On the second day of Blogmas Make Me
Shakespeare gave to me, a blog post on writing.
Here
is something you don’t know about me, or maybe you do, I write short stories!
I
have done for years but since I was sixteen, I had begun to take it more
seriously. Instead of writing stories, like fanfiction, to put online to
websites such as Wattpad. I kept Manuscripts after manuscripts hidden in a
folder for years.
At
the moment I am hashing out the details on my latest manuscript and so this
post has come at just the right time!
Ideas
for stories come to people in so many different ways, for me I’ve always been a
daydreamer and quite often on my walks home from school, work or anywhere I
would be muttering the first draft of a story to myself (often recording myself
so that I can remember later!). This caused some issues for myself growing up
as I treated the world as my storybook; I often told the tales I wove in my
head as if it was my life and people believed me. Those tales consisted of my
cousin carrying quadruplets and how my best friend was famous.
Now
a days I keep my mutters as mutters until I can get them down on a page. I think
it’s better for me socially to not look like a pathological liar and for me
mentally so the guilt from my stories being believed doesn’t eat me alive.
Now
my ideas come in daydream form and dream form. The book I am currently writing
came to me as a very vivid dream. This post is about how I got that dream down
onto paper.
To
begin, I tend to write down all my ideas (it could be the beginning. A plot
twist or the conclusion) onto my old A-Level Q-Cards and leave them in a file
cabinet to get to when I have the time to really break it down. So, what I do
when I have my idea is write it in the middle of an A3 sheet of paper and then
break it down into a mind map. Write the idea in the middle and around it
should be things that are associated with it, things that stand out like
character details, what does the world look like in your story etc.
From
there you make a list of sentences. A sentence for everything that will happen
in your story; you have to keep going even through the circus that will come. I
did this the first time about 6 months ago after reading an article on it by Teralynn
Childs. I was writing down stuff that didn’t even enter my draft, but the
process got rid of the excess rubbish that would’ve been in my first draft and
a b*tch to get rid of in the cut down.
Then
finally it’s the classic year 4 – year 8 English creative writing lessons. You
have to apply the 6 W’s, it’s really 5 W’s and an H.
Who
– who are the characters? What are they to each-other? Always keep asking that
who question until there’s nothing left.
What
– what is happening in the story? Is it stick in a rut?
When
– when is the story taking place, Time is always significant
Where
– is there a location known to your readers? Is it a new place like in the
Hunger Games?
Why
– what are the reasons for a character being a certain way? Why are they in the
story etc as I’ve said before, keep asking questions until you run our of
ideas.
How - How are you characters involved in the story? How do your characters fix or make it worse.
You
will probably start feeling a little stir crazy, so I wouldn’t suggest just
locking yourself in a room and not allowing yourself to leave until you have a
draft. Take a break, go for a walk, dance, sing. Shower whatever. Your mind is
going to be emptying itself onto the pages and it’s not going to without a
struggle sometimes so taking a break to look after yourself is what you need to
do as well as write. Not doing so is what I like to call ‘Writers Block’, its
writing without a break and going insane and its also not writing for yourself.
That is something I see a lot in fiction writers for places like Wattpad and
AO3.
Once
you have those down, you can start to piece together your writing like a puzzle
and have yourself draft number one out of many!
Happy writing my lovelies, tag
me in your works, I’d love to read them!
Love
Always,
Jess
x
No comments:
Post a Comment