1. Expose opinions that OPPOSE the reader’s. Give them an unexpected response.
2. Link character and form. For example, the transformation from sobriety to intoxication could be reflected in the writing – clarity to confusion.
3. Narrative should flow smoothly: ditch the abstract word order you spent hours working on and assert some authority on that insinuation. Decide what you want to say, and say it.
4. Tone should involve simple images that leak detail about your characters or their situation. Your tone should be a window to the world you are creating.
5. When changing scene in single flow, don’t go too fast. Give the reader time to breathe and prepare for the change.
6. Be aware of the appropriate time to refer back to a previous point or image. Always be on the look out for opportunities to link parts of your story together.
7. Re-read and re-read. With the finest tooth comb imaginable. Ask yourself the following questions of every sentence: Does this part support or contribute to the story? Have I over-stated something obvious? Have I told the reader something where it would be more interesting to show them?
8. Don’t over-write. Sometimes (usually) simple writing is the most effective.
9. After your first draft ask: is this the best place to open? There might be a catchier line part way through that could let readers directly into the story.
10. Get inside your character’s heads. What can they see? What can they feel? Write their back-story even though you may not need all the details for your story – build a whole person and know their reactions.

With practise and passion, a superb story is not difficult to write…as long as you believe in the world and people you are creating, your readers will too. And one last thing – let your subconscious mind flow before that ever critical consciousness starts to edit away your imagination. See your ideas through to the end first, re-arrange them later!

Idea fusion is the process of taking random single ideas and cross referencing them until two or more ideas fit together. The best idea fusions create more plot options together than they had separately. The best way to understand idea fusion is to see it at work. Following are two novels that I have written and the ideas that fused together to make them. NOTE: Please keep in mind that these are copyrighted works, and do not ‘borrow’ them.

Chasing Phantoms

Idea 1: I was fascinated with the idea of making a character be more than what they seemed, or even opposite. I wanted to create an unexpected hero, in this case a homeless man who is the witness to a murder.

Idea 2: Many middle class folks get stressed out and caught in the money trap. They can’t leave a job they hate because of bills, raising families and so on. It occurred to me that thousands of people must be tempted to just walk out and turn their back on it all. I wondered what would happen if a regular guy with a white-collar job and a mortgage just decided to let it all go and become a transient worker.

Once I had these two ideas, I realized that my homeless guy was the professional-turned-day laborer. These two ideas suddenly became intertwined. But I was not done yet.

Idea 3: Knowing that my homeless man was an unwilling witness to a murder, I knew that he would be forced into a decision to do something about it. I likened this task to the biblical tale of Jonah, a man who fled from a job that God had given to him, only to be pushed back into service again and again. Likening my story to Jonah’s gave it an extra dimension.

Soul Kiss

Idea 1: I was interested in (and a little disturbed by) the idea of psychic vampirism. I felt that the idea of stealing life force or energy from an unwilling donor was a good metaphor for bad relationships. What if the loss of energy that a person felt in a give-give relationship was tangible?

Idea 2: In my visits to Romania I made several friends who were involved in a yoga organization (or cult, depending on who you asked). Their culture involved not only exercise and meditation but also Hindu influenced ideas about life force and planes of being. One friend told me that she used meditation to ‘tap in’ to the high emotional energies that were put out by large groups of people at concerts, movie theaters, etc. Most of my yoga friends looked much younger than their actual ages, presumably from a vegetarian diet, exercise and low stress levels.

As I considered these two ideas, I realized that yoga could be the source of my psychic vampiress’s power. Perhaps one of the yoga students took the idea of tapping into the cosmic energies a step too far, learning to hurt others for her benefit? Once the two ideas began to connect, I was off and running.

Perhaps you have an idea that is compelling but isn’t strong enough to power a novel. What can you add to it to give it another facet and multiple plot turns? Pay attention to the similarities in your ideas and see if two or more can be fused to make a brilliant new premise.

Curiosity

Within the first couple of sentences, some sort of mystery or puzzling action must present itself. This can be as obvious as an explosion or as subtle as a glance from a stranger, but it must cause the reader to wonder what is going on. Placing a normal character in a strange situation or setting can create the mystery:

• A nun is sitting at a high stakes poker table, a fortress of chips in front of her.
• A beautiful woman in a wedding dress is running through the woods in a panic.
• A construction worker is trying on high heels in a shoe store.

Dropping the reader in the middle of an ongoing conflict will cause instant curiosity. Who are these people? Why are they struggling? Which one should I be cheering for? Deliberately starting in the middle of an action is a good way to make the reader feel as if they are spying on a long-standing conflict. The history of this conflict can be filled in later after the reader is already hooked and committed to the story.

A good opening line of dialogue has a way of creating instant curiosity:

• “You’re probably wondering why I’ve handcuffed you. It’s for your own protection.”
• “How could you – with my sister?”
• “You’ve got about five seconds to hand that bag over, before I decide to see how big a hole this bullet can make.”

Even in stories that do not lend themselves to explosions and murder, some sort of provocative action should begin the novel. Give a few pieces to a larger puzzle and make the reader wonder what the entire picture looks like.

Empathy

Readers enjoy following the actions of characters that they can identify with. Even the villain of a novel should be a person that is fun to hate. As soon as possible, the author should make the protagonist memorable and sympathetic to the reader.

Perhaps the easiest way to accomplish this is to place the hero in a situation that is recognizably difficult. This will not only cause instant empathy but will also give the reader insight into who the character is, based on the type of predicament that they are in.

• The hero is waiting backstage, in a cold sweat waiting for her dance number to come up. Most people have a fear of public performance, so this will strike a chord. This also lets the reader know that our hero is shy.
• The hero is fleeing from someone/thing. Dreams and nightmares of flight are fairly common. The decisions that the hero makes show the reader if he is agile or clumsy, good under pressure or panicky, resourceful or reactionary.
• The hero notices an attractive woman at a party. Nearly everyone enjoys a good love story. How he approaches the situation will reveal what type of person he is.

Characters can also generate empathy by engaging in conversations with other characters. This can be anything from a loving parent-child conversation to a panicked exchange between a man with a gun and his potential victim. How a character interacts with his friends, family, business associates and enemies can cause the reader to closely identify with him.

NOTE: It is important to be faithful to the personality that you have set up for each character. If characters behave wildly different from one scene to the next, the reader will have a hard time identifying with them at all.

Anticipation

Once the reader has been intrigued by curiosity and found empathy with the characters, he will start to anticipate the next scene. The key to strong anticipation is to set up a powerful story question that hints at various upcoming developments and outcomes. The more interesting directions that a story question can take, the more fascinated the reader will be with which paths the author will choose.

Pacing is also important. An overzealous author may want to cram all of his plot twists into the first dozen pages, giving away all of the story secrets upfront. It is better to space out the narrative hooks, giving the reader a little nudge at any point that the narrative seems to sag or become stagnant. A well-structured novel will keep the reader at a high state of anticipation from the first page to the last.           

I have two degrees in writing but I didn’t get them until I was over fifty years old.  I started mailing out manuscripts in my early 20s and the manuscripts kept coming back with rejection notices until I started working on my first writing degree.  So, I think I have some insight into at least trying to teach myself how to write.  Some of the lessons I had to learn in trying to teach myself to be a good writer may give you some insight in trying to teach yourself to be a good writer.

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I was always reading the fiction of my favorite authors.  I read their biographies.  I read critiques of their work.  I read books on how to write.  I read books on grammar, punctuation, spelling and books on the definitions of words.  I studied writing the way a biology major studies for an exam.  Yes I did.  I still stayed unpublished.

In desperation I applied to the University of Pittsburgh and was accepted as a 53-year-old sophomore with a writing major because I had a Liberal Arts Associate Degree from 1973.

During my first conference on one of my short stories, my professor complimented me on how well my story was written, that I had done a wonderful job teaching myself to write.  Then she said a few words that lead to my first publication.  She said that my introduction was too long.  That was it.

A few weeks later my first short story appeared in a local weekly newspaper with a circulation of over 5,000.

It is my contention that a writer can teach the self to write.  It’s also my contention that many writers will not pay the price to do it.

Above all else writing is a craft.  Don’t be afraid of the hard work.

Reading is a necessity to teach good writing mechanics (as a supplement to what you learned in school, of course . The more you read, the more you’ll absorb proper grammar, structure, and punctuation. These are the critical tools to building a solid foundation for your writing project, and a good working knowledge of them is important to produce smooth, flowing literature in any genre. Not every book you read will be a sterling example of good mechanics, but this is also a great learning experience.

Another reason highlighting the importance of reading is the creation of style. Every writer has their own literary voice, their own word flow and method of storytelling. Most writers aren’t born with a style, though. It must be cultivated and tends to evolve over time. Reading copious amounts exposes writers to a variety of styles, to see what works and what doesn’t. For aspiring writers, this provides a great base to create their own style. For veteran writers, it’s a way to confirm their style, to keep it fresh, three dimensional, and engaging.

Reading also provides inspiration and a great working knowledge of a writer’s chosen genre. If you choose to write fantasy, but don’t know much about the lore of typical fantasy creatures, your writing will show it. The creativity and inventiveness of fiction writers is endlessly amazing and useful, giving loads of story and character ideas. Of course, I’m not advocating plagiarism, but concepts are everyone’s domain, and even the smallest detail can blossom into a full blown story idea.

For writers who are also concerned with the business side of things, reading literature that is currently popular can give them an idea of what their target audience is looking for in a book. This can influence a writer’s choice of genre, subject matter, and even character type and personality. I’m not saying writers should shape their entire writing project based on the books that make the best selling lists, but it can give writers an understanding of their audience.

If you’re a writer, make sure you take the time to absorb some literature. The world is a big place, but reading opens up a universe of creativity and provides the backbone to good writing.

In the introduction you are telling the reader what they are about to be presented with.  It should function as a ‘roadmap’ to guide the reader through your essay.  State your answer to the question at the outset.  Summarise the central thrust of your argument and explain the order in which you set it out.  You could define or include some of the theories we have discussed in the module.  Make it clear to the reader that you are aware of the particular subjects/themes/ideas you are about to address. If you are using specific terms you will need to present a broad definition of them and suggest how they will be useful for your essay.

Argument

This is the main body of your essay.  A good way of tackling an essay is to make a list of the key points you want to address; then place them in an order that seems to flow and make sense in narrative terms.  A clear and coherent argument is one of the first things a reader will look for.  Make sure that your essay fulfils its own ambitions and that it answers the question. Make sure you underpin your analysis with a wide range of examples that support your discussion.  Remember to include the dates of all images, objects and texts discussed in your essay – this will help you to establish their chronology.

Reading

In building an essay project, your first step should be to consult any reading lists or course material you have been given.  Look at any books that might be relevant.  Use your library catalogue to find further materials.  You can also use online academic databases to find books and articles.  There is some good academic content on the internet, but it is better to use published books and articles than websites.  In your reading, keep an eye out for quotations that support your assertions and make a note of exactly where you found them – you will need to reference these sources at the end. 

Conclusion

Your conclusion should mirror the introduction.  Briefly recapitulate your main points.  Run through the main thrust of your argument, pointing out the key areas of discussion.

Bibliography

In your bibliography you must cite all of the sources used in your essay.  List any articles, magazines or books you have looked at or found relevant.  There are various systems of referencing, but in each case the reference should include the author’s name; date of publication; title; place of publication; and name of the publisher.  

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What motivates your character? Love? Justice? Power? Wealth? Why do they do the things they do? This is an important thing to tackle when your creating a character, it helps you and the reader understand why the character is in the story in the first place.

They just don’t appear out of nowhere

You have to remember that your characters had lives before the events of your story. They had parents, they grew up and they could have had other possible adventures before the one that your writing about. Think about your characters background. Did they have a happy childhood? Did they have both parents? Where did they grow up? What events took place to make them who they are today? You don’t have to put all of this in your story but it still helps you understand the point of view of a character.

They are people

When you create a character you are basically creating a person. Like people they have loves, tastes and dislikes. What kind of music would they be into? Do they like to read/draw/play sports? Do they have any hidden talent? What is their favourite food? Do they have any phobias? Again not all of this information needs to go into your story but they are good things to keep in mind to make them more realistic to you.

Relationships

Every character needs relationships, whether they be good or bad. They may have friends, lovers, enemies and all of these help develop them as a person. Even characters who prefer to work alone still need some form of human contact, some one to talk too or hate. Again, like everything else in character development you have to ask why. Why does your character choose to be friends with their companions? Is there anything that irritates them about their friends? Also, why do they hate their enemies? What did they do to them to cause so much pain to them?

Appearance

How a character looks can reflect a lot about them. Battle scars and tattoos can give a character history. The colours that a character wears can reflect a lot about their personality, in many stories, movies and cartoons the villainwears black to make them appear darker and more frightening, but this doesn’t always have to be the case, a hero that wears black would appear mysterious or sensual, depending on what they are wearing. When choosing a colour for your character think of what that colour symbolises to you, and whether or not it suits the character wearing it. Body type is also important. Is your character thin/fat/ muscular/ average build? Every detail you think of makes them that bit more realistic.

Equally, you might seed your climactic event in sub-plots. For instance, two of your secondary characters are looking for their fathers; one of them is adopted, looking for her birth father, while another perhaps might have a very distant, much-remarried father who is chief executive of a multinational, and she is desperately trying to get enough time in his diary to get to know him. When, at the end of the novel, we find out that the man the main character has called ‘Dad’ all his life is in fact his uncle, and that his real father is someone he learned blues guitar from who died two years ago, that fits into the pattern that you established with the sub-plots.

You might have little hints early on in the book. For instance with your blacksmith hero, you might show him thinking about swordplay, running fights through in his mind, even practising moves in the back yard – but perhaps in quite a joky way, without ever showing him in a serious fight. So when you come to the climactic fight, the reader knows that he has some acquaintance with the art – but also has real doubts as to whether he’s going to be able to overcome a real expert. (If you want to make the scene really interesting, have him losing to the French fencing master, and then winning by using his own special skills as a blacksmith – perhaps being able to pick up a huge table and actually flatten his opponent with it.)

Or you might set up phrases that link to each other. The most overt way to do this is to give your character a catchphrase that is also the last line – but that’s a pretty cheesy thing to do. More interesting is a link where, say, you have a number of times referred to a particular quote – ‘if music be the food of love’ for instance – or where characters ask similar questions throughout the work.

Suppose you have a character who keeps asking, ‘Where do I fit?’ and ‘Where is home, really?’ Then when at the end of the work he arrives somewhere and says ‘I don’t know how, I just felt at home’, it has real resonance.

This may sound tricky. You might be asking, ‘How am I going to put all these clues in as I write?’

Well the easy answer is that you’re not. If you realise, towards the end of your draft, that you need to seed some clues, the easiest thing is to go back and rewrite the relevant scenes, or even drop new ones in. No one said you have to write a book the way readers read it – in order.

But ’seeding’ the plot is not part of editing. It’s something you should start doing as soon as you know you want to do it – whether it’s as you write your first draft (for instance if you’re concerned with a major theme like absent fathers), or after you’ve finished your climactic scene.

‘Seeding’ your plot is one of the easiest ways to improve the quality of your writing, and your reader’s enjoyment of the work. And if you do it right, you’ll never get readers throwing the book at the wall when they read your final scene!

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Okay, I have to get words down on paper.  Should this be another article about blogging or writing or should it be another flash fiction story?  I’m sure glad Authspot changed its formatting.  Now my flash fiction has paragraphs again; but fiction doesn’t make as much money as articles so no flash fiction.

Even a first draft has to be about something but I’m fresh out of new ideas.  Let me just keep writing and see what pops up.  This is the tough part of creative writing, creating new content…The final days of summer in Pittsburgh…I wish I could publish the articles on my blog on Triond; but Triond only wants original content which is understandable…I think the Steelers definitely have a real shot at another championship.

Maybe I should write an article about the importance of titles grabbing a reader’s interest?  “Legs Wide Open”.  That’s an attention grabber.  No.  Sounds like porn.  No porn on Triond.

Do an article about diction and syntax.  Let’s see if I…Diction is the choice of words while syntax is the order of words.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.  It’s a lot better than “Legs Wide Open”.  Where’d you get that title from anyway?  Oh, don’t waste any more time on it.

Free style writing.  Give some advice and tips on free style writing.  I mean that’s exactly what you’re doing here, isn’t it?  What did it use to be called?…Stream of consciousness.  Yeah, that’s the ticket…

I’ve got it!  You better believe it.  Why not write an article about writing a first draft?  You know, the point being that a writer should not edit a first draft.  Just let the words flow.

There will be plenty of time later for self editing.

For instance, if I’m going to research the Albigensian territories of Southern France in the early Middle Ages, I’ll be looking at maps, accounts of the Albigensian crusade, history that shows me how the fields were divided, archaeological evidence about what people ate and drank, and so on. But I also need to think about how that would affect people; would dry stone walls and rocky cliffs make journeys through this territory difficult for ordinary people? How did most people spend the day? Did everyone get enough to eat? What was considered a luxury – and what would people complain about having to eat?

It’s easy to take in infomation from maps – you need to walk through the countryside, whether in reality (I actually have walked the ‘Sentier Cathare’ through this area of France) or in your imagination. Is is easy to get lost? How do you pick up directions – from signs, from river valleys, from the sight of the sun through the trees, from the wind erosion on one side of rocks, from obvious pathways or walls?

You need to explore all five senses.

Sight. This is easy to get right. What does the place look like? Be aware of the different colour and intensity of light – a misty morning in London has a completely different quality from a day in the desert. How long does the light last? Does sunset come suddenly or slowly? What are the main colours? How many colours are there – and how many shades? (Imagine the difference between the many shades of brown and yellow in a desert, and the numerous different colours of wild flowers in a meadow.)

Sound. Can you hear birds, wind, water? Listen for the small sounds – a pine cone falling from a branch, the tick of a small rock falling over a cliff, the echo you find in some canyons. In a city, is there one predominant noise, like trafffic, or many competing noises?

The ‘circles of concentration’ exercise can help here. Sit with your eyes closed and listen. Gradually, move your attention inwards, to the noises of your own body, then outward again to the room, the street, and finally the whole world. You’ll notice different sounds as you do this. Now, reproduce this exercise for your fictional world.

Let’s put taste and smell together. They’re often overlooked in fiction, but they can be potent senses. (For instance, the smell of fresh paint always reminds me of a particular day just before an important exam.) Does the air smell of damp and decay, does it smell spicy and hot, can you smell earth after rain or freshly cut hay or the resinous scent of pine trees? Taste is more specific but you need to think about the cuisine of your landscape – and in relation to it. In one London street I can smell Indian spices, fish-and-chips in the hot fat fryer, coffee grounds, Thai curry and stale beer – a mixture that conveys rather well the feel of this multicultural but rather downmarket area.

The French have a concept of ‘terroir’ – whether we’re talking about wine, cheese, a stew, a cake, everything made in a particular locality reflects the place where it was made. So imagine a dry limestone landscape in south-western France; there’s a wild, dry flavour to the honey made from heath flowers, there’s goat’s cheese with its acid rankness, there’s a tannin-rich, rather astringent wine – the hard landscape has created equally hard tastes. Normandy on the other hand is all about cider and cream and Camembert cheese, a rich countryside with green fields and gentle rivers – the taste and the landscape are intertwined.

And then there’s touch – probably the least used sense when writers describe landscape. Get out there and start touching your surroundings – or at least imagining what they are like to touch. The dry crumble of rusty iron sheet; soft insinuating dust in an old cupboard; different textures of tree bark (silky silver birch, flaking plane, rough pine). Is the air freezing cold, or damply hot?

Now you’ve done the work imagining the landscape, built it into the book. Have your characters relate to it in ways that show its qualities. For instance, one of your characters falls over, and scrapes his knuckles against a limestone wall – he bleeds, he feels the grit. Another feels dirty, the hot wind making him feel sweaty, and he wastes the little water he has trying to wash.

Is your landscape inimical or friendly? In many action books, the landscape or the city is actively malignant – there are poisonous snakes, or streets full of dangerous traffic; characters get lost, can’t follow the directions they are given, or misinterpret the information they have. Here again you are manipulating your characters’ relationship to the landscape in a way that can increase the interest of your novel.

Does your landscape have a theme? If you’ve got here, you’re moving on from just needing to have a setting for ‘local colour’, and moving onto another level. For instance, your Arctic setting might relate to themes such as a hero suppressing his emotions by trying to be ‘cool’ – using the landscape as a core symbol. On the other hand, you might treat an Arctic setting as a sign of the effects of global warming – looking at the ice gradually melting, and the effect on the environment.

Above all, individualise your setting. Make it Morocco – not ’somewhere with deserts and mosques’. (Actually, most of the Sahara is in Algeria and Libya – Morocco has more mountains.) Make it 1980s London – not ‘a twentieth-century city’. And if you’re inventing it, invent somewhere that readers can clearly recognise as a quite different place – not just another fantasy medieval world.