What's in a Word?

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

~ Matthew Arnold

***

What’s in a word?

Well to begin with, letters, as simple as that, letters are what makes up words. But as writers you need to be careful and choosy with which word you use because just like driving a screw into dry rotted wood, the sentence just might fall apart!
And is that what you want, your sentence to fall apart?

I didn’t think so. First you need to begin with a good strong piece of wood. Okay, too metaphorical here. The strong wood is symbolizing your strong plot! You’ve got a story all ready to build so you have got your solid piece of wood and a few loose screws. Oops again, didn’t mean that. You have screws on hand and are ready to begin writing your story!

Oh my, where do you start? Do you have a character in mind?  What I mean is, has this character been knocking on your noggin begging to be let out of the closet you have her/him stored in? Well, if you’ve got the plot idea, now is the time to let Suzie McQuirkle out of the closet and let her have a run of a few lines. What? You don’t have a plot OR a character?  Uh oh!

Ok...you need to start writing a few sentences. We do that with words. It was a dark and stormy night. Oh that is too cliché. Try something a little stronger. The car was zooming down the wet roadway... Ah little better. You can do so much with the words in a cliché. This might be the foundational piece of wood your seeking to begin building your plot and character. 

Once you have those two elements, start asking the questions: WHY? Why was Suzie zooming down a wet roadway? Was she running from something or worse, someone? WHAT caused her to flee? WHO is she fleeing from? The law, a stalker? Oh my we’re building now! Let’s not forget the WHEN and HOW of the questions, okay?

When you start questioning your character, you have begun to pick up a few more scraps of wood to add to the little story you’re building. I hate to do this to you, after I’m always saying to just keep writing and writing and don’t stop. But stop for a minute. Yes, one minute is all I’m allowing you! Look at the words you used!!! Are they strong words? Too fluffy? Too exuberant? Ok, minutes up. You’ve looked at the words and are thinking, maybe zooming isn’t a tight word, you need something MORE graphic.

Okay, time for the thesaurus. I always have mine opened as I’m writing so I don’t use the same word twice in a paragraph or two. If it is meaning the same thing, you need to find another word! Make it strong, bring home the point you’re trying to get across.
 
The car was zooming down the slippery wet road, making a speedy getaway as Suzie dashes in and out of traffic, she zipped right through the scene to safety. Safety? I don’t think so. She more than likely crashed, or you wouldn’t have told the reader the road was wet and slippery.

See all those synonyms I used. Pretty easy huh? Well it’s not and it takes a lot of skill and tried and true blood, but you’ll get the hang of it in no time. Remember, in writing, words are your friends!  Make every one count for something as you build your little birdhouse, I mean story. A few loose screws later, you might just have something! Stick with it.

Build-a-Character

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. ~Oscar Wilde
***

Okay, we’re off to a great start at f2k. The students have all met one another, they have been rolling through the halls like snowplows on a blizzardy day. They’ve sat at the cafe, posted some work, talked a little about themselves and just basically did everything the orientation week calls for and that is “Get to know your peers.”

We have a lively bunch too, with a sense of humor, intelligence that would make Gates sit in awe, friendliness that Mother Teresa would be proud of, and then there is the camaraderie. It can  possibly be found nowhere else on the web except through writers.

We have a tendency to be accepting and friendly and it rubs off on even the most scared of the bunch, that would be the newbs. Newbies means new folk to the forum for those of you, not in the know.

We’re learning already about each others likes and dislikes, style and originality, we’re getting to know one person at a time and this is always a highlight of my year when I can share with others a part of myself, while growing and learning at the same time. 

Which reminds me this week we learn about our characters. Nice segue by the way, right? From living breathing characters to our fictional characters?  Yeah, that’s what we’re doing this week. We’re getting to know our characters intimately. I mean all the way down to a well produced pimple! If a character has one, write about it, we need to know our characters right down to the hairs spurting out on their heads.

Building a character is as much fun as the ‘Build-a-bear’ workshop. But as adults, we get more out of it than the eager child. We are like the eager child as we build our characters to form a part of a story that we writer’s are writing. It builds and builds until we have a an outline, a story, then either a novel or a short story.

This is the week our characters sit at the keyboard and talk about US! Kinda like Stephen Kings The Dark Half. We’re letting our characters have full reign of the keyboard for a change!

A lot of folks will pay no mind to the rules and guidelines, their characters will stay on the paper while they themselves talk about their characters. Gee, there’s a spin, do what you want! lol I’ll learn a whole lot about everyone’s characters and their character as a person as a matter of fact.

Don’t post your links, and they post them, don’t be in a hurry, and they rush and post the lesson, editing twenty times before weeks end. Yup...its a dog eat dog kinda world. We just gotta live with it. Now...
 
Go be an eager beaver today and start building a Character!

Write Right friends!

The Building of a Story

Matt: 7:26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
***

At my Writers Village University hangout we are often in discussions of what it takes to build a story. Bob Hembree, the mastermind of WVU is an intelligent man who has brilliant articles on the matter of sentence structure, metaphors, and the philosophy behind the building of a story, word by word.

I’m a poet and as such I love metaphors. I love the idea of a hidden meaning somewhere in the makings of a story. Like a poem, a story needs to have a grander picture than what the reader is actually reading at face value.

Recently I read Animal Farm by George Orwell and while unimpressed with his style of writing, I was floored by the hidden meaning of a tale that is now listed as a classic. Like many classics, the meaning of the story transcends time and space.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is another story I read that held deep meaning in every page. I gather, from my interpretation, that man is a beast with struggles on many levels. In Animal Farm, men are pigs; in LOTF, man is a barbaric beast. So you see, this is just my take on the books while others would walk away with a philosophical explanation and may give deep levels of understanding. But we all walk away with something different.

What I’m getting at here is that stories can’t just be written to TELL the reader a story, there has to be intricate levels to your story to make it worthy of any publisher. They have to see that deeper hidden meaning, whether subtle or an in-your-face kind of meaning.

So how do we build a story? We take it brick by brick; layer upon layer, and give the novel shape. You can write twenty thousand words or eighty thousand words, if they have no shape, no structure, your tale will fall flat and on blind eyes, not one glance.

Here I go with the house metaphor again. You see a plot of ground (blank page) and you want to build on it (write a novel.) You are not going to just start building the walls, floor and roof are you? You’re going to check that the foundation (the meat of your story) is sound. This is where the outline becomes your best tool. The outline gives you a visual of how the story begins, all its ups and downs, riddled with conflicts, and a possible ending to your tale. Without an outline, you’re writing without a foundation.

You need to be the architect of your story. You shouldn’t write a tale, then decide, “Hey, I should have checked the foundation first.” You’ll find that after ten revisions, your story still isn’t grabbing the reader after the first chapter. What did you do wrong? You more than likely built your novel on sand and now will have to work extra harder in finding the solid ground it has to stand on in order to be published.

Lyrics: On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand; All other ground is sinking sand.

The Outline

Job 27: 18 He buildeth his house as a moth, and as a booth that the keeper maketh.
***

I’ve opened a can of worms with the mention of an outline.

A lot of writer’s don’t ever draft an outline. They write their story, get ample feedback on it and are happy with what they’ve created. Other writers have a story lined with complexities that an outline is an absolute necessity.

An outline is going to help you with the tiny, mundane, intricate levels in your story, that just writing the story isn’t going to be able to accomplish.

1. It will help you see inconsistencies. Whether it’s the clothing of the era, or the song of the right times, or maybe as simple as a car that’s being driven. If you’re doing an early 20th century novel, surely they will not be driving a Volkswagen.

2. The outline will help you with a time line. If your character was born in 1940, surely he won’t remember the 1800’s from memory. If something happened in 1955, you want to keep track of all instances that things happened.

3. It will help you with POV shifts. Maybe you started out in third person and drifted off to first person?

4. The outline is going to give you a shape and form to your work. Think of it as a lump of clay, and you the potter, who is going to mold it into an interesting piece of art.

5. Clarity! The outline is going to give you clarity so you can point out the weaknesses in your story. Whether it is a weak character that don’t really add to the story. Faults of your main character? Maybe some other character is more interesting?

The outline is a trade secret in all your writing needs. If I’m writing a short story, the outline is more like a synopsis of what I want my story to be about, where I am going with my characters, what direction each one is heading and what is the point I’m trying to get across to my reader. We need the outline to give us a visual field in which to see the future progression of our story, all the way into our umpteenth revision.

I like to think of the outline as the building of a house. You don’t begin building without a plan, a sketch, an idea; or an empty parcel of land (the blank page.) You don’t use mortar in place of wood. You don’t do the brick work without first building the foundation.

After the foundation is laid, you begin framing the house and giving it shape and form. Think of the outline as the foundation. Think of building a story around that foundation and then move onto framing the story. The rooms will all have doorways which will be different levels of your characters and conflict will abound in each and every room. (The chapters)

Sheetrock will be the solidity of each chapter, paint will be the emotions and senses of the story.  The surrounding gardens of the house will be the beautiful imagery that you add to make your story work.

Now I bet each and every writer among us is going to make an outline right this minute if they haven’t gotten one already done before they started the book. Now get building!

author's note: Congratulations to me on reaching my 600th post! Wow, I didn't think I had anything to say. :) Thank you followers!

Building a Story

Proverb 24: 3 Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established:

Brick by brick

Everybody has a story…

Are you one of the people who think that you have no story to tell? I’ve heard so many times in my life from many different people in many walks of life, “Have I got a story to tell you!” Me, being a writer has the urge to say, “Do tell!” But more often than not I just listen.

Listening to people tell me of their day, their past, their hopes for the future all spurn in me ideas to write. Normally I think to myself, ‘What if this were to happen or what if that were to happen?’ and then I go to my keyboard and write.

Writing for me has become my right arm, without it I’d be a hopeless mess. I take all the whispered tales I hear and turn them into my own. Not necessarily using the persons entire tale but I gather a moral from the story, write about it putting in my own characters and from there the idea has spawned in me the ability to build a story.

Every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. It is a little like building a house out of brick instead of straw. If we construct the story from a sound foundation and build it layer by layer (the structure, the outer walls, the inner walls) we can finally conclude that we have sealed our story with a firm design and are ready to show it to the world. That would be after we furnish the house (story) with lots of imagery using our senses!

We have five senses to display in our story (some use six.) We have sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and the sixth being the unknown! In the construction phase you want to SEE the house being built, what sounds do you hear while it is being shaped? Do you smell sawdust in the air? Apple pies being baked at the neighbors, wafting by tickling your nose? Can you almost taste the newly lain sod? Will you explain how the new carpet feels under your bare toes?

Now dapple in the unknown elements, mix it all together and you’ve built a house (story) out of brick! Leaving all of these integral elements out of your story, you will see a house made out of straw and slowly thread by thread it will fall apart and never be seen by anyone.

Are you game at trying your hand at writing?

Tell me your story...

Everybody has a story…

Are you one of the people who think that you have no story to tell? I’ve heard so many times in my life from many different people in many walks of life, "Have I got a story to tell you!" Me, being a writer has the urge to say, "Do tell!" But more often than not I just listen.

Listening to people tell me of their day, their past, their hopes for the future all spurn in me ideas to write. Normally I think to myself, ‘What if this were to happen or what if that were to happen?’ and then I go to my keyboard and write.

Writing for me has become my right arm, without it I’d be a hopeless mess. I take all the whispered tales I hear and turn them into my own. Not necessarily using the persons entire tale but I gather a moral from the story, write about it putting in my own characters and from there the idea has spawned in me the ability to build a story.

Every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. It is a little like building a house out of brick instead of straw. If we construct the story from a sound foundation and build it layer by layer (the structure, the outer walls, the inner walls) we can finally conclude that we have sealed our story with a firm design and are ready to show it to the world. That would be after we furnish the house (story) with lots of imagery using our senses!

We have five senses to display in our story (some use six.) We have sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and the sixth being the unknown! In the construction phase you want to SEE the house being built, what sounds do you hear while it is being shaped? Do you smell sawdust in the air? Apple pies being baked at the neighbors, wafting by tickling your nose? Can you almost taste the newly lain sod? Will you explain how the new carpet feels under your bare toes?

Now dapple in the unknown elements, mix it all together and you’ve built a house (story) out of brick! Leaving all of these integral elements out of your story, you will see a house made out of straw and slowly thread by thread it will fall apart and never be seen by anyone.