Read it out loud!

After you have finished writing a draft of a story, article, press release or whatever, read it out loud to yourself (or have someone read it out loud to you). This will help you find any problems with illogical sentences, bad choice of words, and will even help determine if your writing has the proper rhythm. Most people hear better than they read.

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One facet of writing I struggle with, especially when dealing with short fiction, is writing an ending to a story that doesn’t cheat the reader. I’m sure many of you have read a story or novel, gotten to the ending, and said, "Hey, that ending really sucks!" So how do you prevent this unfortunate circumstance from infecting your own writing?

Since I still struggle with endings, it’s difficult to write advice that gives a clear remedy to the problem. But I have found a few ways that can help reduce your chances of a bad ending.

Plan ahead

This one is simple: Plan your story out in advance, including the ending. This will prevent you from writing 90% of a story and then getting stumped because you can’t think of a good way to end that sci-fi/romance (for example) you’ve been working on for the last six months.

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What if I told you there’s a place where you can find some great creative writing tips in one, convenient spot? You’d probably want to know where that spot is, right? Check out this post from my good blogging friend over at Writing Forward.

And if you read those tips close enough, you might see a tip from someone you recognize (hint, hint).

Enjoy!

One of my favorite forms of fiction is called the drabble (not to be confused with the author Margaret Drabble). Basically, it’s a very short story that is exactly 100 words long. Not a word more, or a word less. You can write in any genre you like, using any style, and all the other elements of fiction are there – you just have to keep it to 100 words.

Yes, it’s very challenging. Trying to have a beginning, middle, and end of a story, plus character/s in such limited space, really forces you to make every word do as much work as possible. But it can be done, and I’ve written quite a few of them. Here’s the lowdown on the drabble!

History of the drabble

While there is no definitive source on the history of the drabble, I managed to find a few good nuggets of information by poking around the intertubes a little. According to this article, the drabble started out as a game, and got it’s name, of all places, from a Monty Python sketch:

Did you ever hear of the great Drabble craze that swept over (bits of) British sf fandom in the late 1980s? Literary historians have traced the name back to the 1971 Monty Python’s Big Red Book: `Drabble. A word game for 2 to 4 players. The four players sit from left to right and the first person to write a novel wins.’

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With my funky work schedule, it can sometimes be hard to find large chunks of time to sit down and write. But I’ve learned to write like I drink (not necessarily alcoholic beverages either): Sometimes I take little sips, other times I really chug it down!

What does that mean? Let me give you an example. If I twenty minutes before I need to go somewhere, I might sit down at my computer and pound out a few paragraphs on my current writing project. For me, that is very much like taking a sip – a writing session that’s very short and too the point.

Likewise, on my days off, I will get a lot more writing done and write for about an hour (usually), take a break, then get back to work on my project. This is like chugging a drink – I try to write a little faster and I don’t worry about possible problems when it comes to grammar, holes in the plot, etc.

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With National Novel Writing Month over half way finished, I thought it might be a good idea to write a post about a problem that plagues me when I’m writing. It’s also a problem that the core concept of NaNoWriMo attempts to solve – eliminating self-doubt during the writing process. Just write, and worry about problems (grammar, spelling, etc.) later.

Yes, self-doubt is a problem I struggle with each time I sit down to pound out a short story, blog post, essay, or even an email. Usually this problem comes in the form of questions that pop into my head while I’m writing: Is this good enough to be published? Will anyone want to read this? If they do read this, will they even like it? Why does this story/blog post/essay stink so much?

Here are a few ways I have learned to deal with self-doubt:

- Knowing it’s a problem for you is a large chunk of the solution! Just knowing that self-doubt might be holding your writing back is big first step. It’s admitting you have a problem. Once you realize this, you can take further steps to minimize the damage self-doubt can do.

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If you’re like me, then you are probably pretty busy. You have a day job, errands to run, chores at home to complete, family commitments, activities with friends and the list can start to get really long. When do you make time to write?

Sometimes it’s not easy. Fitting writing into your day can be like fitting a square block into a circular pipe (does that make any sense?). And it doesn’t help that for many people, writing is considered a "hobby" or "something on the side" by family and friends. This type of thinking can be real damaging to a writer’s fragile psyche.

While I have yet to find a perfect solution to the problem of fitting writing into a hectic schedule. I have found a way that will at least keep your writing consistant. This only involves one thing: Writing one hour each day. That’s it.

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I was recently engaged in some mundane household chores, and I was thinking about the short fiction project I’m currently working on. As I was working, I had a perfect idea for the story, complete with the exact wording of a descriptive passage and everything.

What did I do next? I continued with my chores. It wasn’t until I had finished and sat down at my computer did I try to recall that great idea. I began to realize that I could vaguely remember the idea itself, and as for the wording of that descriptive passage – gone!

After pounding my head on my desk for an hour, I was able to write something similar to what I thought of while cleaning. But the wording wasn’t right and it didn’t feel as fresh as it did when the original idea came to me. And even though I have moved on in the story, I’m still pulling my hair out over the lost opportunity. So what’s the lesson in all this?

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In all the years I have been writing, and in all the writing projects I have undertaken – whether fiction, articles, blog posts, essays, etc, one thing that has always held true is that if the momentum of my writing project dies, the project will probably be doomed.

You are probably asking, "What is this momentum you’re talking about"? When I refer to momentum in this post, I’m talking about keeping a writing project going until it is done. This means writing every day and always making progress – always moving forward.

How does the momentum die? Usually, you start to lose your momentum on a writing project when you let it sit unfinished for a few days. Or even worse, a few weeks go by without even looking at your partial manuscript. Your imagination will no longer be engaged in your story and it will take all that much more effort to get the momentum going.

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One issue I struggle with each time I sit down to start a new short story is whether or not to put together an outline first. There isn’t much guidance from the writing community either, as some writers swear by detailed outlines while others say outlines only stifle creativity. What is a writer to do?

In my own personal experience, if I write a piece of short fiction without some kind of rough outline (even if it’s just bullet points), the chances of that story never being finished increase by a factor of ten. At the very least, I try to write down major plot points (beginning, middle, end), character names, and other parts of the story I deem important. This gives me something to work with and I can fill in the details as I write.

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