Guess what a writer does
Go on. Have a guess. No clues. Just guess.
Give up?
OK. I'll tell you. Ready? Are you sitting down? Here it is...
We write. That's it. Big shock, I know, but I'm always reading stuff online about writing that comes at the expense of actually writing. The latest one was in relation to plotting a graph before writing a book. If I got my head around the idea properly (Maths and all that was never my strong point), it involves making a graph in order to see where the plot could or would hit a high point of action, drama or whatever. Then the low points would presumably be the talky bits like in an action film when you go to the loo because nothing is going to blow up for a minute.
To me, this is a very odd way of doing things. Imagine all that time spent supposedly coming up with an idealised plot based on a poxy graph. What about actually sitting down and typing out a story? What about seeing where your characters take you? I mentioned in an earlier post about the new writers who think there are tricks to writing a book. There are apparently a perfect number of words or chapters or words per chapter or yadda yadda. This graph business is the same sort of thinking. There are no tricks to writing. You could read the top ten best-selling books of the last few years and analyse them to see if you can take the best-selling elements from them and apply those to your own book, but you'd be better off writing your own sodding story to the best of your abilities instead of coming up with a cynical, mashed up rip-off pile of crap. Or messing about with graphs for that matter.
A writer writes. That's what we do. Just like an athlete exercises or a chef cooks a lot, we write. And then when the book is finished, we write another one. And then another.
Give up?
OK. I'll tell you. Ready? Are you sitting down? Here it is...
We write. That's it. Big shock, I know, but I'm always reading stuff online about writing that comes at the expense of actually writing. The latest one was in relation to plotting a graph before writing a book. If I got my head around the idea properly (Maths and all that was never my strong point), it involves making a graph in order to see where the plot could or would hit a high point of action, drama or whatever. Then the low points would presumably be the talky bits like in an action film when you go to the loo because nothing is going to blow up for a minute.
To me, this is a very odd way of doing things. Imagine all that time spent supposedly coming up with an idealised plot based on a poxy graph. What about actually sitting down and typing out a story? What about seeing where your characters take you? I mentioned in an earlier post about the new writers who think there are tricks to writing a book. There are apparently a perfect number of words or chapters or words per chapter or yadda yadda. This graph business is the same sort of thinking. There are no tricks to writing. You could read the top ten best-selling books of the last few years and analyse them to see if you can take the best-selling elements from them and apply those to your own book, but you'd be better off writing your own sodding story to the best of your abilities instead of coming up with a cynical, mashed up rip-off pile of crap. Or messing about with graphs for that matter.
A writer writes. That's what we do. Just like an athlete exercises or a chef cooks a lot, we write. And then when the book is finished, we write another one. And then another.
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