If you’ve been writing for a while, you might notice that much of your writing is similar.
Character-types repeat.
Themes replay over and over.
Settings and atmosphere don’t vary much.
This is good when starting out. You settle into your voice, genre, and style. You get comfortable.
Don’t languish in a writing rut.
Once you’ve found your footing as a writer and are confident in your process, it is time to take some risks.
Sure, your readers will expect a certain something from you, but they will also like to be surprised and delighted. Don’t tell the same story over and over again.
Experiment with different POVs, genres, and twists. Ask yourself, how can I make this story unique?
Predictability is boring for you and your readers. Go wild. Go crazy. See what happens! Be remembered!
Will our consciousness survive the death of our body?
No one is sure about what happens after we take our last breath. It can leave us confused, depressed, and maybe even a little bitter.
Humans cope with the big mystery of life by creating. By expressing ourselves through art. By asking the big questions, and hopefully finding an answer to them.
One way we do know consciousness can survive is through writing. Think about the books you’ve read by a dead authors. How have they changed you?
In the bleak, inhuman loneliness, we can touch others all over the world and beyond our physical existence through our books.
I grew up obsessed with movies. Even though I love to binge on series, I still I prefer to watch movies over any other kind of video format.
I think most writers write from a mental movie that plays inside their heads. We fantasize about our books being adapted for the big screen. It’s natural for us to have this mindset when movies are such a huge part of our culture.
Some authors hire screenwriters to adapt their story and pitch their bookmovie’s the hard way. But there is a shortcut…
If you have a book that you think would make a good movie, Screencraft runs a yearlyCinematic Book Contest. Get your submission ready. It opens in September! CLICK HERE.
Ahhh! This is a wonderful tip! If only it were so easy.
One of the biggest challenges of writing is to recreate the exact vision we have in our minds. Our final draft never comes out exactly as we imagined. We usually end up with another version of our original idea.
It’s frustrating, but we must accept this as part of the process. If not, it can hold us up indefinitely.
We talked about this in the post about all the nasties you
write. So many people feel fear and shame about their pasts. Yeah, we screw up.
We have regrets, but many of us own guilt that isn’t ours. We hold back in our
writing because we don’t want anyone to know our secrets.
We’re all doing the best we can in life, and when we make mistakes, it’s often because we’re acting on the wrong information. Then we learn from our experience and move on.
Don’t be afraid to write about what scares you or makes you ashamed. In writing the truth, you will help someone else who was waiting to hear that they were not the only person in the world who made the same mistake.
I think one of the worst things for writing is thinking too much. Our thinking brain is great for clean up, but it will put up a block whenever we do something out of the norm, unexpected, or that breaks the rules.
Thinking brain will say, no, you can’t do that.
Don’t think of the words you should be using. Don’t think of anything. Connect to the mental movie and write down what you see.
Don’t try to make it happen. Let it happen. It already exists in the future. Let it become what it wants to be.
