Last month, my friend and former in-person-critique-group
buddy Margo (permalink to her blog on the right!) took part in an interesting
blog challenge: a whole month of top ten lists organized by alphabet. It made for fun reading, and I kind of wish
I'd joined in – I’m sure you all have noticed how much I love lists.
My favorite of her month's posts was her Top Ten Writing Tips. I love that idea - writing seems to be such an amalgamation of tips and tricks and lengthy discourses on how to make your pacing work. So for this post, I decided to compile my favorite tips and quotes and pieces of advice for this post - though I came up with six instead of ten. Nothing too lengthy, just the single sentences or short paragraphs that were real eye openers from me, and ideas I revisit again and again (except when I lose the links).
1) Making a list of ten ideas (this was also on Margo's list).
I've written about this before, in this post, and gave an
example. Basically, if you're trying to come up with an idea or solve a
problem, you write out a list of ten possible answers. Those first ten, or at
least the first seven, are generally clichés. Once you get past those, the
truly fascinating ideas start to flow.
2) First step toward a character driven story
All right, I can't find my link for this one, but I found
one piece of advice for how to tell if your story is heading toward being plot
driven or character driven: Does your story start with something happening to
your character? Or does your story start because of something your character
did?
3) For those of us who get too attached to individual words:
Writer Erin Bow says: "No
writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened
partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the
soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an
ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild
yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted.
Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners
compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in
your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They
will make the next words better.”
4) This perfectly sums up what I strive for in my
characters.
Holly Lisle: ” “Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream
made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in
us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely
good enough' to a vision of what is truly great... ...
and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn
inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves.
THAT is why you write fiction."
THAT is why you write fiction."
Greg Curtis : "“People say that writers write for
money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for
money.”
6) From Neil
Gaiman: "Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work
for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they
think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong."
I had a hard time
with this last one. Everyone's advice on how to fix things seemed so sensible…
until I'd fix something just to have a publisher say they didn't like that part
of the story. Now I still listen to advice, of course – but I fix I it in a way
that's true to the theme and the heart of that particular story.
More groups of author
quotes:
Go give it a look. Find your magic tips. And I
hope my fellow Prosers and all the readers will share their favorites... I'm only at six out of ten, after all.
