Goal Setting for the Writer

Setting goals keeps you focused and motivated. So many of you have committed to the “A to Z” challenge so I know you can set goals, but how do you transfer that determination to your daily writing life? Try applying these rules:

1. Write Goals Down - This is a powerful tool. The process of physically seeing your goals helps set them in your mind and better enables you to commit to them. Visual aids are an effective way to program your brain. Reading and re-writing goals are two very effective visual aids. A popular Harvard Business School study found only 3% of the population records their goals in writing. Another 14% have goals but don't write them down, whereas 83% do not even have clearly defined goals. More interesting is that this 3% earned an astounding ten times that of the 83% group!

2. Do NOT set a goal for the number of publications you will achieve in X amount of time. This is out of your control and will leave you feeling deflated. Instead:

3. Make Goals Short, Attainable, & Measurable - Long term goals are great to keep in mind, but take one week at a time to avoid discouragement. Commit to writing a certain number of words each week, submit an article or flash fiction story a week, find at least one new market each week, take at least one writing course a year and attend at least one writer's conference a year. These are all attainable, but they may not be for you. Goals are very individual. You have to set your own goals for success.

4. Don't set wimpy goals simply because you're afraid to fail. If you play it safe, you’ll never attain true self satisfaction.

5. Create Deadlines - Without deadlines, your goals are merely dreams. Set deadlines for both short- and long-term goals, but remember they can be flexible. Life changes and so do goals. Never be afraid to adjust the timeframe for a goal. What's important is to keep moving forward.

What kind of goals have you set?

Flash Fiction Craze

One genre to skyrocket in popularity in the last five years is Flash Fiction. There is no hard and fast rule on the length limit. Some publications limit the tale to 50 words while others accept as much as 1000.

Other names for flash fiction include sudden fiction, microfiction, micro-story, short short, postcard fiction, prosetry and short short story, though distinctions are sometimes drawn between some of these terms; for example, sometimes one-thousand words is considered the cut-off between "flash fiction" and the slightly longer "sudden fiction".

The term "flash fiction" may have originated from a 1992 anthology of that title. As the editors said in their introduction, their definition of a "flash fiction" was a story that would fit on two facing pages of a typical digest-sized literary magazine.

Some of the flash fiction markets will pay. If you are interested in reading some examples or submitting your own for publication:

Flashquake - Flashquake is a quarterly, web-based publication that publishes poetry, flash fiction and flash non-fiction (memoirs, essays, creative non-fiction, and humor). They pay $5 to $25 per submission accepted.

Postcard Shorts – publishes stories of about 250 words. This is as much as you could fit on a postcard. The inspiration for this site comes from Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Quarantine".

Tweet the Meat - Tweet the Meat is a Twitter-only, horror/weird/speculative market. Stories must be no more than 140 characters in total. They pay $1 per accepted story.
For more flash fiction markets, you can visit Duotrope and select flash fiction from their drop down menu.
Good luck, and enjoy your flash fiction writing!

Ending on a High Note

After surviving numerous conflicts, and obtaining something new, it’s time for your protagonist to say goodbye. I’ve read too many books (and seen too many movies) with abrupt endings that left me aggravated and lacking gratification for spending my time with the characters. There should be some emotional reward for the time spent with the story. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t expect a happy ending every time, but there are ways to give your reader a satisfying farewell to your tale.

1. Happily Ever After – I am fond of the happy ending. The best way to give a reader this is by showing a new beginning. Romance novelists usually do this with a wedding or the arrival of the couple’s first baby. The key is the new relationship. The formation of a new friendship or alliance is another way to provide this end. One of my personal favorites was Humphrey Bogart in the end of Casablanca… “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

2. Open-Ended Conclusion – This is often used in sequels. Even if you are planning a sequel to your book or movie there should be a sense of closure. Most loose ends are tied up in the last chapter (scene) or two. If you leave just one or two dangling, you’ll have people talking about your book (or movie) long after the ending. The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy offers a great example of this style. Each movie ends by tying up the tale, but offering a glimpse of the unfinished business that will drive the next film.  The Twilight series employs this method as well.

3. Surprise Ending - Crime stories seem to gravitate to this style. Popular movies such as Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects are great examples. (I won’t spoil the ending in case you have not seen them.) O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi” is a positive example of the twist ending in a short story.

No matter what style ending you choose to give your readers, be sure not to leave a lot of unanswered questions. Remember this is your last chance to affect the audience emotionally. It must satisfy or provoke your audience as you intended.

Dealing With Dialogue

Some authors have a deep rooted fear of dialogue. They converse coherently on a regular basis, but when it comes to writing, they lock down.

They either feel or have been told the dialogue in their story sounds artificial and dead. With little more information or analysis, writers aren’t sure how to repair the damage.

1. Direct Dialogue – This would be the active form or “real time” version of your story. It’s also the most commonly employed by writers. The problem comes when authors forget that humans frequently interrupt, talk over each other or use incomplete sentences. It’s important to remember to interrupt your dialogue with characterization, exposition, description and tags. This will create a natural rhythm for the reader. When you carry on a conversation with someone, you don’t sit static and talk or respond like a robot. You move a stray hair from your face, glance to check on the kids playing outside, think about the work left sitting on your desk etc. Use some of these in your writing.

2. Indirect Dialogue – The narrator sums up the dialogue instead of showing every word of mundane or inconsequential facts. You want the reader to know these things happened, but you don’t want to slow down the story. For example:

It had been ten years since they had seen each other. They walked and talked. They talked about the weather. He told her about traveling abroad and the jobs he held when he returned. She told him about her failed marriage, where she lived and where she planned to move…

Whichever you choose (you might attempt both) there are a few rules to remember.

1.  When sharing backstory, try not to relate an entire history in one sitting. When we gossip about others or talk about ourselves in real life, we do so in episodes or one event at a time. No one relates their entire history in one meeting. Your characters should be the same. Sprinkle the facts throughout, and always hold something back until the end.

2.  If you choose to have a character(s) using an accent or slang, use it phonetically when first introducing the character. Afterwards, simply imply or remind your reader of the dialect. Otherwise you run the risk of losing your reader if they are struggling to read an unfamiliar style of speech.

3.  Keep your speech tags simple. Use “he said” or “she said” in most cases. Any other tag should only be used sparingly so as not to distract the reader from the story. Also, you only need to identify the speakers the first time in a conversation. If you are writing successfully, the reader will know who is speaking without tagging “he said” or “she said” after every single line of speech.

If you still feel your dialogue is lacking, try adding an argument or misunderstanding into the scene. Nothing builds emotional tension better than conflict.

Creativity Chips

Writers are always looking for creative tips and ways to clear writers block. Here are five exercises to help get your creative juices flowing.

1. Paint Chip Storytelling - In this writing activity, you use paint chip samples to write a story. Paint chip samples often have unique and interesting names such as Western Sand, Basket Weave and Mermaid Tear. These names make the perfect story-starters to inspire creative storytelling. You may already be picturing a California beach picnic interrupted by a crying mermaid.

All you need is pen and paper (or a computer) and a collection of paint chip color samples with interesting names (free at most paint and hardware stores – even Wal-Mart).

Now, pick a few paint chip color samples with interesting names that you can use for storytelling. To make it more interesting, you can even try to pick random samples without looking at the names.

Next, think about how you'd link the paint chip color names into a story. For example, I picked the five names of Heather, Skating Pond, Lavender Lipstick, Lovely Silken Ribbon, and Lucky Shamrock; then you need to think of a story that would use all of these words.

You can free write from these ideas or you can use them as a model from which to start; one paragraph incorporating each word. For example, the first paragraph could introduce a character “Heather”; Heather might visit a skating pond in paragraph two; she might lose her lavender lipstick in the third paragraph; in paragraph four Heather tells her friend about the lovely silken ribbon she kept tied to the tube of Lipstick; a friend offers Heather her lucky Shamrock and she finds the lipstick in the fifth paragraph. Remember to make sure the paragraphs link together as a story.

Once the story is finished, try reading the story aloud. Think about your use of descriptive language, new vocabulary, and assess the all-around creativity of your story.

2. Another exercise is to look through family and school photographs. Imagine the photo that was never taken. What does it look like? Who is in it? Who took the picture? Where and when was it taken? What does it reveal about the person/people in it?

3. Read a newspaper or magazine and free-write about something you find there. Why did this topic capture your attention? Who does it affect? What has changed for you or the other people in the story? What if this same topic had occurred 50 years ago?

4. Write a letter to an old lover. (Don’t send it!) Share your fondest memories of them. Tell them about any regrets you have. Imagine what it would be like if you ran in to them today. What would that conversation sound like?

5. Choose a stranger you see during the course of the day. Make up an event in that person’s life. How do they remember it? How has it affected them?

These are just five of many writing exercises you can use to crawl out of your creative slump. Good luck and Happy Writing!

Beginning a New Story

“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” – Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

We all know the beginning of any story is commonly accepted as the most important portion of the tale. This beginning must “hook” the reader’s attention, set the tone of the story and suggest where your main character is headed.

A writer experiences many beginnings in their craft; the birth of a new idea, first outline or draft, a first critique, first submission and first rejection of that piece.

Knowing all of this, in 1987 William Brohaugh, editor of Writer's Digest, collected first-person pieces from the magazine by better and lesser-known writers about the problems of their profession, from finding sources of inspiration to coping with publishers.

The title of this anthology comes from Red Smith's observation on the ease of writing. These 37 essays are written by writers, for writers. Topics include suggestions on how to begin and end stories, getting royalty checks and researching.

The acknowledgement page "honors all writers who take the risk of revealing themselves on paper, and who discover themselves in the process."  This anthology is a treasure for anyone interested in a new beginning.

Annoying Adverbs

Adverbs are used to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and usually end in -ly. Many writers and publishers will tell you these adverbs are a sign of weak or timid writing.

Author Stephen King complains about them in his memoir, On Writing, saying, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs…” King goes on to say you should never even use them in dialogue attribution if you can avoid it. He means you should always use “said” without adding an emotional tag like “sadly”, ”menacingly” or “acidly”.

However, even in the great King’s books you can find adverbs. I, myself am guilty of using them (suddenly, quickly, angrily etc.). Most writers do at some point. The key is to replace any unnecessary ones. Ask yourself if the –ly word is the best way to write the sentence or if there is a more active verb you can use. If there is any way to say the same thing in fewer words, or if it’s not adding to the sentence, omit them.

When I write a rough draft I don’t worry about them. I just get my ideas on paper and these adverbs become place holders for a richer description upon rewrite. Here are some examples from my own WIP. I have drawn a line through the original adverbs and placed the new choice in bold.

Joe walked lazily strolled toward the building.

He frowned angrily scowled.

Jane ran quickly from fled the hall.

She went quickly hurried away.

“Throw that away.” She said loudly shouted.

Jane quietly walked crept down the hall.

He firmly placed slammed the figurine down on the mantel.

She turned her head slowly.

Hmmm. I’m not sure I’ll change the last one. There is a reason for this action. Remember, there is nothing wrong with using adverbs, all writers do so, but use them wisely and only occasionally. Otherwise, they become distracting.

Also, notice how the replaced words create a mental image. This is what publishers mean by “Show, Don’t Tell.” Monica Wood, Description, suggests you “circle your adverbs, especially the ones that end in "ly". Examine your adverbs to make sure you aren't forcing them to do the hard work of observation for you. Instead of telling us that the heroine works "tirelessly," tell us about the calluses on her hands or her heavy walk.”

Repetition is another danger of using adverbs. William Zinsser, in his book On Writing Well, says most adverbs are unnecessary. ”You will clutter your sentence and annoy the reader if you choose a verb that has a specific meaning and then add an adverb that carries the same meaning. Don't tell us that the radio blared loudly - "blare" connotes loudness. Don't write that someone clenched his teeth tightly - there's no other way to clench teeth.”

Editing tip: When you have finished your final draft, edit using the "find" function for "ly" words. Next, read the sentence containing the adverb. Decide whether or not to correct it. Adverbs are all valid words, if used in moderation, but are prone to misuse, overuse and abuse.

Please feel free to share your own advice and examples.