Where Normal Need Not Apply
To make NaNo work for us, we need to figure out our goals for the experience—and there’s no wrong answer. However, if our goal is to create a coherent story, we should try to understand story structure.
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Whatever genre we write, we often have to write scenes that make us uncomfortable. For many, sexy scenes are high on that discomfort scale.
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It’s tricky to tie up all the threads in our story’s Climax and even harder to give guidelines for how to write it, but let’s try to identify some story aspects we might want to include.
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In Part Two, Jeff Lyons shares more of the most common writing myths and the lie and danger for us if we believe them. Learn the truth instead.
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A story’s meaning and hidden messages often lurk in the subtext. Subtext flows throughout our plots, characters, themes, genres…and story tropes. Depending on how we use and twist story tropes, we might create very different messages for readers.
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Are there prerequisites to call ourselves a writer? No. If you write, you’re a writer. Period. But when we pay attention to other writers, every writer—no matter how successful—could find something to feel inadequate about if we let our self-doubt get a hold of us.
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It’s hard to get our opening pages just right because we have to grab readers’ attention, introduce our characters and the story world, hint at a problem, etc. With everything we want to get across to the reader, we might dump too much information. How can we avoid info dumping or confusing readers at the beginning of our story?
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If we know other writers at all, chances are good that we’ve heard a lot of advice. One of the most common pieces of advice? According to dozens of multi-published, bestselling authors, it’s “write every day.” Do they know better than us what it takes to be a writer? Is that a must-listen rule?
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Readers can interpret our characters as weak for many reasons, such as being passive, foolish, or lacking an arc. Another way a character might seem weak is using weak sentences in our writing, making them seem more wishy-washy than we intend.
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Clichés, tropes, and stereotypes all seem like signs of lazy writing. And they are—or at least, they can be. But it can be impossible to avoid all instances of stereotypical elements. So what should we do instead?
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