In grade school, your teacher had Show and Tell. You brought your stuffed Teddy Bear to class to show your class the bear, and you told them how your Teddy Bear came alive at night and fought the monsters under your bed.
If you wrote a story about the Teddy Bear fighting the monsters under your bed, you could say, “I was scared,” or you could show your fear. Today, we will play a Show, Don’t Tell Game to practice showing and not telling.
The first time I wrote a novel, I didn’t think about genre until the first draft was done, and I began trying to untangle my mess in revision. After two painful years (mostly comprised of avoidance, procrastination, and general despair), I hired a developmental editor who began our first phone call by asking, “What kind of book is this?” and “Who is your ideal reader?”
“It’s for everyone,” I said. I could hear the rise and fall of my breathing in the silence.
“No, it isn’t,” she said in a kind, but firm voice. Within minutes, I realized I had skipped a clarifying question that would guide every step of the book process from the plot and characters to cover design and marketing.
By the end of this post you will be using an excel spreadsheet.
Don’t make that face—I know you’re a writer and not a data analyst. Or if you are a data analyst—I understand that you’re on this blog to get away from you day job. I get it. But guess what? At the suggestion of Randy Ingermason—the creator of the Snowflake Method— I listed all of the scenes in my novel in a nice little Google spreadsheet. It changed my novel-writing life, and doing the same will change yours too.
Have you heard the term pantser before? When it comes to plot structure are you one?
There are all types of writers, but most writers fall into one of the three categories: pantser, plotter, or planster (a combination of the two).
While there’s no (necessarily) right or wrong way to approaching structure, writers who fall into their certain category do so with pride.
Today, let’s talk about what kind of writer a pantser is. Maybe you’ll even discover the kind of writer you are—possibly someone who writes by the seat of your pants, or someone who takes a general idea and writers pages of background and structure before moving forward.
Let’s find out!
The stereotypical writer used to be a silent, brooding genius who kept to himself and rarely ventured into the outside world, except to do “research” on how the subjects of his stories lived. People imagined an entire profession of Emily Dickinsons, pale and contemplative.
However, for nearly every famous writer—from Ernest Hemingway to Virginia Woolf, J.R.R. Tolkien to Mary Shelley—this stereotype couldn’t be further from the truth.
And the truth is that nearly every great writer had a Cartel.
If you’re looking for famous poems for National Poetry Month (or any month), try Langston Hughes. His musicality and voice make him one of the most beloved American poets. Here are a few of Langston Hughes’ most famous poems.
