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Large Gatherings

Let's suppose you're writing a complex scene ... say, a large gathering such as an office Christmas party at a very large firm. You have the character list you've been working with plus some outsiders such as spouses and possibly minor characters. It would be easy to have considerably more than 50 people at such an event but let's say between major and minor characters you can count 30. Now the number of possible interactions would be 870 which is far too much to handle. You'll need a few specific ones to advance your plot but will want a few to establish the scene and set the mood. One way to proceed is to list everyone and then use a random number generator - I use Excel's RANDBETWEEN - to select a couple of people at random and then decide how they might interact. I've found this technique works well and makes the large number of possible interactions manageable while keeping the story from seeming contrived.

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Editing Note

I've mentioned this before, but I think it's worth repeating. After the first pass over your manuscript, and you've caught the easy stuff, use either the read aloud feature of Word or Adobe Acrobat and listen to your work. I recently did this with a manuscript I thought was perfect and uncovered dozens of mistakes. Your eye may slip over 'of' when you meant 'off' but your ear will note the difference. Yes, it's a little tedious and it takes longer than just reading but it catches many more mistakes.

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Necessary Anachronism

I'm currently writing fantasy but for a young reader. Because young people today are taught the metric system in school, I'm using it in the story, but it seems so out of place to use meters and kilograms instead of leagues and stone, or even miles and pounds.

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Course

There are a number of free online writing courses. I'm not suggesting you take them, but I do think checking out the reading lists is worthwhile.

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Detectives

It seems almost cliched to have a detective with family and perhaps alcohol problems. This is because many authors firmly believe characters are interesting only if they had deep-seated psychological difficulties. Personally, I think the problem should be the case, and possibly political overhead, but I realize I'm in the minority.

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Conflict

Conflict plays an important part in writing but it doesn't necessarily have to be interpersonal. For example, a person can be conflicted over the alternatives in an upcoming decision, or possibly striving against some natural force.

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Editing

Some suggest reading your work out loud when editing. It works, but an alternative is to store the doc as a pdf and then have Adobe read it out loud to you. I believe, in more recent versions, Word also has a read-out-loud feature but I haven't seen it.

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Canada Day

For those living in Canada who happen to stumble across this post, Happy Canada Day.

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Character Names

A simple method of naming characters is to decide on the nationality, and then use any of the appropriate baby name lists on the internet,

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Character Links

Sometimes you may find yourself stuck. You need to weave two characters into some sort of relationship - not necessarily romantic - and there's nothing obvious connecting them. This is when you should remind yourself about the six degrees of separation theory. Now of the 8+ billion people inhabiting this planet there's a good chance NOT everyone is related to everyone else by a mere six degrees but the concept is still useful. Start envisioning a chain of relations, friends or friends, colleagues etc. and eventually you'll have the necessary links. Then you can use them in such a way your two characters eventually stumble across one another.

#doug lewars #writing #writer #writing advice #six degrees of separation

Endings

Most readers prefer happy endings. Some prefer sad and a few merely want the author to stop and let them decide for themselves how things work out. Personally I like happy endings.

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Show Not Tell

I'm listening to an audio book in which the author got a little carried away with the show-not-tell mantra. You're all familiar with the who, what, where, when, why and how questions I'm sure. It took this author 23 minutes to get to a single where and what. The old maxim 'nothing in excess' is something to remember.

#doug lewars #writing #writer #writing advice #show not tell

Experience

Some people demand you 'write what you know'. On the other hand, if I wrote a Whodunit, I'm not sure those same people would want me going around murdering people to gain experience.

#doug lewars #writing #writer #writing advice #experience

Voice

Writing in first person has become very popular these days; however, if you want to develop subplots it's highly problematic. Third person omniscient is fine for subplots but I've noticed many criticisms on Goodreads along the lines of 'I couldn't follow', 'too complicated', 'I couldn't keep track of all the character'. The latter can be solved by adding a table of characters but shifting scenes bothers some readers. Personally I figure there's not much help for it but many authors attempt to adapt their work to their audience's preferences. Third person limited is another approach but it, too, makes subplots exceedingly difficult. It work well in YA books but if you want a complex plot with plenty of characters each working on a separate agenda third person omniscient works best.

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Good Work

You know you've done something good when you're editing a book and find yourself becoming absorbed in the story even though you wrote it yourself and there can be no surprises.

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Information Dumps

How much information can you provide before it becoming an information dump? Different people have different tolerance levels. Personally I can handle quite a lot if it's well written and the author keeps it interesting but I realize many dislike an explanation at all. Personally, I think if when you edit it, if you find yourself hurrying past one or more paragraphs it's time to stop and make some alterations or even cut out part of it.

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Laziness

The beautiful thing about writing is you can do it while sitting on your butt. For those of us who are bone lazy when it comes to manual work, that's a big advantage.

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