WELCOME TO THE JIREVERSE

I’m not condoning having a computer program do your work. But AI is still a tool many of us have at our disposal in text-to-speech–which has been around for a while. Once upon a time I used a very robotic voice to read back my stories to me.

It was painful, but it pointed out where word choice and sentence structure failed.

Thankfully, advances in AI means we now have access to more soothing tones.

We all speak in our own mannerisms, and that’s often what we put on paper, but what doesn’t translate is the inflection and pacing. In order to test your text, put it through a text-to-speech program. Listen and read along, make a notation every time something sounds weird. Those are the places you need to correct.

This is my personal approach to drafts. No author is the same, and not every story is approached the same for each author. I have stories I plan for months, and novels I’ve written out of the blue based on a one sentence of an idea.

That said, no matter how the story came about, its existence and the finessing required prior to publishing stays the same for me.

DRAFT ONE – the purpose is COMPLETION.

I write the first draft with one goal, get to the finish line. In past WRITING TIPS, I’ve mentioned how I’ll use placeholders for things I need to research more or am just having trouble finding the right word. These are just things I do to make sure I complete the first draft. Because, as anyone that’s written a first draft can tell you, there will be plenty to fix, so don’t stress over it on your first pass.

DRAFT TWO – the purpose is COHERENCE.

I usually do not dive into a second draft for a week or two. I like to celebrate the first draft and get some distance on what I thought I wrote and what I actually wrote. On Draft Two, I am focused on cleaning it up so someone else can read it. This includes grammar and spelling checks (it won’t be the last). Not only does the story have to be shareable at this point, but it also has to be consistent. I take notes on this pass as I approve the chapters hoping that in my race to the finish line I didn’t leave a question unanswered or set up the wrong path only to go down another one.

DRAFT THREE – the purpose is CORRECTED

I usually share my completed second drafts with a test reader. Some provide detailed corrections or comments. Other’s give an overall evaluation of what works and what doesn’t. When I sit down for the 3rd, I want it to be my last draft–it won’t be–but I still approach it with an effort to perfect it. this will go out to a second reader, and the goal is to make sure whatever problems discovered by the first won’t be hindering the second reader from seeing the story vs. the errors.

From here on, there will be more drafts as I continue to repeat the 3rd draft until it is ready for publication.

What a character knows can define what kind of story you are telling.

If you want to write suspense, the reader knows what the character doesn’t. You know that old line from Hitchcock where you show the audience the bomb under the table that the characters are unaware of. Or Michael Myers standing beside the hedge–watching, waiting. That’s all creating suspense–anticipation.

In mysteries, you will have characters know something that the reader and other characters don’t. The reveal generally solves the mystery.

In a lot of fantasy stories, you’ll have one character that knows practically nothing (Luke Skywalker) meet a character that knows everything (Obi-Wan Kenobi). The reader learns while the character learns. Characters like Luke Skywalker or Neo (THE MATRIX) all exist to allow exposition to be shared. Like that new guy on the job that HR takes around and introduces to everyone as they explain when and where they can take their breaks and how to use a time clock.

These are characters at the mercy of the knowledge of those around them. Morpheus could be lying. Obi-Wan could have had ulterior motives. Whenever you present whatever knowledge that your character has been holding back can either create suspense for the reader or become a shocking twist.

Imagine if Luke knew Darth Vader was his father the whole time, and was simply playing dumb to deliver his nemesis Old Ben to earn his father’s favor? When you reveal this makes a difference between whether or not you’ve created a twist or suspense.

The twist could be delivered when Obi-Wan yells at Luke to go–and Luke just stands on the landing platform, arms crossed and smirking as Vader informs Obi-Wan that his son has already joined the dark side. Shocking! This blond-hair, blue-eyed dweeb from Tatooine is evil!

Twists generally come at the end of an act. But it doesn’t have to be the last act.

There are some great horror movies whose twists are revealed pretty early on that change the reader’s anticipation. The recent BARBARIAN (2022 directed by Zach Cregger) is a great example, and an even better one at showing how once the twist is revealed, suspense can be sustained as another character enters the fray with the audience knowing what he doesn’t.

If you don’t like twists, but still wanted to create suspense, you could tell your readers when Obi-Wan says Vader killed Luke’s father, that Luke knew the story much differently. It was Obi-Wan who cut off his father’s limbs and left him for dead. Then the story would have the same impending ticking clock of a bomb beneath a desk as Luke manipulates the poor old Jedi into a fight he cannot win.

Try to be mindful of when a reader learns the information that you know as the author. In order to pull off the twist appropriately with Luke Skywalker, one would’ve had to seed that moment. Perhaps he ‘accidentally’ uses the dark side, and Obi-Wan scolds him while Luke plays like he didn’t know. Perhaps he lets something slip to another character that he would only know about the Death Star if he had already been on it.

Whether you want to create suspense or a shocking twist, be mindful that when you tell your characters or show your readers what’s in store for them makes all the difference.

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.