Worderella Writes

Playing with Structure

Here is a great article on the structure of your work, stressing the importance of making the structure as important as the plot.

What is Structure?
by David Mitchell

To begin with, structure need not just be a frame on which you hang narrative, but a kind of plot in its own right, running parallel to the narrative-plot. Twists in this ’structure-plot’ occur as and when its nature and workings are revealed to the reader.

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The Heart of the Story

Though this is more about feature writing in a newsmagazine or some such publication, I thought this article was helpful for us fiction writers as well. Just um…whenever he writes “journalist,” substitute “fiction writer.” In general, it works out.

The Heart of the Story
by Jon Ronson, feature writer for The Guardian

Finding a Story to Tell
How do you begin your story? All journalists are, to a greater or lesser degree, paranoid conspiracy theorists. This is because stories do not have natural boundaries, every lead can take you to another lead, every thought to another thought, and eventually - if you allow yourself to become crazy - every story you write can incorporate the past, present, and future of all human civilisation. You don’t believe me? Okay, I’m going to pick a topic at random. The Paris fashion shows.

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Book: The Thirteenth Tale

Margaret Lea has a secret about her birth; a secret that haunts her to this day, and affects every decision she makes. She is the daughter of an antique book dealer, and so is his helpmate in running the bookshop that maintains their lifestyle. One day, a letter arrives for Margaret, written in an awful hand, requesting that she journey to the home of the infamous writer, Vida Winter. Miss Winter is infamous because of her past, or lack of it, for with every interview there is a new rendition, and none of them are true. There is no record of Miss Winter’s birth, her childhood…nothing to say who she was before she appeared in the literary world. Miss Winter, it seems, wants to tell the truth of her past for the first time, ever, and she has chosen Margaret for the job. After thirty (or forty, perhaps?) years of public speculation about the past of Miss Vida Winter, and the plot of the missing thirteenth tale from her book Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation (only twelve were released), Vida Winter is ready to speak the truth.

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Playing with Structure

Using Foreshadowing
Heighten the themes of your story or increase the tension by using small incidents which echo later, more significant events, known as foreshadowing. Keep it subtle though, and the reader will be quietly thrilled to have spotted your literary trickery!

Multiple Viewpoints
Don’t be afraid to tell your story from multiple viewpoints if you feel it’s right, but be careful not to confuse the reader - make it clear which character is in pole position at any one time.

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Quote: Write, Write, and Write Some More

Word Nerd: What piece of advice helped you out the most as a writer?

FFORDE: Do it for fun. Do it for yourself. Do it because you want to write. Writers write because they can’t stop

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On Writing Romance

Here is an interesting essay about writing romance that I found at the BBC - Get Writing website.

Writing Romantic Fiction
by Katie Fforde

A Broad Genre
The Brontës, Sophie Kinsella, Phillippa Gregory, Helen Fielding and Jane Austen - they all write or wrote romantic fiction. It’s a large and generous genre but while many books have a romantic element, they can’t all be classed as romantic fiction. For example, The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk has a wonderful thread of romance running through it, but the romantic aspect isn’t what the book is about.

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Creating Convincing Characters

Happy Labor Day!

Today is a list from The Writer (July 2006) that quickly describes how to create convincing characters by Corey Blake. Blake begins the article, Creating believable characters takes time and discipline. Creating dynamically real individuals and not imposing your own thoughts and impressions on them is not easy to do, and is often the difference between a novel or screenplay that sits in a closet and one that finds its way into the hands of audiences.

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Four Writing Tips

I found these tips amusing and true, from imaginarycircus. Go to her post to see a couple humorous comments too:

1. By withholding information from your reader you do not create mystery and suspense. i.e. by saying that your character is hiding a heavy object in her skirt and then revealing it is a gun later–you probably are just annoying your reader. If you had simply said she had a gun in her skirt and was following a man that would create tension and pique curiosity. Vague is not interesting. Concrete details are. (There are always exceptions to these rules, I know.)

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Character Archetypes

I found this list here, and it’s a good starting point if you’ve somehow lost your characters, or realized that you can’t relate to your character at all. Take a step back, and decide if maybe one of these archetypes is how your character views the world:

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Capturing the Setting

This is an article I found on the BBC - Get Writing website, written by Sue Chester. I took out the exercises and etc, focusing mainly on the content. If you’d like to see the original article, click here. It’s a pretty long article, so reader beware:

Setting Off
For the last few weeks I’ve been on a journey through the Caribbean. It was very cheap. Gabriel Garcia Marquez took me there personally for less than a tenner in Love in the Time of Cholera.

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