At The Write Practice, we publish a new article each day designed to help writers tackle one part of their writing journey, from generating ideas to grammar to writing and publishing your first book. Each article has a short practice exercise at the end to help you immediately put your learning to use.
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I once asked over fifty writers what their biggest fear was. Can you guess what the most popular answer was? It shouldn’t be hard. You’re probably afraid of the same thing.
Writers fear Rejection.
We’re afraid our story—the one we’ve been working on for years—won’t be taken seriously. Worse, we’re afraid our work will be ignored completely.
How do you deal with and the fear of failure and rejection?
Every character needs a memorable name. Your character could have the most interesting personality, the most incredible predicament, and could be forgotten if his name is Bob Smith. You need the perfect mixture of unique and believable.
No ideas? That’s okay. Here are five ways to pick out the perfect name.
Serialized novels are gaining popularity, both in the mass market and literary worlds.
Margaret Atwood is in the middle of her sci-fi novel Positron which is available for free on Byliner. (I read the first Episode. It was very fun!). Alexander McCall Smith, of The Ladies #1 Detective Agency fame, published his serial 44 Scotland Street in the Edinburugh newspaper The Scotsman a few years ago. (I read it much later, and enjoyed it immensely.) And Sean Platt and David Wright’s series, Yesterday’s Gone, was created by two well known writer’s in the blogging world who leverage their platforms to publish their fiction.
However, what most people don’t realize is that serialized novels have a long history, at least that’s what Yael Goldstein Love of Plymtpon Publishing says.
Is your writing fuelled by everyday life and experiences or by imagination? Of course, these two are often mixed together; yet, you probably draw more from one than the other. You may be the type of person who eavesdrops in coffee shops and later writers stories.
You may be shut down at home, pulled into a parallel world of other planets, creatures and sixth and seventh senses.
Every item has a set purpose. Sometimes that purpose is merely entertainment or wonder. Other times the purpose is intrinsic and habitual. But what happens when an item is re-purposed?
As much as I’m eager for the arrival of spring—with its longer days and warmer temperatures—the jump forward due to Daylight Saving Time this weekend means we lost an hour of time.
These days, every minute seems precious. With so many commitments, activities, and demands on our time, it’s difficult to carve out a small window for doing what we love. (And sometimes when that time pops up, we may not be in the mood to write—because let’s be honest, writing isn’t always easy!).
How can we find time to write? And how do we make the most of that time?
For every artist who struggles with transforming passion into actual and tangible, remember this:
There is no magic, no luck, no splash of momentary inspiration that will replace the call of the work in front of us.
We must be fully present in our practice.
How?
Not long ago in my writing career, my readership reached an all-time low. It was a pretty drastic drop. My writing was inconsistent, and so were my topics. I wasn’t giving anyone a reason to follow me. But even without the readers, I still had an urge to write.
It was then I made the mistake of making my writing about myself.
Foreshadowing is common enough in storytelling: the burning scar of Harry Potter, Peeta Mellark’s ability to frost cakes, all the hand motifs in Arrested Development, everything in LOST. A well-placed note of foreshadowing can come back to the reader as a smack on the head or a revelatory twist ending. One of the most well-known foreshadowing techniques gets its name from the playwright Anton Chekhov. He famously said that if there is a rifle onstage in the first act, then it absolutely must go off in the second or third act. If it’s not going to go off, it’s got no business being present.
This object, skill, or other source of foreshadowing is referred to as Chekhov’s gun.
When you’re only just starting out as a writer, there are so many questions to be considered before you even begin: what to write about, the genre, the style, how often you should practice, and many technical ones that keep piling up the more you actually involve in the craft of writing.
Those are things that inevitably hit everyone sooner or later, so the proliferation of writing tips and advice shouldn’t be surprising at all. Most of the literary masters have offered invaluable counsel on the matters. This wide range of writing tips is good because it means there’s a bigger chance that somebody will find another person to relate to.
