Photo by Soundman1024

I’m writing this post about that staple of fiction writing, the climax – when the most exciting, most important event in a story happens.

(No, this isn’t one of those how-to sexual technique posts. But you wouldn’t have expected that here, would you?)

Is your writing dull and uninspiring? Not getting traffic? Maybe it just needs a standard fiction technique to spice it up a bit.

TV shows, novels, plays and movies use scenes, dilemmas, and conflicts as ways to build excitement, tension and anticipation about how a story will end.  The climax occurs in a scene when the central conflict or dilemma of a story comes to a head, something happens and there’s a resolution of some kind, like:

• Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star
• Richard Gere’s character proposes to or marries Julia Robert’s character
• The soldiers finally do save Private Ryan

Here are some suggestions on how you can emulate this technique in your writing (this can include article writing, blogging, etc.):

• Start with a mystery, a question, or a controversial idea and construct a way to tell a story that addresses this topic.
• Gradually reveal clues or facts that either support or detract from the idea.  Think of this like presenting a series of scenes (or paragraphs) that describe the concept in more detail.  Take the reader on a journey from point A to point Z and all points inbetween.
• Work up to a revelation, including one or more surprises.  We all love twists and turns in fiction!
• Make the revelation colorful and exciting.  Sometimes predictable revelations are perfectly fine; other times something unexpected is really appropriate.
• Provide food for thought to your reader at the end:  did they learn anything?  Are they motivated to think or act differently?

Non-fiction doesn’t have to be boring.  Borrow some literary techniques and you might be surprised at how your content comes to life!

Following up a bit on yesterday’s post about following a calling, sometimes I wonder where the words come from.

This story helps to illustrate the point. At one point, a music journalist was interviewing a British rock star: I believe Mick Jagger or Keith Richards (both of The Rolling Stones) was being interviewed – we’ll assume it was Mick. The journalist asked Mick about songwriting. Pete Townsend, the guitarist and main songwriter for The Who, had talked about songwriting in interviews and said that his song lyrics came from divine inspiration. He felt that he was the conduit or channel by which some higher power was communicating.  The journalist asked Mich what he thought about this idea. Continue reading ‘Where the words come from’ »

Just write.

Forget about how awful you think it will be.

Forget about how uncomfortable writing makes you feel.

Forget about who might read it.

Forget about worrying what to write.

Just write.  Let whatever comes out come out.

Editing can fix any mistake, omission, or suckage.

You need to write so it gets out.  Then, like Play Doh, you can mold it into the correct shape.  You can fix the problems.  You can even change it completely so that it’s not recognizable from its original form.

But you must write in order to get the idea out.  Nothing else can happen until you take that step.

It can be hard, but it’s worth pushing yourself a bit to do it.

Just write.

Here’s a little snippet of a project that I’m working on:

The Internet is like the world’s biggest amusement park. Amusement parks are full of attractions: rides, games, shows, and lots of people. Picture Walt Disney World for a moment. It has four major theme parks, a major shopping and entertainment area, and a number of hotels and resorts to stay in, plus many stores, rides, eateries, and other attractions.

Imagine one hundred million Disney Worlds and you start to get an appreciation of the size and complexity of the Internet. There is no way that you could visit one million Disney Worlds in one lifetime!

The Internet and the World Wide Web are a lot like one million Disney Worlds. There’s a staggering number of websites for you to explore, devoted to almost every topic imaginable. You can buy, sell, learn, or talk about almost anything on the Internet.

If you’d like to get a sneak preview of the entire document, you can either sign up for the Thought Radiation newsletter E-Mail list (email markdykeman at gmail dot com to register; no need to register again if you’ve already sent your information to me) or you can subscribe to this blog by E-Mail (E-Mail is the only way I’m distributing the sneak peak; ergo I need your E-Mail address).

I have a privacy policy in place if you’re worried about giving out your E-Mail, so please rest assured about that.

Between the green movement and the habits of the mobile computing device age, there’s a growing movement against the unnecessary use of paper.

Let’s state that a different way: more and more people think it’s evil to use paper documents.

Even though paper comes from a renewable resource, there are many downsides to the process of making paper, including pollution, clutter, and garbage.

When it comes to writing (and computing in general), more and more people are getting in the habit of doing everything on a computer screen: writing, editing, and reading.

As a member of Generation X, I spent many, many years both handwriting and using a typewriter to create documents. Every single assignment that I did in high school was done by hand. 90% of the assignments that I did in university were either done by hand or on an electric typewriter.

I use a heck of a lot of paper at work, too. I’m not proud of this, it’s just the habit that I’ve developed.

I’m trying to cut back on my use of paper, at least a little bit, but it’s not going away.

Here’s the thing: I do my best document editing on paper.

I’m doing a little experiment at the moment whereby I’m taking a blog post of about 800 words and I’m forcing myself to edit it. A lot. I have a goal of editing and proofing the post 15 times to see if I can really make something exceptional. I’ve even set up a separate blog to track the editing process, mainly for my own information, but I’ll link to it when this project is done for anyone who’s curious to see.

Here’s the thing that I’m noticing about the editing process: the more substantial, higher quality edits are occurring on paper.

• I can edit for spelling and grammar reasonably well on screen.
• I can rearrange sentences or phrases fairly well on screen, normally within the same paragraph.

BUT

• When it comes to analyzing a paragraph to determine whether it’s necessary
• When I need to determine if the paragraph as a whole makes sense
• When it comes to determining whether or not entire sections of a document flow well

I’m reliant on paper.

There’s something about being able to lay out the pages side by side that I’ve never been able (or interested) to do either efficiently or effectively onscreen.

My conclusion is that paper is still required to do effective editing. Even if some trees must die.

Now that I’ll be barred from ever joining the green movement, I’d like to hear your thoughts. Are you able to do 100% of your blog post or document editing (including BIG documents) on screen? If so, how the heck do you do it?!?

Image by nightthree

Writing continues to transform into a rapid-fire burst of characters that spew out without filters or second thoughts. Get it out, include a link or two and BAM! Your words are on the Web faster than a thundering Emeril (don’t click on this; it’s kind of dumb).

Is this the future of writing?

Fifteen bloody rewrites? Are you a loony?

One thing that stuck in my mind after listening to a recent John Cleese podcast was the idea of drafts or versions of a document. He mentioned doing fifteen (!) drafts on a script. The number of drafts that the episodes of Fawlty Towers that he and Connie Booth went through for each episode is legendary.

In all seriousness, can you ever imagine yourself writing FIFTEEN drafts of a document (unless, of course, you are a professional writer)?

Can you imagine washing your car fifteen times in a row? Making your bed?

Cooking a meal?

OK, bad examples, but do you know what I mean?

Professional writer AND blogger – contrast

Andrew Sullivan, author of The Daily Dish, is a prolific blogger who focuses on short, focused posts including links and quotes to other web pages. I don’t know how much time his average post takes to write, but it doesn’t seem that it would take a long time. These are likely one-draft posts. Blog and go. Apparently they are only 20 minutes apart at times.

By contrast, Sullivan recently provided a well-crafted and thoughtful article about why he blogs. How many drafts did it take him to write that, I wonder?

[Note: podcast with Andrew Sullivan discussing this article is here - MY POST CONTINUES AFTER THE VIDEO]

It takes a village of rewrites to grow a battlestar

Meanwhile, from the Colonial podcast zone, I get the impression that virtually every single episode of the new Battlestar Galactica went through no less than ten drafts, not including scads of minor changes that occurred during filming and editing. Granted, the process of developing screenplays is much, much different than standard documents, mainly because you have to deal with changes that occur when you finally see what your creation looks like in three dimensions.

But still. That is a whole lot of writing.

That’s too complicated for me to write – how about a blog post instead? OR A TXT MSG FTW!

QUESTION: if more and more people keep blogging short bursts of prose on a continual basis, are we gradually going to lose the ability to do the research, analysis, and deep thinking to write traditional long form prose?  [EDIT:  are we losing the knack for revising, proofing, and editing documents into world-class material?  Or are we dealing with a new generation of content creators who don't appreciate the need to EDIT?]

What do you think?