Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Tricks for writers

Today I’d like to talk about writing tricks. We all have them, whether they be for getting the work to flow, or jump starting a character or goosing a sagging plot. And what works for one writer may work for others- so please play along!

I’d have to say my biggest “trick” is writing sprints, with NaNoWriMo being the biggest sprint of them all. Ok, in reality it’s a marathon, but it’s a series of sprints or it won’t work ;).

Sprints are my way of working past whatever part of my daily mundane life is interfering with my writing. You can do them alone, or with friends. I’ve seen pro writers shout out writing sprints on the hour or half hour on twitter. Folks join in, then report their count when the time is up. Sometimes the stuff produced is amazing- other times, not so much- but it’s SOMETHING- and it usually gets the juices flowing. Besides, everyone loves a little competition!

Another “trick” is jumping. Sometimes I’ll just have images for amazing scenes pop in my head- of course they are often nowhere near where I am in the story at hand. I usually follow through on writing them though- then during editing piece things together. It’s a great trick for when you feel like you’re stuck or the story is feeling blah. (And probably would give most plotters the hives, so if you’re one of them- don’t do it ;)).

Lastly, if I have a difficult character I try to take them out of the context of my story and find out what they like in our world. What music would they like? How would they dance? What foods? Since pretty much I write characters not of our world, seeing them in our settings (in my head) often helps me get a better grasp on my otherworldly folks (besides it’s fun ;).

What about you?  What are your tricks to keep the writing fresh and flowing?

11 comments:

  1. I have a trick! If there's a spot in my ms that I'm not sure if the wording is just right or if I can't think of the best reaction from one of my characters in response to something, for example, I put an @ next to it so I don't forget about it. When I finish the draft, I do a search function for @ and all my trouble spots pop up to see clearly how much work I still have left to do.

    Example:
    She took off her boot and hurled it at him. "You dirty, son of a bitch!"
    @his reaction
    The front door slammed open...

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    1. OOOOOO!!! I like that one, Melissa! (and will be stealing it ;)). That is a great idea. Thank you so much for coming by and sharing it!

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    2. I pur FIXME: with a note as to what concerns me when I'm stuck or want to check something. Then at the end I just search for FIXME. Same idea, different key.

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  2. I've recently started jumping around within the narrative to kickstart a slow moving WIP. putting on "mood music" helps me too.

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    1. Excellent Liz! Yeah, I forgot to list my musical kick start- trailer music. Works great for getting the writing moving!

      Thanks for coming by and commenting!

      Marie- stuck at day job can't get on blogger ;)

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  3. I will often jump around in the manuscript. If a scene materializes in my head, I jump ahead. Many times I've had several scenes at different points in the plot, and then I weave them together. It keeps the juices flowing for me, and sometimes jumping ahead makes me see a problem with another previous scene that I can correct.

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    1. That's a good point, Rebecca. Jumping ahead can really allow you to see problems that you might have missed had you stayed in linear writing mode.

      Thanks for coming by and commenting!

      Marie- stuck at day job can't get on blogger ;)

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  4. My personal trick for jump-starting my writing is to write by hand instead of typing directly into the computer. I have lousy handwriting, and I'm a very fast typist, so I do this only when I'm really stuck. It works, though. I've heard ,and I believe, that writing by hand and typing on a keyboard engage different parts of the brain.

    I rarely jump around in a MS, BTW.

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    1. That is a very good tip, Margaret. I'm not the fastest typist, but I do think using pen and paper slows things down. (My first two books were written completely by hand ;)) I don't do that very much any more, but I'm going to add it back into my bag of tricks.

      Thanks for coming by and commenting!

      Marie- stuck at day job can't get on blogger ;)

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  5. I use XXXX in the places where I'm stuck, much like others have mentioned. Silly me, I never thought to use Find to locate them later. Instead I scan the pages kicking myself for not remembering where my problems were. Excellent idea folks.

    Like you I jump. Usually to a scene I've been dying to tackle but haven't reached yet in the narrative. The fingers always seem to fly when I'm in love with a scene. When you think about it, we should be in love with all our scenes, but it doesn't seem to happen that way.

    Thanks for posting and exposing me to options I hadn't thought of.
    Sharon

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  6. I used to do the jumping trick all the time. I'd write whatever scene was in my thoughts at the time and then connect them up later. I kind of got away from that when I started submitting to an online crit group. I felt I had to do things in a chronological order or they wouldn't understand what was going on. Didn't work for me and I went back to jumping. Great post.

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