Quick Story Idea Generator Stories The theme of this story: dark quest. The main characters: unbalanced hero and humble secret agent. The major event of the story: repentance. The theme of this story: light-hearted horror. The theme of this story: metaphorical adventure. The theme of this story: noir slice-of-life. The theme of this story: parody revenge. The theme of this story: serious adventure. The theme of this story: surreal romance. The theme of this story: wacky slice-of-life. The theme of this story: weird revenge. The theme of this story: weird thriller. Busting Your Writing Rut {*style:<i>(Reprinted from Writer’s Digest) by Linda Formichelli </i>*} The business article came out great, but I was stuck for an ending. Finally, I hit upon the conclusion: “Follow these tips and boost your bottom line.” My sense of wordplay wasn’t the only thing stuck in a rut — even my article ideas were getting frayed from overuse. Not that reusing ideas is inherently bad. But what’s good for the pocketbook isn’t necessarily good for the soul. Hoping to leap out of my writer’s rut, I started checking around for advice. Two other writers and I came up with a game to rev up the idea generating process. Another way I break out of writing ruts is to check out magazines that I wouldn’t normally read. I’m a freelance writer. So one day, I surprised myself — and gave my writing a shot of adrenaline — by signing up for karate classes. Taking a break doesn’t always require a lot of free time and cash. If I let writing turn into a burdensome, repetitive task, I pay for it in stilted prose.
3 Simple Grammar Tips to Improve Your Writing As an editor, I encounter certain grammatical mistakes time and time again. Errors aren’t necessarily a reflection of a writer’s intelligence – it makes sense that with all the quick, informal writing we do nowadays (emails, texts, etc.), and the universal availability of no-thinking-required writing resources like spell-check and Google searches, we’re lazier writers compared to previous generations. However, despite their widespread occurrence, grammatical blunders can be costly mistakes if made in certain contexts – such as a cover letter for a job or another important document. 1. There’s a scene in The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya, in response to Vizzini’s use of the word “inconceivable,” says: “You keep using that word. Oftentimes, people mix up two homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings and may be spelled differently) such as “they’re” and “their.” They’re/There/Their They’re is a contraction for the words “they” and “are.” You’re/Your Literally 2.
Writing Inspiration, or Sex on a Bicycle | CornerScribe Writing Inspiration, or Sex on a Bicycle I don’t know about you, but I get inspired by all sorts of things, many of them downright weird. I love to listen to people talk. I overheard one of my coworkers the other day, “It’s like having sex on a bicycle. Or the quote that kept running through my head last week. Sometimes I think about the people I’ve known, the stories I tell. Or how about the coworker who married a woman he’d seen in person off and on for a week; she worked at a resort where he was staying. Or my grandmother, the mother of nine children, about twenty years from oldest to youngest. Or our family friend, who totaled her husband’s car because she was sick of his drinking. I bet you’ve got some stories that would make great stories as well.
Story Starters & Idea Generators One of the best ways to break through writer's block or stretch your writing skills is to pick a story starter and just start writing. Suggestions on how to use each generator are included with the generator. Caveat: There's always a temptation to keep looking for the "perfect" idea, but then you need to ask yourself...are you really just trying to avoid writing? Problem: You can't get a story started Solution: Archetype's Plot Scenario Generator What it is: This generator provides you with the event that gets the story rolling and a secondary conflict to keep you going! Problem: Your characters lack depth Solution: Archetype's Character Generator What it is: A quick character sketch filled with the kinds of little details that makes stories engaging: character gender, cardinal traits, weaknesses, and most prized possession. Problem: Your characters don't feel like "real" people Solution: Archetype's Everyday Problems Generator Looking for something you don't see? Getting Yourself Started
Creative Acceleration: 11 Tips to Engineer a Productive Flow Focus is essential to getting work done. If you can’t engineer a productive flow to your work, everything crawls to the finish. Tasks become a sluggish crawl to the finish that is both inefficient and almost painful to work through. Any writer that has felt writers block or a programmer stuck on a difficult problem can probably relate from experience. Focus is also critical for quality. One of the most popular downloads on this site is a free e-book on holistic learning. Athletes often describe it as “being in the zone” the sensation where self and time disappear and 100% concentration is devoted to the game. Getting into this state isn’t always easy. Eliminate Distractions - This may sound obvious, but it is easily forgotten. This website is supported, in part, by affiliate arrangements (usually Amazon). Debate is fine, flaming is not.
25 Things You Should Know About Character Previous iterations of the “25 Things” series: 25 Things Every Writer Should Know 25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling And now… Here you’ll find the many things I believe — at this moment! 1. Without character, you have nothing. 2. A great character can be the line between narrative life and story death. 3. Don’t believe that all those other aspects are separate from the character. 4. The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. 5. It is critical to know what a character wants from the start. 6. It doesn’t matter if we “like” your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even “like-like” your character. 7. It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to give a fuck. 8. You must prove this thesis: “This character is worth the audience’s time.” 9. Don’t let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. 10. 11. 12. 13. The law of threes. 15. 16. 17. 18.
The Seven Major Beginner Mistakes Starting anything new involves mistakes. Tons of them, if you plan on being good. Although you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, there are a few that often go ignored. These mistakes accompany the first phase of anything and it is easy to repeat them in everything new that you do. I don’t claim to be immune to these mistakes. Actually, I think it is simply because I have made these mistakes myself so frequently that I’ve begun to recognize them. Motivation is necessary to start anything new. I’ve made this mistake dozens of times before. Long-term goals are great, but it’s the next-step goals that really matter. More correctly, too much false knowledge. It isn’t a sin to say, “I don’t know.” I’m privileged enough to have a journal that has recorded my highly erroneous predictions. It’s scary to start something new. How do you know what will work? When I commented that I exercised almost daily, many people informed me that this was bad. All areas of life are interdependent.
Go Into The Story: "Kurt Vonnegut at the Blackboard" My students in the Writing for Screen & Stage program at the University of North Carolina are great. Smart, interested, motivated, and bubbling with talent. And sometimes, they go above and beyond. Like this email from rising senior Sam Morgan: Hey Scott,I knew how much you liked Kurt Vonnegut and drawing charts about writing so I figured you needed to see this post. I do love drawing charts about writing. I want to share with you something I’ve learned. Now let me give you a marketing tip. You get the gist. Boy Meets Girl: Cinderella: Franz Kafka: All this is great fun and you should most definitely read the rest of the article because it’s illustrative that stories have a structure. Because screenwriters are inundated with dozens of differing screenplay paradigms, we can get bogged down in details, even stifling our creativity to fit narrative events into somebody’s idea of what page this plot point or that should happen. Act One – Act Two – Act Three Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis
Free Association, Active Imagination, Twilight Imaging Category: Writing Techniques Freud used free association; Jung used what he called active imagination. Active imagination is a psychological state between everyday awareness and the dream world. It occurs naturally in circumstances like listening to stories, watching the flames in a fireplace, and listening to the sea. Progoff uses active imagination, but called it "twilight imagery". The key to Twilight Imaging lies in the fact that it takes place in the twilight state between waking and sleeping. Ten rules for writing fiction Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin 1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. 2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. 3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. 5 Keep your exclamation points under control. 6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". 7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. 9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. 10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Diana Athill Margaret Atwood 3 Take something to write on.