Sometimes you want to work on your WIP when you don’t have much time (during school, work, out on errands, etc) so here are quick, easy, and little things you can do with it when you can’t actually write/plan in-depth. I’ve also included websites and links as jumping off points.
Create a playlist based on the WIP or a character/relationship
A great piece of writing advice I’ve heard (if not one of the greatest) is that you should always write what your characterswouldsay, not what you wantthem to say.
A concept that might sound confusing to new writers, since you’re the one who provide your characters with a voice (they wouldn’t exist without you), but creating a story based on what your characters would say/do, as opposed to what you want them to say/do, really just comes down to what you want to happen in your story, and what realistically would happen.
You might feel the need for a character of yours to talk about their feelings, trust the person standing in front of them. It might be beneficial, the right thing to do — but your character has trust issues, and don’t easily open up to people. Forcing your character to do so anyway, behaving in a way that doesn’t correlate with their personality, can lead to inauthentic storytelling, and characters who continuously contradict themselves.
Keep in mind — with life comes consequences, and your characters should face the consequences of their own actions. You can’t protect them from all things evil, or from making mistakes. Consequences is what drives your plot and your character arcs, and your audience are not looking for perfect characters who never do anything wrong.
So let your characters guide you through their lives — even if the story ends up going in a direction farfrom the one you initially had in mind — let that happen. Your characters will know what to do.
And eventually, the more you familiarize yourself with your characters, and their goals, fears and misbeliefs, the easier it’s going to be to distinguish your wishes from your characters needs, and writing them authentically becomes second nature.
I am absolutely not joking at all when I say that The Sixth Sense should be required as teaching material when you’re trying to get kids to learn about why color matters.
No, the red DOESN’T mean love or violence or passion, however the creators set it up so that in this particular work red means OH NO A SCARY GHOST IS HERE.
When I was in college (as a lit major) I ended up sitting down and talking to a returning student who was having trouble in one of our classes. He liked books, and he had GI bill money so he decided to be a lit major.
He was VERY confused about the “The Curtains Are Blue And It Means Something” approach to symbolism and I remember that he very seriously got out a notebook and a pen, sat down, and asked me “Okay so what to stars mean as a symbol?”
And I was at a loss because of course I was! Stars-as-a-symbol can mean a thousand things and are heavily dependent on context. Are you reading a book about sea travel? Stars mean a map. Are you reading Maus? Stars represent faith and community and the way that the Nazis dehumanized Jewish people. Are you reading something by a romantic author who has a thing for the classics? Stars probably have something to do with heroism and destiny. Are you reading science fiction? Stars are probably just stars but if you’re reading Whipping Star by Frank Herbert they are literally people and our entire conception of stars is reexamined.
So one one the things that I think a lot of people are missing in their high school English classes is that whether the curtains are blue matters or not depends on the work.
The fact that Hamlet is wearing black is an important part of the story and the antagonist commenting on it it is almost the first thing that happens in the play.
What color dress is Lizzy wearing at the first dance in Pride & Prejudice? It doesn’t matter, the curtains are just blue.
And that’s one of those things that it takes a lot of time and a lot of exposure to different kinds of stories to learn and when you’re in high school you just don’t have that experience and your teachers are just now telling you for the first time “sometimes it matters why the curtains are blue” and I know you’re going “okay, sounds fake” but the goal is to get you to look at blue curtains and ask if they do matter, which is why they hand you books with big obvious examples of the kind of shit they’re talking about. You read A Tale of Two Cities because it’s full of binaries and line motifs and it’s the perfect thing to teach a fifteen year old how to look for a motif because there are a shitload of them. You read The Scarlet Letter to look for color symbolism and to ferret out biblical allusions.
“The curtains are just blue” is just “yet another day has gone by and I haven’t needed algebra.” Most people aren’t going to need algebra in their day-to-day lives but it’s handy to know how to do a bit when you need it and it’s good to learn that the concept exists.
If you’re reading books just because they’re fun and you like them then that is cool and I’m glad you’re having a good time and you absolutely do not have to give a fuck about symbolism.
But I am going to laugh my ass off at you if you’re one of those folks who is like “the curtains are just blue it doesn’t matter” and then whines about why scifi and comics and cartoons and video games are all political these days. They were always political, you just couldn’t tell because the curtains were red.
(also because you were socialized to see certain things as apolitical and value neutral but if you’re going “WHY DO THEY PUT SERIOUS MORALS AND SHIT IN A KID’S SHOW, STEPHEN UNIVERSE IS FOR TEN YEAR OLDS IT’S NOT THAT DEEP, LOONEY TUNES WASN’T LIKE THIS” I’m afraid I’m going to have to refer you to all the actual war propaganda made by Disney and Warner Brothers.)
Sometimes suspense is worth it, even if it means serving your audience the entire plot on a silver platter:
In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet isn’t dead. Romeo does not. It’s a tragedy.
In the TV-show Breaking Bad, a DEA agent is looking for a crystal-meth producer who calls himself “Heisenberg,” not knowing that “Heisenberg” is his brother-in-law.
In the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus tries to expose the murderer of King Laius, not knowing that he himself is the murderer.
That my friends, is what we call dramatic irony. A literary device in which the audience’s understanding of certain events or individuals in a story surpasses that of its characters.
What I mean by that is simple — not every plot twist or plot line that occurs in your story has to come as a surprise to your audience.
It’s not in any way wrong to drop important information ahead of time. Sometimes the best way to tackle a twist is simply to let your audience in on what’s happening. Let them anticipate the emotional reactions of the characters. In certain cases, that can be torture. Which is a good thing. Storytelling wise.
You’ll still have your audience at the edge of their seats, not out of suspense of what’sgoing to happen, but out of fear, and excitement, of how the characters they’ve grown to love are going toreact to it.
For all they know, the plot twist, and I am using plot twist loosely, it can just as well be a secret big enough to destroy a relationship, but not something that is going to affect every character, could potentially ruin everything.
It can turn characters against each other, massive consequences to follow. Maybe a certain character is heading towards a certain death, maybe their partner is falling in love with someone else, unaware of their partner’s infidelity.
Maybe a character is enjoying a nice day out at the park, not knowing that previous night a herd of zombies marched through. Instantly alarm bells starts ringing — the apocalypse is upon us. When is the character gonna find out? How are they gonna to find out?
Worst part — a close family member of the character has already fallen victim to the undead, and now, having been missing for a couple days, is approaching said character from behind, reanimated as a zombie. We’ve already seen this person bitten and turned, but for the character, it’s a different story.
Your audience are emotionally invested in your characters. Use that to your advantage.
To haveyour audience sit on a a piece of information, not knowing how it’s going to affect their favorite characters and relationships, can have just as much of an emotional impact as a “regular” plot twist.
This is your friendly reminder that the last few years have been hard, and if your writing has taken a toll as a result, that doesn’t make you any less of a writer. Maybe you went on hiatus. Maybe you got burnout. Maybe life gave you shit and other things took priority. It doesn’t matter. Writing is hard, so when life is hard, you might end up slacking in the writing department. And that’s okay. There’s no rule that says you have to write even when life is shitting on you. You’re allowed to take a break, and you can start writing again when you feel ready.
Take the pressure off of yourself today. Let yourself just write. What words do you want to put on the page right now? What do you want to say? Don’t worry about word counts or deadlines or audiences. Let yourself sink into the story, even if all you can do is manage a few lines. Don’t forget to enjoy the process!
You learn to write by writing, and by reading and thinking about how writers have created their characters and invented their stories. If you are not a reader, don’t even think about being a writer.
Your lack of motivation isn’t because the story isn’t good. It isn’t because it is boring or uninspired.
Your lack of motivation is due to 1. trying too hard to force yourself to create something you’re not in the mood mentally or physically to create or 2. you’re so busy insulting your story, you’re suffocating your flame for it.
When you go, tossing casual insults at your WIP, talking about what makes it imperfect, you are slowly choking off your passion for it. You’re slowly teaching your brain to associate negativity toward it instead of what makes it great.
Don’t forget: brains are genius, but even geniuses can be idiots about certain things. And the brain’s thing is being gullibleyour brain will believe whatever your lips tell it.
So next time you’re thinking about your writing or thinking about something you put a lot of time into, try saying something good, something you love about it.
It won’t change things immediately, but just like burnout came slowly, it will come eventually.
so i’ve been seeing a few posts on avoiding filter words, especially in third person pov, and i wanted to make a post about some of my own thoughts about it!
filter words are words like noticed, spotted, saw, realized, felt, heard, etc. they take an event and as the name suggests, they filter it through the perspective of the narrator.
filter words tend to slow down the pacing of whatever sentence they’re in, so they can clutter up action scenes or reduce the impact of certain moments. however, they’re also not something you should necessarily avoid altogether, and here are a few reasons why!
introspection
while writing a longer work, you don’t necessarily want to be going at 100% for 100% of the time. it’s good to pull back a little bit to give an opportunity for slower, more introspective moments. with no filter words, the rhythm of each sentence accelerates. there’s no moment for deliberation on either the reader or the character’s part, everything that happens simply is.
for example, let’s take a look at the sentence, “he knew he should have been there sooner.” “knew” is a filter word in this case, but it makes it seem like the narrator has had time to think things over and come to this conclusion.
this same introspective tone can work well with a character who’s withdrawn into themself for one reason or another. after a traumatic event, for example, the frequent use of filter words can suggest a character numb to their environment, barely registering what’s happening and even then only through a hazy filter.
unreliable narration
in third person in particular, using filter words can be a great way to hint at an unreliable narrator. “the sound of footsteps echoed down the hall” is what is really happening. the reader and the narrator have the exact same description given to them. “she heard the sound of footsteps echoing down the hall,” meanwhile, is filtering the sound through the pov character. for another level in unreliability, we can say “she thought she could hear the sound of footsteps echoing down the hall.” you can also use filter words to state things to the reader to imply unreliable narration, since as readers, people are primed to assume that a basic description is just that: a basic description.
in first person, the reader is already completely in the narrator’s head, and is already seeing everything through their eyes. in third person limited, meanwhile, filter words can be a good shorthand to mark someone as unreliable, and to create a distance between the reader and what’s actually happening in the text of the story.
filter words should not be used as a crutch, but they also don’t have to be completely removed from your writing! they have their own use cases, and are important to creating narrative distance, whether that be for the sake of internal deliberation or for establishing unreliability.
A lot of romance novels and love stories have the failing that the relationship relies on the the tension being some form of “he’s cruel to her, and then at some point he’s less cruel to her because he’s fallen in love with her”. Those often end up having a fair amount of domestic violence or sexual assault in them, but then he, I don’t know, gives her a consensual orgasm or something, so then it’s fine.
If you don’t want to rely on the character and relationship growth being him being less cruel to her and her being more willing to put up with cruelness, here are some other forms of romantic tension that you can have in romance novels:
Forbidden love - basically the oldest romance plot in the world, two people who are in love but can’t be for some reason. There’s the Romeo and Juliet version of this, but there are also a lot of forbidden or at least taboo relationships in the world right now: same-gender relationships, interracial relationships, interreligious relationships, etc.
I’d caution that you should be wary of writing the type of YA “this white girl’s relationship with this white boy is forbidden because society hates love” forbidden love because it’s a bit played out.
Danger- this is the basis of basically every romantic suspense novel: danger is chasing them, and they can’t focus on their relationship because they need to keep themselves and each other safe, but they’re falling in love anyway. This can have the advantage of forcing them alone for long periods of time.
Circumstances plotting against them - this can be two people who keep missing each other, or one of them is engaged to someone they don’t want to be engaged to, or they’re on opposite sides of a business deal. They want to be together, but something keeps getting in the way.
They love each other but have different priorities - think of every advice column where one person wants children and the other doesn’t. Maybe one wants adventure and the other wants to stay at home, or one wants fame while the other wants anonymity. The tension then is then figuring out if they can make it work despite their priorities, or if it will pull them apart.
A lot of little truths and one big lie - this is one of the tricky ones because it can lead into the sort of gaslighting that isn’t good for a healthy relationship. You can look at books like Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t for a good version of this, but basically what you want here is a situation where one character has a major secret, but everything else they share about themselves is as true as possible, so the love interest knows them even if they don’t know this secret about them. The tension them becomes about the stress of keeping the secret or the stress of what the secret is itself or the stress of the love interest finding out the secret.
Trust issues because they’ve been burned before - they may be in love, but one character (or both) has significant trust issues that keeps them from fully committing/believing in the other person’s love because they’ve been burned before–by hurtful parents, by a previous unhealthy or abusive relationship, by the loss of a love.
They think it has to be temporary - this is a love story with a set end date–one of them will move at the end, or the job will end, or one of them is dying. Whatever it is, they are going into any sort of relationship knowing that it can’t last, and so they are unwilling to commit fully because of it.
Some says something early on that leads to an ongoing misunderstanding - again, this is one of the potentially tricky ones, but this is one where someone says something stupid or misunderstood, and so they need to figure out their way around this misunderstanding.
They used to have an antagonistic relationship - another tricky one, because it can fall into the “one of them is cruel to the other and now they’re getting over it” or “one of them is a bigot but the other is learning to love them despite it”. There’s a certain level of antagonism that you can’t really get past, like abuse, but there are a lot of ways you can play with this. They could be sports rivals or people on opposites of a business deal or people who just never managed to get along, but now it’s later and they look at each other and think oh. This often goes in the direction of one pining before the other (see: Pride and Prejudice) but it can be them falling in love simultaneously.
As writers, we have the great benefit of understanding what makes stories work. What makes characters compelling? What moves the story forward?
When we deal with plot points and character arcs, it can be easy to forget that we’re writing our own story too. What will it look like? We throw our protagonists into unbelievable hardships and write their ways out. Through failure and misfortune, we let our protagonists grow into people that we ourselves aspire to be.
What would your protagonist do if they sat at the desk in your place? A pen in their hand, a page of crossed-out lines in front of them, not sure where to take the story next?
Storiesalways include some sort of conflict. Often, this takes the form of obstacles. A character wants something, but something else is in the way. And that pretty much sums up anyone’s life. We all want something.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably want to write more or even publish a book.
Of course, to get what we want, we have to get over whatever stands in the way. Overcoming obstacles is where good stories are. If I was writing the story of my life as a piece of fiction, what would happen next? What should happen next? What would make sense in the story?
The other crucial ingredient of any successful story is action. Action is what moves a story forward. Even in fiction, people won’t buy a plot where things come to the protagonist without trying much. Pretty much all good stories involve the character making decisions and taking action. They may not be able to make the right choices yet, but it’s better to move somewhere than to do nothing.
You don’t have to display heroic levels of bravery or do some crazy things like your characters. Sometimes, closing the YouTube video that you’re watching and writing some words is enough.
I like to remind myself of this once in a while. It helps me sanity-check whether what I’m doing can reasonably lead to wherever I’m trying to go.
One day, your life will be just a story. It may not be as glamorous or heroic as the stories of our protagonists, but it may often require similar levels of bravery and dedication and work. It’s not easy to look into yourself and write about things you see there. It’s not easy to show up and face the blank page day after day for many years.
It’s not easy, but you have to keep facing the obstacles that stand in your way. Otherwise, your story won’t be worth telling.
About the Author
Hi, I’m Radek . I’m a writer, software engineer and the founder of Writing Analytics — an editor and writing tracker designed to help you beat writer’s block and create a sustainable writing routine.
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create! create! even if it’s been a while. even if you don’t know what to write or draw or sing. connect with what once brought you joy and you will remember how. create in a new way, knit or dance or crochet. try spoken word or painting. poetry or pottery. the freedom in creating… it’s liberating
