Live Life, Then Write

Henry David Thoreau once said, “How vain is it to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” He wasn’t vain. Thoreau spent a good amount of time in seclusion in a cabin he built in the woods. He wrote one of his most famous works, Walden, about what he discovered about himself while there. He wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Thoreau had a good idea. How can someone write about life when they haven’t even experienced it themselves? A while back, I took a break from writing my novel. I was about to start college; I felt I needed to live in the moment before I could start writing again. Eventually, I started back again with fresh ideas.

I believe the more life experiences you collect, the more ideas you will have for your writing and directly proportional, the better your writing will be. Your writing won’t be confined to your limited experiences. It will be able to burst off the page, dancing with joy because it reached its full potential.

So, for now, put your pen down. Close your laptop. Go out for a night on the town. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Then come back and write about those mistakes.

-Landman

Dealing With Criticism

Hearing criticism is probably the hardest part of being a writer. You write something; it is your baby. You created it, nurtured it, and it grew into a full-fledged story. And to hear someone say something negative about it makes you go on the defensive.

In my Creative Writing class, we have workshop days where we talk about the work we just submitted. When it is my turn, I always get nervous. I am always afraid everyone will hate it. I tell myself I have a thick skin and the things said are to help me. They do, but somehow the little insecurity inside me says, “I told you!” Because it knew all along, the story wasn’t my best work.

But how do you conquer that irritating little insecurity? I think the best thing to do is just to keep hearing criticism. It is the only way to build up a thick skin. You hear it over and over again, and you become numb to the negative part; you just don’t hear it anymore. Just the part that helps you out.

-Landman

Planning It All Out

I’ve always found it interesting when someone shares how they come up with an idea and what they did to start writing a story. I’ve heard people have made detailed outlines and story arcs or story pyramids (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and dénouement).

When I started writing my novel, I knew exactly where I wanted Rena to go. Of course, it was all in my mind. I decided I needed a written outline, so I could refer back to it. I wrote one, and it certainly helped. I found it was a lot easier to write scenes because, technically, I had already written them; they just needed details and descriptions.

Finding the best way for you to plan out a story, I believe will make it easier in the long run. Once you figure out how you work as a writer, your writing will ultimately be improved.

What do you do when planning out a story?

-Landman

Where the Action Is

Another aspect of writing I struggle with is writing action scenes. My internal dialogue is great. My descriptions are great. But when it comes to writing action, my writing seems to lag and it rushes through all of it.

I recently wrote a short story about a teenage girl who goes to the fair with her friends and little sister. The little sister wanders off, leaving the teenage girl in a whirl of panic. At least to me it was panic. In the actual story, it was just boring sentence after boring sentence following the girl in the pursuit of her sister. All of the feedback from my fellow workshoppers said the same thing.

It got me thinking, what makes a good action scene? What keeps me on the edge when I’m writing an intense scene? I’m thinking it is the actual language itself. Sentences build in quickness as you read them; they get choppier and choppier. I have yet to try this out, but I will soon.

-Landman

Plot Twists

Plot twists are what make fiction interesting. I love writing fiction based on reality, but with a little more of a spin on things.

I like experimenting with people’s relationships, like a girl is dating her best friend’s half-sister’s cousin, and the cousin’s best friend is an enemy of the girl. It is interesting when people’s relationships are messed up like that.

For example, I dated this guy once who was my friend’s uncle. Before you get disgusted, he was only seven months older than me. His oldest brother was 20 years older than him, and the father of my friend. I told people about the relationship all of us had, and people were interested; they would ask more questions.

But the point being, it was weird, so they were interested, and they remembered it. I learned from that experience that I should make the relationships of my characters really weird and crazy so they are remembered.

-Landman