15 April, 2010 8:53 am

The Freewriting Process

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by Deb    in NonFiction Writing, Writing Courses, Writing Prompts

eBook Write Out LoudIt’s a few years since I brought out my eBook, Write Out Loud, on freewriting, and people ask me if I still write that way? Am I still freewriting? Hmmmm, do ducks still swim?

Of course I am. I don’t know how to write any other way.

The thing is, when you start a writing project you have to begin somewhere and freewriting is a great way to find that somewhere. The first word has to go down, followed by the second to make up the sentence. You may have a rough idea of what you want to say in the body of the piece, or you may have no idea where you’re going when you first start, but where ever it is, a start must be made. Getting those first words is even more pressing when you’re on a deadline.

If I’m writing nonfiction, I might start with research and let that suggest a few angles. For instance, I was recently asked to write a short piece on home insurance. What do I know about home insurance? Being ‘between homes’ I don’t even have insurance at the moment.

But this was a general interest piece for an estate agency (real estate) website. I didn’t have to consult experts, mention particular brands or focus on any one aspect of the subject. I just had to write an SEO article around the general subject.

I started with research and went to one of my favourite hunting grounds, the BBC News website. At this point I had no idea what I was going to write. I only knew I had to write something. I’d said I’d do it. I had a deadline. Between now and then an article on the given subject had to come out of my keyboard.

When I’m writing nonfiction I need a starting place before freewriting can work its magic. Freewriting prompts are great for fiction, but I find not so great for nonfiction at the beginning. On the BBC website I found my starting place within minutes, and a few minutes later, having scanned a couple of articles on the subject, I had enough knowledge to fire up Scrivener and begin freewriting.

I don’t fret about structure at this stage. I have a little corner of my mind on the clock – I’m on deadline remember – and if this writing is going to be profitable to me I can’t afford to tinker and angst over word choice. I trust my freewriting muse to deliver to goods, and with my general subject in mind I just start writing.

And from that point on I let it go where it wants. All the time I’m subconsciously giving it a little direction because the research I’ve just done is fresh in my mind. My muse has plenty of fodder to draw on.

One paragraph in and I’m rolling. A structure of sorts begins to suggest itself and I let it run. What I don’t do is make alternative suggestions to my muse, or worry about whether it’s be the best structure. It’s a structure. That’s all I need. Let it grow and see what happens.

What happens is this. The more I trust my freewriting muse the more it delivers to me. Words are there when I need them. Sometimes the best words don’t pop up until the last minute, and that’s okay too. It’s the popping up that counts, not the moment when they do so.

Having been given a great ending line, right at the point when I hit my given wordcount, I stop writing. Close Scrivener. Shut the laptop. Go and have coffee.

My first draft of the article is in the bag and what I need now is a little distance from it. When I come back, which might be an hour or so later, or given the lead time it might even be a day or so later, I read it with a fresh eye. 9 times out of 10 I’m happy with what I got and don’t need to do more than tighten, correct typos, check for SEO (which Scrivener is great for – see here) and alter accordingly.

For the article in question, my great line at the end was actually a lousy place to end. It was too sudden, had no element of conclusion and left the reader hanging. Not good.

I sort of knew this as I was writing, but because I was freewriting, and this is what you do when you’re freewriting, it had to go down. Always remember, freewriting is first draft stuff. A fast way of getting the ideas down and controlling the internal editor.

When I went back after my break, I realised my rotten ending made a perfect beginning.

It was a couple of minutes work to shift that ending up to the start and rejig the transitions so it read smoothly. A little editing in the body reduced my word count, and having done that tidying up I was more able to see the finished structure and add an ending that rounded off and provided a proper conclusion.

I could have sat for a couple of hours at the start, fighting with myself to find the perfect beginning. I could have refused to start until I had the structure planned out and the ending firmly in mind.

From experience I know this way of writing doesn’t work for me.

I found my perfect beginning only after I’d almost finished. What became the opening sentence of my article was actually the last one I wrote.

In freewriting this happens time and time again. It’s a process you have to learn to trust, and you can only learn to trust it if you try it out for yourself.

I’m not saying freewriting like this works for everyone. We all do things a little differently from each other. But it works often enough, for enough people, that if you haven’t tried it yet, you maybe should.

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13 April, 2010 2:31 pm

Scrivener and SEO

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, NonFiction Writing

scrivener logogI spend quite a lot of my writing time providing web content for various clients. This involves writing for SEO (search engine optimisation) purposes, which means, amongst other things, you need to weave keywords or phrases seamlessly into the text. The idea is that both search engines and humans will find meaning in the words.

Whilst I’ve found Scrivener invaluable over the last few months I’ve been using it for both fiction and articles, I’ve only just realised what a help it is when it comes to SEO.

Scrivener is the most magical of writing apps. I can’t imagine how I used to keep things organised before I found it.

For nonfiction writing, it’s just so easy to keep everything together, labelled either by subject area or client, and in the corkboard view I can see at a glance the content of each separate piece. A big help when you’re trying not to repeat yourself!

But back to SEO and how it helps with that. The key trick is in repeating the words and phrases you want the search engine to focus on. Not so much that it sounds silly, but just enough to throw a definite spotlight on the subject matter.

Scrivener has a neat little trick up it’s sleeve that helps with this.

scrivener screen shot

Under View/Statistics/Text Statistics (or ^⌥⌘S) there’s an option for Word Frequency. Clicking on it reveals all the words in the document along with how many times that word’s been used. What this means is that if you’re after a word density of, say, 5%, and your document is 500 words long, you need a word frequency of 5 alongside your target word. Any less than that and you know you need to go back and add some stealthy repetitions in. Any more than that, and providing it still doesn’t sound like it was intended for four-year-olds learning to read, and you’re onto a winner.

Ideally you want the keywords to be evenly spaced all through the body of the article. It’s no good at all repeating your SEO targeted word/phrase ten times in the first paragraph then leaving it out of the rest.

Scrivener helps here too, via its search facility.

In the little search box at the top of the screen, just type in the word you want it to look for, and it will highlight every instance of that word in the document. You can see at a glance where the targeted words appear and through this visual pattern you’ll immediately see if you’ve got the spacing about right.

Of course, with short 500 word blog posts, the search option is enough to show me my word density. Where the text statistics score over a simple search is in the added information it gives me. For example, in this article I’m mostly targeting the words Scrivener and SEO, but in text statistics/word frequency I can quickly see if I’ve inadvertently targeted other words too. Search engines are pretty clever, but they’re not clever enough to deduce intended meaning from accidental meaning. So if I’ve got the same number of repetitions of a different word the search engine might lay the emphasis on that instead and return a search result I didn’t intend.

Clever Scrivener.

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7 April, 2010 11:38 am

Is Your Main Character a Wimp?

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing

Tin SoldierAre your main characters lurking in the wings and refusing to take centre stage? Are they constantly upstaged by every bit player who walks across your pages?

If so, you’re not alone. It happens to the best of us. There’s always the danger that a little girl in the chorus line will suddenly sing up and attract the spotlight, effectively putting the real main character in the shadow. In a single POV story this isn’t a good thing because your protagonist is supposed to stay in the spotlight all the way through. The real danger of secondary characters who step out of line is that, once allowed a taste of glory, they very often won’t give it up and can send your whole plot off on a tangent.

In an ailing story this might not be a bad thing if it gives a new spark of life and renewed interest on your part, even if it does entail rewriting the parts that went before. But in a story that is otherwise sound, letting a secondary character take the lead can only bring trouble.

The main character needs to grab back the control, and only you, the writer, can give him back that control. If you’re struggling with a sulking or hiding main character, these tips might help.

1. Give your main character the best lines of dialogue. The main character is supposed to be one who makes the smart remarks, is always ready with the quick retort and (in comedy) gets the most laughs. If, for some reason, your main characters are always being upstage by the bit-players it’s possible you don’t know your character well enough, or you don’t like them well enough to really walk in their shoes or live in their heads when you’re writing. Go back to the drawing board of character creation and have a heart to heart talk with them. Find out what makes them tick, makes them laugh or cry, what it is they most want in the world and what they’d die to achieve, or protect, or gain and work with them until you understand them inside and out.

2. Make your main characters work hard for their survival. They’ve got to be faced with overwhelming odds right from the beginning. They can’t carry ray guns in their pockets unless their enemies have bigger and better ray guns. Think back to all the successful books or films you’ve seen over the years and try to think of a single one where the main protagonist was (initially) stronger than the antagonist. There’s no such beast. Even Superman has his weak spots that his enemies know about and use against him at every opportunity.

3. Keep your main character active, not passive. Let him be the one who makes the big decisions, the big mistakes, the big sacrifices. If he’s ever sitting around drinking tea and thinking whilst someone else is fighting his battles you’ve lost him, and the one doing the fighting has stolen the limelight.

If your main character still refuses to get out there and you find yourself still favouring a secondary character when it comes to the best bits in your fiction, you possibly need to make that secondary character your new main character.

Yes, it might take some rewriting and replotting, but if your fiction is going to be successful it’s vital that the character who’s taking top billing in the story is the one who deserves it.

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5 April, 2010 9:34 am

Finding Your Writing Process

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, Random Writing Rambles, Scrivener

A lot has been written about the process of writing – how you go from initial glimmer of an idea to the final draft – and for good reason. It’s one of the things that most bugs new writers, and most fascinates many more experienced writers. When you’re starting out, you wonder if you’re doing it right, and when you’ve been at it a while you’re curious about what processes other writers use.

For those just starting out, the question of whether or not you’re doing it right, whilst valid and, to some extent, unavoidable, is a question that can never be totally answered.

There are as many different answers as there are writers. We all do it a little differently from the next person, and we’re all right. It’s getting to the final draft that matters, not the route we take.

Having said that, there’s something very reassuring about reading about the writing process of someone who’s further along the road to success than you are. At the very least you can, maybe, learn to streamline your own process if you’re lucky enough to find someone who’s work pattern is already similar to your own. At the very best you can discover that other more widely published writers take a route that’s just as meandering and repetitive as your own. Very reassuring.

The important thing is that you don’t let another writer’s writing process totally derail your own.

This has happened to me in the past. I’ve read a workflow that sounds really good, efficient, clean and organised. I’ve thought it was something I just had to try. I’ve abandoned my own process and adopted the new one – with mostly disastrous results. Disastrous because I’ve had to study how they did it to make it work for myself, so I’ve wasted precious writing time. I’ve had to, in some instances, recopy notes already written in order to make them fit into a new pattern, and I’ve even had to get new software and learn how to use that before I could proceed. And in the end, just about every time, I’ve eventually abandoned the new process and gone back to the one that is uniquely mine.

Just occasionally I come across a writing process/workflow that really does help. In case you’re curious, the best ones I’ve found recently are the totally fabulous writing app Scrivener (which all mac users who write really ought to have, and which I was so sure would be the right one for me I actually bought a mac so I could use it), and which I now use for all my writing, the diary system used by David Hewson, and the notebook used by Antony Johnston.

I’ve always made copious notes about what I’m writing, including plot progression ideas, character sketches, motivations, questions to myself and my characters, reasons and consequences, and I’m more inclined to follow Mr. Johnson’s method of having one notebook on the go at a time, rather than a dedicated notebook for each separate long project/novel. I’ve never tried MacJournal, as used by Mr. Hewson but I am tempted by his latest idea of the private, online novel blog diary and may give that a go.

These two examples of successful author’s processes help rather than derail my own writing process because they expand on methods I already use – namely the notebook and Scrivener. With my notebook, I have tended, in the past, to leave my notes in there and eventually lose them in the plethora of random addresses, phone numbers and shopping lists that also get noted down. But if I adopt either the online diary or the extended use of Scrivener as described by Messrs Hewson and Johnston I should, theoretically at least, not lose track of my notes again.

I don’t think I’ll ever be totally cured of my curiosity towards other writer’s working methods, but hopefully I’ve learned over the years what works best for me and can now pick and choose which new methods I take on board.

The very best advice? By all means read how others do it, and learn from those who’ve gone before, but ultimately follow your own instincts and do what feels best for you. And never, never, ditch a working method half way through a project unless your present writing process just isn’t working and you’re starting again anyway.

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27 February, 2010 1:24 pm

Should You Write Every Day?

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by Deb    in Fiction Writing, Random Writing Rambles

notebookPhoto by jking89

Should you write when you don’t want to?

Everyone’s heard the advice to write every day. I’ve even repeated it to writers myself, but I’m wondering if it’s really good advice after all.

Most writers start out writing because they enjoy it. They do it just simply because they can and because it gives them a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment. It’s why I started writing, and why my exercise books in school consisted of several taped together by the end of term, whilst most people were struggling to get half way through their first. I just loved to write and wrote at every opportunity.

Back then I had no notion of writing for money, or writing to please someone else. It was just something I did, and if it pleased me it was good enough.

Because I had so much enjoyment in my writing, I wrote on most days. But I never felt bad or guilty for the days when I didn’t. I never once got anxious that if I missed a day or two, or even a week or two, I’d struggle to get back into it or have to relearn some writing skills.

If you don’t write everyday, unwritten crap doesn’t build up in your head. You don’t have to get all that garbage down on the page before you can writing the good stuff again. Once you can write well, you can write well at any time no matter how long you stay away from it.

You might get rusty. You might find your ideas don’t flow quite as smoothly or as fast as they did when you were writing every day. But you won’t necessarily have to write rubbish before you get to the good stuff.

The biggest danger in not writing every day, especially if writing isn’t your living, is that it’s harder to start again after a break.

Being such creatures of habit, if we allow the writing habit to get broken then that precious half hour we’ve got into the habit of stealing from each day will become elusive again. If you’ve missed two weeks of writing, it’s only too easy to let yourself believe another day won’t hurt.

That’s the biggest danger in not writing everyday. Losing the habit. Not losing the ability to write.

So, should you write everyday?

I’m no longer going to say yes. I’m going to say, if you like. If you want to minimise the danger of writing becoming something you used to do but no longer find time for.

But also if you still find it enjoyable to write every day.

If it’s become a chore, if you no longer enjoy it, then give it a miss. Walk away from it. Do something else for as long as it takes.

Writing is hard enough without making it a punishment.

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