Tag Archives: Inspiration

An Idea is Great, But it Ain’t a Story… Yet.

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Don’t you just love the feeling when a thought or concept tickles your mind in the right way and the longer you contemplate it, the greater the potential it has for existing as a piece of writing? And it always blindsides you, doesn’t it? On some idle Thursday whilst you’re hip-deep in work or chores and too preoccupied to be overly critical of it. And in its purest form, untested by experts, it’s a thing of beauty–this idea of yours–but as the title of this post suggests… it doesn’t even live in the neighborhood of being a story.

So, despite the fact that you were clever enough to have jotted the idea down on paper–preventing it from pulling a Papillon-esque escape—and attempted to workshop it somewhat, tacking on the odd bits of reality to make it less ethereal, in the end all your efforts amounted to were pages of writing that eventually found their way into a file folder or a desk drawer.

That’s because you haven’t moved your idea into the development stage yet. What you’ve done up to this point is commonly referred to as seat-of-your-pants writing. It’s all fun and loosey-goosey and noncommittal and some writers are actually able to complete stories in this fashion with nary a problem. The rest of us, however, tend to run out of steam, write ourselves into a corner, or worse yet, discover that our idea lacks staying power.

The workaround is to create an outline for your idea. This is where some writers begin to whinge that outlining is boring, it locks the brain into rigid thinking, it creates too much anxiety, and makes your story sound just plain silly. If you’re that writer, there’s nothing more I can offer you here other than a good luck handshake and a pat on the back. I wish you well.

For everyone remaining, before we get to the outline, I’m going to tear a page out of the screenwriters’ bible and suggest you create a logline (for more details see: At Loggerheads With Loglines) which in this case will be a single sentence synopsis of your story’s plot with an emotional hook to stimulate interest.

Why a single sentence? I think Albert Einstein summed it up best, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” It’s really not that hard once you get the hang of it and to prove it to you. I’ll create loglines right here on the spot, from the first three ideas that pop into my head, so that you can better understand what I’m talking about:

“After her parents die in a tornado that destroys her isolated small farm, an agoraphobic girl struggles to survive in the harsh wilderness as the frost approaches.”

“A wife returns home from grocery shopping and finds that her husband is married to another woman and her own children no longer recognize her.”

“A twenty-something virgin with a week left to live races to fulfill her dying wish to find true love in her small town.”

These representative concepts aren’t the best, granted, but they serve their purpose in showing how your idea would look explained in a concise manner that would plant recognizable images in your audience’s mind.

The first concept sets up not only the tragedy but also the protagonist’s weakness and the ordeal she must overcome in order to survive. The second is more in the speculative fiction vein, as normal events take a sharp left turn and create a reality-bending mystery for the protagonist to solve. And the third, while seeming a bit unrealistic and extreme, introduces the notion of a ticking clock which implies a sense of urgency.

You’ll notice that character names and details are missing from the above sentences, and that’s because they have no place here. Your goal is to introduce the protagonist (by gender and sometimes following an adjective and/or job title if absolutely essential to the story), establish their goal and set up an obstacle, preferably with a hook to answer the unspoken yet ever-present audience question, “Why should I read this?”

If your initial attempts fail to net the desired results, rework the sentence, and keep reworking it until your idea sounds like a solid story. Once you’re satisfied, you’re ready to begin the precursor to building an outline by examining the overall structure of your story. The easiest way to accomplish this is by answering:

  • Who is the protagonist and what is their goal?
  • Who is the antagonist and what is their goal?
  • Who are the supporting cast and what are their main wants.
  • What are the major events and sequences and in what order should they appear to properly convey the story?

With these answered, you can safely move onto plotting your concept by applying the five stages of dramatic structure (see: Climbing the Freytag Pyramid), which are:

  1. Exposition – Where you introduce the setting of your story, the characters, their situation, the atmosphere, theme, and the circumstances of the conflict.
  2. Rising action – Difficulties arise that intensifies the conflict while narrowing the possible outcomes at the same time.
  3. Climax – The turning point of your story, where your protagonist has changed and their hidden weaknesses are revealed.
  4. Falling action – The conflict finally unravels and your protagonist either wins or loses to your antagonist. Also where the final suspense is usually located when the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt.
  5. Dénouement – The satisfying ending to your story in which the conflict is resolved—or not.

The great thing about this stage is you don’t have to fill these stages in any particular order. Not really sure what your rising action is yet, but have a lock on your dénouement? Jot it down. In fact, feel free to move around and provide details as they come to you. And give your inner critic a little free reign as you get in the habit of asking yourself a ton of questions, because each answer you give is a baby step towards fleshing the whole megillah out.

After that’s done, congratulations, your idea is now a plot. In order to turn it into a story, all you need to do is…

Sally forth and be writeful.

— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

PS. For anyone still reading this that felt the off-the-cuff writers got short shrift in this post, allow me to apologize and offer this one quick piece of advice:

Start your story off with that touchstone moment–a powerful situation–something that thrusts your character(s) into the deep end of the problem pool of an injustice or imbalance, something that possibly pisses you off in real life (allowing your rage to carry you through to the end), something that signifies there’ll be plenty of conflict and tension coming down the pike. And deny your character(s). No easy solutions. Let them wrestle with the problems in their own unique manner. And toss additional problems in their path for good measure.

(This is where you accept the good luck handshake and pat on the back).

I wish you well.

My Mad Fat Brain Bug: A Story Box Full of Regret

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The damnedest thing can place a bug in your brain. Rod Serling is the source of one of mine.

It happened while I was deep within my Twilight Zone infatuation phase, in the prehistoric information days before civilian access to the internet, when I devoured every Serling-related book, article or fanzine I could lay my grubby little mitts on. In one of the pieces, I read how Rod’s widow, Carol, found a number of scripts and stories amongst her late husband’s possessions that were unproduced at the time.

And thus the bug found a home in my grey matter.

I pictured Rod in the final moments before he shuffled off this mortal coil, his gaze sliding across the room until it fell on the closet door, eyes filled with that unique brand of sadness only known to writers. Carol would remember that stare and later be drawn to the closet by a mysterious force that urged her to dig out a box buried deep beneath the material remnants of Rod’s life, shed like so much old skin. A box filled with his regrets, the stories that remained untold, that never found a proper home.

You don’t have to say it, I know that’s all rubbish. Simply me fictionally placing myself in the position of a man I never met. If Rod had any regrets at all, I certainly wasn’t privy to them. But that doesn’t make my brain bug any less real.

You see, I have a box–well, it started off as a file folder and grew into a box–filled with stories in various stages of development. Ideas written on scraps of paper, composition notebooks loaded with concepts and outlines, and completed stories that only exist in paper form–written pre-computer on an Underwood typewriter, circa 1950–as I haven’t gotten down to the laborious task of transferring them to my computer.

I don’t discuss my box much and I only brought it up to respond to an email I recently received (copied and answered here with permission):

“I want to write a blog but I’m scared of being exposed and having people judge or attack me because of my opinions and I don’t think I have the writing skills to get my point across in the right way. What gives you the courage to write?“

Guess what? Self-doubt and anxiety regarding humiliation and criticism is all part of the process and grist for the mill, so welcome to the club. What separates writers from non-writers is that instead of running away from that fear, we invite it in for wine and cheese. Befriend the beast that frightens you most because there’s a story just waiting to be revealed in that encounter.

It’s true that honest writing takes courage, as does sharing your writing with people who may not be kind in their opinion of it, but you also have to realize that it’s not your job to make people like your writing. Some people will flat out hate it because of your views (see: The Opinions Expressed) or your writing style, and because they may not know any better, can possibly hate you because of it. Hopefully, it’ll be the minority. Accept it as an unavoidable truth and move on.

As for the question, “What gives [me] the courage to write?” Everyone has their own reason for writing, and fear of acceptance isn’t high on my list. Sure, it’d be great if the unwashed masses loved my work, but the simple truth is all writing has its audience, whether infinite or infinitesimal, and if you never put your writing out there, there’s no chance in hell of your audience ever finding it.

The real reason I write is because of the aforementioned box. I just don’t want to be lying on my deathbed–hopefully many, many, many years from now–and staring at that damned box full of unwritten stories. I no doubt will have my fair share of regrets in my final days, but I’m determined not to have that box be one of them.

And since we’re on the topic of regrets, I recently read a book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing” by Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse who cited the most common lamentations as being:

  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

So, while I can’t offer you reasons why you should write, I can tell you that most of the regrets listed above factor heavily in my need to write.

In closing, someone once wrote, “writing is like getting into a small boat with a wonky paddle and busted compass and setting out on rough waters in search of unknown lands.”

Paddle forth and be regret-freely writeful.

©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

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Author’s note: Since I’m never at a loss for ideas, I don’t dip into my story box as much as I’d like to, though I occasionally slip one or two of them into or in between current projects. The story idea folder on my computer… that’s a whole different story.

So You Want To Be A Writer by Charles Bukowski

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if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

The Various Rules for Writing Fiction by Famous Authors

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1. Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear).

2. Cut (perhaps that should be CUT): only by having no ­inessential words can every essential word be made to count.

3. You don’t always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they’d be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it’s the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

— Diana Athill

Roddy Doyle

1. Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

2. Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph ­–

3. Until you get to Page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety – it’s the job.

4. Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

5. Do restrict your browsing to a few websites a day. Don’t go near the online bookies – unless it’s research.

6. Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, eg “horse”, “ran”, “said”.

7. Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.

8. Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

9. Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven’t written yet.

10. Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – “He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego.” But then get back to work.

— Roddy Doyle

1. Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.

2. Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don’t yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.

3. Read Keats’s letters.

4. Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away. It’s a nice feeling, and you don’t want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

5. Learn poems by heart.

6. Join professional organisations which advance the collective rights of authors.

7. A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

8. If you fear that taking care of your children and household will damage your writing, think of JG Ballard.

9. Don’t worry about posterity – as Larkin (no sentimentalist) observed “What will survive of us is love”.

— Helen Dunmore

1. Never worry about the commercial possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over – or not. Conversation with my American publisher. Me: “I’m writing a book so boring, of such limited commercial appeal, that if you publish it, it will probably cost you your job.” Publisher: “That’s exactly what makes me want to stay in my job.”

2. Don’t write in public places. In the early 1990s I went to live in Paris. The usual writerly reasons: back then, if you were caught writing in a pub in England, you could get your head kicked in, whereas in Paris, dans les cafés . . . Since then I’ve developed an aversion to writing in public. I now think it should be done only in private, like any other lavatorial activity.

3. Don’t be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov.

4. If you use a computer, constantly refine and expand your autocorrect settings. The only reason I stay loyal to my piece-of-shit computer is that I have invested so much ingenuity into building one of the great auto­correct files in literary history. Perfectly formed and spelt words emerge from a few brief keystrokes: “Niet” becomes “Nietzsche”, “phoy” becomes  ­”photography” and so on. ­Genius!

5. Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary.

6. Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

7. Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it’s a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It’s only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I’m bunking off from something.

8. Beware of clichés. Not just the ­clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought – even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are ­clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

9. Do it every day. Make a habit of putting your observations into words and gradually this will become instinct. This is the most important rule of all and, naturally, I don’t follow it.

10. Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try to live without resort to per­severance. But writing is all about ­perseverance. You’ve got to stick at it. In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of ­going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That’s what writing is to me: a way of ­postponing the day when I won’t do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss.

— Geoff Dyer

1. The first 12 years are the worst.

2. The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

3. Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

4. Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

5. Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn’t matter how “real” your story is, or how “made up”: what matters is its necessity.

6. Try to be accurate about stuff.

7. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.

8. You can also do all that with whiskey.

9. Have fun.

10. Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

— Anne Enright

I Feel the Need, the Need For the Careful Build of Momentum

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You’ve finally finished your latest piece of fiction. Congratulations! Once you’ve stuck a feather in your cap and given your back a big, hearty slap, you pass your gem along to a trusted reader… and the notes you get back are, “the story feels uneven/ seems melodramatic/ lacks momentum/ becomes anticlimactic” and you haven’t got the foggiest how that could be possible. You made sure your writing has all the basic components a story of this type should have, so where’s the problem?

The simple and direct answer to that would be pacing, my friend.

Proper pacing is one of the critical elements needed to keep your audience actively engaged and as a writer you must develop structural and word choice skills and use a variety of devices to control the speed and rhythm at which your plot unfolds.

Here are a few tips to start you on your journey:

1. The most obvious momentum control is length.

When writing a tense scene—filled with action, danger or crisis—you want your audience to experience feelings of speed and intensity. There’s no room for distractions here, just the meat of the nutshell, which is accomplished by keeping your descriptions and sentences concise, and if there’s any dialogue, have your characters spit it out at a rapid-fire tempo.

During the times when you need to establish a character, place or event in order to build a foundation for your story, longer scenes with more descriptive sentences, character thoughts, richer dialogue and transitions, come into play.

2. Give your audience a chance to catch their breath.

Let’s say one of your strengths is creating sharp, high-tension scenes. You trim the fat off sentences, annihilate unnecessary prepositional phrases, and swap out passive linking verbs for active ones like a pro. In fact, you’re so good at it that it becomes your default style of writing. That’s great. I’m pleased as punch for ya. Your audience—not to mention your characters—however, will need a breather between high conflict points, which means you must vary your pacing by providing a slower, more introspective scene. Balancing your story with intentional calm moments also ensures your electrifying scenes maintain their power.

3. The devil—and a slower pace—is in the details.

I’ve mentioned in other posts that you should always plant your feet firmly in the soil of your story, and if you can accomplish this, it pays off during scenes when something extremely dramatic is about to happen. This is where you take your time and describe everything in detail so that your audience feels the full impact.

4. Remember the advice, “show, don’t tell?” Well, it doesn’t always apply.

Yup, I know, it’s been drilled into your head countless times and I’ve even written about it (see: Skip The Tell And Bring On The Show) but there are always exceptions to the rules. Tedium is the primary cause for this rule break, as your intention is to keep your audience’s focused on the important and interesting matters. By telling rather than showing, you can skim over unimportant scenes that you don’t want to linger on.

5. Become a master manipulator (of word choice and sentence structure)

You don’t need me to tell you that words are the tools by which you control the worlds you create, and those same words—both singular and in groupings—are your first best means of managing your story’s pace. But the manipulation of the length of words, phrases and clauses to control the ebb and flow of sentence and paragraph structures, isn’t the only way deal with pace. You also have allies in cliffhangers and prolonged outcomes.

Now that I’ve mentioned cliffhanger, you’re no doubt thinking, “oh yeah, naturally…” because as an avid reader, you know first hand that you hate being left in the lurch and will quickly flip the page to discover what happens next. Your job as a writer will be to introduce that uncertainty in the form of an impending threat, an interruption in the action, unfinished business, or a dangling peril.

Prolonged outcomes, on first thought, might appear to require a slower pacing, but the reverse is actually true. When you prolong an event, the story speed increases because you’ve piqued your audience’s interest and they’re eager to discover how the events play out and pay off.

As with all my posts, this is simply rudimentary information, and you will come to notice that each story you write has its own unique pace. Some will speed along fast and furious, while others will make their way unhurriedly to the end. What’s important is that you’re not only aware of the message your story’s pace conveys to the audience, but are also in absolute control of it.

Sally forth–at the proper pace–and be writeful.

— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Unlock Your Inner Story

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Photo: Unlock your inner story ...

They say, “Everyone has at least one good book in them” and while I think book might be a bit of a stretch, I wholeheartedly believe that everyone has at least one good story in them. The natural length—the pure story without padding or the encumbrance of unnecessary detail or description—of which can range from flash fiction (under 1,000 words) to short story (under 7,500 words) to novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words) to novella (17,500 to 40,000 words) to a proper novel (over 40,000 words).

No matter how non-creative you believe yourself to be, your brain is nonetheless gifted with the special ability of imagination, and regardless of how infrequently you put it to use, you still are able to dream up intricate realities, despite your age or IQ level. Haven’t we all, at one time or another, projected a new reality in our minds in the form of daydreaming our desires? And no two daydreams are exactly the same since we each possess unique preferences, points of view, wants and needs.

Yet, even armed with the knowledge of this gift, we, as writers, tend to suffer because we either do not fully believe in or properly comprehend our true nature as creators. Sure, we continue to imagine “what if” scenarios but sometimes we find it difficult to allow those thoughts to flow through us—the conduit—and blossom into the stories they need to become.

The following list isn’t a step-by-step “how to” guide, because no one can tell you precisely what you need to do to access your inner story. You are a totally unique entity, after all. View it more as a broom to help you sweep away the clutter piled up on the footpath to your personal tale.

1. Examine your self-image.

The first battle you must face is the one against your self-image. You are more than pen and paper, more than a keyboard, more than “just another writer” or more than whatever obstacle your past or conditioning has placed in your path. The main reason why most writers fail to connect with their inner story is because of their limited knowledge of who they truly are.

As flawed human beings we are so engrossed with the perceptions of who we are that we fail to see that we are usually the source for the reality we have created for ourselves. Sure, the walls of the prison may have been constructed by events of the past, by family, peers or environment, but we continue to fortify the walls and never once open the lock–the key is always in our possession–push the cell door to step out into freedom.

This in no way suggests you have to deconstruct your self-image–unless that’s your goal, then by all means, have at it. You’re merely peeling away the layers of the identity you’ve created for yourself for societal purposes and exposing your core self, the real you. Don’t worry, it’s only for the exercise of writing. You can reapply your layers once you’re done.

Your secret identity is safe with me.

2. Take note of your gifts.

Different from writer traits–talent, the hunger for knowledge, and diligence–a writer’s gift can range from an eye for detail, to a flair for description, to a talent for dialogue. Or, you might not even be aware of your talents, so I want you to grab a piece of paper and something to write with and in 60 seconds jot down a list of what you’re good at. Don’t think about it. Simply jot down, off the top of your head, the things that come easiest to you when you write.

All done? Now take a long, hard, honest look at your list. The things you don’t concentrate on, those bits and bobs that just sort of come naturally to you when you write… those are your gifts. You’d be surprised to discover how many writers aren’t aware of their innate skills because they aren’t utilized in their everyday work lives and wind up being placed in the “Hobby” category.

3. Exploit your strengths. 

Since you’re bothering to read this, my guess is that you’ve written a couple of pieces already and maybe even finished a few of them. Now, if you’re an avid reader, you will have no doubt compared your piece to your author idols, and have developed the brutally honest ability to cast a critical eye upon your own work and spot areas in your writing that aren’t as strong as others. And since the writing isn’t perfect, you are therefore a horrible writer who should no longer legally be allowed to string a sentence together in an email, let alone write a story.

Maybe it’s true. Maybe you really are a bad writer–hey, they exist–but that’s not my call to make. I don’t know you, so I’ll assume you at least have some fundamental writing potential. However, no matter how good you are, there is one basic truth you must learn to face: Your writing will never be perfect. Why? As stated in a previous post: Because wunderkind wasn’t conveniently inserted into your backstory, and perfection isn’t DNA-encodable at this point in time. Still, you should always strive to get your writing as close to perfection as you can manage, and accept the fact that: It. Will. Not. Be. Perfect.

Maybe you can’t write a convincing love scene. Maybe you struggle with organic dialogue. Maybe you get stumped when attempting to create a character’s internal arc. Maybe you’re rubbish at tying up all your story’s loose threads. Console yourself in the knowledge that you wouldn’t be the first. A few of these “weaknesses” and more are true for authors of published works, some of which even make bestseller lists.

And because, as a writer, you are always a student and ever pushing yourself and learning new ways to hone your craft, you will eventually learn to strengthen your weaknesses. In the meantime, put all of the aspects of your writing into perspective, make a deal to stop beating yourself up so much, and focus on your strengths. They’re your “A” game.

4. Gird your loins against the enemy.

In addition to dealing with possible self-image barriers, there are other obstacles that can block your path: Fear, intimidation, procrastination, and self-doubt. The problem with these buggers is that they often take the form of lies you tell yourself. And they happen to be effective as hell because they insulate your brain from facing unpleasantries, in this case the difficult portions of the writing process that you need to slog through in order to strike gold.

The biggest lie you can tell yourself as a writer is, “I’ll do it later.” It’s a dishonest postponement because later never comes. If you don’t confront the enemies that keep you from your writing and tamp the bastards down long enough to complete your piece, then you don’t have what it takes to be a writer. Staring into the gaping maw of the harsh realities that terrify you is one of the most important parts of the process.

Slap a “H” on your chest and “Handle” it.

5. Identify your genre.

At this point, you arch an eyebrow and ask, “Rhyan, how can anyone not know the genre of their story?”

The answer lies within the fact that writers are creators. Some are resistant to the notion of placing labels or classifications on their work. For others, classification difficulties arise when their piece contains elements from several genres as some writers disagree with the act of limiting creative freedom in order to adhere to strictly delineated genre segregation.

For your audience, knowing the genre sets not only the stage, but their expectations as well, and puts them in the proper mindset to both understand and accept the rules of your story.

At this stage in the process, the importance of identifying your genre has to do with story mechanics. Certain elements step to the forefront and operate differently depending on genre, so you should be aware of the rules of the category–even if you decide to break them because of the maverick you are–as you’re arranging your idea into the proper story structure (see: Simple Anatomy of a Plot Outline).

6. Plant your feet firmly in the soil of your story.

This is your story. First and foremost, it must feel natural to you. No matter how fantastical the environment, how outrageous the yarn you’re spinning, if you don’t feel confident in the pocket dimension you’ve created, there’s little chance of you selling the story as being credible. Your job is to take utter nonsense and portray it with as much authenticity as possible.

7. Go with your gut.

Some people seek permission to write. Thinly disguised under the “Oh, it’s just an idea I’m toying with” veil, they will ask family and friends if they should write about such-and-such or if this-that-or-the-other-thing would make an interesting topic.

I urge you not to be this person.

I’m reminded of a quote by Jerome Lawrence, “The whole point of writing is to have something in your gut or in your soul or in your mind that’s burning to be written.” So, if you can actually feel inspiration or instinct churning like hot snakes in your gut to write, forget the opinions of those around you, disregard the idea of “should” and just go for it.

Never live with regret, if you can help it.

8. Do it now. No better time than the present. 

To snatch a line from Pixar’s Ratatouille “Why not here? Why not now?”

By now you know you must show up for writing everyday, and there’s no time like the present. So, why not find yourself a quiet spot, practice listening, and trust what you hear. That’s your inner story talking to you, and it not only has to be unlocked but it must be accessible at will.

I know it’s become hackneyed to instruct you to follow your bliss, but if you deny your instincts to do what you truly want to do, then the problem becomes one of trust. Do you trust the voice within you or do you trust reality as you are made to perceive it? Or, are you willing to trust the voice and write what you hear, no matter how crazy it sounds?

You have to learn to be compassionate with yourself, as well as having compassion for yourself. Especially during the vulnerable times when you’re blocked and can’t bring yourself to write because you’re scared you’ll be rejected. Take some small comfort in knowing you’re not alone in this.

Since all art must be criticized, every single published author had to overcome fear of rejection. What you need to keep in mind is that your audience–human, just the same as you–can only relate to your writing from their own experience, and sometimes their feedback will be negative. That doesn’t necessarily indicate problems in your writing, and may simply reflect a varying viewpoint.

But fear of rejection has no business rearing its ugly head right now as it’s time for you to honor your inner story by listening to the words it shares with you and writing about it. Trust me, if you’re willing to enjoy the process, you can write damn near anything.

So, why not sally forth and be inner story writeful?

— Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Famous Thoughts on Grammar and Usage

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1. “You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.” — Robert Frost

2. “Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong. That is a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.” — James Thurber

3. “It is indeed acceptable practice to sometimes split an infinitive. If infinitive-splitting makes available just the shade of meaning you desire or if avoiding the separation creates a confusing ambiguity or patent artificiality, you are entitled to happily go ahead and split!” — Richard Lederer

4. “When you catch an adjective, kill it.” — Mark Twain

5. “The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.” — Clifton Fadiman

6. “The adjective is the enemy of the noun.” — Voltaire

7. “If the noun is good and the verb is strong, you almost never need an adjective.” — J. Anthony Lukas

8. “Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers ‘Please will you do my job for me?’” — C.S. Lewis

9. “Forward motion in any piece of writing is carried by verbs. Verbs are the action words of the language and the most important. Turn to any passage on any page of a successful novel and notice the high percentage of verbs. Beginning writers always use too many adjectives and adverbs and generally use too many dependent clauses. Count your words and words of verbal force (like that word “force” I just used).” — William Sloane

10. “The editorial ‘we’ has often been fatal to rising genius; though all the world knows that it is only a form of speech, very often employed by a single needy blockhead.” — Thomas Baington Macaulay

11. “Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial ‘we.’” — Mark Twain

Writing Joke of the Day: Comforting a Grammar Nazi

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Q: What do you say when you are comforting a grammar nazi?
A: There, Their, They’re

English Professor

“In English,” he said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”

A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”

Library

A Texan was visiting Harvard University, and was lost. He stopped a student and asked, “Do you know where the library is at?”

“I sure do,” replied the student, “But, you know, you’re not supposed to end sentences with prepositions.”

“What?”

“Prepositions. You ended your sentence with an ‘at’, which you aren’t supposed to do.”

“Oh, ok,” said the Texan, “Do you know where the library is at, asshole?”

Grammar walks into a Bar

Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They Drink. They Leave

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.

A Question mark walks into a bar?

Two Quotation marks “walk into” a bar.

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking a drink.

The bar was walked into by the passive voice.

The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense.

A synonym ambles into a pub.

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.

A hyperbole totally ripped into this bar and destroyed everything.

A run on sentence walks into a bar it is thirsty.

Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapsed to the bar floor.

A group of homophones wok inn two a bar.

Panda

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

Writing Joke of the Day: Heaven or Hell?

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A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell.

She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

“Oh my,” said the writer. “Let me see heaven now.”

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

“Wait a minute,” said the writer. “This is just as bad as hell!”

“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice. “Here, your work gets published.”