In 3 weeks my little girl is going to be 3 and i'm busy sewing dolls clothes for her little Baa Sheep and her horse Jilly. Do you know how expensive dolls clothes are? It's ridiculous!! Believe me, it's easier (cheaper!) to use the box of scrap material i have.
But besides that. I managed 1,000 words on Wednesday, AND a pilates workout!
I've also read two chapters of Kate Walker's fab book.
I feel so good this week, so am not even going to think about the horrid headaches i had too!
First, Dialogue.
Do you struggle with it? I do. Maybe i don't know my characters enough, but sometimes i just can't seem to get them to talk! I am more of a narrative writer and Kate's advise for a truly compelling read is to make sure your book is 60% dialogue and 40% narrative - uh oh, i think mine is the opposite! but oh well, i'll tackle that in revisions :)
Dialogue is the best way for the reader to find out about the character, to create tension, and instead of writing all that narrative (ahem) you can use it affectively to SHOW not TELL what is going on and keep the characters and the reader in the present.
When you read do you sometimes find yourself skimming through the paragraphs to get to the 'good' bits? If you think about it, visually we are looking for the dialogue - so be sure to write lots of it!!
I am definitely going to try and do this more!
Next was on Focus and importantly to me was Flashbacks.
Kate's advice was if you can pepper it into the narrative in a way as to make it as present as possible without using a flashback, then do, as this keeps everything current, without diluting the tension. Or better yet, see if you can put it in the dialogue, another way to get it up to the 60%!
And a big question always for me is How do you know which Viewpoint to use for Which Scene?
She gives heaps of questions to ask yourself, like whose feelings are most at stake? Or which characters holds the most information, or which character do you want to withhold information from but who has the information? Which character do you want the reader to see the reactions to information?...
So if you struggle and re-write the same scene over and over from the different character's viewpoints just ask yourselves some questions and hopefully that will help!
Happy writing!
way to go, knocking out another 1k.
ReplyDelete;-}
60/40. geeze. that is a lot of putting yourself into their shoes. A lot of work. Good to have that kind of guidance though.
Hope the day after the yoga was not too hurtful. Sometimes the core training is ouchie the next day. ;-}
SH - amazingly no pain the next day! I'm gonna do some more today, get my body working for sure!! pilates used to be a daily part of my diving training but since the kids...nothing :)
ReplyDeleteI was stoked with the 1k output, gonna try some more later, how are you going with yours?
Haven’t started yet. I am working on my skills by doing short stories. One of them was published by an internet site, no wait, two different internet sites. I was excited about that. I think I am improving, thanks in no small part to yours and Nicole’s blogs.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are finding time to work out too.
;-}