Worderella Writes

Refresh Your Writing

Caricature drawn by Worderella

If you have Writer’s Block, you have sapped all of your creative juices. We writers tend to think we should write all the time without replenishing our imagination, which is as unhealthy as exercising all the time without stopping to replenish fluids. How do you replenish your imagination? Get in contact with people! We attempt the impossible by trying to transcribe the unorganized chaos of life into an organized plot that (dare I say it?) makes sense, is engaging, and means something.

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Books Writers Should Read

This past quarter, I read books on the side between my crazy class schedule, work, and the magazine. I should write my typical Worderella review on them, but instead I’m going to list these books and give a little blurb about why you should add them to your To Be Read list. If you’ve read these books, let me know what you thought about them.

Includes Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King, On Writing Romance by Leigh Michaels, and A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation by Noah Lukeman.

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Article: Hold on to Your Plot Part 3

And now, the finale for the article on how to hold on to your plot!

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Article: Hold on to Your Plot Part 2

A continuation from the article I posted here, read about how you can hold onto your plot by working with your characters, etc.

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Article: Hold On to Your Plot Part 1

When we begin writing, we have this core idea, this main plot that keeps the story together. But as we get deeper into subplots and secondary/tertiary characters, sometimes we lose our main idea. We obsess over the little things. We forget the forest for the trees. We see the colors but not the rainbow. I could go on, but I won’t, for your sake. The following series of three entries will focus on Mike Phillips’s essay showing how he keeps his plot in line, with his hints on how to help you stay focused.

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Tension Tips

Fear Factor
Get inspiration from your own fears and phobias - if it scares you, the chances are it will scare a good proportion of your readership. Primal fears go to the very route of who we are and can be particularly effective if they’re magnified or exaggerated for the purposes of your story.

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The Importance of Theme for Organization

I often read that the biggest things a writer should worry about are theme and organization. Theme, because that is the heart of your work; organization because that’s the skeleton to help you write about the theme.

For the longest time I wondered, How does one find a theme in the first place? Maybe something happened in your life that you want to write about. Let’s face it, wanting to write about that topic isn’t enough. You need a focus, something that connects you to the topic and distances you from it at the same time, so that you can communicate clearly with your reader.

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Eight Writing Tips by Vonnegut

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

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Book: Stardust

In the town of Wall there is a young man named Tristran Thorn, and he is in love with a young woman named Victoria Forester. Victoria, young, beautiful, and completely aware of the fact, sends Tristran on a fool’s errand: to fetch the fallen star on the horizon. And so, Tristran steps across the border from the everyday to the mystical.

Why whould you read this book? Because it’s Neil Gaiman, and everyone should read one Gaiman book at some point. This book begged to be read aloud, and I almost wish (now this is a shocker) that I had the audio version. The narration is simple yet intriguing and complex; I want to read it again just to figure out how he was able to convey so much with so little. Which is exactly why you should read this book. Long sentences and over-the-top vocabulary are gimicks easily pointed out…they hide bad plots and expose worse execution. Gaiman’s simple narration is a quick read, yet, there are important themes discussed.

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Horror Fiction

Think you’re just a simple fiction writer? That your romance doesn’t have anything to do with horror? I find that the best fiction has elements of multiple genres, or at least tricks from multiple genres. You want to add tension, or make your antagonist creepy and scary? Try applying some of these horror fiction hints to bring out that creep factor. Even if in the end you decide it’s not for you, it will make for a great writing exercise!

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