Andrew Ferguson's Blog, page 26

Why I Quit Camp NaNoWriMo

My novel was going nowhere (although he's feeling much better now, thanks) and I noticed someone on Twitter remarking that they had just signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo.

Ah-ha! I thought, Now's as good a time as any to give this whole NaNoWriMo lark a bash. Maybe it will help me complete my novel...

I was very excited about it. I was going to make progress and lots of it! I joined a cabin so that I could compare notes with other like-minded writers; I read all the useful 'camp care packages' that were sent to my inbox, full of useful advice to help me make the most of Camp NaNoWriMo; I perused the forums and all the articles full of helpful writing tips...

The one thing I did not do was write my novel.

A Few Thoughts on Star Trek Beyond

My main problem with Beyond was the pacing of the plot. It was fast and exciting almost from the outset, but as any good writer will tell you, speed and excitement cannot make a good story alone. Slower scenes, rich in dialogue and other details are important to allow for a build-up in suspense and to keep the audience abreast of what is actually going on. In particular, these slow scenes are essential for adding substance and meaning to a story.

Like It or Lump It, Your Intended Audience Matters

Every now and again I hear authors, publishers and other would-be writing gurus all saying the same thing: it is very important to know exactly who your audience is before you write. I don't mind telling you that every time I hear that, I groan. I don't like to be restricted by boring things like that; I just wanted to write my story. Let the publisher worry about how they're going to market my story: I am creating a work of art, darling!

Believe me, if you ever feel that way, you're not alone. But lately I've learned that knowing who your audience is is just as important to the artistic side of writing (the most important part, surely?) as it is to the boring business side of things.

How to Kill Someone (in Fiction) and Get Away With It

The death of a main character can easily be one of the main turning points in your story. A skillful author can use it to provoke any number of responses from all of the other characters, as well as further taking the reader's sympathies in almost direction you like. Don't spoil it or cheapen it by killing characters unnecessarily. If you're going to kill a character then I implore you... don't remove the fear of death from your story. Make sure dead characters stay dead, no matter how difficult it makes things for your other characters and be sure to do the proper ground work to get the correct response from your audience.

Adversity: A Leaf Out Of Peter Newman’s Book

Make sure your fictional world does not revolve around your protagonist. Take a leaf out of Newman's book and force your character to adapt. That's what will turn your character made of words into a person with substance - dare I say, a soul. Albert Einstein said "adversity introduces a man to himself"; but in fiction, adversity is what introduces the reader to the man.

Suspense: A Deliberately Awful Story

Today's short story came about as a result of a random creatively prompt provided to me by the Android app, Writer Unblocked:

In 1000 words or less, write what happens when a B-movie director gets stuck between floors in an elevator.

When I got this prompt, I couldn't help but think that it actually sounded a bit like a B-movie about a B-movie director so naturally I thought it would be a bit of a wheeze to write it in screenplay format (or at least, as close to screenplay as I could get it; I've never actually written a screenplay before and WordPress has rather messed up my formatting) and give it the paper thin plot, terrible dialogue and half-naked robo-bodybuilder you would expect to find in a B-movie. My tongue was, as you might expect, firmly embedded in my cheek when I wrote this.

The Overwhelming Art of World-Building

Research is, undeniably, one of the most important stages of writing a story. Understanding the time and place your story is set in will enable you to make that story more true to life, and therefore, more compelling. But what if you are writing a fantasy, set in an imaginary world? Make no mistake: research is just as important in fantasy as it is in non-fantasy, perhaps even more so since you are creating a world from scratch. If you're writing a historical fiction set during the Spanish Civil War, you probably won't need to research whether or not gravity existed in Spain or what colour the grass was. We can take these things for granted in non-fantasy, but in fantasy you need to become an expert on your entire world... and still make time to actually write the story!