Writing – Page 5 – WRITE TIME AND AGAIN

Creating Empathy

Posted on February 23, 2023 by L. M. Montes

On October 6, 2021 I wrote a blog post entitled Connections. Toward the end of the article I talked about a character, Mary, who was in a heated argument with her boyfriend as they were walking along. They had come to an area or clearing where the sunset could be seen much better in all of its glory. The boyfriend didn’t notice it. He could’ve cared less, but Mary noticed it and enjoyed it so much that for a moment she forgot about the argument. In this post I said that the sunset itself had nothing to do with the issue at hand, which was the argument. It was a random occurrence. But it had everything to do with creating empathy for the character of Mary. Add to this the dialogue between the two. Maybe Mary’s boyfriend said something nasty to her. The reader will be affected by these words to in that they will feel for her/have empathy for her. Mary may not be hurt by his words, but the reader will feel for her anyway. Well, most readers anyway.

Creating empathy for your characters is what draws your readers further into your story. Feelings, as we all know, have a strong connection to empathy. The two go hand in hand. As a side note, not everyone feels empathy, so don’t worry if your characters don’t connect with some readers. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Empathy, or even lack thereof, also gives incite into your character’s personality. In the above scenario we come to understand that Mary loves the beauty of sunsets even in the face of angst. It also hints towards her sensitivity. In addition, deep down she doesn’t let something like an argument with her boyfriend get to her. This indicates strength to get through it and not dwell on it. It could also indicate she feels as though the situation between her and her boyfriend will get resolved. The point being, in the ugly face of an argument, she saw beauty.

What drives the feelings within your characters? The situations they are thrust up against. Let’s say we have a character named Jack. He’s 31 years old, a successful corporate lawyer, and married with one child. He finds out his wife is cheating on him. Over the eight years they’ve been married, he has given his wife everything. He supports her in all that she enjoys doing. There isn’t anything that indicated to him that she had been unfaithful. Until he walks in on his wife and her lover when he comes home to surprise her (I know. This is a typical scenario, but it works for the point I’m trying to make). Already the reader feels empathy for him, and we haven’t gotten to how he is feeling yet. Although, his feelings will be interspersed throughout the scenario anyway.

Everything, the feelings and situations, even the words characters say to one another can create empathy within your readers. They will be pulled into your story. You want this. Of course, there are other ways besides creating empathy that can pull a reader in as well. Here again, that’s another blog post.

Writing

Life Long Learning

Posted on February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 by L. M. Montes

The years spent writing my first novel weren’t just spent writing. What I discovered early on was that I didn’t understand how to put a book length story together. To be specific, I needed to learn story structure. Thus, great care was taken to spend time learning about the craft of writing a book. Much trial and error occurred, and through all of that I discovered what worked and what didn’t work for me.

Other story elements I had to brush up more on were story flow, word flow, grammar, plot, character development, dialogue, character emotions, the list goes on and on. This all takes time, yes, but it is well worth it. While I was learning and brushing up on these skills, I wrote as well. There were times of frustration, when I had to delete part of my story and start over. But the more I wrote and learned, the easier the whole process became.

The Moment of Meditation by Louis Surugue is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

You won’t be the best straight out of the gate. No one ever is. But the more you learn and learn continuously, and practice what you learned, the better and easier it will become. So where do you start? Start with your weakness. What areas of writing and grammar are you weak in? Start there and move forward.

Now, two books later, the ride has become more fluent. The words flow more, and I know way more about story structure than I did years ago when I first started. This doesn’t mean there isn’t anything else to learn. I still continue to learn. Learning is what keeps us going and maturing and moving to the next level.

Plot/Story

Story Trees

Posted on February 16, 2023 by L. M. Montes

The beauty of a tree is intricate. There are so many parts, yet they are all part of one trunk. Everything comes together to make up the whole. We see the individual parts, but we also see the one.

Stories work much the same way. There is one main story, but within it are ‘branches’ or ‘offshoots’ of smaller stories that, when you put them all together, make up the main story. The end result is one story with many parts within it. They all connect. With a tree if you take a part of it and replant it, it grows into another tree. The same applies to a story. If you take a part of the story, you can create another story.

Writing

Writing Prompts: Part II

Posted on February 12, 2023February 12, 2023 by L. M. Montes

Hello everyone. I hope your day is going well. A while back I published a post with some writing prompts. Here are some more.

As I shut my draw, something tiny and black flew into it.
The cool water caressed my feet. But…
I did a double take, when I passed…
The day came when…
“I talked to him yesterday. He said…”
“You’re standing in my way. All I…”
Choose an article in the newspaper, look at the fifth or sixth line, and use it to create a poem or short story.
I reached into my purse then realized…
Write a story about a talking gold fish.
Write a story with the line, “Then he/she slapped me.”

Writing

Don’t Rush

Posted on January 26, 2023 by L. M. Montes

Writing, whether you are writing fiction or nonfiction, is more than the act of writing itself. It is a process and it all takes time. Rushing through from the beginning to the end will only get you no where very fast. This is not a post about the writing process; although, that is come up in a future post. No. This post is about taking your time with it. Let’s dig in.

I understand the urgency to get the finished product in front of people. Trust me when I say, readers know when a writer/author sped through their writing. How, you might ask? The writing itself will be bad. There will be misspellings, awkward sentences, punctuation in places there doesn’t need to be any and vice versa, plot holes, and/or the format is all wrong. The list goes on and on. I’m not talking about a few errors, because we all make mistakes. I’m talking about many. You might say that a piece of writing like this needed a good editor. That is correct. However, here again, the time was not taken to even edit the piece. Editing takes time, too. Trust me. I’m not talking about a couple of days or a week. Instead, I’m talking about months. Then beta readers have to read it first before putting it out to the public. The beta readers, or test readers, will give you viable feedback in regards to what is and isn’t working with your story or book.

Once you get feedback from your beta readers, look at their recommendations one at a time, and fix them if you agree with their assessment. Remember, it’s your writing, so it is up to you as the writer to do with your piece as you see fit.

Here is a list that should give you a picture of the length of time it takes to write a book…..

Planning- How you plan your story is up to you.
Draft one- Depending on the length of your story (book length) it can take 1 to 3 years for draft one. My second novel is over 500 pages and took me three years to finish the first draft. But remember, we are all different, and life gets in the way.
Draft two- No, you are not starting over from the beginning. What you are doing at this stage is taking your first draft and working with it from the beginning to the end. What you will be doing is tweaking your story, characters, structure, looking for plot holes, etc.
Draft three- Repeat draft two process. Yes, there might be things you will miss.
Do you need a fourth draft and beyond? That is up to you.
Self editing- You will want to edit your story/manuscript first before you send it to an editor.
Editing- Get a good editor. Shop around. Don’t hire the first one that comes along unless they come with good references.

As you can see, writing a book is not a quick process. Take great care with what you are writing. You want to please your readers not make them shut the book before it begins.

Theme

Theme: Where to Find It

Posted on January 15, 2023 by L. M. Montes

To start with, theme is a lesson or idea the story teaches and is carried throughout the story. But where do we find a theme to center our stories around? We can Google a list of possible themes and go from there. After all, sometimes our mind goes blank right at that moment you want to think of something. Google helps boost our minds. Of course, there are other search engines, so the choice is yours which one you use.

Another possibility is yourself. You’re probably going, huh? That’s right. Your own experiences can shed light on various themes you can center your story around. In your lifetime what have you learned? How did you learn it? Did you have to learn how to get along with someone you didn’t like? Did you have to learn how to give more? Did you have to learn to be patient? Maybe you had to learn to take risks. The list goes on and on. Or maybe you know of someone who had a learning experience.

Does this all mean your story has to be directly related to your learning experience? No, absolutely not. You aren’t creating nonfiction. You are wanting to create fiction. All I am saying is to use your learning experience (or someone else’s) and come up with a fictional story that centers around the theme (or what you learned) from your own life.

There are times, though, when all you have to do is start writing a story and the theme will present itself as the story unfolds. Yes, there are some writers who write this way. I am one of them. I don’t like to restrict myself, and I find it more freeing to just start writing. How about you?

Writing

Write a Poem (Idea 3)

Posted on December 21, 2022 by L. M. Montes

Write down a number of topics. Then create a list of words and/or phrases under each topic relating to that topic.

Example:

Topics
Love– flutter, heart warming, constricting breaths, tingling, soft kisses, stab, gentle pulse pounding kiss, sweet thoughts…..

Rain– spattering diamonds, twinkle tapping, splashing, thought disruptor, meditation melder, a guide to dullness, sprouter of Spring…..

Expressions– muddied knowledge, human weeds, life’s tides, stabbing stare/glare, ice eyes, singing smile…..

Growth– as a mustard seed, a newness, knowledge comes knocking, the deepening of a flower’s color, life’s momentum…..

Next:

Think about the kind of poem you would like to write. Let’s say you want to write a poem about growth; go to your topic entitled growth and read through the list of words/phrases you came up with. As you do this, ideas will start to flow, and you will begin to think of lines of poetry. AND you will end up using some of the words/phrases from your list in your poem. Also, you don’t have to stick to just one topic. Mix them up by pulling words/phrases from more than one topic to use in your poem. You will be very surprised at how easy it is to think of a poem by using these processes.

Above all else, have fun.

Writing

Write a Poem (Idea 2)

Posted on December 20, 2022 by L. M. Montes

Verse 1: Make something normal seem out of the ordinary.
Verse 2: Make something out of the ordinary seem normal.

This is not as easy as it looks.

Writing

Write a Poem (Idea 1)

Posted on December 15, 2022 by L. M. Montes

Grab a photo of anything.
Study it for a few minutes.
Brainstorm a list of words that come to mind as you are looking at it.
Take your list of words, and use them to create a poem of your choice.

Writing

Theme: That Sticky Thing Some Have Issues With

Posted on December 6, 2022 by L. M. Montes

How do you insert a theme into your story? Well, there are different ways of doing this. Just so you know, how this is done differs from writer to writer. After all, we are all different minded individuals. I tend to do things a little backwards. At least in my mind I do. To start with, theme is a lesson or idea the story teaches and is carried throughout the story. A story can have more than one, so don’t think you can’t go beyond that.

Examples
1. Good vs. evil
2. Power of corruption
3. Love
4. Free will
5. Tragedy

Of course, there are many many more. But, how do you incorporated it into your story? I have come to the knowledge over the years that it has much to do with how you write. I am a panster. In other words, I don’t plan. I make the story up as I go along. I know in advance the type of theme I am wanting to work with, so I set out writing my story. As I am writing, the theme is working in the background, a.k.a simmering in my subconscious. It will come to the surface as the story unfolds.

In my latest book The Cross’s Key, when I finished it, I started at the beginning of the book and looked for anything that pertained to the story’s theme and made notations of it. When that was finished, I went back to each notation and decided whether or not the theme was developed enough. If it wasn’t, what did I need to insert in order to develop it more. Was there anything that didn’t make any sense that needed clarification? Did the theme flow with the rest of the story, or was there something out of place that might derail the reader? Trust me, it’s your story, so you will know the answers to these questions at the moment you’re going through it.

If you are a planner and plan your story out before you set to writing that first chapter, then you are going to outline your chosen theme during the planning process. If this is the way you work, what I would do is come up with a theme first. Next, I would write down in a couple of sentences what my book is about (or a general idea anyway). Then go back to your theme and brainstorm various ways that theme could be incorporated into your story.

Whatever way you choose, please note, theme is an integral part of your story. Yes, I know there are many elements to a story that are important, but theme will pull at the reader’s mind and work toward making connections in ways only they will know.