been away

I haven't written for a couple of reasons. No feed back for one. Why write if no one is interested, and I've been working on my own novel. I still check back from time to time and will post if anyone leaves a comment or question.

I'm about 3/4 through my rough draft. Also looking for a possible writing partner. Although I don't run out of topic ideas, (I've given away more on Yahoo Answers than I have written about) a partner will help me get through the writing faster. We can either co-write something, or be readers for each other's writings.

I did find one person who said he was looking for a partner, but he was looking for someone to do all the work, or so it seemed to me. He kept asking more and more details about my experiences with the Beatles (I had no personal ones), yet seemed unwilling to share any parts of his story.

He did not answer my questions about being homeless, even though he said he was for a short while. I just didn't see a partnership forming here.

Anyway, I'm still hopeful, AND still writing!

Oh No! I've Got an Essay Due!

I think people over think essays. Really just think about how a conversation would go. For the people who ask, "HP or Twilight?" a teacher would say "compare and contrast the characters in Harry Potter and Twilight"
I haven't read either one of these, but I know what the teachers would look for. A thesis statement comes first. In a conversation with your friends, this is your short answer. So you pick Harry Potter.
Begin:

Harry Potter is superior to Twilight because he has a natural ability that sets him apart from others and still has room to grow as a character so everyone likes him.

What the teacher looks for is the example. Or you can choose Twiligt.

Bella's character is already developed so the book can proceed with the action which is the purpose of a fiction novel. Or Bella provides a strong female rolemodel for the girls who are most likely to read this book. In chapter 2 she stands up to her domineering parents and meets Edward... (I actually had to make this up, but the point is there's not a right or wrong, but only that the teacher is asking you to back up your statement.

An example of a real one is: compare and contrast the action in "The Yellow Wallpaper' with that of "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge".

In both of these stories the action takes place inside the main character's head. In Owl Creek Bridge, The action is his last longing to be home right as he is being hanged. In the Yellow Wallpaper the action is the character's attempt to remain sane during an enforced rest where she is literally ordered to 'turn off' her very active and creative mind.

Also in both the stories, the attempts end in failure, as the Owl Creek Character did not escape, but was hanged, and in the Yellow Wall Paper, the woman goes insane as demonstrated by seeing things that aren't there.

A contrast might be that in Owl Creek Bridge, the character deserved to die, but the character in the Yellow Wallpaper was taking a health retreat, so she was harmed by those who loved her. In this part of your essay, can't you hear yourself telling your friends, "yeah, but.."?
Teachers usually want three examples of each (3 comparisons and 3 contrasts)

A conclusion might be that life is gennerally better when you are in charge of your own life as demonstrated by the woman id The Yellow WallPaper would have been fine if she was allowed to determine when she had enough 'rest' rather than let the doctor's program or tradition determine when she could go home, or the man who was hanged at Owl Creek Bridge only commited treason through Hobson's choice and would have gone home and retired from the war if given the chance rather than the Union army commander hang him so his men could blow off steam.

The other type of essay is also a conversation. I see the question "Does he like me?"
A teacher would ask, "What does the author mean when he says...?"

When you post online does he like me?, you have no problem digging for examples of behavior, like 'every time I look at him, he is already looking at me', or 'he started sitting next to me at lunch'. This is really all your teacher is looking for.

Start with the short answer as your thesis statement:

He likes me as demonstrated by his change in routine of sitting with me instead of his friends, and looking to see if I notice him.
The body of the essay would be actions you would take to encourage this behavior, such as changing hairstyle to confirm that he is in fact watching you, or start attending his track meets to show you have an interest in him also.

The conclusion is something like he likes me and this is something I would like to take to the next level by introducing him to your circle of friends so you can be comfortable around each other.

A teacher might have an assignment like: What is the theme of "The Way to Rainy Mountain"?

Again the thesis statement is the short answer.

Momaday is tracing his roots through three means. Go into your examples for the body of your essay.
One method is to tell his grandmother's stories. Even though she grew up after the decline of the Kiowa People. She knew their factual history through knowing where each of the the legends came from.

Then you'd give one of the legends, say the origin legend that shows the Comanche started as hunter-gatherers in the Rocky Mountains. This is a long story so finding examples is easy.

But don't get carried away at this point because YOUR theme is the way Momaday shows his own history. You need another statement about Momaday's methods. So you say something like:

Another way Momaday traces his roots is through personal trips to the places where the legends originate. In the Black Hills he sees for him self that they saw the plains as an empty land and yet saw the Comanche People living there. Traeties were made for passage and trade remembered through the legends of a people who had no written language.

Finally he honors his past by celebrating his grandmother's life at her gravesite through remembering her contributions to their people

The conclusion is his resolve to add his own contributions at preservation of a dying culture through his writing.

I had intended to split this blog into two entries, but I have a conclusion of my own. A good writer keeps on top of things even though they may not seem important in themselves as far as getting words on paper. This is shown by my total inability to edit what I write.

Looking back through most of my blog entries, I see typos, ommissions, and a few duplicate sentences. Is that a reflection of a bad writer or one who grew up in an age before computers?

fanfic

This post is short, but just to keep the blog active... I've seen some successful fanfiction out there. There's a couple of things I found out. Copywrite of course. The easiest way to get around the copywrite infringement is to send your story to the same publisher as the original story and clearly label it as fan fiction.

The other thing to note is do NOT make it a love story. We fall in love with characters and that tends to show up in our stories about them. You can't do that if you stand a chance of getting published. Captain Kirk must always ride off into the the unknown, and Spock does not acquire emotions. I'm giving away my age here, but you get the idea. Characters that go on a quest are worn out by their experience and while they may get married in the end of the book, it's a wrap up of the story, not a part of it. He changed and no longer fits into the culture he saved.

Remember YOU did not make up the characters, so you can't change their personalities.

More on what should I write about

It occurred to me that homework (I know Uggh) could be incorporated into your stories. I've already mentioned using history and mythology stories as plot basis.

Health and Diet classes can be fillers. Fantasy stories usually include a hunter in the traveling group, but what if the group came down with scurvy because they didn't have fruits. Could the weakness that the antagonist have be lead poisoning from all the pewter dishes he likes to eat from?

If you take psychology, is there something on group dynamics that will help you decide how members of the group squabble, then ultimately resolve their differences? After all, you should have a lot of alpha personalities. They'll all want to be the leader.

Does your sociology book have something on how societies are put together? Your group has to have something to save and reason to fear the change they are trying to stop.

Less obvious is algebra.
Population shifts, is the birthrate declining in your society? Are people disappearing?

How fast can you climb a mountain. How do you choose the best path up? If you are moving a whole village to a safe place, it will be a different path than a band of hardy explorers.

In a village, how big or deep would a cave used for food storage have to be to supply a whole population?
Do they have farms? How big would they have to be in order to supply the entire area for a year.

In the antagonists camp: He surely has a large, permanent place. It would have to have large roads to trasport supplies, plus (usually) not the brightest of followers, and yet it is kept secret. How is this accomplished?

Walking, horseback or bicycle speeds. These will help you set the timelines for your novel. How long will your journey be?

Can you plot points on a graph? You'll need all this information to make a realistic map.

All this math is algebra 101. Now you know why authors include a map. Writing is a job, it's real work, my friends. (It will also give you cool questions to ask your math teacher, which is almost as good as knowing the answer, if she calls on you.)

Religion and Spirituality

I was spending some time in R&S at Yahoo Answers until the 'do my homework questions' questions die down. It's a good place becausr the people there, no matter their beliefs or lack of them have something to say. Sharing information is always a good reason to write things down.

A search through the local libray and bookstore categories showed me that religious writings are not a specific genre. It is a category placed either by itself or under philosophy depending on what part of the country you are in.

For the purpose of writing though, you must know the genre. I found three. The fiction tends to be love stories so the barrier is one party is Christian and the other isn't, or a very few have two separate religions. I was unable to find anything with the protagonist being anything other than Christian. Any practising Muslims or Buddhists would find a wide open market, I should think.

In non fiction, I found two styles of writing. One is written by those with degrees explaining Bible escatology The origin and meaning of the wording of the Bible with rference to how it was used at the time of writing. There were a few works that published sermons and works aimed at spreading the Gospel message. There was not many of them because the target market (unbelievers) are unlikely to buy them. Again, I was unable to find very little from non Christian religions. I would avoid this type of writing if you don't have a degree or are fluent in Greek, Hebrew or Aramaic (a dead language)because you'll need to have something original to add to whatever is out there.

Another type is the daily living variety, such as the Chicken Soup for the Soul series or The Upper Room. This format is marked by giving a Bible verse and sharing a personal testimony relevant to the verse. Sometimes an event will remind the writer of a verse and sometime the daily reading will especially stand out because of something that happened that day. This is a good field to specialize in because it's more effective when written by layity persons. The focus should be on your daily walk with God.

One type I found exactly zero on was Contemporary Christian fiction that was not a love story. Nothing about anyone's conversion experience, nothing about how people share their story in the workplace without getting labeled as wierd, or even if they tried it, what the reaction of hte people you talked to were. And nothing about how your life changed for better (or worse?) after your conversion.

Libraries think they are up to date if they carry a copy of the Holy Quoran, but then I live in what is called the Bible Belt. There also may just not be anything out there. The bookstores had very little to offer, but tell me they can order anything if I have an ISBN number or the title and author.

Hope this gives someone ideas. Peace

What do I write about?

I see this question a lot. Has anyone considered non fiction? For example, I subscribe to a magazine, Organic Gardening which has a monthly column on mulch piles.
If people will pay to read about the different ways of of creating food scrap piles, it shows you don't need a degree to write. You do need knowledge though.

Do you have a hobby? You probably have magazines on the subject, so you have an idea on what they're lookin for. So you can't compete with what the contributing writers know? Then write about getting started. Write about how you share your hobby with others, or what you do to gain more knowledge on the subject, or even if you hope it will lead to a career, or add to an existing career (if you're working). Perhaps throw in how it helps you escape an job you don't like. My daughter has a BA in history and uses historical events as a plotline for science fiction.

These ideas not working for you? Take your hobby, and place it in a different time. My son and I are writing a story that begins with his love of coin collecting and ends in the Civil war. It will be a time travel story. With some historical facts and websites supplied by my daughter. It gives us all something to do together without dumbing down or talking over anyone. We contribute what we knnow and we're closer for it, whether it gets published or not.

Been on vacation to another culture? Travel mags are generally looking at two angles. One is places not frequented by tourists, and the other is how this trip changed you as a person. Another option could be a kids eye view of what you see, but keep the first two POV in mind. They will not be interested in 'we went to Disney land and had a blast!', but they might be interested in 'we went to Disneyland and met the guy who designs the rides.' This is where the query letter comes in. The risk is, can you deliver? Write the article first, send the query letter, then is they are interested, you can tweak it to put the slant they want on the story. That way you know what information you have on the designer and his works.

Since most of the writer's I meet want to write fantasy or possibly love stories, I'll contemplate my inspiration sources in the next post. If anyone is reading this blog, feel free to post. This post is dedicated to my daughter who bugs me to add to it.

Show don't tell

I was reading a book I've read a dozen times. This is what I gleaned from it.
Those lovely, delightfully descriptive adjectives and adverbs that we merrily sprinkle throughout our profoundly, singularly distinct writing. In a word, DON'T.
Remember writing essays in high school? Take whatever you are working on, look for words ending with ly, and change the sentence to give an example. Which sounds better.
I hate you, the boy angrily yelled at his mom. Or The boy threw his clothes unfolded into his backpack, stomped to the door, and slammed it on his way out. I hate you, was the last words she heard.
If you take nothing else from high school English class, remember the words, "for example".
One half to three fourths of your tag lines should be he said, or she said. If you have two people, or a group with distinctive voices, written so you can tell who's speaking, you should be able to have no tag line at all.
Find your favorite book. The one you have practically memorized so you won't get caught up into what happens next. Look at the dialogue. Watch for times when an action shows tone of voice.
Which makes a better experience:
"Come to my room", she whispered huskily. -or-
Fatima wrapped her scarf around my neck. Drawing a well manicured finger down my bare chest, she said for my ears alone, "Come, let's leave the party"

What else can my characters do?

I decided not to leave you hanging after only one chapter. For chapter 1, I said there is a side trip. Actually, in each chapter there is such a trip. They are not random for the sake of length. Stories have subplots which must be solved in order to solve the main plot. In a quest fantasy, the subplot is having the character gain enough strength to defeat the antagonist. (the enemy). This is accomplished in two ways. He gains new skills or powers so he is equal, but perhaps not as practiced as the antagonist. ie; more magic or charms, plus he becomes more skilled at leadership. ie; his followers like him better, which compensates for his lack of experience.

The best straight line example I can think of is David ben Jesse (who knows his 'real' last name?) We know him as King David in the Bible. When he was annointed by Samuel he was a young teen. It took him 15 years to actually attain the throne. Along the way he lived in the house of King Saul learning the ways of courts and diplomacy, he was hunted, so learned subtlty, gathered an army, learning how to command loyalty and respect, and had friends in high and low places, learning the value of friendships, and how to retain the love of people even through hard decisions. Though he was annointed as king, the crown certainly wasn't handed to him.

As you travel from place to place seeking clues, lost keys, those who need to be on your journey, who needs to be sent home and who to kill off, let each event be something your protagonist will learn from.

Hope I have helped.

This post is dedicated to my son, Jason who lives online. lol

The journey begins

The first part of any journey is to know where you are going. A goal. To get there you need a map, compass or a really smart guy who knows the directions. Design a character guarding the map or a character who knows the way. If you have to go get a map, you'll need a theif. If you're looking for a sage, you have to know what he wants in trade for the information.

Perhaps the sage wants his lady love to visit so he can tell her why he disappeared. Perhaps he's dying and wants an apprentice. Whatever you decide, the sage needs a motive to tell you what you need to know.
If you need to recruit a thief, he needs a motive to join you. Perhaps he has a chance to clear his family name, or collect whatever treasure is with the map, gain bragging right among his friends or be initiated into the guild of theives.

Stealing a map implies someone is guarding it. This character also needs to be designed. A dragon would not be interested in a map, but might like a nice shiney compass. Someone who collects antiquities might like a map, or someone who wants to trade it might even suffice. You may meet characters who want to join but can't add to the success of the journey also. Whether they join or not depends on the personality you gave to your leader, but if you include them, they will need to have a part later, such as shock troops at the final battle scene. They have to have power motive, but they don't need much personality. Just something like 'the antagonist wiped out their village would suffice.

Your map should have a section where this part of the journey ends, the mountain top or cave under the waterfall, whatever you decide. It should be somewhat secluded, but not secret.

In addition to your characters, at least 3 at this point, you should have on your outline a a paragraph about how the protagonist finds out about the problem, It should be a big problem such as save the kingdom, what needs to be done to fix it, (the goal) and the plan.

In the Hobbit, the problem was brought by Gandolf, who also has the position of omniscient narrator. (I personally don't like the omniscient narrator positions, but it's your story.) You could also use someone returning from their own journey.

The goal was to destroy the ring in the volcano in which it was formed.

The first step was figure out what all the strange people were doing inviting themselves into Bilbo Baggins' house. You could also present the problem as something out of kilter in an otherwise steady world, such a when Yoda senses a disturbance in "The Force", in the Star Wars series. This is much more fun to me to collect characters as necessary.

The sage can't sell his information, but requires something the group has to make a side trip to obtain, or his past love doesn't want to see him or she has died.

Your antagonist will not come into play until you pass the first part of the journey which may or may not involve a battle, but must involve a minor conflict. The dragon can be tricked, or he's not intelligent so that he is easily defeated perhaps the towns people distract him while the theif sneaks in.

Each section of the journey must be harder than the last. By the time you reach the ultimate battle sight, your forces must have enough experience working together to defeat the antagonist despite his overwhelming numbers. You will need an army, but you will also learn his weakness during some part of the journey.

This has been an interesting study for me. If I get any feedback, I'll write more. Feel free to add, or to ask questions. Or, if I'm way off base here, let me know.

Fantasy

This is a genre I don't know much about, so if you like it, feedback would be appreciated here.

First I tried to analyse common elements. To do this I watched cartoons with my grand kids all morning, and played army video games with my hubby all evening. Finally I had to read something. I chose The Hobbit, pretty much because I already had it in the house, and I'm cheap. Ain't research rough?

This is what I learned. Structure: Even with the cartoons, your are facing a series of tests, challenges or levels. Each test, or battle will give you a clue or item to help you solve the main purpose of a quest(the journey). The quests are seldom on earth, or if they are on earth, the characters are from somewhere else. They will either be looking for some type of power, or they are defeating someone with power in order to maintain the staus quo.

This means your protagonist will always be the 'good guy'. A bad guy will not be facing the same obstacles ie, no one is trying to stop him because he's doing everything in secret. While he certainly has challenges, writing them out will read like a smooth rise to power and make for a boring book.

So you have exotic landscaping and altruistic protagonists on a journey to save the world, or some variation. But you know that, that's the research you don't need to do because you've read lots of them, and are ready to attempt your own story. Now you need to put the fantasy down for a bit.

Things you need to do. First, have fun. Don't get bogged down with the perfect exotic sounding name just yet. It will come. Remember this is a journey. You will need a map. Take some graph paper and put several sheets on a wall so you'll have space for a large map. Don't write on it yet. You'll be working on this at the same time as your outline.

Your first task is to decide a goal. Why do you have to leave leave The Shire anyway?
Now go to your graph paper and design your own homebase. Don't make it large and put it off to the side because you won't be staying there.

Love, Hope, and Faith

People seem to confuse these words.
Love is always a verb. It means you need to show an action. Love is getting up at 2 AM to change your baby's wet diaper even though you have to get back up at 6am to go to work. It's not a typo or whim that the KJV Bible translates the Greek word into charity in Corinthians chapter 13.

You have to know this when you are writing a love story or reading one, such at Twilight. There- I said it. Stephanie Meyers is either loved or hated, it seems. Seldom do people say they can take it or leave it. If you understand that she wrote a love story rather than trying to classify it as a fantasy, you'll be able to wirte something similar without copying her, even you have vampires in it. What is the struggle they overcome to be together? Change the basic conflict and you will have a different story. Keeping it about a clash of cultures even if you change the character into a werewolf, and it will still sound like copying.

Hope is usually an adjective, sometimes a verb. "I love him but he doesn't know I exist" is a post I commonly see on Yahoo Answers. Hope is what you want to happen. Why? What do you know about him if you gaze from afar? You need hard facts to make someone else happy. Does God approve of your actions? Is your baby comfortable? Does your guy have a hobby? If he doesn't know you exist, can you let him know? Books and real life are similar here, don't tell, show! Watch him play football even if you don't understand the game. Bring him a drink or a snack. You understand working out in the hot sun. If it's not worth the effort, do you really love him? If you want him (whether it's in your own life or a character you're writing) to treat you a certain way, is there any indication that he will do it? If there isn't, you will end up constantly trying to change him, creating conflict. If his mom cleans his room for him, he will not suddenly become a neat freak when he leaves home. Something needs to happen outside of the relationship to make him want to change, like his uniform is nasty right before the big game with the talent scouts in the stands. -Ah, the subplot-

Faith is a noun- something you have. Do you want a bigger one? Do you want two of them? This makes no sense even to dedicated Christians who commonly pray for it. Besides, God said my grace is sufficient for thee. So what exactly are we praying for? Faith is the substance of things hoped for. (Heb 11:1) Faith is the warm fuzzy feeling people are trying to describe when asked about what is their definition of love. What the prayer means is we'd like to be able to see it. We want to see our love returned, whether it from God or a potential boyfriend. Faith is what tears the heroine up when she has to choose between the rich, but authortarian boss who nevertheless pays her dying father's hospital bills (and has secretly loved ever since she saw him cry at his own mother's funeral) meets the poor poet who has claimed he is her muse and inspiration to keep going. Whew! Long sentence there.

This post is dedicated to my Composition teacher in college, Carolyn Horner, who showed us how to break down a piece into it's elements, as really I don't read love stories or fantasy either for that matter. Hope I got this one right.

Passion

I keep seeing online the idea that passion is a qualification to be a writer. Sure it is, but don't misplace it. Writing is work. A good wordsmith puts a lot of skullsweat into finding the best way to take the pictures in his head, and put them into the reader's head.

In a quest story, the genre of LOTR, you could say something like:
The group of lost explorers huddled in their camp on the mountain. They prayed to Jove, god of the sky for guidance. There's was a meteor shower. It was enough to let them know Jove was still watching out for them.
The next day they saw an eagle. It led them west through the mountain pass that they hadn't been able to find in the previous days storm.

Same story:(paraphrasing John Denver) On the rocky mountain high, we prayed to the gods for guidance. The storm hadn't let up for days and the last of the food was long gone. Hunger had many in cramps and frostbite was threatening fingers. Directly overhead, we saw it raining fire in the sky. It was an omen. Jove, god of the sky had answered or pleas. We could rest now. In the morning an eagle's flight called us to dance on the west wind. It led us through the pass Jove had opened before us. We were free. The new settlement would honor Jove above above all other gods, as a token of respect.

Or which is better? (based on the movie Transformers):
Fly the fighters to latitude 41 degrees north by longitude 17 degrees east and saturate the area with bullets. -or-
Look for the orange smoke and Bring On The Rain!

The passion you have should be in your life, not sitting in front of a computer. Do you see having a passion for numbers as a requirement for an accountant? No, it's a skill to be learned. You need the interest to learn that skill, though. For fantasy writers the passion is to reach beyond the mundane and take others with you.

So you're 15 and can't take off for the Colorado mountains. Is there a place to hike? Can you check out the sporting goods store at the mall? Why does a tent claim to sleep four when it's six feet on each side? If you are asked where to vacation, can you pick a state park instead of a theme park? Can you rent a canoe for a day on the lake? I promise you, you'll show a better adventure if you have guideposts. Say yes to passion, but live it, not desparately seek it. Your stories will only be improved.

Food Not Bombs

This is a group that meets in our city park every Sunday to give food to local homeless people. One Sunday I cooked a cassarole and volunteered with them.

I met quite a number of homeless and struggling people. Many have jobs, this was essential to my story. They are disabled, or underemployed, or have no jobs skills. The number of panhandlers was low, but perhaps they weren't willing to admit to doing it. Some worked under the table, or were illegal. A few seemed to have a lazy streak, though few admitted to that, of course. For my story, I've had to learn to read people and I suck at it. I was dependant on other volunteers to give me the lowdown on the regulars. I generated some characters from this adventure.

I stayed after the food I brought was served and spoke with a few people eating. The homeless people tend to not trust each other either. They'll steal from each other and when they congregate, the police tend to watch them more closely. This became an aspect of my story, too. My main subplot actually--will the homeless people work together to change their situation, or keep going from one handout place to the next and hope for change?

I learned that some local residents are trying to shut them down even going so far as to claim there are break ins, prostitution, and muggings in the park. The city closed one parking lot while there was an investigation. They didn't find anything in two weeks so the parking lot was reopened. This is a large, well lit and landscaped park with a waterfall, that holds free concerts every weekend during the summer, not a lot with a swingset installed. It's called Findley Park if anyone is familiar with the area. (Columbia, SC). This became fill in for my story that puts more pressure on the characters in order to get them working together.

A few people shared with me how they spend their nights. Shelters when it's cold, under bridges when in town, camping in lots seems to be a favorite. --Every story needs descriptive passages. Details like snakes also like to be under bridges, and a cut on the leg tends to not heal due to poor nutrition but can be ignored until 'suddenly' when it's cold, it's infected and requires a hospital stay with with lots of food and clean sheets and showers. How much is deliberately infected by rubbing dirt in it and how much is real, who can say? Details like this make my story more realistic.

I was in the park about four hours and spent a couple more over the next week following the parking lot closing in the newspaper. There's information from this trip on every page in my story. If you have writer's block, turning on music might might help you phrase what you want to say, but getting out in the world will give you fresh information. Why work when you can have the story handed to you? GO FORTH WRITERS!

testing a premise

The premise of the novel I'm working on revolves around a group of homeless people who try to buy some land to camp on. To test if that was reasonable, one thing I did was visit some banks.

In one bank, even though I told them I was writing a story, and not actually asking for a loan, I was not made to feel welcome. In their defense perhaps they felt I was tying up their time with non banking matters.

Another sent me to their PR office (online) and they didn't get back to me. I didn't know banks have PR services, but if they did, wouldn't they want to leave a favorable impression?

I actually had good luck at a credit union where I was told to form a co-op so they could look at all the bits of verifiable income the people made could be concidered as one lump sum.

That's a lot of specific material for a couple hours work. Research needn't be hours and hours of reading in the library, if that not your thing. I wrote four different scenes- maybe 20-25 pages from a couple of hours visiting. Even the null results were information. Of course I could play it up since my character would have the added problem of needing a shower, and having self esteem problems, like not being able to look people in the eye.

This is meant by writing what you know. Don't be afraid to give yourself an experience if you haven't got any. You can't write about traveling around the world if you haven't done it, so go do something.

Don't assume people will 'get' what you want to say. Try to figure out details that will make it real to them. When I describe homeless people endlessly walking, I give them motive, and put description of what's in their heads so the reader's feet will hurt when they're done reading. Only enough description of the area to let the reader know whether the area is familiar to the character or not. That the way homeless people think. Where to go next.

A quest story would be different. The area is NOT familiar and would require extensive description to put the reader on heightened alert right along with the characters. If anyone wants to share stories of how they get ideas, this is the place.

Why I started this blog

I have been on Yahoo answers, and posted to what are probably highschool kids. This is great, really, that people want to write. I run across the same questions and problems time and again though, so I thought this might help. I also want to write and thought this might also help me, as I'm not published either.

Since there are plenty of places to edit stories, this blog will try to focus on stuff to do 'behind the scenes'. Stuff to do before you write the story. I've tried to point things out in a story that I see needs work, and people defend the reason it needs to stay the way it is. This is fine if you're happy with the story and nobody said you have to followed my suggestions, but then why did you put it out for peer review? If something's hard to follow because too many viewpoints in a scene, (there should be just one) then it's up to the writer to fix it, it's not up to the reader to understand a more complicated plot. If I can spot that, an editor will too.

I never get writer's block- ever. That's about all the expertise I can claim at the moment. Hoping to be able to share with other newbies to the writing scene so we can encourage and enlighten each other. If you're published we'll hope you can share some tips on that as well.