If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
-Toni Morrison
Tag: writing tips
Writing Quote
Write what should not be forgotten.
– Isabel Allende
Writing Quote
First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!
– Ray Bradbury
Writing Quote
Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.
― William Faulkner
Curious about Haiku?
If you’ve ever found yourself curious about the poetic form ‘haiku’ but haven’t taken the plunge, here are some links from one of Ashley’s blogs that outline some common concepts and approaches to writing haiku:
The Writing Process
Writing advice about the ‘best’ writing process is easy to find.
Some writers enjoy meticulous planning and outlining. They know what’s going to happen from scene-to-scene. Some people like to fly by the seat of their pants and improvise as they go. With one method, you might end up revising more. With the other method, you may revise less but miss some of the thrill of discovery.
Now, if you’re starting out and trying to decide the best way to write – be careful of advice that says you must outline heavily, or that ‘pantsing’ is the only way. Both statements amount to terrible advice.
Instead try both methods. Maybe you find yourself working in both camps. 30% here and 70% there. And that’s ok.
The best advice about writing is to learn how you write.
Foreshadowing
The narrative technique of ‘foreshadowing’ is used to prepare readers with the knowledge they’ll need to best enjoy plot and character developments in the latter parts of a story.
And so the urge for a writer is to give the reader everything they need, so they’re ready. On the other hand, we might want to hold back, keep the reader curious, keep them turning the page. And so which way to go? Foreshadowing can be a fine line between revealing too much too soon or too little too late.
We believe that the stories which handle foreshadowing best are the ones that give the reader enough information up front to build curiosity around questions of how and why as much as and sometimes more than, questions of who, what or whether.
So, for instance, a murder mystery will still work very well if the reader knows who the killer is early on in the story.
What the reader then wants to know most, is how the killer got away with the deed, not whether they will be caught but how they will be caught and why they did it in the first place.
Point of View
Clear and engaging use of Point of View (POV) is vital to good writing, especially in fiction.
Not just a question of who is best suited to telling your story, it is also a micro-level series of choices made by the writer to build and develop character at the same time as developing plot or setting scene.
There is a wealth of advice out there on how to handle POV, but we feel Australian author Karen Miller describes point of view very clearly in her post on Voice and Point of View, in addition to providing a clear comparative example.
Is your point of view working for you?
Close-Up Editing & Assessment 