April 29, 2020 - We had a nice response to last week's mailing of writing tips. Here's another batch. Lots of writers think they should be getting more writing accomplished during this lockdown, especially those who have more time. But many report that they’re finding it hard to concentrate on writing. Perhaps there’s simply too much reality in our lives now.
To help us all write more, we’re offering writing tips from some Southwestern authors. Writers helping writers. This is the second of two mailings. We hope these tips spark an idea or two and extra excitement for your own writing project:
Memoir Writing:
Memoir can move both backward and forward in time. You can reorder chronology or compress three years into one year. You can write as if the past is now, “I am eight years old” or you can reflect about the past, “We lived in that apartment from when I was eight until I was twenty.” When the author jumps back and forth in time, it creates a collage and suggests that all things are connected.
— Julia Fricke Robinson, author of All I Know
General Writing:
In the essay collection The Fire This Time, Wendy S. Walters writes about a burial site for slaves that was paved and built over. The essay meanders along and then it does something startling. It begins listing the slaves’ body parts discovered during an excavation. Pieces of bone. Teeth. A broken hip. The fractured skull of a child. The reader, moved to tears, realizes that beneath the forensics there were people with dreams and families and histories. The essay finally reminded me of Holocaust literature, which in a sense it is.
My tip to writers of fiction or non-fiction is to find the truth in the details.
— JJ Amaworo Wilson, WNMU writer in residence
Motivational:
Carry a notebook and pen with you at all times. Jot ideas and thoughts as they occur. Everything is material, everything can be interesting, an anecdote, or even the beginnings of a story.
— Lynne Zotalis, author of Saying Goodbye to Chuck
Self-Editing:
English is a living language. Especially in fiction, especially in dialogue, rules have fuzzy edges. Creative decisions are up to you, but quirky grammar slows readers down, and typos are always annoying. Edit, edit, edit to remove mistakes.
— Kate Rauner, science fiction author, Glory on Mars
Motivational:
Don't beat yourself up if you miss a day or two in your writing routine. Sometimes you need to take a break. Give your subconscious space to help work out the thorny problems that always seem to arise in developing a piece of writing.
— Alethea Eason: New novel coming soon: Whispers of the Old Ones
Poetry:
Pay attention to beginnings — they set the tone of your poem — and endings — a turn of words for surprise and closure.
— Beryl Raven, Artist /writer
Memoir Writing:
Start in the middle of the action, not from the beginning. Employ the use of flashbacks. Use descriptive language to build the world within your memoir. Show, don’t tell. Don’t make conclusions yourself, set it up so that the reader can draw his or her own conclusions. Create round characters. Your secondary characters should be realistic and not all good or all bad.
— Julia Fricke Robinson, author of All I Know
Reading aloud:
Read your work out loud. Listen to the voice. Does it flow and sound authentic?
— Lynne Zotalis, author of Saying Goodbye to Chuck
Mystery Writing:
Before you start writing a mystery (and sometimes science fiction, fantasy, or other fictional categories), work out the antagonist’s behind the scenes actions: how s/he commits the crime/s or other actions, how s/he sets up an alibi and/or directs suspicion to someone else, as well as how s/he counters the protagonist’s actions as the novel progresses. For most of the novel, the antagonist is the playmaker, while the protagonist is only reacting to the villain’s actions. Though the villain’s identity is typically kept secret until near the end of the mystery, the writer should be able to switch from the on-the-page mode to the behind-the-scenes mode to avoid plot holes. You need to know where the villain is at all times. You can’t put him/her off somewhere committing a second crime, when s/he’s also in full view of the protagonist (and the reader) in the on-the-page mode.
— Kris Neri, author of Hopscotch Life
Stay well, stay safe,
Kris