Author: dannedmind

An author, artist, and filmmaker. Interested in telling stories.

WRITING TIPS: WALLS

Somedays are golden and others are days we can’t write. One of the best way to overcome the walls of a writer’s block is to create your own walls.

Placing limits on what the story can or cannot contain will allow you to focus on what needs to be written vs all the possibilities of what could be.

I find I struggle most when the ideas are plentiful but don’t gel. A story about a boy with a toy car can go anywhere. But if we take that line and say the boy is a son of a mobster, but the story cannot have any guns or murder, we’ve narrowed our approach to the story, eliminating several possibilities.

Creating walls is narrowing your focus, and once you have precision focus the writing tends to flow quicker because you’re not addressing every possible problem, you’re just addressing one.

You can use genre to help narrow a story as well as time and place. A horror story with no cellphones makes life easier, right?

But if that cellphone works, then you have to focus on how you can still create fear when a call for help is just a quick selection of a contact’s info.

Avoiding tropes and cliches is something most writers try to do every single time they sit down–that’s creating a wall. I want to write a scary story, but I don’t want them to realize they suddenly have no cellphone connection.

Creating walls is narrowing your focus, and once you have precision focus the writing tends to flow quicker because you’re not addressing every possible problem, you’re just addressing one.

WRITING TIPS: CHANGE THE POINT OF VIEW

Did you know my short story MAD DOG DONALDSON has been published in 3rd Person POV before?

Here’s the original in first person (one of many free to read short stories here on my site): MAD DOG DONALDSON

I got some kind of critique/complaint on first person point of view and took it to heart enough to revise this short western story into 3rd person. While I reverted to the first person POV, I kept some of the lines that I’d added because they helped clarify the story.

I’ve had other stories that started out in one point of view before I changed them in a future draft.

It can change a story, it can make one that didn’t work, work. I find it is easier to convert a First Person POV to 3rd person, just because you’re eliminating all the I, Me, My, Mine, etc. And if it’s limited 3rd person you can keep many of the thoughts and feelings of that particular character.

But switching from 3rd to 1st, can be a lot more fun. When you make that switch you get to throw the character’s personality into every action of your story. Their commentary can be used to switch the tone of the story or amplify the mood.

BEHIND THE SCENES: SPIDERFACE (Short Story)

If you’re a parent, you know sometimes your kids can make you mad.

Thus, SPIDERFACE was born!

I forget the actual circumstances, so let’s assume my youngest was refusing bed or not letting me go to bed after story time. But it was presented for the exact intention to gross out and deliver a moral message.

Or maybe she just wanted me to kill a spider–something I am against.

I don’t like killing spiders. Even if they are in my home. Maybe especially if they are in my home. Spiders serve a nice function, gobbling up the ‘bad’ bugs. Sure, I dislike hiking into a web in the middle of the woods on a hot summer day. I hate finding cobwebs in the corners of ceilings. I’ve even been bitten by a spider (on several occasions) while I slept. So long as it is not a venomous spider, I’m fine with it.

The story was off the cuff. But I enjoyed it, and the reaction so much, that a week or so later, I made sure to retell it. I might’ve even told it a third time at bed time.

But I was never happy with the written story. It’s not the same without the performance: the facial expression and gestures–and of course the listener’s reaction.

So, if you don’t quite ‘feel’ the story, try to tell it to someone else. Try shocking them with it as you walk the line of whimsy and horror.

WRITING TIPS: EDIT A FRIEND’S STORY

Just like the title says . . . One of the best ways to learn is to see other people’s mistakes–and successes.

Although, most of the time, most of us are going to be mostly critical of our own work, but sometimes, more often than not–we actually have BLINDERS on and so, we don’t notice what’s wrong with what we wrote because we clearly wrote it specifically like that for a very important reason and our choice in punctuation or lack thereof can be defended . . . until we see it elsewhere.

I often realize my own bad habits when reading another friend’s story.

There is a difference to being the author reading your own story vs. being the reader expected to be critical of another’s work. By keeping a metaphorical mirror nearby, you can see where your friend’s mistakes are yours as well.