Play around with different ways to describe characters in stories. Here are examples of how to make characters real and likable and how to capture readers’ interest. What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg “My mother was dressed in her beautiful yellow summer robe, the tie cinched evenly into a bow at the exact center of her waist, but her auburn hair was sticking up in the back, an occasional occurrence that I always hated seeing, since in my mind it suggested a kind of incompetence. It was an unruly cowlick, nearly impossible to tame — I knew this, having an identical cowlick of my own — but I did not forgive its presence on my mother. It did not go with the rest of her looks: her deep blue eyes, her thin, sculptured nose, her high cheekbones, her white, white skin — all signs, I was certain, of some distant…
Category: Just Write
The Past – from different perspectives.
The following is inspired by Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox. Chapter 4, “The Past” It’s Still Happening. “We love the present tense. Be here now. Yesterday is gone and best forgotten: our tradition is to have no tradition. We aren’t Europeans buried in ancient tombs and cathedrals and medieval ruins. We were born yesterday and we will be young forever. Over thirty is over the bridge. Age embarrasses us; remembrance is a function of senility. We exile the aged to Sun City leper colonies so they won’t impair our illusion of endless summer. But history is not so easily dismissed. Repressed memories, national or personal won’t stay down. To be alive is to have a past. Our only choice is whether we will repress or re-create the past. Childhood may be distant, but it is never quite lost; as full-grown men and women we carry tiny…
Failure is necessary to find “wondrous and magical moments”
“A rough draft is inherently an experiment, or, rather, a series of experiments. each novel, each piece of writing, is a new thing with different possibilities that demand to be explored. Many of these experiments will fail, but failure is necessary to find those wondrous and magical moments of success.” — “More Ideas Faster, Writing With Abandon” by Grant Faulkner, Jan/Feb 215 Poets & Writers magazine. Grant Faulkner is: Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month, co-founder of 100 Word Story, writer, tap dancer, alchemist, contortionist, numbskull, preacher. Click here to read more about Grant Faulkner. Note from Marlene: Click here for ideas of what to write about. Choose a writing prompt, set your timer for 12-15 minutes and Just Write!
Sometimes you just want to sit down and write.
Sometimes we just want to sit down and write. No particular place to go. Nothing in particular to write about. Just enjoy the feel of pen across paper, or fingers flying atop keyboard. Sometimes it’s fun to have a writing prompt to play with. There are two places to explore on The Write Spot for writing prompts. One is here, on The Write Spot Blog. The other is here on The Write Spot Website. On this one, read the prompt on the plaque. Click on the plaque to read what others have written on the prompt. Follow your heart, let your mind wander, trust your intuition. Select a prompt. Set a timer for 12-15 minutes and just write. Discover where your writing path takes you. Photo by Breana Marie
Lose Control and Just Write!
Natalie Goldberg expands her thinking about writing practice in her latest book, The True Secret of Writing. You may have heard these ideas before and may be familiar with her other books, Wild Mind and Writing Down The Bones. And it’s good to be reminded of “the basics” of freewrites. Helpful ideas for writing from Nat: Keep your hand moving. If you say you will write for ten minutes, twenty, an hour, keep your hand going. Not frantically, clutching the pen. But don’t stop. This is your chance to break through to wild mind, to the way you really think, see, and feel, rather than how you think you should think, see and feel. This does not mean you have to write orgasmic sex scenes smeared with butter to touch wild mind. You might end up writing about toast, your sore throat, your fingernail. But it will be alive, real….
“When there is an obstacle . . . ” Angelina Jolie
“When there is an obstacle, you have to rise to the challenge, not be overwhelmed by it. And we’re not alone in the world. I don’t know if there’s a name for that — religion or faith — just that there’s something greater than all of us, and it’s uniting and beautiful.” — Angelina Jolie, December 22, 2014 People magazine. From Marlene: Writing unites and connects us and that is, indeed, beautiful. When you reach an obstacle or challenge with your writing, see if you can work around it. Write sideways, in the margins. Come at the problem from a new angle. See the stumbling block as an opportunity to explore the problem and create a new solution. How? By doing a freewrite. Write down the first word that pops into your head and then write, for 12-15 minutes. Click here and here for more writing prompts. Just Write! Photo…
Write a telegram . . . Prompt #121
Compose a telegram — a brief note that could be sent over the wires. Oh, I guess this sounds like an email, or a text message. But doesn’t “telegram” sound dramatic and perhaps romantic? Nostalgic for some people, a curiosity for others. So . . . write a telegram to someone who has touched your life in a significant way. Have your message tell him or her something you wish you could say in person. Or, if the person is no longer in your life, what do you wish you could have said? You could also write a telegram to or from your fictional character. Idea inspired from From Family Tales, Family Wisdom — How to gather the stories of a lifetime and share them with your family, by Dr. Robert U. Akeret with Daniel Klein
“. . the best prize that life offers . . .
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” — Theodore Roosevelt, from a speech given in Syracuse, New York (September 7, 1903) From Real Simple magazine, September 2014 Note from Marlene: Your writing, your work matters. Just write!
We write for a variety of reasons . . .
We write for a variety of reasons: ~ To tell a story, or what happened as we remember it ~ To create a fictional story ~ To tell a fiction story, based on truth ~ To journal what happened and our feelings about what happened ~ To write non-fiction: share our knowledge or to tell what happened All of this involves what we learned, what changed us, what impressed us. It doesn’t matter why you are writing. It is important that you write. No matter the motivation for your writing . . . Just Write!
Breathe, focus, keep your head down and . . .
keep going. — Christina Baker Kline, interviewed by Alicia Anstead in the October 2014 issue of The Writer Magazine. Or, as Dory sings in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming. . . swimming. . . swimming. . . ” At some point in your writing life, you may think your writing is no-good, awful, horrible and no one would want to read it. Join the Ark. Most writers, I think, are in that boat at least once. Take the advice of Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train, “Breathe, focus, keep your head down and keep going.” Click here if you want prompts to jumpstart your writing. Click on “Comments” on any of the Write Spot Blog posts to read inspirational writing. And just keep swimming, swimming. . . writing, writing.