More frequently, the author is unable to wrap their arms around how to make the setting work for them to the point where the story couldn’t take place anywhere else. I’d like to review two of my works as examples of where the setting is integral to the events, so that should it be set elsewhere, it wouldn’t be the same story.

Washington Academy — When the Building Has Secrets

Washington Academy in 7th Grade Revolution isn’t a generic school. It’s a charter school housed in a post-Civil War mansion in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The building has tunnels, secret passages, and a cavern no one knew existed until seventh graders had a reason to find it.

The setting does something specific: it makes the students’ rebellion plausible. An ordinary school building offers nowhere to hide, no secrets to uncover, no historical mystery to anchor a plot. But a nineteenth-century mansion with hidden rooms and underground passages? The building itself is practically asking to be explored by curious twelve-year-olds who’ve declared independence from adult authority.

The Blue Ridge Mountains visible from the classroom window are also doing quiet work throughout the book. Dennis looks out at them and feels the pull of something beyond the walls that contain him. The mountains aren’t described at length, but their presence, and the contrast between their wildness and the school’s rigid structures, says something about what Dennis is fighting for.

The setting isn’t just where the story happens. It’s why the story can happen.

Los Angeles as Living Landscape

Secret of the Red Key (Homeless Myths, Book 1), a work in progress, uses Los Angeles in a way worth examining because the city isn’t interchangeable with any other American setting.

Los Angeles is specifically the right place for a story about homeless children who are also warriors destined to give mankind a second chance. Skid Row, the largest concentration of homeless population in the United States, grounds the children’s reality in something undeniably true. Little Tokyo, where the annual Obon Festival takes place, becomes the backdrop for supernatural encounters. Los Angeles sprawls from ocean to mountains, its districts laid out like a patchwork quilt with the Music Center bordered by a cathedral, Skid Row, a park, and the superior courthouse, each piece distinct in texture and character yet somehow cohesive. The tunnel system beneath the streets even becomes both sanctuary and danger as the series progresses.

Each location is doing character work. Skid Row establishes the stakes of the children’s daily survival. Little Tokyo opens a window into a cultural tradition the story needs. The ocean’s edge provides the mythological resonance of a liminal space—neither land nor sea. The tunnels mirror the children’s own hidden existence, invisible to the city above.

Remove Los Angeles and you don’t just lose a backdrop. You lose the framework within which the story operates.

How to Make Your Setting Work

If you want your setting to function as a character rather than decoration, start by asking these questions:

• Could this story happen anywhere else? If the answer is yes without significant loss, dig deeper into what makes your specific place unique, its history, geography, social texture, and secrets.
• What does the setting want? A place with strong character has something like an agenda; it rewards certain behaviors and punishes others. The Mississippi River rewards Tom’s wildness and punishes his attempts at conventional respectability. Naomi rewards vulnerability and connection. Washington Academy rewards curiosity and resourcefulness.

• What does the setting know? Old places have history. That history can be a resource, a threat, or both. McDougal’s Cave knows where Injun Joe hides. Washington Academy’s tunnels know where the treasure is. The Los Angeles sewer system knows what lurks beneath the streets.
• What does the setting hide? Secrets are one of the most powerful tools a setting offers. The cave, the tunnel, the hidden room, the thing in the water aren’t just plot devices. They’re the setting revealing itself to characters willing to look.

Your setting was there before your characters arrived and it will be there after they leave. Give it the weight it deserves.

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Setting is something that is important to every novel. It helps the reader to become immersed in the world, and it's something my editor often points out to me during my editing rounds with him. Since I see everything so vividly in my head as I write, I sometimes forget to put it on the page. But setting is far more than crafting a pretty description … it can influence the direction of the story.

When finishing a book you love, can you picture where it took place? Not just a vague sense, but the specific texture of the place—the smell of it, the way light falls, whether it feels safe or threatening, and where it keeps its secrets.

If the answer is yes, the author made the setting work. Not as wallpaper or stage dressing, but as a character.

What Setting as Character Actually Means

Setting becomes a character when it does what characters do: act, change, create pressure, reveal truth. A setting functioning at this level doesn’t just contain the story, it shapes it. Remove it and you don’t have the same story. You have a different story entirely, or no story at all.

This is different from vivid description. A writer can describe a place beautifully without making it matter. Setting as character means the place has stakes. It has personality. It pushes back.

The test is simple: could this story happen anywhere else? If yes, the setting is decoration. If no, it’s doing the work of a character.

A Look at a Classic

Decades before anyone coined the term middle grade, Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It remains one of the most instructive examples of setting as character in all American literature aimed at young readers.

Setting as character doesn’t merely surround the action. It participates in it, makes things happen, reveals who characters are under pressure, and sometimes determines their fate entirely. Twain understood this instinctively, and every significant location in Tom Sawyer proves it.

Consider Aunt Polly’s thirty-foot fence. It functions as a social statement representing the respectability Aunt Polly and her neighbors prize above almost everything else. As punishment for Tom’s unruly behavior, the fence becomes a burden of duty, the whitewashing a task designed to discipline him into conformity. But Tom manipulates his friends into paying for the privilege of doing his chore. The fence reveals Tom’s cunning precisely because it applies social pressure.

Jackson’s Island works differently. Where the fence represents confinement and social obligation, the island represents everything the town cannot reach. When Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper escape there to play pirates, they aren’t simply going somewhere. They’re going somewhere the rules of St. Petersburg don’t apply—where Aunt Polly’s respectability, the schoolmaster’s authority, and the town’s suffocating expectations have no jurisdiction. The island doesn’t just offer freedom. It defines freedom by contrast with everything left behind on the shore.

The Most Powerful Example

The setting of McDougal’s Cave acts as a character with genuine consequences. The cave is the refuge where Injun Joe hides, the place the town cannot reach him. But when the townspeople seal the cave’s entrance as a protective measure after Tom and Becky’s ordeal, they inadvertently transform his sanctuary into his tomb. The cave doesn’t change. The townspeople’s relationship to it does, and Injun Joe dies in the dark, starved, in the place he used as protection.

The cave acts. It receives Injun Joe in the guise of a haven and keeps him as a prisoner. No character made that decision. The setting did.

Twain’s genius was understanding the physical world his characters inhabited wasn’t neutral. St. Petersburg has rules, order, and suffocating respectability. The fence, the river, the island, and the cave each exist in a specific relationship to those rules—some enforcing them, some escaping them, one absorbing their consequences entirely.

Tom isn’t just a mischievous boy. He’s a boy in constant negotiation with what his specific place allows, forbids, and ultimately determines.

Could Tom Sawyer happen in a landlocked city without a cave or a river? Technically, perhaps, but it wouldn’t be the same story. The Mississippi river and its surroundings are as much a character as Aunt Polly.

Kate DiCamillo and the Town That Heals

Because of Winn-Dixie takes place in Naomi, Florida, a small town baking in the summer heat, slightly faded, full of people carrying losses they haven’t finished grieving. Opal’s mother left. Gloria Dump carries her past mistakes in the whiskey bottles hanging from the tree in her backyard, emptied before she got sober. Otis, who works at Gertrude’s Pets, has a complicated history with the law. Miss Franny Block, the librarian, has outlived almost everyone she ever loved.

DiCamillo uses Naomi’s specific locations as emotional containers, and this is where setting begins doing the work of a character. The library is where Opal finds knowledge and connection to history. The pet store is where she finds a kind of unconditional love, listening to Otis play his guitar for the animals after hours. Gloria Dump’s backyard—enclosed, private, full of the evidence of a life fully lived—is where she finds the comfort and wisdom she’s been missing since her mother left.

Each of these places does something the others can’t. They aren’t interchangeable locations within the town. Instead, they’re distinct spaces with distinct emotional functions, and Opal needs all three. DiCamillo also understands the setting’s larger function: Naomi is small enough that everyone knows everyone, which means every person Opal meets has a story connecting to every other story. The community is woven together by shared history and shared loss in a way a city couldn’t replicate.

The hot, humid Florida weather isn’t decorative either. Summer heat creates a languid, slightly suspended atmosphere in which the story’s slow healing can take place. Sudden thunderstorms pierce the somnolent tone revealing Winn-Dixie’s storm phobia, which becomes a pivotal plot point.

Transplant Opal to a suburb of Chicago and the story evaporates. The town itself is what makes the healing possible.

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Have you ever read a book that made you feel like you were living the story along with the characters? A book that made you think about your own life and how you would handle the challenges they faced?

Novels are powerful. They help us understand ourselves and others better. Reading helps us cope with difficult emotions and situations, such as grief, bullying, and survival, which are common themes in middle grade and young adult books. They are also common experiences in many people's lives. If you haven’t faced some of these issues yourself, you probably know someone who has.

So how can reading novels or writing stories help us deal with these issues? And how can we use these issues to create our own stories? Here are some tips and ideas:

How Stories Help Us Deal with Strong Emotions and Situations

• We feel less alone. When we read about characters who are going through the same things as we are, we relate to them and feel like we have a friend who understands us. We learn from their experiences and see how they cope with their problems.
• Reading helps us process our emotions. When characters are feeling sad, angry, scared, or happy, we can empathize with them and feel those emotions too. This can help us release our own feelings and process them in a healthy way. We can also share the books we like to communicate our feelings to others.
• We find hope and inspiration. When characters overcome their difficulties and achieve their goals, we feel hopeful and motivated. We admire their courage, resilience, and creativity, and try to emulate them in our own lives. And sometimes we find ideas and solutions for our own problems.

How to Use Strong Emotions and Situations to Create Our Own Stories

• We use our own experiences as inspiration. If we have faced an issue in our own lives, we can use those memories as a starting point. We write about how we felt, what we did, and what we learned from those situations. We use our experiences as a springboard for the imagination by changing some details or adding fictional elements.
• We use our imagination to create new scenarios. If we have not faced a scenario the character in our story is facing in our own lives, we can still write about them by using our imagination. We can think of what-if questions, such as "What if I lost my best friend?" or "What if I was stranded on an island?" or "What if I was bullied at school?" We can then imagine how we would react and what would happen next.
• Research—research—research. Whether we use our own experiences or our imagination, research is essential to make our stories more authentic and accurate. Read books and articles about whatever situation has arisen in your story. Talk to people who have gone through those issues or are experts on them. Then use what you’ve learned to drop in a detail here or there which evokes emotions in those who read the story.

Writing novels or stories is challenging but rewarding. Rain Falling on Embers deals with the themes of grief, bullying, survival, and love, to name a few. A challenge to write, but I am so glad I did. It turned out to be a gripping and inspiring story that shows how Katie McCabe overcomes her challenges and grows as a person, finding hope and happiness in her new surroundings.

So next time you read a book, think about how it makes you feel and what you learn from it. And next time you write a story, think about how you can use your experiences, imagination, and research to make it engaging and meaningful.

Happy reading and writing!

This post is part of the Young Writers Series: for more tips, click here.

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Getting to know my characters is like getting to know a friend and I need to know not only those things the character will tell me, but maybe even more importantly, those things they won’t say. Because it is the things we don’t talk about easily which are the deepest well of emotion. And the depth is where you find the uniqueness of the character.

So why is it important to know your characters … especially those traits beyond what you can “see”? Because the better you know your character, the better able you are to put them on the page as a real person. Here is an example of what a difference it makes:

When I started writing Speak No Evil, I knew there would be a character in the role of social worker because the main character winds up in foster care after the death of her mother and disappearance of her father. But I didn’t know anything about her/him — the character was like a stick figure to me with no features whatsoever. I honestly thought the social worker would play a minor role in the overall book. The “minor role” wound up blossoming into one of the major support characters for Melody. When it came time to write the first scene with the social worker, I didn’t even have a name … though by that time I knew the character was a woman. So I stopped writing and took the time to get to know Rebecca Prescott.

At that point, I still thought she was a minor character in the book, but over the next few scenes, she proved me wrong. As I wrote, details of her personality and past unfolded, which is fairly normal for first draft character development. I finished the draft and took the work through several revisions, honing and tightening. But I realized there was a gap at the beginning that needed to be shored up. I needed a transitionary chapter to go between chapter one and chapter two. So after the completion of the book and a couple of years, I wrote the “last” chapter to go toward the beginning of the book. The writing went smoothly and only required a little “touch up” here and there because I knew my characters so well at that point.

Then, during the publisher editing process, one of the editors determined that the second chapter should become the first as it set the book up in a much better fashion. He was right. It’s something I would never have seen because I am way too close to the book (and which is why editors are essential.) I could have given a hundred reasons why the chapter should remain exactly where it was in the 2-spot. But I took a step back and looked at his comments from a more objective perspective and his one reason trumped all my reasons combined — the strength of my characters were there on the page and provided the hook necessary to draw readers in.

The editor in question is Jonas Saul, the international bestselling author of the Sarah Roberts Series, which has sold well over 2 million copies. So here is a tip from Jonas:

Think of it like this: you’re writing about a kitchen. Everyone knows basically what a kitchen looks like, so we as authors shouldn’t bore them with kitchen details like, stove, fridge, counters, and so on. Tell them about the cockroach on the counter, though. Show them the kitchen’s age with that cockroach, or the state of cleanliness of the kitchen. It’s my, “Cockroach on the Counter” rule.

Then he followed it with a specific comment about a line of text in the chapter:

The, “You haven’t said a word for almost two years. Not even in therapy,” was awesome. There’s the cockroach on the counter, your originality, your yank-me-in moment. Love it!

If I had written that particular chapter first, it probably would have been a very different chapter … because I wouldn’t have known my characters as well as I did at that point. Rebecca Prescott said the words that ultimately set up the entire novel, and they may not have been said at all, had I not known the character well. In fact, no other character in the entire book would have KNOWN enough about Melody to say those words.

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You’ve done it. You conceived of a story idea, sat down and wrote ALL the words and finally reached the point where you typed The End. You’re exhilirated. The world will gasp and hold its sides at how perfect your story is. It is, without a doubt, a work of art … sheer poetry in prose form.

I’ll be honest … I feel like I’ve just run a race when I reach the end of the first draft of any novel I’ve written and like I should be taking a victory lap. It is a HUGE accomplishment, and one we can all be proud of. Except the completion of the first draft is equivalent to reaching the starter’s line for the race, not the end. The first thing I do on completion of a first draft is put it away and go on to the million-and-one other things I have to do, whether it be starting a new project or polishing up an old one. I need fresh eyes before I go back and look at the masterpiece I have just penned … because I need to be able to see the mistakes. And they are there, I can promise you that.

Let’s say you’ve finished up the story, read through it again, confirmed your own conviction that it is wonderful and you send it off to be read by someone else. Someone who has a critical eye, because that’s what your story needs, someone to find those things that aren’t quite right to help you make sure it is the best story it can possibly be.

Then your story — your perfect little story — comes back and looks as if Jack the Ripper and the Warwick Slasher were having a contest to see who could rip it up the most. It is bleeding with red ink and your feelings go from confidence to failure in two short seconds. Thoughts start chasing each other in your mind. How could it be so bad??? Why did I think I could write in the first place?? Maybe I should give up? You have failed to achieve the effect with your story that you wanted. It’s OKAY. Failure is embedded in the fabric of success. No one achieves perfection the first time out. And in writing, I daresay no one achieves perfection. So let’s change how we view failure.

It has become popular to make fun of people’s failures … in fact, there are memes (Nailed It!) dedicated to mocking failed attempts. And yes, the attempt failed, but at least they tried. Something the mockers didn’t do. And here is the thing about failure, it is only the end result if you give up on trying to achieve your goal. You failed … so what? What did you learn this time to make the next attempt better? Because every mark on that story represents an opportunity to learn and improve your craft.

I am always extremely thankful for all of the red marks. Someone else has taken the time to help me see things I was blind to to help me make my story the best it can be. Does that red mark represent a failure? You bet, but it also represents something that can be fixed now that I am aware there is a problem. I really like the acronym for FAIL — First Attempt In Learning.

Instead of feeling down because we have not achieved perfection, we should relish the things we have learned through trying and failing. Does it mean we have more work to do? You bet. But nothing makes me happier than making my story better and stronger. Success is built on the back of failure — when we choose to learn from those failures.

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I’m not a big fan of the term writer’s block because the word block tends to make me feel like the problem is insurmountable. And if I walk around telling myself I’m completely blocked … I will be. The situation will only get worse. Because tomorrow, you’re not going to be as eager to write because you have the word BLOCK stuck in your head. The day after that will be even harder until so much time has passed and you’re afraid to even face the blank page. So the question becomes how to avoid the big, bad block.

Every writer I have ever known has faced at least a few bad moments where the words are hard to find, and there are posts all over the internet about how to get around the block. But how do you know which method is going to be most effective? How can you keep trying if you keep failing to get words on the page? For me, it all boils down to one little word … Why?

When the words dry up and I am staring at the page, rather than get frustrated, I start looking for the reason. There is always a reason. And once I figure out the reason, the writing resumes. People have different ways of dealing with the words drying up and that will be the topic for another post. The method most effective for me is to walk away from the screen, put my headphones on, and go for a walk. While I’m on the walk, I don’t furiously think about the book I’m writing or actively try to figure out the issue — I put the brain on autopilot and listen. My brain is much smarter than I am, and if I give it a chance, it always gives me the reason.

Here are some of the reasons the words can dry up:

1. Not knowing the characters well enough. If I don’t know the characters well, then how can I possibly tell their story with any conviction?
2. Not knowing where the story is going. You can know your characters well, but if you don’t know what they are doing next, you might need to take a break and let them tell you.
3. Not listening to your characters. This may depend on the type of writer you are. In my writing, the characters drive the story forward. So when I know my characters and know where we’re going, sometimes I get on a roll writing, and stop listening to them … until we come to a screeching halt. Once I listen I learn I didn’t have the full story.
4. Impostor Syndrome. Show me a writer, and I’ll show you someone who has had at least a few moments of doubt along their journey. So many don’t feel like a real writer because of X, Y, or Z. It’s hard to keep moving forward when you feel like a fake. If this is the reason, then you have to remind yourself that the act of putting words on the page means you ARE a writer. Good, bad, or indifferent … you are writing, so therefore a writer. Bad or indifferent writing can be edited — a blank page cannot be.
5. Fear. This comes in many forms. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of people hating your work. Fear of not realizing you are terrible. Fear of putting yourself out there for the public to criticize. If you never finish, you never have to face these fears.

Once you understand the reason you have stopped writing, you can take action to overcome whatever the issue is, and once you do that, the words will flow again.

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You’ve just had a fabulous idea for a story and your brain is bursting with all the details and you cannot wait to write it. You sit down at the keyboard and pull up a page, or grab a notepad if you draft long hand, and the blank page mocks you with its emptiness. The only thing on your mind is a huge question: Where do you START? The sizzling in your brain fades and you think maybe the idea wasn’t so great after all if you don’t know how to get started.

STOP!

You’re trying to run the race before you’ve put your feet on the ground. Before your story can have legs, you need to know more about it. You need an outline. (I feel like there should be a musical tag here of dun-dun-DUN!!!) Before you freak out and start protesting that you can’t outline because it robs you of your creativity, or that you’re a panster and if you try to figure out your story beforehand, it becomes stilted and flat, I’m saying outline in the loosest sense of the word. An outline is not always a document with Roman Numerals listing all the scenes in the book. If I had to do that, I’d be rocking in the corner whimpering at the thought and I’d never get the outline written, let alone the book. Because when I write a book, I don’t know all the scenes that will end up in the book before I start. Part of the magic of writing is allowing your characters to develop and letting them lead the way.

Outlining could be developing your story structure which is figuring out your major plot points and when they occur throughout the story. Mystery writers might be more focused on this type of development prior to starting so they don’t wind up in a muddle half way through. There are some well known methods like Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! which was developed more for screenwriting, but the use of beat sheets has been adopted by several novelists as well. Or you can try Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method which starts with a single overarching idea, the idea for the story summed up in a single sentence, and builds from there.

I have a friend who usually starts with the Snowflake Method, but when I attempt it, the only thing that happens is brain frostbite. So what happens if you don’t work well with a more formalized method of outlining? Start with what got you excited to begin with. Write down your idea. That’s always a good place to start because you might not remember it clearly later. Fill in as much detail as you can because I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone back to my outline and realized I had forgotten something. Once you have the story idea down, what next?

Play 20 Questions. Not really, but think of all the questions you need to answer and jot them down. Who is the main character? What makes them tick? What is their biggest obstacle in the story? How do they overcome it? Or DO they overcome it? Where does the story take place? What place in time does the story take place? What is the character’s main motivation? Who or what is the antagonist? How does the conflict escalate? What I’m really telling you to do is brainstorm. Once you’ve answered all the questions you can think of to start with, you’ll have a much better idea of where to start your story, what type of research you need to do before beginning to write, and where you want to end up when you’re done.

Whichever method you choose, the next time you face the blank page, it will invite you to start writing.

The start image at the top of the post is: © Lina0486 | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

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“Ideas can come from anywhere and at any time. The problem with making mental notes is that the ink fades very rapidly.” – Rolf Smith

The bane of the writer’s existence is the idea that arrives at an inconvenient time. I don’t think I’ve ever had a story show up while I’m sitting in front of my keyboard, hands poised over the keys, ready to dash down the idea as it forms. Ideas show up in the middle of the night as dreams, or wake you from a sound sleep with a mind blast of a brilliant idea you’re CERTAIN you’ll remember in the morning. Then morning comes and you struggle to clear the fog away to remember the unforgettable. Ideas come while driving, walking, taking a shower, in the middle of a conversation, on a bike ride. They come from all places: dreams, the lyrics of a song, a two-second sound byte of a news story, a newspaper headline, an article on the internet, an overheard snippet of conversation, and completely out of the blue as if by lightning strike.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single writer I know state they are going to go sit in front of their computer and come up with a brilliant idea to write about. Invariably, the idea has come and we are itching to get to a keyboard and get it down. BUT what happens when you’re brain is a magnet that collects more ideas than you can write at the moment? How do you capture the idea, especially the one flitting through the night? Most writers I know have a list of story ideas they work from. And once they get started on one from their list, invariably a shiny new idea makes its presence known.

Some keep a notepad and pen on their nightstand to capture those middle of the night revelations and travel everywhere with a notebook or journal for capturing the ideas as they arrive. A friend of mine uses a recording device in the same way. Because thoughts can be elusive. My method is this: survival of the fittest … up to a point. If I have a dream or an idea wakes me in the middle of the night, I don’t jot it down. I wait until morning and if the idea is truly one meant to be captured, I’ll remember, or it will come back. Because my stories that are waiting to be written can be pests. They don’t leave me alone until they have been properly documented and saved in a file.

I used to document the ideas in a word document, jotting down as much of the story as I got at the moment, and adding to the document as more thoughts for the story arrived. I have since modified to using OneNote because I can post a segment of an article from the internet and the URL of the article is automatically captured, or if I explain my idea to anyone, or something develops during an email conversation, when I copy and paste the pertinent bit into the document, it links to the email exchange — which can come in handy. I can also save pictures for character representation and have multiple pages to document things like setting, character background, etc. so organization is much cleaner.

Once I document what I need to, I close the file and go back to what I’m working on. Sometimes it takes years before I get around to the story, but in the meantime, as ideas occur related to the story, I have a place to keep them so I don’t forget. My brain happens to be one of those idea magnets, so my list is always huge, but when I’m ready to work on something new, I never lack for something to write about. How do you capture your ideas?

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Previously, I spoke about being a plotter or a pantster and how I fall in the middle of the spectrum. I’d like to add that for me, every book is different. Some require much more detailed planning in advance of starting, others simply have to be written and forget the outline you dashed down because we’re going on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride with this one.

I am very much a character-driven writer, so no matter whether well-plotted out or using the sketchiest outline possible, I need to know my characters well. They need to become real people to me. I imagine different scenarios, outside the story line, to see how they will react. I have imaginary conversations with my characters to get a sense of who they are and what their opinions and attitudes are.

Not all authors have to know their characters like I do, but for me, if my characters are not real people to me, I can’t write the story. So before I put one word on the page, I will spend a lot of time staring at the screen, the ceiling, off into space … listening for my characters to speak. One method that usually works for me is putting in headphones and going for a walk. Or going for a long drive. Until I know WHO I’m working with, I don’t have their story.

Writing the story is just the beginning. Once you get the story down on paper (or on a computer file), you then go back and re-read and revise. You are looking for mistakes (like missing words) as well as changing some of the story. EVERY writer makes changes to their work because they always find something that they want to change, something that will make it better. No one starts with a story that doesn’t need changes. It doesn’t matter how many times I review a story, I will always see something I want to change, so for me the hard part is determining when the story is polished.

One writing teacher I had stated the ability to write a story was the ability to keep your behind in the chair long enough. Inspiration of what to write is the wonderful part because your brain is bubbling with ideas and they take hold and haunt you until you put them down on paper. Then comes the work of staying in a chair long enough to get the whole story down — and to review it more times than you can count.

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I’d like to share with you a little about the writing process. Of course, I can’t tell you how all authors write, but I can share my process as well as those of some authors I know.

There is a popular theory that if you had a room of monkeys typing on a keyboard and infinite amount of time, they would be able to replicate all of the great works of fiction or indeed any book ever written. It is called the infinite monkey theorem—and the idea has always tickled me because I cannot conceive of a roomful of well-behaved monkeys sitting for as long as it would take to create the complete works of Shakespeare. Jesse Anderson created a fun visualization of what it would take for the monkeys to recreate Shakespeare … hover the cursor over the text and the box on the right shows how many attempts it would take to create the highlighted phrase. And at the bottom of this post I have included a computer simulation of how those random phrases might occur. So I guess my biggest problem is not having enough monkeys to do the writing for me.

Another theory is that to write a story, you start at the beginning, keep writing until you reach the end and then stop. This sounds easy, but when you start to put the words down all sorts of questions start cropping up. What is the beginning? How will I know when to end? How do I get from the beginning to the end? Getting started is tough when looking at the blank page, but sometimes knowing when the story is done is even harder. YIKES!!

Some authors create a very detailed outline of their story before they start to write it. They need to know every plot point before they can start writing the story. Once they have all of the details mapped out, they put the words on the page and the characters in the story follow the map. They are called plotters.

Some authors don’t know where the writing is going to take them, they don’t map out their story line first, but just start with a concept (a setting, a character, an event) and see where it takes them. They approach writing with a “let’s see what happens next” attitude. They are called pansters.

I actually fit in between the two. I need to know the basics of my story, but as I write, there are twists that happen that I didn’t know were going to happen. It’s almost like the story takes on a life of its own and the characters go in directions that I didn’t know they were going to go in, but eventually, they meet me back at the story line that I started with. It’s fun when your characters start taking on a life of their own, because at that point, they start writing the story for you. Maybe I do have monkeys in a room somewhere. Or maybe I’m the monkey.

Another thing to keep in mind, is how you approach the story may depend on the story itself. Some take more planning and others need to be left more to where the characters take you. Where do YOU fall on the spectrum? What is your writing comfort zone?

The post YWS: How Writers Write – Take 1 appeared first on Be the Cat.

Wallpaperswide.com

Writing is a life skill; something we all need to get through life. The better your writing skills are, the better able you are to improve your standarad of life. Writing is not something you learn for school assignments and never use again once you graduate — it is something you will use for the rest of your life.

From Grammarly.com

I’m a writer, so OF COURSE I think writing skills are important. After all, I have to know the rules in order to break them effectively. But writing isn’t the ONLY job I have, and I use my writing skills on a daily basis for my day job. Those skills have made me a better employee and have helped me rise in stature with my company.

Don’t believe me? Check out what my friends at Grammarly.com have to say about it. (Click the graphic to enlarge it.) The folks at Grammarly.com polled people in the workplace and found that those who had fewer errors in their written work were PAID better. Who doesn’t want more money?

Think about it from an employer’s point of view … wouldn’t you want your employees to sound professional? Wouldn’t you presume that those who made fewer errors while writing were the same employees who paid closer attention to the task at hand? Those who write with fewer errors also tend to sound more professional when speaking, so it relates directly to the first impression you make when meeting someone.

So how do you improve your writing skills? Grammarly has a free grammar checker. Use it for your next writing assignment … see what you think.

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Wallpaperswide.com

One of the questions that most fiction authors are asked at one point or another is “how did you get the idea for the story?” Sometimes this is a hard question to answer.

The easy answer is: LIFE

Actually, there are several ways in which an author can come up with an idea for a book.

Through reading or hearing about a current or past event. Maybe you read about a historical event and something about the situation intrigues you and you start imagining characters and how they deal with the events occurring. This can be through newspapers, something you see on TV, or even other books you read.

Visual imagery — You might see a picture that draws your attention and you can start building up a story about what happens in the picture. I still have one book that I haven’t written where I came up with the idea in this very same way. I was visiting a friend’s house and she had a picture on the wall of sketching of two girls and just looking at the picture, I started to imagine the story of what was happening in the life of those two girls. I even knew their names just by looking at the picture (Cassandra and Alexandra). I have jotted down my ideas for this story and one day will get around to writing it.

A setting — I once went to school in Owatonna, Minnesota, and realized that the school I went to would be a great setting for a story. I knew that my main character would be someone who was not used to having any rules enforced, and the school rules were very strict. This story will actually (when I finish it) cover the course of 3 books, because the story that I want to tell with it is too long for one book.

Daydreams — Sometimes your mind wanders off on its own and something you see or hear sparks a line of “what if” thinking or imagining and you realize that when you get through to the end of the “what if” that you have the basis for a story.

Dreams — Believe it or not, the first book I completed writing was the result of a dream that I had. When I woke up from my dream, I knew that I had the making of a story — I knew the beginning, the middle and the end. I didn’t know all of the details of course, but the major points of the story were all there and all I had to do was write it.

Reading another story — Sometimes you read a story and think to yourself “that’s not the way I’d write it”, and then write your own version of the story. Or maybe it’s just part of the story where you think an underlying part of the story was left out.

Tips for generating story ideas:

Study an author whose books you like. Identify what it is that you like about how they write. It’s also important identify things that you don’t like and know why. It helps you to avoid the same thing in your own work.

Some writers carry a notepad wherever they go so they can jot down ideas as they come up. Or they will keep a journal to at least write something down every day. The more you write, the better you can become.

The internet is like a cornucopia of ideas waiting to be found. Google or Yahoo writing prompts and you will find several exercises to give you ideas. Something like: Start with a character that has an unusual fear. What is the fear? How does the character react when he/she has to face that fear? If you start with an idea like that, you are well on your way to creating a story, as well as character development.

These are just a few of the ways in which you can come up with a story. Can you think of others?

The main thing to remember is that you shouldn’t try to force yourself to come up with ideas. Sometimes the biggest obstacle to coming up with an idea is the fear of not being able to come up with an idea. Just relax and let your mind wander. Something will pop in sooner or later.

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