Writing Lesson 01 Write About? FREE FICTION WRITING COURSE FROM CUPIDEROSBOOKS.COM

Writing Lessons

WRITING LESSON 01:

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT?

MOST PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO WRITE BECAUSE THEY:

* ASSUME THEY DON'T HAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT TO SAY

* ASSUME THEY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING TO WRITE ABOUT

* DON'T KNOW ANYONE WHO IS A WRITER

Well don't let those reasons stop you. Everyone starts somewhere and the fact is you have lived and gain information, reasons, opinions about a wide variety of subjects from school, to work, to play and entertainment activities. Any one of, or mixture of those areas make you fertile ground for writing fiction or poetry.

BASIC WRITING RULES:

* WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT OR HAVE PARTICIPATED IN

One major rule is write what you know. This means things you do in your everyday life or encounter often enough to have gain a lot of knowledge about. Cheer leading, school, school subjects, hair, pets, clothes or any hobbies are some examples of this.

* RESEARCH TOPICS YOU'RE HAZY ON OR DON'T KNOW ABOUT.

Another rule is to research what you don't know about, then you'll know what to write on a subject. This means if you like sky diving but you've never done it, simply go to the library and look in a book or two about the subject. You might watch a film about sky diving.

* FORGET ABOUT ANYONE READING YOUR WRITING.

Third rule is to just write what you feel in your gut and get it out on paper. Then you can polish it over and over until you get it into high form.

* WRITE WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT MOST?

Fourth rule as Ayn Rand says is to write about what you think most about. If it is worth thinking about you probably have a lot to say about it writing too.

* SHOW THE ACTION, FEELINGS, MOVEMENT, OPINIONS, THOUGHTS IN YOUR

WRITING.

Show, don't tell. Hmmmm....

Mary had a balloon with her in the park. She saw children play. They smiled at her and her balloon. Then a girraffee stole it. Sound exciting, right? = telling

Mary walk in Aziom Park, down the wild white rose lane where daffodils swayed and butterflies flitted back and forth. She smiled at the other children on swing sets and playing in the pond, who pointed at her big, beautiful red balloon. And just as Mary sat down in the cool shade, under a huge oak tree, a long yellow and brown spotted snake snatched the balloon string. Mary swiftly looked up and saw the snake retreating back into the green leaves. "Come back here," she yelled and gave chase only to realize the snake moved very fast, leaping from tree top to tree top. "Stop!" Mary yelled, her arms pumping wild as she ran, darting in between tree trunks. Mary kept thinking to herself that's no snake moving amongst the trees. It's a Giraffe! = showing

* EVERY STORY HAS A BEGINNING, MIDDLE AND END

Most stories contain a beginning, middle and end. So that's all you have to think about the big major events that end the story/novel, that are right smack in the middle of story/novel, or the start of the story or novel. Some like writing from the end because then they know how the story is going to end. Others like to start by knowing the beginning.

Key to all this advice is to experiment and use whatever method works best for you.

* EVERY STORY HAS CONFLICT, OPPOSITION FORCES

What's conflict or opposition forces? Mary has a little balloon and a giraffe came and took it away. Now Mary has a conflict. Does she forget about the balloon? Not much of a story if she does. Does she cry about the balloon and asks someone else to get it? Again, not much of a story if someone other than Mary solves the problem. Or does Mary go after the giraffe and recover her balloon? Yes! That's a story. It's Interesting! It has conflict! This would be Mary vs the Giraffe.

Suppose Mary is turning 18 and realizes everyone considers her an adult. What does this mean to Mary? Is Mary comfortable being accepted as an adult? Does Mary want to do different things like get her own apartment now that she's an adult? This would be, Mary vs Society considering her as an Adult.

A character can be against herself. Perhaps she doesn't like her hairstyle and wants a new one? Perhaps her conflict is against a machine, time, a place, a situation, a group, history. Every story has to have conflict or there really no reason to read it. The character, Mary, gains or looses something in the process, but the struggle and problem solving was worth it to Mary so, it will be worthwhile to the reader.

* NUTSHELL OR CORE OF A STORY IS?

Writing a story in a nutshell is:

Characters = people

In a situation = environment place or time

With a problem to solve or something they want.

So you have characters, situation and what they want out of that situation.

* GOOD WRITING HABITS

1) Write at the same time every day.

2) Do not answer the phone and tell your family members, if they constantly interrupt, you're busy writing.

3) Write the same amount of words or pages a day, unless inspiration hits.

* GOOD WRITING TOOLS.

1) You'll want to get some effective and good value money writing tools to help you writing and reading.

2ND SPEECH CENTER

2nd Speech Center converts any text into spoken words or even MP3/WAVE audio files. Text-to-speech player that lets you listen to documents, e-mails or web pages instead of reading on screen. Great program for listening to stories, novels and poems on your favorite websites and in word. You can also simply copy text and have it automatically go into 2nd Speech Center and have it read back to you. Want to listen to your favorite story while jogging or riding the bus? Simply copy the text into mp3 format and send it to your mp3 player! A great program because writers should be readers! 2nd Speech Center will save you time and improve your fiction ear!

WORDWEB PRO

Writers reach time and time again for the dictionary, the thesaurus, and even sometimes search the web for the history of a word. That's a lot of work. WordWebPro does all that by highlighting the word then press control+right mouse click from almost any program you're currently using! Looking up a words has never been easier. It shows definitions, synonyms and related words. It includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links.

* ONLY SURE WAY TO WRITE YOUR STORY

The novel/story won't be written unless you finally sit down and type it OR write it OR

speak it out into a tape recorder or computer and transcribe it.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET STUCK IN WRITING YOUR STORY

* VISUALIZE A CONTINUUM PATH

If you get stuck in your writing you can just visualize it like this.

A-------------------------<b>B</b>---------------------------C

B=a scene in your mind, you know will be in story.

A= is a scene you don't know about but you find it by asking yourself what event caused/came before B?

C= is a scene you don't know about but you find it by asking yourself what event or result/event came after B?

* ASKS "WHAT IF THIS HAPPENED IN MY STORY?"

Another way to keep the plot moving is to asks yourself five what ifs?

Let's say you have B scene.

Speculate. Put down five different scenes/events that might or could happen.

What if #1 event happened after B?

What if #2 event happened after B?

What if #3 event happened after B?

What if #4 event happened after B?

What if #5 event happened after B?

Choose which of the five possible events could that contains the riches/most to write about.

In this way, you can continue to write your novel scene by scene until it is done.

* GO BACK TO OLD UNFINISHED WRITINGS, JOURNALS, NOTES

Another way to keep the novel/story going is to go back into your journal or unfinished stories. Perhaps you can take scenes, characters, chapters or plot events from those and include in your novel/story? Some writing prompts for you.

* REALIZE YOU ARE ALLOWED TO WRITE THE SCENES IN ORDER YOU CHOOSE!

And you are allowed to write the scenes in any order you want. A number of scenes make up a chapter or Act. You might decide to write chapter 10 before writing chapter 3 if you know chapter 10 better. It's all up to you. If you keep each start each new chapter on a new page in Word, it will be easily to switch the chapters around using the outline form view. (See more about writing scenes in Lesson 05.

* HOW LONG IS A STORY?