How to get story ideas and learn new writing tricks faster

Posted on by
Reply

Hi, my name is Amy McLane, and I write epic fantasy. Here is a sampling of the books I’ve read in the past month or so, in reverse chronological order (and yes, this is related to that flashing neon sign of a blog title, don’t worry, we’re getting there):

American Vampire by Scott Snyder (Horror, graphic novel)

The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman (Fantasy, graphic novel)

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King (Horror, four novellas)

Driven by James Sallis (Noir Thriller, short novel)

Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell (Science Fiction, novel)

The Cold Commands by Richard Morgan (Fantasy, novel)

Now, fantasy is my first and moste potente love, but as you can see, I try to read all over the map, and I go through phases, too. For example, in the early spring I went through a big Classic Lit/YA thing, whereas right now I’m more drawn to Horror, Crime, and SF. I read all over the map for three reasons:

  1. As a reader, it’s fun
  2. As a writer, I learn more tricks faster
  3. And, the more (and varied) books I read, the more ideas I get

What? Yeah. More tricks. Faster.  More ideas. Faster. YUP. Don’t believe me? TRY IT. If you’ve been in a writing rut, go to the library and check out a handful of books in genre you don’t normally read. Put your smartphone on silent and snoopily check reviews, so that you can pick books that have good word-of-mouth. After all, you don’t want to try sailing into a new land on the back of a dead whale. (I hear it’s really hard to get ambergris out of blue jeans.) And then read them!

Bonus round: Target your weak spots. If you only ever read novels, try short stories, novellas, graphic novels, and learn how the different forms function. If you have trouble creating tension in your stories, go for thrillers or horror novels. If your relationships suck, try romance. If your settings are flat, pick SF or fantasy. Now that’s not to say you can’t find, say, a thriller with a rich setting, or a fantasy novel with a breakneck pace (that’s pretty much mandatory these days, amiright), but if you really want to see how the game works, how all those bits and pieces come together to make a functioning whole, you need to get outside your comfort zone and examine how things are done in different genres. It’ll open your eyes.

I have lots of story ideas. Frequently. It annoys many of my writer-chums. Right now I just finished a novel and am trying to clean up my query packet. Next up? Well I have five different novel ideas, some of which I have 10k+ words laid down on already, and I guess I’m just going to go with my gut in regards to what to work on next. In the meantime, I bumped out three short stories last week, as a form of procrastination against cleaning up the aforementioned query packet.

How do I get so many ideas for stories? By exposing myself to other stories, lots of stories, wildly different stories. Try it, I’m begging you. Those wildly different stories will throw a party in your hindbrain, they’ll mix, they’ll mingle, they’ll ferment, and then, the stork named inspiration will leave you a present in your cabbage patch.

So go forth, my writerly friends, read everything you can get your grubby little mitts on, and reap the rewards.

All Tied in Knots

Posted on by
Reply

It’s confession time, again. And there’s nothing worse than posting one of these that sounds more like a list of excuses than a list of accomplishments. I have a little of both this month. Okay, more of one than the other.

For the last month I’ve felt like I’ve had my hands tied when it came to getting anything creatively done. Everything from house hunting to laptops breaking plagued me this month. Just classic cases of life happening. Converging all at once makes it suck that much more.

Those were legitimate problems to stop writing for a while. Now they’re not. However, the longer I went without writing, the harder it was to pick it up again. I began looking for other things to do that would keep me from writing. You know, things like house work.

So in concerted effort to break that unhealthy chain, I’ve started to write. My first task was to finish the Round Robin story we set out to do **mumble-mumble** weeks ago. To keep it fair, I didn’t (completely) read it until I knew I’d have the time to finish it. Shooting from the hip is a big premise to the story, and I didn’t want to deviate from that. You can read the full story here, or get to it from the menu bar above.

Now I’ll wrap this up so I might get to another short story I have brewing. In the mean time, can you let me know how you manage to get out of your non-writing slumps? One can never have to many tools at his or her disposal.

500 Club (5/3)

Posted on by
2

Hello, Thursday! Hello, 500 Club!

Before we get to today’s prompts, here’s a quick recap of the rules.

  1. Choose one of the prompts below.
  2. On your blog, write a 500-word story or scene based on the prompt.
  3. Post a teaser to your story in the comments below with a link to where we can read the rest.

Ready to write?

Here are today’s prompts:

1. Write a scene in which a character loses one of his or her senses, either temporarily or permanently. Choose any POV you’d like. 

…or…

2. Rewrite an ending you hated into the ending you wanted.

Have fun!

Up and Over the Query Letter Mountain

Posted on by
3

I used to read angsty blog and forum posts written by frustrated writers who were toiling over query letters and think, What’s the big deal? You write the letter, you send it off. Clearly they were making mountains out of mole hills.

Then it came time for me to write one.

And I got it.

What a nerve-wracking, nail-biting, anxiety-inducing venture that little letter is. Turns out those mole hills loomed rather large after all.

I questioned everything. Was I professional enough? Too professional? Overly personal? Cold? Desperate. Did I capture the essence of my book? Holy cow, what was the essence of my book? Hang on, I wrote a book?! In a blink, I’d over-analyzed everything and was totally out-of-whack.

Then I remembered a little book I’d downloaded a while ago that I thought might come in handy one day.

Elana Johnson’s From the Query to the Call. Great book. Filled with practical information and examples of winning letters. I only wish I’d remembered it when I first sat down to craft my letter.

If you’re about to enter the querying fray, check out Elana’s book. It’s free on her website. Seriously, it will lead you through the madness. (Thank you, Elana!)

The other resources that have been wonderful are Amy and Kate, my two writer friends who are also writing query letters right now. We’ve been workshopping each others’ letters. So helpful, getting feedback from people you trust an who want to see you succeed.

So that’s this month’s confession: my query letter is out in the world. *gulp* I hope it does what it’s supposed to do.

Now I find myself joining those angsty writers obsessing over response times and acceptance rates and all the other things that drive us writers bonkers. Turns out you tackle on overly-tall mole hill, and there’s another one right there, waiting to be climbed.

500 Club (4/26)

Posted on by
2

Hi everybody, it’s time to write!

Here’s the rules for our little game:

  1. Write 500 words based on one of the two prompts below.
  2. Post it to your blog.
  3. Give us a line or two in the comments, along with a link back to the full text.

1. Write a story about a tight-knit community. Does your hero want to break free, or remake the rest of the world in his community’s image? And would that be a good or a very bad thing?

2. Start with an omen. A raven, a black cat, a shining light haloing someone’s head. Just make sure your omen foreshadows the opposite of what we expect (halo = bad! Raven = good!)

Good luck and have fun!

A Writing Lesson from Sherlock

Posted on by
Reply

There’s a TV show I used to watch, back in the days before I took writing seriously. BBC’s Coupling. Some shows made me smirk and others snicker. Coupling is one of the only shows that has made me laugh out loud. The writing was brilliant. The writer was Steven Moffat.

Imagine my joy, then, when it was announced Steven Moffat would be taking on Doctor Who after Russell T. Davies. Huge relief. Oh good, I thought, the show will be fine. *exhale*

And then, like an extra pressie on Christmas morning, along came BBC’s Sherlock, with none other than Mr. Moffat at the helm.

Sherlock blew me away. And it taught me something about writing. Namely, that passing dialogue can be used to plant plot seeds along a story line.

Elementary, right?

(Sorry. Had to.)

One of the things I love most about Moffat’s story lines are the clues he hides along the way. Little gems that seem at first like throw away lines, and only later — on second and third…and fourth viewing — are seen for the foreshadowing omens they really are. This is particularly true in the final episode of the second season of Sherlock, The Reichenbach Fall. I want to give examples here, but…well…spoilers.

Okay, fine. Here’s one. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, don’t read. In fact, I’ll put it in white text so you’ll have to highlight it to read it and then you can’t blame me for the spoilers, deal?

Spoiler example here:

In what seems a transition scene in The Reichenbach Fall, Sherlock startles Mrs. Hudson. She says, “Oh Sherlock, you made me jump”. Seems like a throw away line. Passing dialogue. Fill. Until you get to the climax of the show, and what you realize is that little statement, “Oh Sherlock, you made me jump” is LOADED with foreshadowing. 

Kind of gives you goosebumps, doesn’t it? 

See? That’s brilliant. And it happens again and again throughout the show.

That’s the kind of writer I want to be. Beyond tone and setting, I want even my passing dialogue between characters to do as much work as possible. To become road signs for what is to come. To be on the page and yet invisible such that the reader will want to read the book again just to find those markers missed during the first read.

There’s only one way I’ll learn how to do this, you know. Only one way to really understand how to effect this trickery in my own work.

I’m going to have to watch Sherlock again.

And again.

And, as Sherlock would say…observe.

P.S. – Sherlock will air on Masterpiece/PBS beginning next week. Check your local listings.

writing lessons from the idiot box: Band of Brothers

Posted on by
Reply

I’m not big on war movies, so it’s hard for me to talk about how very much I love Band of Brothers, because it’s such a outlier of my usual preferences for entertainment. A dear friend talked me into watching the first episode, Currahee, and I was quickly hooked by the strong pacing and  smart writing.

(On Lieutenant Sobel, a hapless dickhead of a drillmaster hilariously played by David Schwimmer. How much of a hapless dickhead was he? Well, besides constantly punishing Easy Company for imaginary infractions, he quite frequently bellowed out “IR-RE-GARD-LESS” during his dressing-downs of Easy, which is not, you know, a real word.)

Capt. Nixon: Sobel’s a genius. I had a headmaster in prep school who was just like him. I know the type.
Maj. Winters: Lew, Michaelangelo’s a genius. Beethoven’s a genius.
Nixon: You know a man in this company who wouldn’t double-time Currahee with a full pack just to piss in that man’s morning coffee?

Besides often being funny, Band of Brothers is captivating for many reasons; not least of all that it is a true story of a company of men who were larger than life. It’s great to watch just for the sheer pleasure of good tv, but on the rewatch (and it is infinitely rewatchable) I’ve got my writing hat on. I’m learning how opposition breeds heroism and camraderie, I’m getting a whole new definition of the word “brother.” I’m getting a better idea of how an army actually works, what wartime is really like, and how to realistically write a soldier, a man at war, who might be hilarious and loveable like Perconte… and yet have no qualms about stealing watches from the dead enemy, like Perconte.

“They’re all ticking, unlike their previous owners”

And that’s just one soldier out of a whole company; each of these guys has his own life, story, personality, quirks and foibles. There are no flat characters here. This verisimilitude is really important to me in crafting my own fiction. Yeah, my wars might be fought with swords and sorcery, but I like to think the people caught up in them are chips off the Easy Company block.

So if you ever want to write about soldiers, I really think you can’t do better for entertaining research than Band of Brothers. I wanted to put some clips in here, but a 2 minute Youtube reel just doesn’t do it justice. You can see it at HBO’s site, if you have one of those pass things, or download eps through itunes. Personally, I am going downstairs right now to watch Currahee on my shiny metal boxed set.

3 Things I Need to STOP DOING So I Can Write Already!

Posted on by
Reply

I procrastinate.

There. I said it.

Usually I can pull out of my procrastination haze and complete whatever task I’m avoiding in just under the wire. It’s the fear of consequences that gets me to the finish line on time. If I don’t do my job, I’ll be looking for a new one. If I don’t get the house in order, I’ll have the wrath of the Mrs. to deal with. See where I’m going? Fear is a powerful motivator for me.

I can’t say the same about writing. I have no deadlines other than my own. If I don’t meet them, then I change them. Not done by Friday? What’s another week. Less than a thousand words written today? Five hundred will do, right? Sure I’m left with guilt, but it doesn’t have the same effect as fear. I’m going to continue to work on it. In the mean time, let me clue you in on some of the bad things I should be cutting out:

1. INTERNET

I have to echo The Amys here. This is the number one time-suck to my writing time. It always stars out innocent enough. Check an email. May write one (that counts as writing, right? Didn’t think so.)

Look in on Facebook. Click a link. Then another. Next thing I know, I’m dosed with some cyber goodness such as the like of the Burrito Bison, The Annoying Orange, and Phil in the Whaaat? For those of you who clicked the links, you’re welcome… or sorry, as the case may be.

*For full disclosure, I spent more than a half hour playing on those sites just now, getting their URL. Stupid internet goodness.

2. Cleaning House

Sound odd? Well, when I’m in need of a good excuse not to write, I suddenly find the state of my house unacceptable. Dusting, mopping, dishes and laundry take immediate priority. And for those of you who don’t know me, I hate each and every one of those activities. Yet somehow at times, they seem like a better idea than tackling that difficult plot, character or setting. My wife might string me up, but I must cut out the cleaning.

3. Be Selfish, Not Selfless

This is the hardest one for me. I want to put everyone else before me. I want the best for my family, and I want to be the one to do it for them. My wife and I have a good balance in that regards. It took us several years to get it right, and there might be a hiccup now and again, but we make it work. My problem is crumbling for my kids. How can I resist when my two-year-old pats the ground next to her and says, “Come on Daddy. Sit. Sit.” Answer: I can’t. And do I just ignore when my son brings wild snakes he’s caught into the house? Answer: A resounding NO!

I’m getting better, I limit my time on the internet. I barely touch it on the weekends, and house cleaning is limited to designated days. Eventually I’ll be able to sneak away more for myself. As the kids get older, they’re less entertained by Dad. That’ll hit harder one day, but for now it’s a small light at what feels like a very long tunnel.

What do you need to avoid? Are you successful? Any and all tips are appreciated.

500 Club (4/19)

Posted on by
Reply

Hello Thursday!

I have some writing prompts ready and waiting to be tackled. Carve out a few minutes and give them a try.

Here’s all you’ll need to know:

  1. Write 500 words based on one of the two prompts below.
  2. Post it to your blog.
  3. Give us a small taste in the comments below along with a link to the full text.

As always, feel free to change the name and sex of the characters as you see fit. After all, it’s your story.:

1. Finish this opening: Killing the headlights and coasting up the driveway, the crunch of the gravel under the tires was the only indication he had arrived. He checked the passenger seat again. No turning back now.

2. Work a poem into a 500 word story. The poem can be as long or as short as you like, made up or well-known (just remember to give credit where credit is due).

3 Things I Need to Stop Doing and Write Instead

Posted on by
2

Every writer has the best intentions. (I’m going to finally write that novel. Yay me!)

A lot of writers have overly ambitious intentions. (I am going to write a bestselling novel this weekend. Just watch me!)

And many writers get in their own way. (I’ll get back to that novel after I finish this level of WoW. *yawn*)

Me included. I don’t play Warcraft, but I do find that a lot of unnecessary things suddenly become very important when I’m starting a new project.

Call it Resistance. Call it fear. Call it laziness. Whatever it is, I need to call it out and get back to work.

Here are the 3 things I need to stop doing and write instead.

1. Internet

Stupid internet. Stupid, wonderful internet. Why must you be so shiny? So often I start a new story, new page, new sentence and then, boom. As soon as I get to that first hesitation where that initial idea runs its course and I have to think up the next thing, I flip open a browser page and see what fascinating bit of distraction there is to entice me. It’s like a nervous tic. A foolish consistency. It’s much easier to see what pictures from Pinterest people are posting on Facebook than write that next sentence.

I need to stop avoiding the hard work and start writing.

2. QueryTracker

QueryTracker is awesome. What an incredible resource for writers. I love it. I’m kind of addicted to it. Especially the “watch” feature. Now that I’m querying agents, I’m checking my watch alerts, researching who reps who and what, adding agents to my lists. And that’s all well and good. But I’m spending too much time reading other people’s updates about agents than writing my new project.

I need to stop obsessing and start writing.

3. Worry

I worry. There. I said it. All kinds of thoughts fill my head when I’m writing and when I’m not. Am I a hack? Will I get an agent? Will the agent who requested the full like my novel? Is this the new project I should be working on, or the other one? Am I getting the tone/voice/setting/mood/sentence structure of this chapter right? What if I don’t find an agent? Should I self-publish? What if I’m just a hack and not good at this? What if the world is ending and I’m wasting my time writing this book? Ugh. It’s an endless battle.

The thing about writing, though, is it brings me such joy. And if I can ignore the worry wart in my brain and write, I’m transported out of that mindset altogether. Writing is a great remedy.

I need to stop worrying and start writing.

What do you need to stop doing so you can start writing?