MarisueWrites.com

Most people who enjoy reading, never think about the labor involved, and that’s good. Writers who write, should definitely think about the labor involved and that’s good.  When the two join, in an easy comfortable partnership, the reader enjoys what the writer wrote, and never realizes the writer probably edited it 50 times.

Never forget, you are writing for the reader.  It (the writing) is not about you, though the story may well be.  Think about that.

If you are a new writer, and want to tell a story, your final version should look nothing like your first version, unless you are more talented than Shakespeare. 

What do you want to say?  About what?  Food?  Mystery?  Illness?  Pet?  Child? Love? Marriage?  Divorce?  Tell something, but remember you can’t and shouldn’t try to tell everything!  Make a point or two, and make it interesting.  Sad.  Funny.  Horrible.  But, interesting.  It’s okay to frustrate the reader during the story, with the climax of  it right around the corner, so you aren’t frustrating  them too long.  And, just like sex (which is more like writing than you may realize), more than one climax is fine, but don’t overdo a good thing. It’s not supposed to make someone think “Enough already, you had me 2 pages ago!” 

In the first stage of telling a story on paper, think about the purpose or “moral” or “message of the story.  What’s it all about?  One or two sentences should come to mind, the real heart of the tale. 

Next, how will you make it interesting, and how long will you let it be?  No one wants to read just the punchline:  “I went camping and a bear ate my tent.” 

Ok.  End of story.  Wow. 

Think about what leads up to the event, what leads up to the climax or “punchline” and what brings it to an end.

It’s got to be more than “I decided to take a break and go camping, I went, a bear ate my tent and I escaped and came home.”

But, you get the idea.  Introduce, build up, punch, and then dwindle to the end.

In the beginning of the first rough draft, just talk, tell it, get it all on paper rather like a shot gun blast, just get it down and don’t worry about spelling  or even story order or jumbled sentencing.

Read it over, cross out, and start again.  Add a few lines that make it funny or scary, take out repetitive words. 

Read it over, cross out, and start again.  Change a few words, make sure the order of events is logical and makes the story flow, tell the most important things and double check your intro and endings. 

Read it over, cross out, and start again.  Ask yourself:  Does it tell all that is important to the main idea? Do you need to take out a few sentences that don’t matter and dilute the flavor of the main event?  How about adding a few more details?  Have you made your conversation sound “real” if people are talking in the story?  If it’s a narrative, which many stories are, is it dull at any spot?

Once all the events are in order, the words are carefully chosen and mean what you want to say, check for grammar, spelling and sentence structure.

Read it slowly, cross out, and start again.  Read it aloud.  Do you like the way it sounds?  Be critical!  Make sure your paragraphs are short to medium length and readable.  Can the person reading breathe at logical intervals as they read?  Readers do pause and breathe and think and your story should allow for that, even building those pauses into the writing.

Give it to another person, have them read it silently, first, and then ask them to read it out loud while you listen.  You should, at this point, be a little sick of it by now, which is a good sign.  It’s almost ready for publication, when you’re sick of thinking about it and hearing it.

If the volunteer liked it, understood it, and laughed or took their breath in the right places, let it hit the presses! 

Revisions and editing is where great movies are made, as well as wonderful stories and casual reading.  Birth that baby, and let others coo and woo at it, and move on to the next.  Not any writing is perfect and you could always change one more word, but let it go. 

You did it, now do it again.  You’ll get better, and faster, and sometimes bogged down as time goes.  Welcome to a writer’s life.

-MarisueWrites