If you have a story idea and you want to write on it, start first with a summary. It doesn’t need to be long, but get the idea out on paper first or else you risk it disappearing or getting jumbled before you finish writing it.
Check out more Tips and Tricks for your story!
Worried your characters might sound too much alike? Each character should have a way of speaking, phrases or words they use specific to them. They need to be distinctive because in a novel, their words are one of the main things readers have to understand their personality. You don’t want five of the same characters running around just with different hair color. That’s a boring story.
Try this:
Copy five or so phrases from each character into a separate word document.
Don’t use any names and jumble the order of the phrases.
See if you can tell who the speaker is each time.
Ask a friend or fellow writer to do the same.
If no one can tell the difference, they probably are too similar. Edit!
Check out more Tips and Tricks for your story!
If you’re suffering from writer’s block, try this tactic.
Take a break for a few days (3-5) from your specific story.
Each day write for 10-30 minutes about anything but be descriptive. No distractions, no phones, nothing but you and your keyboard or journal. Write about the way the light is coming through the window, the sound of your neighbor’s dog, the scratch on your desk. Don’t write a story, just write.
By the time three days has passed, your brain will have gathered a lot of imagery that will hopefully kick start your story.
Check out more Tips and Tricks for your story!
Don’t just tell us what eye color they had. That won’t give us very much insight into the character.
Instead tell us if their eyes are shifty, soft, wrinkled, deep, watery, bloodshot, or other descriptors.
This will let us know more about them as a character and leads you into an easy way to either forecast action or explain personality.
If you get stuck in your story, ask yourself three questions.
1) “What does my character want?”
2) “How can I make that difficult to achieve?”
3) ”What are the consequences if they don’t get it?”
Proceed to make each answer more intense than the last time you asked and go from there.
If your writing is starting to feel flat, read over your piece for passive voice. Change any passive parts to active to give them more punch.
