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How To Take Your Freelance Writing Chances
Your initial freelance writing assignments are the best way to present yourself to your client for repeated work. If you provide for them a good product, at a good price, they are likely to come back time and time again. The goal of any career,...
"I Have Nothing To Say!" Overcoming The Fear Of Writing
You have worked hard on your business and now the time has come. You keep reading that you should do it and all the benefits of it, but the thought terrifies you! You've been putting it off, but eventually you know you are going to have to do it....
Sales Headline Copywriting - Two Quick Steps to Success
Get a Good Start for Sales Success
The headline to a sales letter is like the doorway to a store. The purpose of both is to draw people in. To get people in the store, a doorway has to be both attractive and inviting. To get people to read...
The Myths Of Writing: Have You Bought Into These?
There is an image most people carry of the artist (think Van Gough's self-portrait, the one with his ear bandaged), working in solitude in a barren garret in a dark corner of the city. Everyday is a struggle. He continually walks between moments...
The online writing business requires constant and regular writing
Many writers do not understand that the online writing business is very different from the offline writing world. The economics are totally different and no amount of lobbying and noise will change that. Sadly, because of this reason, many good...
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Writing a book - tips from an author #2
Writing a three act story - dealing with the middle act. In the
second or middle act, you get to expand the story past the
initial 'inciting incident', and develop the characters and
their various drives and needs. Scenes are a good way of writing
the middle act. In the same way as a 3 act story itself, a scene
is a 'fractal' mini-version - it has a 'purpose' (the scene's
inciting incident, i.e. what the point of the scene is), an
obstacle (a conflict to make it interesting) and a resolution.
Action and dialogue are the way to go here. Never write flat
prose simply explaining what's going on, describe it in actions
and dialogue. For example, "Harry Potter was frightened. He'd
didn't like spiders. This spider was gigantic" is frankly
rubbish. "8 pairs of shining eyes appeared in the gloom, in a
rough semi-circular shape. Against the dim light of the moon,
Harry also thought to see legs - lots of them. Maybe eight.
'Harry - we need to get out of here - now!' said Ron, tugging at
Harry's sleeve. Harry's mouth was too dry to answer, and his
legs were turning to jelly, literally." is much better.
Don't constantly surprise your audience by omission. In other
words, if Harry Potter can only escape from the spider's lair
using a semi-intelligent Ford Fiesta, it's no good dumping it in
the scene 2 minutes before you need it. Introduce it well ahead,
so your audience won't start thinking 'that's cheating'. Also,
make your characters realistic, no matter how outlandish the
scenario. Your audience need to be able to identify with them if
they are to feel any empathy. It's been said that "Drama is
people doing amazing things for sound reasons. Melodrama is
people doing amazing things for unconvincing reasons".
Suspension of disbelief can turn to outright incredulity unless
your characters act from motives that are familiar and
believable to the audience. Characters can be
difficult to come
up with. The character generator at www.GetPlotted.com allows
you to click a button and instantly generate a fresh character
from literally billions of possibilities. Name, age, physical
appearance, motivations, family, all this and more can be
created automatically. You can then 'tweak' any part of the
character you like in order to make him or her perfect for the
part they play in your story.
A good plot, like a good song, grows at it progresses.
Challenges should get increasingly difficult until the final
resolution. The solution to a previous problem may set the scene
for the next problem. For instance, Bill may jump into the water
under the pier to escape the attentions of the octogenarian
yankee widow. Problem solved. But... these waters have sharks -
what will Bill do now? Even though deep down the reader knows
the hero will probably survive, make it doubtful. This creates
suspense. Bill is a strong swimmer, but the pier is too steep
sided to climb up, and the sharks are circling. Can he make it
to the dinghy 50 yards away across open sea? Problems have to be
solved in convincing ways too. If you already established that
Bill isn't a strong swimmer, getting him to do the 100 yard
crawl in 11 seconds to escape sharks isn't going to work for any
reader. This 'crescendo' of plot development is particularly
easy to organize using the 'Plot Cards' system at www.GetPlotted.com. Using
cards allows you to lay out the plot in any order you like until
it has exactly the right pace and feel to keep an audience
entranced, without exhausting them from 'action overload'.
About the author:
Copyright www.GetPlotted.com. You may
reproduce this article as long as you do so in its entirity, and
preserve working links.
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