We think that we need talent in order to be successful writers—or musicians, or golfers. But the truth is, writing, like any other skill, is learned and improved through daily discipline. Are you maintaining the disciplines you need to become a successful writer?
Ideas always feel fully formed in our minds. But when we sit down to put them into words, the struggle begins. Ideas don’t just morph into narrative form. They resist our efforts, and soon the process of storytelling becomes torture.
Thankfully there are strategies you can use to overcome the stubborn nature of an idea and successfully rise to the challenge of writing a great story.
And one of the best strategies you can use is the Three-Act Structure.
When we read books, books with characters we love, we can learn how to write our own characters by studying what details the writers included. There are so many details about your characters you could include in a character description, but which ones do you need?
Let’s look at the advice Stephen King gives in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft about good description and see if applies to Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
I love Joseph Campbell’s monomyth theory. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s the idea that every hero, and hero’s journey, uses many of the same characters, symbols, and themes.
So in honor of Thanksgiving, let’s write a story with the Noble Gobbler in the role of the hero, or Pro-turk-onist!
Do you ever want to give up on writing? The impulse to quit can strike at any moment. In the beginning, when you’re trying to start writing but can’t. In the middle, when a story just won’t do what you tell it to. Or even at the end, when you’ve written something amazing but can’t find anyone to share it with.
Writing isn’t just artistically difficult. It’s spiritually challenging.
But you have to overcome the temptation to quit. You have to believe that each failure will pass and lead to success.
And most importantly, you have to believe that you write stories not because of some accident or mistake in the cosmic order of things. You write because you were meant to write.
You are fulfilling a calling.
