Claire Scobie's Blog: Wordstruck, page 3

Wordstruck - Write out of your comfort zone

Do you always fall into the same writing habits? The same tone, the same phrases? You’re in good company.

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At my lovely Creative Writing class yesterday I was explaining how writers have tics – not facial ones, although perhaps we have them too – the ones that crop up in language. In my first book I kept using the word chocolate brown. I read a friend’s early draft and half her characters were nodding.

Often we don’t notice our own tics, which is why we need a writing buddy or editor to point them out. But seeing your own habits and pushing yourself to change them is an important way to expand your craft.

A screenwriter recently told me how challenging it is writing for commercial television where the adverts dictate programme content.

‘You need to setup a new character and end on a cliffhanger in 30 seconds,’ he was told.

Surely not, I hear you say. How can you do all that in 30 seconds? At first he struggled, then he found inventive ways around it. In the process he learned new tools which he’ll carry through to other projects.

I’m finding this with my new novel. I am happier writing from the third person point of view (pov) and personally I prefer reading third person pov stories. However, my main character ‘wants’ to be told from the first person. While first person can be very engaging and immediate, it’s harder to sustain.

‘Tough. You’ve just got to learn,‘ my writing buddy told me.

She’s right. Keeping it fresh is part of what we need to do as writers. That’s why I switched from journalism to long form fiction, and now to fiction. I like to mix it up.

Here are 5 ways to stretch yourself:

Change your voice. If you’re chatty, become formal; if you always talk about yourself, reduce the number of ‘Is’ and focus outwards. See what you learn by doing so.

Switch point of view. If your story isn’t working, your narrative position maybe wrong. Take the plunge and write from another pov and see how that changes the narrative.

Try a different genre. If you’ve always loved fantasy but you’ve been too scared to write about aliens with blue heads and five arms, do it now. What have you got to lose?

Read your work out loud to someone you trust. Be brave enough to get feedback.

Kill your darlings. As writers we are often attached to our pet phrases, our favourite opening line. Sometimes we have to throw them out because they stifle a story. Don’t be afraid to try new approaches.

As author Neale Donald Walsch puts it, ‘Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.’ I look forward to seeing you there…

If Travel Writing in Italy is a stretch too far this year, join me for a weekend Travel Memoir course, June 21 & 22, at the Australian Writers’ Centre, Sydney.

My next 5-week Creative Writing course at the AWC starts on June 03.

Wordstruck - 11 ways to write great dialogue

This week I started Italian classes in preparation for my upcoming Travel Writing in a Palace retreat (let me know if you’re interested!) I love languages and Italian, as we all know, is particularly passionate and evocative.

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Years ago, I spent a summer learning Italian in Perugia. I have a vivid memory of sitting on sun-baked steps eating a mozzarella-filled panini dripping with olive oil and fresh oregano. I remember thinking, ‘There is nothing better than this.’ I’ve never tasted a sandwich like it.

So even though my grammar is very rusty and I’ve forgotten half my vocab, just being in the class made it all rush back. Afterwards I walked through Leichhardt – little Italy, for those who don’t know – and wanted to say ‘Ciao’ to everyone I met.

Of course, it wasn’t the exercises that made me excited, it was watching the teacher and being part of the group. I was mesmerised by her gestures. How she joked and drew everyone into the conversation; how she listened, her head cocked to the side. How she conducted the evening class as if it was an orchestra.

Capturing how a person talks is crucial to making your characters come alive on every page.

Here are 11 ways to keep your dialogue fresh:

Interleave dialogue with action. This helps create a scene so the reader feels like they are seeing something in real time. i.e. She picked up the cup. ‘It’s chipped,’ she said. ‘Mother won’t be pleased.’

Use ‘telling gestures’ that reflect the character of the person who’s talking. These also help to break up quotes.

Condense an exchange. We don’t need every ‘um’ and ‘aagh’.

Paraphrase some sections as a way to cut to the chase. If you paraphrase, you don’t need punctuation, as you’re not quoting the person word for word.

Edit your dialogue to the strongest moments. Avoid those waffly bits – this is especially true in fiction where there’s a tendency to let dialogue drag. Keep it sharp.

Include information – or exposition – in dialogue. Be aware this needs a light touch (especially in fiction.)

Show what isn’t said between characters with ellipsis. i.e. ‘I was hoping you’d stay …’ she trailed off.

Capture the rhythm of how a non-English speaker talks, rather than relying on dialect.

Include a few foreign words to get the flavour of the language & include the English translation. i.e ‘Basta! Enough!’ said the mother as the child stamped her feet. (You can italicise the foreign word if you want.)

Keep with ‘said’ as your speech tag. Writers often worry that ‘he said/she said’ gets boring, so they replace it with umpteen other words. Actually we don’t notice these tags when reading and it’s distracting if you have ‘hollered / murmured / responded’ etc.

Be careful with swear words. They come across much more strongly in text than in speech.

So over to you, how do you use dialogue to humanise your stories?

Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in a Palace 2014.

Wordstruck - 10 ways to be a master storyteller

Yesterday I heard Mark Strom speak about how asking ‘grounded questions’ leads to people telling more meaningful stories. A self-described ‘story-teller with a PhD in the history of ideas’ Mark uses this approach to help businesses identify their narratives and affect positive change.

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A passionate speaker and author of Lead with Wisdom , Mark’s particular approach brings together his knowledge of philosophy and belief in the value of wisdom, with ways of using story to communicate better.

We all know that one anecdote can tell us much more than stats or facts. As he says, ‘Storytelling is fundamentally how we construct identity and a sense of purpose… Tell a story and people will grasp what you are saying.’

This approach is now used in politics – Barack Obama made the art of narrative campaigning all his own – in business, in leadership, content marketing and social media.

‘We can’t make anything without words,’ says Mark. ‘We all have to become the author of our own world.’

Here are 10 ways YOU can become a master storyteller:

Make your story universal. It will touch more people.

Use emotion. How we respond to people is relational not just intellectual. If someone else feels your story they will be touched.

Be succinct. Don’t waffle.

Know the point of your story. Why are you choosing to tell it?

This leads too… Have an intention behind your story. Intention focuses energy into your words creater greater resonance.

Think about how to tell your story. Allow for suspense and build to a punch line.

Listen to other people’s stories. They will inform your own.

Make your story fit your audience. If necessary adapt an anecdote to suit who you are speaking to.

Work with your imagination. Stories don’t just come from the intellect. They come from the heart, the soul, from the ether and the winds, from the past and the future. Use your stories to encompass all of that…

And lastly, be open to changing your story. Here, I’m talking about the story of your life… so you can become the hero of your own destiny.

If you want to learn more about storytelling there’s a Sydney International Storytelling Conference coming up, 6-8 June 2014.

Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in a Palace 2014.

Wordstruck - How to make your words powerful and affect change

This morning I decided to blog about why some words move us and why others don’t. I was thinking about this as I arrived at a breakfast meeting for She Business Australia entitled ‘How to be a great leader and create the world you choose.’

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It’s the first time I’ve been to one of these meet-ups. I booked at the last minute because the timing was right. This year I’m expanding my business and I need tips on how to do this.

The guest speaker was Babette Bensoussan who talked about the personal system of Energy Leadership, a coaching program to help people become more successful and happier in their lives.

So how does this relate to writing?

In clear positive language Babette explained that there are 7 levels of energy divided into:

Catabolic energy (levels 1 & 2) which can be destructive and negative except in short bursts. This is the sort of energy which gets things done. For writers, it’s ‘I don’t want to finish this article but I have a deadline so I’ll do it now.’

This energy is often anger. Sometimes this is a powerful driver and as we know in fiction, conflict is a key way to advance a story (but that’s another post).

Short term this can help. Long term it’s destructive.

Anabolic energy (levels 3 to 7) is constructive and healing. It’s the shift from ‘I win, you lose’ to ‘We both win.‘ It’s about taking responsibility for our lives and having compassion for ourselves and others.

And here’s the crux. How we talk – and how we write – has power.

It can help us get where we want or it can hold us back.

Here are a few expressions of ‘energy language’:

Catabolic (the not so good stuff)

• I should, I must

• I can’t

• Always

• I try

• I think

Anabolic (the good stuff)

• I choose, I want

• It’s important to me

• Sometimes, often or seldom

• I intend or I aim

• I know or I don’t know

In Babette’s words, ‘Level 1 is the victim. The person who says, “I can’t do this, I can’t save.” They always have a problem, never a solution.’

For centuries storytellers have known that words have power. It’s no coincidence that the word ‘spell’ has a double meaning.

As Christopher Vogler says in The Writer’s Journey, Many cultures ‘ believed letters were powerful magical symbols that could be used to cast spells and predict the future.

‘When you spell a word correctly, you are in effect casting a spell… The healing power of words is their most magical aspect. Writers, like the shamans or medicine men and women of ancient cultures, have the potential to be healers.’

And, I’d add, writers can also be powerful leaders.

Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in Mercatello 2014.

Wordstruck - 10 ways to write smarter

We all benefit from being more time effective and cost efficient. Here are ten tips on how to make your writing day run smoother.

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Know what you are going to write before you sit at your desk. If you’re working on a novel this can mean finishing halfway through a scene so you know instantly where to pick up from the day before.

Listen to your biorhythms. If you write better first thing then no emails before you’ve done your 1000 words. Don’t start something new in the groggy mid-afternoon period, do research instead.

Have regular breaks. Research shows that sitting is the new smoking – our sedentary lifestyle is literally killing us. Try the pomodoro technique. Answer phone calls standing up. Have a proper lunchbreak.

Make priority lists to plan your day if you’ve got so much to do and don’t know where to start.

Prefer mindmaps? Write them out with coloured pens or use one of the many software programs like Novamind.

Get to grips with Scrivener for big writing projects. I know I’ve said it before – that’s because it works. It will save you time sifting through Word documents trying to find that one para you know you’ve written.

Give yourself personal deadlines – very helpful if you’re working on a book. If necessary do a spreadsheet with dates on when you will finish sections/chapters by.

Clean your desk. It makes a difference to how you feel when you sit down. You’ll find things you’ve forgotten that might be useful.

Meet up with fellow writers once a month to swap ideas, to read each other’s work, to have a moan, to inspire each other.

Avoid social media when you are writing. No Facebook, no Twitter, none of it. Make use of the ‘focus’ option in Microsoft Word: View > Focus (Scrivener has a similar tool) which blacks out everything else on your desktop. Then dedicate a particular time of day to virtual connectivity – perhaps during the 3pm blues over a cuppa.

What ways can you be more efficient?

Next Tuesday, 8 April, I’m starting a new Creative Writing 5-week course at the Australian Writers' Centre. Join me!

Wordstruck - Finding your personal style

You can teach a lot about the craft of writing but style is very personal. It comes through practice. It’s about getting familiar enough with words, the rhythm of how they fit together and the overall shape of a narrative. Even though I’ve been writing professionally for twenty years I’m still learning.

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Some of it is instinct. Some things you learn by reading and analysing how other authors write. I still do that. I’ll never stop.

Gotham Writers' School says style boils down to three things:

Diction – word choice
Syntax – sentence length
Paragraphs – long, short.

Style also comes from within. It reflects how you see the world.

I would love to write humorously. I’d love some of Hilary Mantel’s black sparkle, Walter Mason’s gentle wit or Bill Bryson’s buffoonery. But that’s not my thang.

When I was working with journalist and author Mick Brown at London’s Telegraph we used to joke that we’d love an ‘ironising machine’.

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We imagined it would look like a fax (remember them?). Once you’d written your story you could put in a ‘humour symbol’ at ket points – a wink wink nudge nudge cartoon of two arched eyebrows and a pair of laughing eyes.

Then this magical machine would make your story ironical and funny. All those parts that needed spicing up and flexing out would be transformed. All the ‘try hard’ bits would re-configure into jokes.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

I still haven’t found one of those machines. I’m still no good at writing humorously but I’ve decided I’m going to have a crack and learn.

This year I’ll be signing up for an online Humour Writing course at Gotham. I’ll let you know how I go. Or maybe you’ll be able to spot a shift in my style.

Over to you. Can you write comedy?

Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in Mercatello 2014.

Wordstruck - Can you write humorously?

You can teach a lot about the craft of writing but style is very personal. It comes through practice. It’s about getting familiar enough with words, the rhythm of how they fit together and the overall shape of a narrative. Even though I’ve been writing professionally for twenty years I’m still learning.

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Some of it is instinct. Some things you learn by reading and analysing how other authors write. I still do that. I’ll never stop.

Gotham Writers' School says style boils down to three things:

Diction – word choice
Syntax – sentence length
Paragraphs – long, short.

Style also comes from within. It reflects how you see the world.

I would love to write humorously. I’d love some of Hilary Mantel’s black sparkle, Walter Mason’s gentle wit or Bill Bryson’s buffoonery. But that’s not my thang.

When I was working with journalist and author Mick Brown at London’s Telegraph we used to joke that we’d love an ‘ironising machine’.

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We imagined it would look like a fax (remember them?). Once you’d written your story you could put in a ‘humour symbol’ at ket points – a wink wink nudge nudge cartoon of two arched eyebrows and a pair of laughing eyes.

Then this magical machine would make your story ironical and funny. All those parts that needed spicing up and flexing out would be transformed. All the ‘try hard’ bits would re-configure into jokes.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

I still haven’t found one of those machines. I’m still no good at writing humorously but I’ve decided I’m going to have a crack and learn.

This year I’ll be signing up for an online Humour Writing course at Gotham. I’ll let you know how I go. Or maybe you’ll be able to spot a shift in my style.

Over to you. Can you write comedy?

Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in Mercatello 2014.

Wordstruck - Creating three-dimensional characters

We read because we want to feel what it’s like to be another person and experience another reality. We watch films for the same reason. When a movie or a story is gripping it is because the emotions that we’re seeing on the page or screen are replicated in us.

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We’re gunning for the hero to make it across the desert before the enemy tracks him down. We cheer on the heroine as she breaks free from her painful past. We become so involved with their lives that we think about them after we’ve left the cinema or put the book down. Something inside us is touched – and through that we are changed.

In fiction or narrative non-fiction you want to make your lead characters live and breathe on – and off – the page. If you are the main character in your story, the reader needs to feel your highs and lows. You must take the reader by the hand to the scene of the action. At the key points in the narrative, we need to see through your eyes, hear through your ears.

Some people you meet in real life are so unique that you couldn’t have written them better in fiction. This is often true in travel writing. We may go to exotic locations but it’s the individuals who stay with us after the landscape has faded into sepia.

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This is why I’ve chosen to combine my travel writing retreat in Italy with immersion in traditional village life. 
Mercatello sul Metauro isn’t on the tourist trail. It’s full of artisans and craftsmen and women who still ply trades dating back to the Renaissance. They are unique and colourful; the older men’s faces are craggy. Exuberant Luisa (pictured here) owns the Donati palace where we will be staying.

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How a person looks is one way to bring a character to life. Famously Philip Roth uses only three words of description. Raymond Carver avoids any physical traits to show character. Most writers use a combination of telling details and action.

Here are 8 more techniques you can use to portray character:

Use dialogue to let the reader hear the character’s unique voice.

Combine dialogue with gestures so we can hear and see them. ‘Give me that,’ she said, slicing the air with her hand.

Use all five senses – not forgetting smell & taste – to show how a person reacts. This could be you in your travel story arriving at a new destination.

Reveal their flaws. None of us are perfect. We identify with others’ weaknesses and their strengths.

Show how someone changes. It can be an internal shift from anxiety to confidence or a major transformation.

Walk us step by step through the dramatic moments in your narrative. Do this by slowing the writing down when you want to ramp up the emotion.

Combine what’s going on internally with what’s happening externally. So show how your character (this could be you) thinks as they watch events unfold around them. This mimics reality.

Surprise us. In fiction your character needs to have consistency but it doesn’t mean they should be predictable. That’s the same in real life.

Don’t you love it when you surprise yourself?

I know I do!

Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in Mercatello 2014.

Wordstruck - Grammar refresher

Good grammar is the bricks and mortar of writing. If you want to communicate clearly in an email, a report, an article or a full-length book, it’s important to get your grammar right.

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Some writers I know rely on the squiggly green lines in Microsoft Word that alert you to mistakes. Others prefer writing applications like Grammarly for proofreading because it catches those pesky errors that other programmes miss.

Participants at my workshops often complain they weren’t taught grammar at school. There are blank stares when I ask them to define an adverb or a simile.

When the copy editor was editing my novel The Pagoda Tree she pointed out some of my mistakes. I confuse the two verbs ‘to lie’ and ‘to lay’. Instead of saying ‘I laid down’ I should say ‘I lay down.’ This is because the verb ‘lay’ or ‘laid’ needs an object. E.g, I laid the table.

In contrast ‘lie’ or ‘lay’ or ‘lain’ is an intransitive verb and doesn’t need a direct object.
So you can say, ‘I lay and read.’

Last year to further my knowledge, I went to Deb Doyle’s excellent Editing Essentials course at the Australian Writers’ Centre. She’s a stickler for proper grammar and how it sharpens your writing.

Here are 5 grammar tips that can help you:

Make your verbs active, not passive. Not ‘I was told by the man’ but ‘the man told me.’ Less words and more dynamic.

Use verbs rather than adverbs. They are the engine of your sentence. They drive a story forward. Not ‘she walked slowly’ but ‘she strolled.’

Write simple subject-verb-object sentences rather than relying on several clauses in a sentence to convey meaning.

Avoid using nouns as adjectives. This is common in the corporate and business world. E.g. ‘We provide alternative solution strategies’ can be ‘we provide alternative solutions’ or ‘alternative strategies.’

Watch the apostrophe. People often confuse the possessive pronoun ‘its’ for ‘it’s’ which is short for ‘it is’. Or ‘your’ for ‘you’re’.

Over to you. What grammar mistakes do you make? And how do you fix them?

Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in Mercatello 2014.

Wordstruck - Cut out the boring stuff

When I started off as a journalist I was fortunate enough to work alongside Mick Brown, a brilliant writer and long-time journalist at London’s Daily Telegraph. He’d read my stories and say, ‘Claire, Cut to the chase here.’

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What he meant was, get rid of the boring stuff. Tell the story.

Last weekend at my travel memoir workshop one of the participants said, ‘I thought I had to tell everything that happened. Now I realise I don’t.’

That’s right. If nothing happens in a section of your journey – replace this, with your life if you’re writing memoir or your plot if you’re working on a novel – then skip it.

If you need to zoom forward, summarise.

‘Two weeks later I was in…’

Or, ‘A year later, she left him…’

Or, ‘This happened again and again until the day he learned enough…’

All of these sentences advance the narrative. They move us forward in time or develop character without going into the details.

Because we don’t need every detail, we don’t need to know every person you meet or hear about every experience your protagonist has.

In your writing try and focus on the parts that:

a) Are most interesting

b) Are most relevant to your narrative thread

c) Add to the sort of story you are writing. If it’s funny, include the funniest bits. If it’s thrilling, focus on the edge-of-the-seat moments.

d) Develop your main characters

e) Take us to places we don’t know

f) Tell us something new

g) Reinforce your theme

h) Advance the plot

Much of writing is about emphasis. What you chose to bring to the foreground and what you leave in the background. It’s about finding the telling detail to draw the sharpest portrayal of a place or the choice quote that brings to life a character.

But you may ask, how do you know what’s boring and what’s not?

You might not initially. You might have to write a lot and then only when you re-read it do you see where the story drags. In fiction you may need to write into your character to understand him/her. Then you chop that section in your second draft.

This is where you need to have an honest reader, a writing buddy, a writing group.

It’s also practice. The more you write, the more you get attuned to the rhythm of words and how they shape a narrative.

Reading out loud can help. Leaving it for a few days or weeks gives you distance.

It’s at this point that the dreaded ‘inner critic’ that can be so debilitating while we write can actually lend a hand. The critic is often a good editor in the second draft. That’s when you need that incisor part of you to say, ‘This bit has to go, it’s dull.’

And when you cut it, you’ll find it’s liberating. Honestly.

Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in Mercatello 2014.