Advice for writers

I run writing and storytelling courses for all ages and abilities.

People often tell me they’d love to write but don’t know where to start, or they’re worried about how to put a story together.

The knack is to risk it, give it a go and have fun. David Almond says, ‘Writing is play.’

• Put down what’s in your head. Don’t worry about whether it’s right or wrong. 

• Each time you finish a draft, read your story or poem aloud. Change anything that doesn’t quite sound right or that muddles your tongue.

• Love your writing. Even if you never show it to anyone, remember, it’s your treasure.

Nuts and Bolts of Writing

Golden rule: Always leave a space between each line you write. This makes your work easier to read. It also lets you change your mind and put new ideas in. It’s not wasting paper, it’s giving yourself room to think!

Get ideas and hold onto them!

• Always carry a little pock-sized notebook and a pen wherever you go. You’re bound to see or hear something that really grabs you. When you do, write it down.

• Keep a scrapbook or a file on your computer with interesting newspaper articles and pages from the internet that might be useful one day.

• Take photos.

• Make sketches.

Ideas from real life

Everyone has a story to tell. A million stories a second are put up on social media. Your friends and family will all have some weird or scary tale; what about that time Grandpa met a burglar on the stairs? Remember when your sister found a gold ring in a rock pool? Listen to people chatting on the bus.

Keep a notebook and write down all these ideas – this’ll be your treasure chest next time you’re stuck!

Myths, legends and fairy tales

Try reading old tales and put them into modern setting, eg, Red Riding Hood becomes Ruby in the Red Hoodie who dawdles on the way to Granny’s house and gets followed by a stranger…

Or what about Jack and the Bean Stalk? Think about why was Jack so lazy? Try writing Jack’s point of view:

It was Jack’s thirteenth birthday, but there’d been no presents, no cake, just Mum yelling up the stairs, ‘Jack? Jack! Get down her right away…’

Now write on from there!

Remember – Make notes, make notes, make notes, make sketches, take photos, oh, and it’s sometimes a good idea to make a few notes as well.

Teach yourself:

• Keep a reading diary. Every time you finish a book, write down the title and author. 

• Write down what you LOVED about the way the book was written – and why.

• Write down what DIDN’T work and why.

This way you learn from the best writers. You’ll also discover pitfalls to avoid.

To Plan or Not to Plan?

Unless you love planning, just sit down and write what comes into your head.

This is called VOMIT (organic) WRITING.

When you’re sick, what comes up is a grand mixture of everything, (usually including carrot, even if you have just eaten greens! YUCK!) Well, writing is like that. You need to ‘sick up’ all your thoughts and daydreams, then sort out the best bits for the story you want to write.

Any ideas that don’t ‘fit’ you can save for other stories (put them into a ‘spare ideas’ notebook or file on your computer).

This is a bit like separating out the carrots from the chocolate cake and the strawberry ice cream: it’s all good stuff, but needs to be ‘unmuddled’ before you can work with it.

Editing (Troubleshooting)

Once you have a rough story, take a structure like The Story Stair © below, (or any planning method you like). Make a few notes putting the main points of your story into this structure. This will help you see what’s missing, or what wobbles a bit.

Now sort it out so it ‘unwobbles.’

Why not plan first?

There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to write. You can plan first if you like, but try and be flexible. If a plan doesn’t work, change it. Most people work best by ‘playing’ with ideas and words until something good starts to emerge.

A plan is what you stick to when you don’t have any better ideas.

Stories often like to ‘do their own thing’ and often end up much more exiting if you give them their head!

When I write, I play with my ideas for a long time to find the most interesting and fun path with excitement and action in the right places. Once that’s all sorted, I begin a well thought-out second draft.

Remember…

• Think what your main character wants or needs to learn (their goal).

• What difficult situations or problems must they face to achieve their goal?

• Help them get through their problems and crises in a believable way (‘Voldemort waved his wand and the baddie disappeared,’ is cheating!).

• Get to know your characters and the worlds live in. Enjoy discovering it. Make notes and sketches.

Keep all this in mind and you’ll find it much easier to write a great story with a satisfying ending. You’ll know where and how your character is going, what motivates them and why!

• The goal your main character starts off with will keep them (and you) going.

• It’s OK for your character to discover they really needed something completely different from what they thought they wanted in the beginning! This makes a great twist at the end – but make sure the clues are in the story, or it won’t work.  

• Don’t forget to go through your notebooks for ideas if you get stuck.

Story Structure – The Story Stair ©

You can make a story out of anything, but if you don’t give your story a solid framework, it will fall down.

            Your character’s journey is a bit like going up stairs – that are getting bigger and more difficult all the time. 

            Imagine your character sitting downstairs watching telly or eating cake. They don’t want to move, they’ll need a pretty important reason to make them get up out of that chair and go all the way upstairs!

Beginning – The ‘set up’ is at the bottom of the stair – ‘Once Upon a Time’.  

In the opening paragraphs (or chapters if you’re writing a book), you need to establish:

·      Who is your main character?

·      What do they want or need? (Their goal)

·      What problems or difficulties will they face to achieve that goal?

·      Why do they choose to do things they way they do? (An angry person will fight their way through, a gentle person will try and persuade.)

·      What makes them determined to try for their goal?

·      Less crucial, but still important: where and when does he/she live and is it winter or summer, etc.

It sounds a bit bonkers to think about the ending at the beginning, but it does work – I promise J

Middle – The Crisis – these are a series of ‘oopses!’ (crises) each more difficult than the last.

What obstacles (people or things) get in your character’s way? Think of at least three things that cause problems for your hero / heroine. Each one should be bigger or more difficult than the last one, eg Jack climbing the beanstalk three times and getting closer and closer to being caught!

The third obstacle needs to be the ‘final straw’ that forces a solution to the hero’s problems and meeting their goal: the giant chases Jack down the beanstalk so Jack chops the beanstalk down.

Remember: The sort of person your hero / heroine is will affect how they cope with each crisis and how they try to achieve their goals. For example, Jack (Jack and the Beanstalk) was too lazy to go to market and sell the cow. If he hadn’t been lazy, he’d have ignored the old man and walked on, sold the cow for a fat profit, and made a very different story!

The end or resolution. This is the ‘phew!’ – or the ‘aaaagh!’ if you don’t like happy endings! Here the hero / heroine’s problems are sorted out and they have achieved their goal – or not. This may sound odd, but make sure you know what your main character wants or needs as soon as possible or they may wander around inside their story and never get anywhere.

This is why so many people struggle with ending their story – because they don’t know where their story is going.

Make sure Jack learns something as well, i.e. not to be so bone-idle. I sometimes wonder if he was any better for his adventures, or if being rich made him even lazier? But then, that’s another story….!

 Types of ending:

·      The main character achieves his goal (happy ending)

·      Or loses everything (sad ending).

·      They might also find something even more precious than their initial goal (a twist).

·      A cliff-hanger – this is not the end. There’s another story to come – or make up your own ending.

There are other sorts of story. This is just a simple ‘starter’ one.

And don’t forget, if your story isn’t working – change it!

Check List and what to do next

Check through your story before you write it up in ‘best’

• How many characters have you got? Does each of them deserve a place in your story? Make everyone WORK for their place.

• Does your main character have a clear need/want/goal at the beginning of the story?

• Are they in an interesting but difficult position because of this?

• Do they have decisions to make? How do they make them? What is it in their character that makes them choose that course of action, and not another one?

·      What are the obstacles that get in the way of the hero/heroine solving their problems? (Difficult people or unfortunate circumstances.)

·      Are the obstacles believable? We can believe that Jack’s giant is evil and lives at the top of a beanstalk because we know it’s a fairy story. Putting Jack’s problems into ‘Pig Heart Boy’ by Malorie Blackman, for example, just wouldn’t work. They are too different. Make the problems and solutions ‘fit’ the sort of story you are writing.

• How does your hero/heroine sort out their problems? How will they get out of their difficult position? Is your solution logical for the story (magic for a fairy story, medicine for an episode of ‘ER’, etc)?

• Does the ending ‘feel’ right, or is it just too crazy to sit comfortably with the story?  Is it satisfying? Does an ending ‘work’ where the bad guy gets rewarded or the good guy goes to prison? Usually the answer is no, but it might be OK as long as there is a reason for it to happen this way. Perhaps the ‘good’ guy has done something bad and needs to face his past, or the ‘bad’ guy might learn that helping people can be satisfying.

• Whatever sort of ending you choose, you must convince the reader that what happens is ‘right’ for the characters in the story.

• Ideally the hero/heroine should have learned or realised something, or have developed his or her character somehow by the end of the story.

What to do with your stories

Stories and poems make great birthday or Christmas presents. They’ll be treasured for years – but chocolates will be all gone in moments!

It is difficult to get published, but if you’d like to try, write an article for your favourite magazine (that’s how I started) or the local paper, or try blogging.

Enter competitions. For details look in your library, your local bookshop, ask your teachers, librarian or look on the web for festivals and local events you can enter.

Good luck with your writing.

     Beth