-AUTHOR/ MUSICIAN/ TRAVELLER-
LYNDI SCOTT
Write Prescriptions
Made famous by EatleepWrite.net, these prescriptions are presented daily to help you write with confidence, enthusiasm and success. Whether you need help rounding off your characters, needhelp with hooking an agent, story structure or writers block, Lyndi's Write Prescriptions is a one stop carnaval of ideas. Find more in my daily blog posts.
Prescription ONE
Shhhhh. We don't need words to communicate.
Don't speak, and tell me everything.
I would surmise the majority of people would prefer telepathy to our daily awkward conversations. Unfortunately, until there is scientific proof of 'talk without a tongue' and 'words automatically transferred from one mind to another', I am afraid we are stuck with language as a way of communicating. And what's so bad about speaking to each other? We can make an adventure of it - we can use words which might fall off our tongues like a rainbow, full of nuances and significance. We could use words with a zing like: eupeptic, vapidity, widdershins, sybaritic and caliginous - these words would confuse the majority of the population, and we would have fun causing this confuddlement. We could start a war with words, we could stand out from the crowd, we could change the world!
Coming back to my statement at the start: we don't need words to communicate - I would disagree; let us shower the world with delicious, salubrious, palpable words. WRITERS UNITE!
In my column, LYNDI'S WRITE PRESCRIPTION, my aim is to inspire you with ideas which might take your writing to another level. As a writer, you have the unique privilege of touching another human being without meeting them. Your writing should create a profoundly warm feeling in your reader; a reading-releasing, reading and feeling tension expand and rise up and out. Your words should make them feel desperately sad and frightfully happy. After reading your story, your reader should be consumed by a desperate desire to reach out; reach out and touch someone, anyone, everyone.
There are many doorways to adventure. Take language as an example. The ethereal nature of language allows us to a myriad of creative ways words can be put together. Everyone’s creation will echo their inner voice, so in my opinion, if you remain true and authentic to your inner voice, then you have created a thing of lasting beauty - someone will one day read your work and say, "oh, so that's what she/he 'looked' like? How marvellous."
Whatever coaxes us out of hiding, to write, record, and express, is a revolutionary act. When I look back at my journals, I have a lifetime of stories to use as fodder in my current writing. And there is angst; I have been diseased with anxiety for as long as I can remember - I use this emotion often in my work. Angst is not an illness, it’s a state of Being between the tranquil spots - but very few understand this, especially the people close to us.
You don't want to die without having written your story on the inside of someone heart.
I don't want to die without having written my story on someone's heart.
See you tomorrow. Don't forget to write your daily 1k word count. Good luck.
Prescription THREE
Yesterday I began my discussion on writing books for children. There are three different age groups that children's books fall into:
1. SMALL children - children who can't yet read themselves/ 3-8 years;
2. MEDIUM children - children who have begun to read for themselves for pleasure, and they are not so interested in books with many illustrations/ 9-14 years;
3. LARGE children - at this stage girls and boys start to veer away from each other.
SMALL GROUP CHILDREN'S BOOKS -
1. These, should naturally, be written with the question of illustration well to the front of your mind. Pick a theme that will illustrate easily and gracefully.
2. Be in frequent contact with someone in this age group.
3. Words are vitally important because there are very few of them on each page.
4. Before you decide to write your small-child's story, take time to observe the small child and discover where its interests lie.
5. What are the small child's primary interests and occupations? Food, clothes, the process of getting up, going to bed, bathtime, walks, visits to shops, riding the buses, watching parental activities.
6. If you choose a subject that lies within their experience, you are giving yourself a head start.
7. The story you want to write is always better than the one you feel you ought to write.
8. Stairs, cupboards, blankets, sinks, ovens, soaps, shoes, clocks, knitting, paper-bags - all these can be full of mystery, excitement and beauty.
9. Toys are also a topic of continuous imaginative activity for small children. Pooh, Piglet, Raggety Ann, Paddington and Pinocchio are all good examples.
10. Tell the story with one voice, simply and smoothly.
11. The plot need not be elaborate: a quest pursued to its end, a task achieved, a hazard overcome.
12. RHYTHM is very important in a small child's book - it must be easy to read out loud.
13. Unfamiliar words may safely be introduced into the text.
14. Provided you keep your sentences short and rhythmic, your vocabulary may be quite rich.
15. Keep the rhythm moving, keep the sense clear, and you'll keep the readers happy.
16. Avoid limited vocabulary stories, if you have a good idea, write it regardless of vocabulary in the best way you can.
NOVELS FOR CHILDREN OF MEDIUM AGE -
1. The average book for this age has 40,000-60,000 words and takes approximately 6-9 months to write.
2. Regularity is a fundamental necessity of good writing.
3. A children's book needs a strong, consistent style, and the only way to achieve this is by disciplined, regular output.
4. Make a habit of writing at least 6 pages a day - you must keep it flowing or it will dry up.
5. If you do not write every day, the struggle to get back into it after each interval away from it will be proportionately harder and more painful depending on the length of the gap.
6. VOICE - nothing encourages the flow of a story so much as the discovery of the voice in which it is to be told, "It was dusk- winter dusk. Snow lay white and shimmering over the pleated hills..."
7. Voice has a strong connection with your imaginary reader. Almost every writer has an ideal reader in mind.
8. The imaginary reader helps the writer to preserve his single voice - every sentence is aimed at that specific ear, and gives the work unity and consistency.
9. If you do decide to write about children as characters, avoid referring to them as 'the children' all the time - it is patronizing and says you do not believe these characters are individuals in themselves.
10. Novel writing has to be a combination of two urges - the urge to tell a story and the simple yearning to describe a story.
11. If you do nothing but describe, others will automatically skip all your best descriptions, and the plot will creep along at a snail's pace.
A final thought - Once you have the nucleus of a story in your mind, like a submerged wreck sticking out of the water, you will often find other pieces of material become attached and cling to it.
Prescription TWO
"A good children's book makes complex experience available to its readers; a good adult book draws attention to the inescapable complexity of an experience." Myles McDowell
Over the next few Prescriptions I will be focusing on how to write for children. Let's first ask if you want to write ABOUT children or FOR children? Are you, when you write, eager to explore the mind and feelings of a child, analyze his relationship to the world about him, recall the joys and terrors of your own childhood? Or do you merely want to tell a story that you think children will enjoy?
Unless you, the writer, have a definite x-reader established as the target towards whom you are aiming your story, the work will be likely to waver and vacillate, to fall between two styles. If there is any doubt or ambiguity about this, your work will suffer. An element of archness or insincerity is almost certain to creep into your style.
Ask yourself: Who might read this book? In what way will they read it?
Adult readers want something that won't overtax their minds after a long day - probably a whodunit, a piece of light romance or comedy. Children have plenty of energy - they read to LEARN - they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries. For an adult, the writer must amuse, entertain and distract; for the child, the writer's responsibility is much greater.
The first book that a child reads has a colossal impact. The characters must be real, rounded-out individuals. Over-elaborate descriptions are not necessary - allow the child to use their imaginations. It is your duty to produce rapid, vivid pictures with only enough detail to nail it in their minds. Bridge passages bore them - NO BRIDGE PASSAGES. Also, NO FLASHBACKS. No lengthy soliloquies, inner ruminations or abrupt changes in time sequences - children can't adjust. Children can't stand COYNESS - children aren't reading for fun - reading is a deadly serious business.
Keep the narrative in a children's story as smooth as possible. Children must not be bored, shocked or harrowed by what they read; the reading should imbibe something of value within them. Each book should nourish them in some way - with new ideas, insight, humor or vocabulary.
Let me warn you right now - writing for children may not be as simple as you think. You should enter this field only because you have a strong urge to tell the kind of story which you think children will enjoy. Children have huge needs. There may be disastrous gaps in their education, their environment, their upbringing. Not every child lives in a happy, well-organized home or family. And any child may have some need which reading will help to fill.
It is your duty to demonstrate to children that the world is not a simple place. The world is infinitely rich, strange, confusing, wonderful, cruel, mysterious, an inexplicable riddle. We too, as humans, are a riddle. We don't know where we come from or where we are going, we are surrounded by layers of meaning that we can only dimly apprehend, however much we try to learn. Children need to get from the stories they read a sense of their own inner existence, and the archetypal links that connect them with the unexplored past; they need to receive something that extends beyond ordinary reality.
A story should give a child some kind of glimpse or vision or key or intimation that things are not necessarily the way they seem. Your vision doesn't have to be beautiful. It just has to be your own - your own glimpse, your own angle. It may be a rusty bridge, a mousetrap, or a dragon lost in a supermarket.
Tomorrow I will discuss the different age groups of children a writer should zone in on and choose - 3-8 years of age, 9-14 years of age or 14 and older. I will pay particular attention on novels for the age 3-8 years.
Prescription FOUR
"A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face... It is one of the few havens remaining where a person’s mind can get both provocation and privacy."
Novels that really work are books that people can see their own hearts in. They're books that make people feel that you are writing about them. The best way to write such a genuine work is to write from an authentic part of yourself.
Here are a few ideas to get you on your writing way today:
1. Write as vividly and briefly as possible, where possible.
2. Don't lecture - show feelings and ideas, don't tell and pipe facts.
Your goal is to immerse your readers in your story world.
3. The only factual information you should include, is information that is so fascinating it may 'sell' your story.
4. The Golden Rule: put yourself in the skin of your reader. Write as a reader.
5. When in doubt, cut it out.
6. Find the uncommon in common experience.
7. Humanize your hero: find a failing for your hero that is human, a universal frustration, a humbling setback, or any experience that anyone has had. Add this early in your story.
8. Create a situation in which your exceptional protagonist is in over his head, feels unprepared, is simply lost, or in any other way must admit to him/herself that he/she isn't perfect.
9. Develop a moral for your story - in the end, how is your hero better off/ what do they regret in hindsight.
10. Fiction is a combination of 'true-life', imagination and invention. Recall your own life and detail your own experiences.
In conclusion, here are four ways to structure your story:
Always begin with your protagonist and the inciting incident.
Establish time and place.
Announce why the reader should be reading your book. ie. what are your intentions and goal?
Organize: structure your story around the beginning and know your final scene/ goal - focus deliberately on weaving your story towards your envisioned finish line.
Write, write, write. Where's your 1k word count?
PS. I will always end with a new word to entice your vocabulary.
Here it is (I confess, this word is a favourite of mine and has frequented my life all too often):
ZUGZWANG: (n) a situation where every possible move or decision is a bad one, or one that will result in damage or loss.