If fear stops you, how will you ever take the initiative your creative mind conceives?
Fear and Initiative
Tag: create
Patience
Patience can be an unruly monster, especially when you want something bad enough. Like success or wanting to see the final product of something you’re writing or making. You want it now. I think if one is normally an impatient individual, then that comes second nature to them. They will rush through to get something done. Maybe they need a reminder to slow down.
The project will get finished. It isn’t easy. Trust me on this one. I am a very impatient person, and I have to remind myself frequently to take my time.
So, slow down. Take a deep breath. Think of the end result and know it will be even better because you will have taken your time.
Word Selection
How picky are you with your words, when you write? Do you have to choose just the right ones in order for you to move on? Or do you belt them out there onto the page and rework them later? The first way can stop you up and prevent you from making headway at a steady pace. Because what happens is this: a creative idea for your story may have popped into your head, and you might forget it by the time you’re finished making your wording what you ultimately want it to be.
Get the words on paper first along with your ideas and worry about making them just perfectly right later. You can also make notes for yourself along the way about what you want to go back and fix. Your draft will still be there waiting for you.
Have a great weekend everyone, and God Bless 🙏
The Tight Rope of Story Telling
We write and we edit. We try to get the story on paper or the computer screen, then we go back when we’re finished and edit what we’ve written. That’s how it’s supposed to be done anyway. Does that always happen in that order? No. Not always. There are times when we try to edit as we type. The left side of our brain wants to insert itself at the same time our right side of the brain is trying to be imaginative and creative. This process can cause you to slow down when you’re trying to come up with a story.
Let’s say you’re a paragraph into writing a scene. So far you like it, but then the analytical side of your brain (left) is saying ‘No, no. That won’t work’. You go back and rewrite parts of that paragraph. You like what you came up with and move on to the next paragraph. You’re a couple of sentences into the second paragraph when your analytical side starts rethinking what you rewrote in the first paragraph. So, you go back and look at it but aren’t sure how you want to fix it. You end up sitting there thinking. Your fingers start strumming on your desk and you lean back in your chair and stare at the ceiling. An hour later you haven’t fixed anything, nor have you moved on with your writing. Had you waited to fix what your analytical side of your brain wanted to fix, you would have been MUCH further on in your story. You may have even gotten a chapter done.
How many of you can relate to the scenario above. I know it’s happened to me at times. So, how do we turn off the left side of our brain and make its impatient self wait? It’s quite easy actually. You make it wait. Turn it off. If you don’t like something you’ve just written, make a note of it so you can go back at a later date and fix it when you’re not writing. Choose a specific day and time when that’s all you’re going to do is edit and fix.
Loosen the “rope” when you’re creating and “tighten” it back up when you’re editing.
Atmospheric Emotion Continued
On (April 8, 2021) I posted a photo of a lightning storm and titled the post Atmospheric Emotion. In your writing you will need to convey emotions to your atmosphere/setting. This then creates a connection to your readers because they start to feel these emotions too. Typically, darkness or a dark room conveys foreboding or unease. A warm setting with trees, green grass, a cozy cabin with a small pond depicts serenity. But what if you want that calm serene scene to depict foreboding without the darkness? What can you insert into that scene to create that foreboding? Perhaps it’s too calm. Maybe the friend of yours who lives there is no where to be found. Her belongings and car are there, but she is not. Her cellphone is sitting on the patio table, so calling her won’t do any good. Or, perhaps he/she was there a minute ago and now he/she is not. He/she vanished in the midst of this calm setting.
When it comes to emotions and projecting them onto a setting, you must go beyond narration. Just telling your reader the back yard was creepy or gave your main character a creepy feeling or a sense of foreboding, is not enough. They must FEEL that sense. These emotional projections from a story to its reader(s) is part of what makes for a great book/story.
Example 1:
Bad
I hadn’t been in my friend, Elliot’s, basement before. Elliot had always been so upbeat all the time; full of jokes. But the black walls and purple lights were the opposite of my friend’s personality, so it was creepy.
Good
I hadn’t been in my friend, Elliot’s, basement before. I never understood why until now. In the past Elliot’s upbeat demeanor magnetized others. People drew to him. So, my breath caught in my chest, when I reached the bottom of his basement steps and flicked on the light. A deep purple glow radiated throughout the room in front of me. The color of the walls appeared to be black, but the purple light made it impossible to tell. A kind of mist seeped through a few cracks in the walls. It hit my nostrils and a dank stench reached my stomach, giving me the dry heaves. Peering to the left, a cot stood in the far corner. Was it my imagination, or was there an indentation of a body on the one and a half inch mattress? I inched that way to take a closer look. I came within five feet, and the indentation moved. No body was visible…..
Example 2:
Bad
I took my tea, opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the back deck. The grass had been freshly mowed the day before and the flower gardens weeded. A well kept yard makes for a relaxing mood. I spotted the lounge chair to my right, walked over to it, and sat down.
Good
I lifted my tea to my nose and inhaled the ginger fragrance, causing me to smile at the sweet scent. The sun peeked out from behind a cloud and shown through the sliding glass door. I opened it and stepped out onto the back deck. A warm breeze whispered by and pushed my shoulder length hair back as I took in the freshly cut lawn and sweet scented flowers. Standing there taking in all of the beauty reminded of a mental massage of sorts. I stepped over to the cushioned lounge chair and sunk in, closing my eyes and relishing the clapping of the leaves on the trees as the breeze moved them.
In Example 1 the bad sample tells us that the character feels creepy, but do you the reader feel it? In don’t. We get that the main character feels creepy, but WE don’t feel as creeped out as he/she does. We don’t even believe he/she feels creeped out because the seriousness of the situation doesn’t come across.
In the good sample of Example 1 we feel the main character’s emotions of fear and apprehension, and we feel his disbelief of a friend who is normally upbeat but has a basement that’s dark and dreary. We are as creeped out as he/she is.
In Example 2 the bad sample is rather mundane and stale. We understand the environment is relaxed in nature but it doesn’t come across in the writing. The environment doesn’t evoke emotion at all.
However, the good sample of Example 2 conveys the imagery needed to evoke the relaxed and warm atmosphere to the reader. We can actually identify with this because most of us have experienced this type of relaxation. But, it wasn’t told to us as in the bad sample. It was SHOWN to us. Did you feel relaxed? I did.
Overall, emotions play a huge role in any story, especially when it comes to atmosphere/setting. They draw your readers into the text and keep them there. That’s where you want them, and you want them there to stay.
Summer Dream
Inspiration
Book 2 Update
I discovered 2 things this morning. First, the long awaited title for book 2 in my novel series is finally here. It will be called, The Cross’s Key. Second, since I started book 2 I have been having placement issues. I was never happy with the order in which I put each chapter, and just when I think I have it right, I find I don’t like the order at all. So I continued to rearrange. THEN…….Then, this morning I realized that it isn’t necessarily the chapters I have out of place. It’s that the chapters I have written should be in Act II not Act I. Nothing like starting in the middle. HaHaHa, at least now after I create Act I and get to Act II, I’ll be a step ahead. Gotta love writing.
Also, book 2 features Kyle Stevens, who was a main side character in book 1, as the protagonist. He has been given a most exceptional gift. Will he be open to its mysteries, or will he ignore it and rely on his own merits?
Creative Burst
You can take a piece of something intoxicatingly boring and mundane and give it that creative flare. I call it “dressing it up”. Take the pictures above for example. Yes, I agree. They go on forever, or so it appears. Some would see beauty in them; some would see lack of an appeal. I see both actually. I didn’t grow up in an environment such as this, so the vast open plains give me a sense of beauty and allure. But there isn’t a whole lot to them. They’re just a road that goes on for miles, some hills, a sparse amount of trees, grass, and sky.
Now, take these same views, turn out the sun, and watch the stars come out. Now that is truly jaw dropping. Here there are no city lights to drown out the night’s sky. Here it is pitch black outside at night. You can get a blanket, lay it out, lay down and gaze up at the stars for hours. Better yet, the moon. I once saw a harvest moon out in the open like this. I was driving at night on I-70 through the state of Kansas. I looked out my driver side window and saw the biggest moon I’ve ever seen in my life. Talk about spectacular. I wanted to reach out and grab it, it was so huge and close.
In writing, we want to capture these beautiful scenes on paper. We want to capture the boring ones too. Either way, we writers can spice it up if it’s lacking or keep it as is. That’s one of the things I love about writing. We create and it’s anything goes. If your imagination sees it, your hand can write it (or type it).
WRITE TIME AND AGAIN 