I can’t promise that I’ll try to not use lame 80s songs as an inspiration for future columns, but I can promise that I’ll try to try. Actually, I really only grabbed the Corey Hart when I was digging around for a title. It was too hard to resist the urge to include the video. You’re welcome.

My goal with this series of articles is to encourage people to write. But I don’t want to give anyone the impression that is all great whisky and accolades and adoration. Writing is a very solitary act, and if you have any notion of getting your work published, you’re going to have to seal with rejection.

You’re also going to have to deal with people doubting you when you say that you’re a writer. Try not to listen to them. Most people that are going to get picky about whether or not you should be able to call yourself a writer are going to be under the impression that you have to be a published author to call yourself a writer. In truth, if you write, you’re a writer, no matter what anyone else says. Don’t forget that.

If you show your work to other people, you’re going to come across people who don’t like it. They might think that you’re a terrible writer, and they might tell you so. There’s really no easy way to deal with that, except to learn that you can’t let their opinion bother you. I don’t mean to say that you should make yourself immune to all dislike of your work; you should learn to accept constructive feedback and ignore the rest. You can then take that constructive feedback and improve upon what you’re doing, instead of dwelling on someone hating your work.

If you’re looking for a good source of constructive feedback, you’re probably going to want to seek out other writers. If you already know someone else that writes, that’s pretty easy to do, because you can always ask them for feedback. Keep in mind that you should be open to providing the same for them.

So how do you find other writers if you don’t know one? You can start by looking for public readings, book launches, and that sort of event. There are always other writers at these, and sometimes the audience is almost entirely made up of writers. Get to know some of them, and see if anyone is interested in sharing each others work for feedback.

If you’re not so good at face to face communication, there are plenty of websites that you can turn to. Look for websites about your favourite writers, writing magazines, writing podcasts, etc. These places attract other writers, and if they have a forum or message board community, they often have an online workshop where you can post work and get feedback (often provided that you first give feedback on other work). I’ll talk more about giving and taking feedback in a future article.

Finally, if you’re going to send your work out to agents, literary journals, publishers, etc., you have to be prepared for rejection. And you will be rejected sometimes, even if your work is legitimately good. There are millions of writers out there, and not enough venues for all of their work. There may be more books in print than ever before, but there are still plenty that get rejected every day.

All of this can easily make someone want to give up on their writing. But don’t let it get to you. You should be writing because it’s something that you enjoy. The rest doesn’t really matter.

I know, I know, you’re very busy. You want to write, but you just can’t find the time to do it. I often feel that way too, and I still manage to put together at least 500 words most days.

A friend of mine once told me that that busy people who want to get a lot of stuff done don’t find the time to do it. They make the time. There’s a pretty essential difference there.

You’re never going to find time, even just half an hour, if you just wait for it to pop up while you’re doing other things. You’re never going to find the time if you think you need to be inspired, or if you always feel a need to do more research before you start writing. You’re definitely not going to find the time to write while you’re refreshing Facebook or watching YouTube videos.

All of these things are fine activities, but they won’t help you put words together. And that’s because you need to make the time to write.

So here’s what you do. Tell yourself that you’re going to write, and then do it. That’s it.

But the kids will distract you, and you’re waiting for some important email, and your best friend from high school just posted a bunch of pictures from prom and you’ve got to tag everyone you know in them because they didn’t do it themselves.

Find someone else to look after the kids for an hour. Your email can wait, as can anything else you think you need to do online. The internet will still be there when you’re done. So will all of your housework. You can watch TV later. Now is writing time, and you’re going to have to get serious about that if you expect to actually get any writing done.

You don’t have to exist in a vacuum to get some writing done, but you do have to learn to ignore distractions. That might mean closing your web browser, or turning off your phone, or locking yourself alone in a room for a while.

Or it might not. Maybe you can have your web browser open and keep an eye on your Facebook news feed while you’re writing. Maybe you can sit on the couch with your laptop and watch TV while the kids are screaming and playing in the room and you can still get your writing done. I don’t know, I’m not you. If you feel that you just can’t stop doing something to write, to to write while you’re doing it. If it doesn’t work, you actually are going to have to stop doing whatever that is for a little while.

If you find that you still can’t stop whatever that is, or get a break from it, ask yourself if it’s really a higher priority than your writing. Is it really that important to watch every one of those TV shows? For some of them the answer may be yes (I don’t know, I don’t really watch much TV myself, and when I do it’s in short bursts). For really important stuff like watching your kids or going to work, I would definitely hope that the answer is yes. But when the answer is no, you know that’s some room in your schedule that you can make time for your writing.

Small bit of administrivia before we start: I’m shortening the title of this column because it’s not really a how-to, exactly.

I was watching the special features on the Braveheart DVD that I have, and one of them was about Randall Wallace, the guy who wrote the script for the movie. Now, Braveheart is a flawed movie in many ways, but it’s also one of my favourites. It’s a very exciting, epic adventure story with kick ass fight scenes and it’s genuinely funny in parts (especially in the characters of Hamish and his father, and Stephen the Irish guy). Braveheart has also been attacked for its many historical inaccuracies, which are too numerous to list here, and would detract from the point that I want to make here (but just for fun, here’s an analysis of the first two and a half minutes, with several errors and a minute and a half of opening titles and aerial scenery).

In watching Wallace talk about the script, it’s pretty evident that historical accuracy wasn’t his biggest concern. He wanted to write something that felt true to himself as a story. It seems like any attempt to add historical accuracy only occurred after the script was completed. Wallace has a decent sense of humour about it, pointed out at one point that he was being made fun of for details like having a castle with glass windows.

Now, I’m not going to defend the film’s many inaccuracies. But I would like to point out that, in the end, they didn’t rally matter. Braveheart was a hugely successful film, doing well at the box office and winning several awards. And this happened because Randall Wallace wrote what he wanted to write.

You should do the same. If you want to write, you’re going to enjoy it a lot more if you are writing the stories that you want to write. I don’t care if it’s an historical inaccurate epic adventure, or some slash fan-fiction. If you don’t enjoy what you’re working on, at least a little bit, you’re not going to keep at it.

You may be limited in what you can do with your writing if you take this approach. You might have a hard time getting your work published. In fact, if you’re writing fan fiction, you may not be able to legally publish it at all. Some creators, like Diana Gabaldon get really pissed off at the idea that fan fiction even exists, whether it’s published or not. Others, like Charles Stross, don’t care as long as you aren’t making money from it, and they don’t have to read it.

Go ahead, let yourself write the story that you’ve always wanted to write. Who cares what other people think about it? What you think about it, and whether or not you enjoy writing it, is what really matters anyway.

This week I want to talk about making sure that your characters seem like legitimate people. We’ve all experienced works with characters that are flat or one-dimensional. Those of us who write have probably all written characters that are one-dimensional too. It seems to me that the problem often lies in focusing too much on the protagonist, and not enough on the characters that the protagonist interacts with.

Something to think about, when you’re developing characters, is the Bechdel Test, and whether or not your story could pass it. The Bechdel Test comes to us from a comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For. In it, a character has three criteria that must be met for her to see a movie. It must:

1. includes at least two women
2. who have at least one conversation
3. about something other than a man or men.

Now, I’m not saying that you need to pass this test 100% of the time. I certainly haven’t, although I’ve only been made familiar with the test recently, so while I don’t have an excuse for writing bad characters, I’ve now at least got a better idea as to where I may be going wrong, and I’m resolved to correct that. I make no promises about eliminating run-on sentences from my writing, and neither should you.

I think the Bechdel Test is a good starting point to thinking more in depth about the characters in your story. The Bechdel Test can be used to get you thinking about creating less stereotypical characters.

First, start to think about who your characters are, beyond just how they interact with your protagonist. Consider how they would interact with other people. Think about what they’re interested in, what they like or dislike. Think about where they come from, how they were raised, and anything else that informs their personality. Resist the urge to infodump about your characters; don’t just tell us that your character is from a big Catholic family in rural New Hampshire, and that she loves ornithology and hates wine-tasting parties. But keep those details in mind when you write about her.

You’re also going to want to resist the urge to include characters just to appear diverse. I’m talking about writing a token minority character. At best, doing this is going to come across as bad, lazy writing. At worst, it’s going to come across as superficial and racist. A good way to avoid this is to honestly consider why each character is in the position that they’re in, and why they’re acting the way they act.

Sometimes you may find yourself writing a sexist or racist character. It would be disingenuous to ignore those character traits, but remember that your characters words and actions have consequences. Although if you’re writing a racist character in a racist setting, those consequences would probably not be the same as they would be for someone living in a multicultural society today.

One final note about character development, is that some characters are not important enough for this level of detail. You’ll generally know who these characters are because they won’t say or do anything of consequence, and they probably won’t appear often.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free post a comment on this site, or email me at mromard@gmail.com

No dialogue for me, I took a vow of silence.

Eventually your characters are going to have to talk to each other. Well, they usually will, at least. It is possible to have a story without dialogue, but it’s not a common occurrence. Really, unless you set out to write a story without any dialogue (as my fellow Vagabond Jordan Trethewey did a few weeks ago… hey Jordan, why don’t you tell us all about that?), you’re going to use at least a little bit of it.

Good dialogue can be really tricky to write, and I’ve heard it claimed that it’s the hardest thing for new writers to write well. I’m not sure how true that is, because every writer has their own strengths and weaknesses, regardless of how much experience they have.

Personally, I’ve always felt that dialogue was one of my strong points. At any rate, if it isn’t, no one has pointed the fact out to me. So let’s pretend that it definitely is.

When I started writing, I wanted to make movies. I had a very naive idea that I was going to write, direct, and star in my own movies. Most of my characters were thinly veiled versions of myself and my friends, and I didn’t finish anything that I wrote. Thankfully, none of my early writing has survived.

The point is, when I first started to write, I wrote nothing but dialogue, with the occasional stage direction. So I really had to focus on the quality of the dialogue. What I tried to do, and still try to do, was to make the character sound like real people. So I listened to the way that people around me were speaking. I listened for the words that they were contracting, the slang that they used, and word use that they favoured.

When I started to write more seriously, and stopped basing my characters on people that I knew, I had to start listening to a lot more people. But the technique stayed the same.

Doing research online is really helpful for getting a feel for how people talk. If I want to know how people in a particular group speak, I look for web sites, and especially message boards, that are aimed at that group. I try to get a feel for the terminology that they use. When I don’t understand the words, I just use google or wikipedia to search for a meaning.

Last week we covered the author’s voice. Your characters have their own voices too. You need to remember to inject your characters’ personalities into their words. You build their voices the same way you build your own: by considering how they describe things, what their personality is like, what they think is important enough to focus on, etc.

You also need to consider why your characters are talking, and when they would keep their mouths shut, or only speak enough to keep a one-sided conversation going. Not everyone wants to talk, and sometimes your characters won’t want to either (or they will but don’t think they should).

Another thing to remember is that you need to break up your dialogue every now and then with a little description, like a character moving, or a change to the scenery, or even a little bit of explanation. This can be pretty important for the pacing of your story. The reverse is also true. Sometimes you’re going to want to use a little bit of dialogue to break up long sections of description.

One last thing that I’d like to talk about is the format of your dialogue. Generally, it’s going to be something like this:

“Blah, blah, blah,” said person A.

“Blah, blah, blah, blah,” replied person B.

“Blah blah!”

“Blah!”

You’re going to be tempted to use descriptors every time that you have a piece of dialogue. Said and replied are okay, because they’re pretty invisible. But sometimes you’re going to want to use laughed, yelled, cried, chortled, bellowed, etc. Don’t. Well, don’t very often. It’s okay to use these descriptors once in a while, but they’re really not necessary if you’re writing your dialogue well, because the reader will be able to fill in the character’s emotions from the words that they use. Likewise, you’ll almost always want to avoid using an adverb to modify your descriptor. For example:

“You’re a son of a bitch!” he yelled angrily.

The description of the dialogue should be redundant. We should get that this guy is angry and yelling from the context. We don’t have the context in the example, of course, but you get the idea.

Next week we’re going to cover a mystery topic, because I haven’t decided what it will be yet. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free post a comment on this site, or email me at mromard@gmail.com.

Go ahead, describe me!

Now that you’ve started to flesh out the ideas for your story, it’s time to focus on your voice.

What do I mean by voice? Well, your voice is what sets you apart from other writers. Voice is your tone and your style. Think about the last time that you had to read a memo at work, or a form letter from a business. Now think about the last time that you read an email message from a friend. Other than the messages themselves, what is different about these things? Chances are, the memo or business letter would have been written with more formal and neutral language than the email was (unless you work in a really casual office, or if you have really boring friends).

So how do you establish your voice as a writer?

Well, the first thing that you have to do is to practice your writing. Try writing different styles and see what works for you. The easiest way to do this is to try to imitate other writers. Note that when I say imitate, I don’t mean that you should try to write the same things that they did. I don’t want you to go out and try to re-write your favourite book. What you should do is try to figure out what sets the author that you’re imitating apart from other authors. Look at how they are describing things.

Are the descriptions more optimistic or pessimistic? Are they funny or dull? If they’re funny, what sort of humour is used (sarcastic, dry, dark, light-hearted, absurd, etc.)?

Another thing to consider is what to describe, and what to leave out. Do you describe where your characters are in great detail, or do you just focus on what they’re doing? Do you describe what your characters look like at all? How they dress?

One thing that’s really important when you’re writing description is to show what’s happening, rather than to tell what’s happening. A good way to tell whether you’re showing or telling is to look for adverbs. Let’s take a look at an example:

He ran quickly through the office.

Pretty boring, isn’t it? Now, take a look at this:

As he ran through the office, he could feel the sweat stains forming on his white button-down shirt under his arms and around his waist where the shirt was still mostly tucked in.

We’re still not going to be winning any awards for that description, but it’s more interesting than the first example, at least. The difference is that in the first example, we told the reader that this guy was running fast, and in the second example we gave the reader some clues as to how fast this guy was running.

One last thing to note is that the point of view that you’re writing from can have a huge impact on your voice and description. For example, if you’re writing something that is a first-person narrative, you actually need to find that character’s voice just as much as you need to find your own. What this means is that your voice as the author can still be present, but it has to remain true to the narrator. For example, if your character is really abrasive, and your voice is more reserved, you need to make sure that your voice isn’t holding the character back. You have to let your characters be themselves.

Next week we’re going to talk about writing dialogue. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free post a comment on this site, or email me at mromard@gmail.com.

Write about monks!

Last week we ended with you writing down an idea. This week, you’re going to start expanding on it.

There’s an old adage that you’ve probably heard before. Write what you know. Try not to take that too literally. You probably don’t want to set your story where you work, with all of your coworkers as your characters. Well, you might want to, but it’s probably not a good idea, because you’re bound to offend someone, and that’s just going to make your life more difficult.

There’s a lot of things that you know that you can write about. You know how people talk and interact with each other. You know that behave differently depending on who else is around, or where they are. You know that different people respond to challenges in different ways. You know what it’s like to experience a wide range of emotions, and why you’ve experienced them. This the stuff that you know that you want to use.

Let’s pull out your idea from last week. Maybe you’ve got an idea for a scene, or a couple of characters that you want to write about. Maybe you’ve got a setting that you’d like to write about, but no idea what the story is yet. What you need to do is to start developing the context for your story.

You need to figure out who your characters are, what’s going to happen to them, and how they are going to react to what’s happening. You don’t need to have all of the answers right away. Part of the fun of writing is that you get to figure some stuff out as you’re writing.

So there are two things that you can do with your idea at this point, now that you’ve started to ask yourself some questions about what’s going on. You can make an outline of what has to happen. Or, if you’re like me and don’t like to outline, you can just start writing. Pick a scene that you want to write, and start working out some details on the page. Introduce some characters and have them interact with each other.

Next week we’re going to talk about writing descriptions, and the ever important show don’t tell rule. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free post a comment on this site, or email me at mromard@gmail.com.

This could be you!

If you’re not already writing, this can be a pretty intimidating idea.

Fortunately, it’s also a pretty simple idea. If you want to write, you need to write. It’s so basic that you wouldn’t think there is a need to say it, but many would-be writers need to be reminded of this. It’s very easy to get caught up in daydreaming about being a wildly successful, rich and famous author, or to talk yourself into believing that you don’t have time to write, or that you don’t have anything to write about. Or maybe you think that you don’t have the tools, the talent, or the training necessary to be a writer.

You’re wrong.

Writing is a skill that can be learned. You can get better with practice. Writing doesn’t require any special tools. It’s true that you’re extremely unlikely to become wildly successful, rich and famous. You may never be as skilled as your favourite authors, and you might never even get paid for your work at all. But none of this means that you can’t write.

Here’s what you need to get started:

1. Access to a computer with a text editor or a word processor.
2. An idea.

That’s it. Seriously.

1. Access to a computer with a text editor or a word processor.

I recommend a text editor (something like Notepad for Windows, TextEdit for Mac, or gEdit for Linux) instead of a word processor (something like Microsoft Word, Pages, or OpenOffice Writer). You can use whatever text editor comes with your computer. There are others available if you don’t like what you’ve got, but I really wouldn’t put too much thought into choosing a text editor.

The idea behind using a text editor instead of a word processor is that text editors are less distracting. I find that when I write in a word processor I am more likely to play with different fonts and formatting options, check my word count, and do a lot of things that aren’t writing. I can get distracted in a text editor as well, but it happens a lot less often.

That said, if you find that you prefer to write in a word processor, there’s nothing wrong with doing so. The point here is to get you to write, not to get you to write the same way I do.

You’ll notice that I’m not recommending that you write with a pen and paper. Or on a type writer. Or that you carve your words into a clay tablet. This is because I’m trying to make writing an easier task for you. Anything that you don’t create on a computer adds an extra step to the process, because you’ll need to type it into your text editor or word processor when you’re done writing it, unless you don’t ever plan to show your writing to anyone and don’t want your work to be easily preserved.

Tip: Save your work often while you’re writing. There’s nothing more frustrating than working on a story and losing all of your work because you didn’t save it and your computer crashed, or the power went out, etc.

2. An idea.
When I say that you need an idea, I don’t want to give you the impression that you need to know everything that is going to happen in your story before you sit down to write. You don’t. What you need to get started is just some facet of your story that you can work with. Maybe you have an idea for a character, or a setting that you want to work with. Maybe there’s a scene in your head that you don’t have a context for yet.

Maybe you don’t actually have an idea, or you can’t decide what you want to write about. There’s nothing wrong with trying to find some inspiration. As Jordan Trethewey suggested here a few weeks ago, you can always try a writing prompt from Writer’s Digest if you need a little help.

It doesn’t actually matter what your idea is, yet. Open your text editor or word processor, and write it down. You may not keep what you’ve just written, but it’s a good idea to write it down anyway, so that you don’t lose your thoughts. Write down anything you can at this point - descriptions of characters or settings, snippets of dialogue, events that you think will take place, absolutely anything. And don’t forget to save the file; you’ll need it later.

That’s all for this week. Next week we’ll get into actually working with the ideas that you’ve written down. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free post a comment on this site, or email me at mromard@gmail.com.

The zine is open for submissions on an ongoing basis. Issue #2 is only a few pages short of being filled, and will be on the way around the first of August.

Dreams of the special edition, VTZ (Vagabond Trust Zine) are still alive. If the other Vagabonds wish to see it happen by submitting to…

corenski@hotmail.com

Peace out y’all
- The Boxcor Breezer