know exactly what I would have called it. The whole idea was blown out the water when I realised I couldn't think of many spin-off shows I actually liked; certainly nothing that I liked enough to devote several hundred words to raving about. A painstaking trawl through Wikipedia's ever popular list of television spin-offs did nothing to inspire me. It only confirmed what I had already begun to suspect: most spin-offs suck.

3 Types of Distinctive Characters

Characters who are not just believable people (though that is vitally important), but who are intriguing, unusual, captivating and - most importantly - unique. Their distinctive qualities makes them memorable, interesting and appealing (even if they are the most sinister villains) and they don't slot too neatly into cliched archetypes - damsels in distress, moustache twirling villains, reluctant heroes or any other such thing.It is, therefore, naturally quite difficult to capture the formula for creating such a character. After all, any examples I can highlight (and I've highlighted a couple of my favourites) would only serve to be examples of unique characters who have already been written. You, dear writer, need to think of something new! But I have tried, as best I can, to sort them into three more general categories of the kind of thing you can use to add that distinctive sparkle to your character.