How to Make the WRITE Money 1

It has been said that to be a writer you have to be a reader. True. Most good writers read widely, or, at the very least, have an extreme favourite type of literature – author even.

For the aspiring writer it is extremely important to read as much as you can spare the time for, particularly about the lives and styles of great writers. By doing this and practising writing passages in the form of these men and women you will be able to absorb the flavour and manner of their writings.

This is not to say you must copy other writing styles, but rather, these exercises will help you to develop your own. This is important. Develop a unique style and you could hit the jackpot…in fact, you will make the WRITE money!

Read read read. Read everything – trash, classics, god and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! Yoou’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window. William Faulkner

Let’s Go

The correct place to begin is at the beginning, and by that I mean the market place. That is obvious you might say. Not so. Many aspiring writers sit down and start churning out the work without first considering who – or what – market they are writing for.

There is an old and constant rule in marketing; first define your target audience then refine a product for that audience. Do not dash off a little masterpiece on how you designed and made a lovely television cabinet then submit that piece to Yachting World. I know it sounds laughable but you get the idea? This sort of thing does go on, so it is essential that you do your homework first. What market are you aiming for? Have you any special skills or knowledge of any particular aspect of life?

If you can write from any specific standpoint with special authority, then you can have a head start. This extra insider know-how will be injected into your writing style and all adds up to a professionalism in your work.

Honestly assess your capabilities. Do you have the experience and/or education, to aim for the higher grade publications, or will you just have a fertile enough imagination to enable you to build an engrossing story out of the everyday occurrences of life? Assess yourself.

Start small…there is no shame in this. As an absolute beginner you must gain experience, that is, experience in layout, preparation, research, submission.

Letters to the editor, fillers, short shorts, these will all be of invaluable use to you, helping you to gain this experience. Quite good money can be earned in these markets these days. Practice and keep on practicing. Another important word is TENACITY!

Keeping Files

An essential tool for the writer is the Plot Book. Plots, themes for stories can be collected from many sources such as newspapers, radio and television reports, snippets of conversations, and even little anecdotes told by friends. Make a note with them as to the type-or name-of the publication you think they would be suitable for, and the type of readership of that publication; age, sex etc.

A cuttings file is another useful addition to the writer’s tool kit. Anything interesting you see in newspapers, magazines, such as names, places, situations, can all be extremely useful to you.

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Only one hour in the normal day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep, and that is the hour spent in bed with a book after being called in the morning.    Rose Macaulay. 

Plotting

  Someone once said, ”ingenuity of plot is everything.” It certainly is extremely important, but then, there are many factors that go into the make-up of a story, all important.

Let us define a plot. A plot is a plan, a framework upon which the ingredients of a story are built, and this plot should of course be directly related to your selected market. This is where you tie in your market research. Having selected the publications that you think you are capable of writing for you must study them very carefully until you feel that you have a real understanding of the material that the readership wants.

Now think of questions that would interest that readership, for example; in the case of women’s magazines, “is it possible for me to have the job I want and the baby I love at the same time?” “How can I win back the man I love?” Get the idea? Conflict. The story lies in the answer.

Search for themes for stories which will interest your target audience, such as; “a man prefers honour to riches,” “a woman finds that castles in the air do not always bring happiness.” Corny, hackneyed you say? Maybe, but they are the basis for many of the good stories that are written and published in our magazines. There are very few basic themes available, and all stories are built on them in one form or another.

One thing you must be absolutely sure of before you even begin to write for your chosen market. Does the theme fit the editorial policy and readership? This is essential.

Necessary ingredients of your plot are emotions of one sort or another, and these usually fall into one or more of the following classes;

1. Amusement, absurdities in situations or characters.
2. Pleasure, in recognizing enjoyable situations.
3. Pleasure, in the achievements of a main character.
4. Satisfaction, in seeing the villain receiving retribution.
5. Satisfaction, in the developing and unfolding of the story to a convincing and satisfying conclusion.
6. Pity, for a child, character or animal.
7. Fear, as in tales of horror and the supernatural.

Use these emotional factors to colour your themes for they constitute substance and power, and if you can put these across in strong, descriptive writing you will vastly improve you chances of editor acceptance.

It has been said that a work of fiction must say something about human life, so this can be directly related to theme. This need not – in short fiction at least – be a profound dissertation on the human condition.

The next item in your plot plan should be the problem aspect, or set back. The old American screen writers used to call this “the menace,” greatly enlarging it of course. There was black and there was white. In the old cowboy films, or westerns as they were known, the “good guys” wore the white hats and the “baddies” wore the black. This analogy is totally absurd these days of course, but the idea is there; good and evil were clearly visible, and we took sides and felt for our heroes.

Never forget your market. Read all you can get your hands on that suits your chosen readership; psychology, criminology, mythology, biography, all can provide you with ideas to suit whatever publication you are aiming at.

Basically, short fiction can be broken down into two main types; romantic and realistic, the former being in greater demand because it provides an escape from an ordinary, everyday existence.

Whatever you do, do not get the idea that writing romantic fiction is a soft option, for that, it is not. It must thrill, amuse, entertain and move. It must have a believable plot, never be to far fetched, and must satisfy the reader.

There are many and varied opinions on plotting. Some writers – and I suspect they are rare – invent plot as they go along. Perhaps a greatly experienced author can do this, but it is not a method recommended to the beginner. The consensus of opinion is in favour of having a definite plan worked out before actually commencing the writing.

Let us look at the method recommended by H.G.Wells for budding authors. First of all, test the initial idea by critically examining the theme and asking – is it any good? If doubt exists discard it and look for another. It may be that you will return to the original.

Then make a start, get into the business of developing it, grappling with it. This leads to what Mr.Wells referred to as the “slush,” or the writing of the first draft. When this is completed, it is read through carefully and the essential parts are extracted and the rest rejected.

After the essential parts have been re-written they are pruned and polished, sentences and paragraphs removed or replaced. This is one way. The mainstream of opinion decrees that the beginner should write, first of all, a short synopsis of the plot, together with a list of characters. Then he should divide the story into a set number of chapters and sketch in a plan for each chapter then write out these plans more fully.

With this method the story will move along to a definite climax and the author will have complete control over it.

It is not necessary that the plot should consist entirely of incidents melodramatic in themselves. While a good craftsman naturally strives to obtain the maximum dramatic effect out of the means at his disposal, the beginner should not despair because his plot does not seem full of the tortuous convolutions of incidents that new writers usually associate with plotting.

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There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island… and best of all, you can enjoy these riches everyday of you life.         Walt Disney

To be continued…