Creative Writing Blog

Keeping a Journal

Keeping a journal can be a good way to subtly improve your writing skills. Doing this keeps you actively writing each day. More importantly, it makes writing a habit. The more you write, the more you will improve. Keeping a journal of your personal life can also help your fictional writing. It can aid in the development of your characters for other fictional stories. Explore the motives o the people you interact with in real life. What are their motives? What makes them do the things they do? these sort of things can aid in your creation of realistic characters in your story.

I encourage your journal to be made up of many different things. Don’t make it simply just a diary, though this is helpful. Include personal thoughts, real life experiences, fictional writing and even poetry. The idea of keeping a journal is to improve your writing through consistently writing daily.

Freedomnomics by John Lott Jr.

Recently i finished Freedomnomics by John Lott Jr. Freedomnomics is a book about various economics situations. The subtitle of the book is “Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t.” This is basically the thesis of the book; Lott discusses why he thinks the American free market works and why various theories don’t. Freedomnomics is also a rebuttal to Freakonomics.

In this book, John Lott discusses oil and cheaper drugs, and how higher prices help the economic. His theory is that because people pay higher prices for products, oil, drugs, and so on when other’s are paying less, they cover the cost of research and development. through this, he explains how price discrimination is a good thing.

He also discusses how reputations keep businesses and politicians honest, and explains how abortion is not the real cause of decrease in crime, but that the death penalty, law enforcement, and concealed-carry laws are. He also touched on voting, voting fraud, and other political topics. For the most part he demonstrated these economic principals accurately and well, though I would still recommend you read by Freedomnomics and Freakonomics to get an objective picture. The one thing that Lott doesn’t really cover is Freakonomics, which it theoretically is a rebuttal to. It discusses the book and it’s topics, but not extensively as one would assume.

Overall, Freedomnomics was an enjoyable economical book that I’d recommend to anyone and everyone.

Three Tips to Beat the Competition

The competition a writer has to face has drastically increased in the past decade, especially since the amount of people reading for pleasure is decreasing. While methods of publication on the internet have grown exponentially, publishing by traditional print means is becoming more difficult. For this reason, as a writer who seeks a print publication you need to be more competitive - simply because the writing market is decreasing. Here are some ideas to give you an idea you need to stand out from the hordes of writers.

Develop Your Own Style

Many writers work hard to make their style match well known authors. In my opinion, this harms the writer rather than helps them, because in the long run it’s really not a unique style. It’s someone else’s. As a reader, what I love most is an author who’s style is unique and distinct. I’ve noticed that some authors have developed their style or techniques to the point that readers can recognize the writing as the authors without knowing it’s the author’s piece of writing to begin with. This is difficult without an established fan base, but it’s something all writers should strive for.

Get Your Hands Dirty

Don’t be afraid to try new things. Try creative styles, new genre’s and new techniques. You might just like it. Experiment and find out what works. The best writers never stop experimenting; they’re not afraid to try something new.

Make Your Characters Real

If not the #1 thing that attracts readers, characterization is #2. Impersonal characters put a reader off. Personally, if the characters are personally, I’ll end up not finishing the book. Create characters that draw the reader in; make characters that the readers want to know more about. Most importantly, make characters that people can relate to, but also characters that surprise the reader.

Funny Writer’s Comic

I stumbled onto this comic from The Writer at Work and found it humorous. This post is just for fun. I thought I’d share.

Good Grammar Makes You Credible

As a reader, there’s little that will annoy me more than poor grammar.

Using correct grammar, including spelling and punctuation, gives you a bit of credibility. It makes you seem much more professional than if you’re mistaking “you’re” with “your” and a colon with a semicolon. If you use correct grammar you make your writing appealing to the reader, which should be your goal. It also makes the reader think you know what you’re talking about, or at least more than if your writing is littered with errors.

You should never use poor grammar. Typically, making grammatical errors shows one of two things: ignorance or laziness. Neither should be an excuse. If you consider yourself a writer, it’s your duty to know if a usage is correct or not; if you are unsure, it’s still your duty. Moreover, it’s your job to proofread your own work. Likewise, laziness can’t be an excuse; if anything, it’s worse than not knowing how to use a grammatical situation correctly. It shows that you don’t care. If you don’t care, i don’t care; if I don’t care, I’m not going to read your writing.

To summarize, grammar lets the reader know how serious you are about writing. It tests your perseverance and demonstrates your willingness to work and learn. The more grammatically sound your writing is, the more professional it will be.

Finding a Descriptive Balance

You can have a good concept, plot, or theme in your writing, but without good description the writing suffers. Learning to use description with a balance is difficult to learn. Writing without enough description results in a dull and dreary product, a product no one would want to read. Moreover, if you over-describe, you make the writing to complex to enjoy; as a result, it becomes difficult to progress the plot because you get lost in the description.

Consider the following examples:

Too Little

At night, the thief stole the car at his first chance. It was hard, but he entered the car and got away.

Aren’t these terms too generic? Car, first, chance, night, hard, entered, “got away?”

At night (dusk, twilight, after the sun fell), the thief stole (hijack, “jacked,”) the car (vehicle, automobile, Meredes) at his first chance. It was difficult, but he entered the car and got away.

Too Much

The sunlight fell, filling the steel city with the utter and total darkness (utter and total are redundant - and darkness is redundant with the sunlight “falling”). The short, fat thief pried the large, black car-door open with a rusty crowbar he stole from the warehouse down the road (unless you’ll use the warehouse latter, this is insignificant). It took the car thief much longer than usual for him to complete breaking into the car (wordy and unnecessary), but he eventually managed to enter the stunning vehicle, start the car, and drive away at a rapid speed.

There is also a lot of unnecessary repetition in this segment. Moreover, one might consider that, if you were writing this as fiction, you might give the character a name.

Better

As the sunlight fell, the car villain immediately moved in on his target. Fumbling with the crowbar, he managed to enter the sleek Mercedes. Hot-wiring the vehicle, Jack made of with his prize.

Though it still needs work, the last example using both better words and more literary variation. It also names the character and gets the concept across briefly, but with decent description. Moreover, while a brief excerpt of a hypothetical story, this small passage hints at some suspense, whereas the other two examples did not.

Note, while the third example isn’t fantastic, it’s okay and straight to the point. It using enough description to keep it from being completely boring. It added description, removed redundancy, and supplemented some words with more relevant ones. A good writer must find a balance in which relevant description is applied, but in which unnecessary description is omitted.

A piece of writing with description primarily has description that is relative to the characters and plot.

The Interrogbang

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking: what the hell is an interrogbang?! Well, if you think with punctuation, you’ve justed used one. The punctuation at an end of a sentence that includes both a question mark and an exclamation point is a modified version of the interrogbang. The name interrogbang comes from the question mark (interrogative point) and from the exclamation mark (the bang). The technical symbol for the interrogbang is the two marks overlayed as follows: ‽.

The intended use of this punctuation mark is to express a question with an exclamation. The punctuation mark is intended to be used to express excitement in the form of a question, anger or disbelief in the form of a question, or a rhetorical question.

For example:

What’s wrong with you‽

The term and symbol of the Interrogbang was created in 1962 by Martin K. Speckter.

Writing a Bestseller

Everyone wants to write a bestseller - I mean, come on - who wouldn’t? Not only do you (theoretically) end up wealthy, but you end up well known. While there are hundreds of books that make it to the bestsellers list, there are tens of thousands that don’t. For this reason, new writer’s must be realistic. If you manage to get published, chances are you won’t make it to the bestsellers list right away.

Here are a few things to consider:

Content - you need a story that encaptures the reader; a novel that has some highly original and highly creative ideas and plotlines that will keep them interesting. It needs to be full of intricate details and perhaps alternative storylines. You need to have characters that the readers love, and characters that form strong, realistic relationships.

Something Viral - Your story needs to be good enough that readers will recommend it to a friend. If your story is good enough that people will tell others to read it, you’re doing something right and you’re halfway there. This is usual a combination of things that make readers recommend your writing, namely style and simply good writing.

Experience - Sadly, this is the number one thing a writer typically needs to write a bestseller. Most bestselling authors have written several published books that didn’t make it onto the bestsellers list. An author who has previously published three books typically stands a better chance at making the bestsellers list than a new author.

Keep in mind the genre of the book as well. Currently, 7 of the 10 top fiction bestsellers, according to the New York Times, are thrillers. They’re about crime and detectives an suspense. 8 of the top 16 fiction bestsellers were authors i personally recognized, which reinforces my previous point that publishing experience is key to making the bestseller list. Novels of certain genre’s just don’t do well in making the bestseller list. This is simply because there aren’t many readers of the genre, not necessarily because the book isn’t good. Western is a prime example of this.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t be writing to get your novel a bestseller. You should write because you love it and want to write, not to make money. Moreover, getting your novel published is a worthwhile goal, but you, as a writer, have to keep in mind that it isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…

A friend of mine recently pointed out what otherwise should have been obvious, but was nonetheless something I’d never really thought about before. The popular quotation, “it was a dark and stormy night” is, in itself, a very redundant clause.

The phrase itself originated from novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. The style is, in today’s literary terms, an attempt at dramatic flair.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s opening sentence went as follows:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The phrase was not well known until Charles Schultz (”Peanuts” comic artist) used it in his comic strips, sometimes with a variation as “He was a dark and stormy Knight.”

If it was night, don’t we already expect it to be dark? And can’t we be more descriptive than “stormy”? Particularly to begin a story, “It was a dark and stormy night” is weak, even standing alone. It has no teeth, no vitality. - Cogito.

This is a very valid point. Why state that it’s dark if we know it’s night? Why not be more descriptive? One could describe the storm, the dark, or even the night. The writer just needs to carefully examine that he’s not restating the obvious.

In general, there isn’t anything wrong with the phrase, aside from it becoming a modern-day cliche. My point isn’t to bash Bulwer-Lytton, but rather to point out the importance of not being redundant. While there are some situations in which redundancy can be beneficial to a writer, in general it should be avoided.

Write About What You Like

When writing, find something you like to write about. For some people, this is a particular genre, such as romance or fantasy. Sometimes it’s the same genre they read, though oftentimes this is not the case. Writing about what you like is especially important in nonfiction writing. Not only is it boring for the writer when they write about something they don’t have interest in, it sometimes results in poor writing. For example, it wouldn’t make sense for someone interested in cosmetics to write about global warming if she loved writing about cosmetics but hated science papers. This is not always the case, but it is the most of the time. Not only this, but it will be more difficult for the writer to write; if they like the topic, they’re typically more knowledgeable in the topic, whereas if the writer doesn’t know anything about the topic, it’ll take them a lot more work and research to write accurately.

On the other hand, keep in mind that writing about things your not knowledgeable or interested in can still be beneficial. It might expand your focus and abilities; who knows, you might find a new interest.