Posted on by seasonsshadow

A.M. to P.M. – The Best Time to Write

Recently, a friend told me he gets up and writes before work. This doesn’t sound too extraordinary as a standalone fact. But he works at 5:30 in the morning. Now, I don’t know about you, but doing anything requiring any modicum of concentration at 4AM is simply out of the question for me.

He told me he likes it when the world is quiet.

I made a sound of agreement, but I know the REASON the world is quiet at that time is because everyone is asleep. Including myself.

In the evenings, I write. I choose music I want to ignore and slip my headphones on. That way, I don’t care if the world is quiet or not. I’ve created my little sphere, and I work within it.

Which got me thinking. IS there a best time of the day to write?

There is NO best time to write, as long as you’re alert, consistent, and minimizing distractions.

A lot of posts and articles I read stated my friend and I fall into the two “best” times for writing. However, looking a little deeper into it, it’s not that simple. It’s related to your circadian rhythm.

A circadian rhythm is the mental, physical, and behavioural cycle a person goes through in a 24 hour period. It is influenced by when the sun rises and sets, temperature, stress levels, food intake, physical activity, and other outside factors. Within this rhythm, there are times of alertness and fatigue. These times of alertness are what we want to focus on.

Generally, one or two hours after you wake up, you experience a period of wakefulness and alertness. I personally do not experience this consistently/reliably. And let me tell you. If I woke up at 6AM just to see if I could wait out the groggies to get an hour of writing in… I would be a miserable person to deal with. Others who DO experience this alertness and wakefulness consistently/reliably would benefit from incorporating writing into their mornings.

For the standard 9 – 5, Monday to Friday, if you skip this morning writing period, your next obvious opportunity is after work. Moving straight from work to your WIP is not very effective for most, because your brain needs a “cool-down” or a “destress period” from the job. Then, of course, you have dinner and clean up, and whatever else you catch yourself up on, run your house, destress again, and then your next opportunity presents itself. Are you alert at 7PM? 8PM? 9PM? Great! Write then.

For the non-standard shift workers, it’s even harder to nail down a writing session to stick to. Rotating days off, swing shifts, clopens, and 12-hour shifts can all cause disruptions to any semblance of a schedule, so you have to essentially “game the system”. Instead of writing at a set time, it’s going to be more effective for you to write within a set part of your schedule.

For example.

Do you like to get up several hours before your shift so you can get stuff done? Work writing into the “before your shift” routine whether that’s at 4AM, 7AM, or 10AM. Alternately, are you the kind of person who rolls out of bed half awake for your shift and does most personal tasks afterwards, punting all your chores and errands to your days off? Work writing into the “before bed” routine you have, whether that’s at 9PM, 11PM, or 1AM.

Like I said. Whatever works with your schedule and your body. Just make it consistent. Make it a routine. Put your interests on the same level of importance as your personal hygiene. Sound radical? Sometimes that’s the mindset you need to force yourself into a new routine!

I also don’t want to hear a single person say “Ah yes, but the best time for me to write is a time with every distraction that has ever existed.” because you can get some really nice noise-cancelling headphones for $200. You can get normal headphones and some sweet thematic music for substantially less than that. You can get earplugs at the dollar store. Control your distractions wherever it is safe to do so, and get that writer-butt in there!

The only thing I saw toted as a strictly “bad time” to write is that horrible after-lunch slump. So don’t pick that time to schedule your writing session.

Alertness. Consistency. Having minimal distractions. You can do this!

Since your most productive writing time is linked to circadian rhythms and circadian rhythms are affected by the seasons, I wanted to touch quickly on whether or not there was a best season to write.

The season you’re least busy and most comfortable in? That’s the best season to write.

Lame. I know.

I always thought it would be summer and fall, but most of the articles I read said fall and winter. There were also a bunch of votes for spring. Consensus? Apparently, we don’t know her.

The trend I DID notice was that people who argued for fall being the best writing time cited things like being really busy in the summer and liking the cooler weather to sit at their computer or have their laptop. People who argued for the spring seemed to like that it was warming up and seemed to gain inspiration from the world starting to grow again. Winter had votes because you could be snuggly in your house and ignore the weather for as long as you wanted. There’s also not a lot of good reasons to go outside come, say, February. For summer being the best, people said things like enjoying writing on the dock at a lake all summer. In the sun. That sounds awful to me, personally.

Summer is the time when there’s the most daylight. This is important to me because I have trouble feeling motivated to do things when it’s dark outside. Summer is also the time for fun sugary drinks, shaded patios, and air conditioning. I don’t have kids, I don’t have classes or trips or anything to do in the summer so it’s not busy. Therefore, for me, summer is perfect for writing. Autumn is much the same. The mornings and evenings are nice and cool, the days are still warm, and I’m not busy here either. These are the two best times to write for me personally.

During the winter, I hate everything including myself. It’s cold. I’m dry. You’re dry. We make static electricity when we shake hands. The outside is cold, wet, cold and wet, or frozen. It’s hard to be covered in as many blankets as I want and also utilize my hands for things like typing. Spring, I tend to my garden and get the yard up and running. I’m quite busy! These are the seasons I don’t expect much creativity and writing from myself.

So! I am an evening writer who does her best work in summer and fall. How about you? What are your productive times and seasons?

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

He Said, She Said

Just like every technique and stylistic choice, there are good and bad ways to do multiple points of view. For some people, the point of view of a book will determine whether they’ll read it or not. I can’t say I have ever personally gone through a phase where I straight-up hated the choice as a whole. Except for in Eldest. (Christopher Paolini, you know what you did.)

However.

For some reason, for some strange and incomprehensible reason, Colleen Hoover is really popular right now.

Enough people on the internet are talking about the weird dynamics featured in her story. Enough people on the internet are talking about her single-dimensional characters. Enough people on the internet are talking about the examples her fictional relationships are setting and romanticizing. THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT ANY OF THAT.

No, this post is gently blaming Colleen Hoover for this epidemic of books that switch the character point of view with absolutely no good reason to do so.

When you are dealing with a romance book, it can be a lot of fun to watch characters falling in love with one another. It can be a lot of fun to see a singular event happening from multiple character’s perspectives. But sometimes, including things that are “a lot of fun” is at the expense of your coherent plot line. Sometimes, you should have just conceded and written a limited omniscient point of view.

Throwing some quick definitions your way just in case you need a refresher.

  • Omniscient is where the narrator knows all and sees all. The narrator is generally, but not always, separate from the characters of the story being told. Because the reader is not directly in anyone’s head, it can pose a challenge to get the reader emotionally invested in your characters. Also called Third-Person Omniscient.
  • Limited Omniscient is where the narrator knows everything about ONE character. It tells the story using the opinions, emotions, biases, and perceptions of the main character. All other characters are described, seen, and presented to us based on the views of the main character, not objectively like in regular/third person omniscient. You can deliver information about that main character that is not known to the character. Like a stowaway in a car, or a mystery item in a purse. This style is meant to make you sympathize and root for the main character particularly. Sometimes this is further divided into Objective Limited Omniscient where the narrator ACTS completely omniscient and impartial, but only follows that one main character.
  • First-Person is where the stories paint you as the main character. It uses “I”, “me”, and “myself” to put the reader into one character’s brain and hear their thoughts and feelings. This is similar to limited omniscient in that it really focuses on one character, but differs in that if the character does not know a thing, the reader is not told that thing either. This is utilized a lot in novels meant to encourage escapism.
  • Switching Point of View or “Head-Jumping” is typically a first-person style narration, but instead of focusing on one character, you focus on two or more. This is generally organized by putting different characters’ viewpoints into different chapters with names in the headers. For the rest of this post, I will be referring to this style as “switching POV”.

When is it a good idea to use a switching POV? When the story will benefit from it. When your plot is building suspense. When you need to show a different world than the one the main character perceives. When you need to build out your setting and characters. It can also be used if you need to reflect the main character’s personality through someone else’s eyes (eg. when the main character is unreliable).

When is it NOT a good idea to use a switching POV? When it will confuse or upset the reader. When it is just there to bulk out the book. When it will not add a character-building moment, a setting/world-building moment, or further the plot in any way.

Now, the crux of this post:

Please. Friends. I am so tired of reading chapters from “his” point of view where the entire thing is telling me how hot he finds the main character. How amazing she feels and her quirks. How he’s changed his life for her. How he thinks about her the entire motorcycle ride to their next date. I don’t care about his motorcycle ride spent thinking of her. Well, not enough for it to make me happy about it taking up an entire chapter.

Too many writers (especially romance writers) use a switching POV as an excuse to be lazy. Instead of showing us through a secondary character’s actions that they’re conflicted about the relationship, we switch to their point of view and TELL the reader about it. To use my motorcycle example from above, we told the reader how Mr. Love interest was feeling about the main character. Why not have it shown instead? How he misses what the waitress says to him or how he doesn’t seem to be listening but is staring intently at her? Explain the softness of his eyes to make sure it doesn’t come across as creepy or overbearing. Don’t tell me in ANY setting. Show me. Let me figure it out for myself.

Colleen Hoover does this switching POV to “tell” a lot. I think it’s in part responsible for making her characters feel very flat.

I also think her popularity has sparked an interest in this style of writing, without anyone considering the pros and cons of how it feels to the reader (especially in a genre made to accommodate escapism!).

At worst, switching POV can confuse the reader who is trying to keep track of which characters know what. It can also muddy your plot and make certain sections needlessly drawn out. At best, it’s a thrilling way to explore different characters and their opinions/perceptions.

Keeping just one or two questions in your head like “Is this clear enough?” or “Is this adding anything we don’t already know in an effective way?” can make a WORLD of difference in how your piece comes across when there are multiple perspectives in it. If you ARE interested in writing a piece with switching POV, I highly recommend taking a look at the Masterclass link I have below in the reference section.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Is Your Setting a Mary Sue?

The online course I’m taking for video game writing has been talking a lot about worldbuilding. This is nice because it gives me plenty to think about in my job and hobbies. I’ve made several posts about this already, but today I’m going to get to the core of the issue: Prevent your setting from being the most boring character in your book. Or the most pretentious character in your book. Or the most hated character in your book.

“But Winters!” You say. “My setting is Lubbock, Texas!” (I googled ‘the most boring city in the world 2024’ and this is what it returned.)

That’s nice. If you don’t want it to come across as a cardboard cutout of Lubbock, you still need to build out your setting more than just a cursory description. Trust me, if you ask anyone who grew up in a place with “nothing to do”, you’ll get a lot of wild stories. Human beings MAKE their own fun. They MAKE their own activities. Even if those activities are drinking around a fire and accidentally creating ghostly snow-thrones making it look like a gathering of spectres. Then maybe the locals call that area the “hill of kings”. That sort of thing won’t make it into any articles you may grab for research purposes. Unless you’re reading someone’s blog and they mention it.

Please make your setting well-rounded, personable, and real. Draw the reader in.

The relationship between the protagonists and the setting should be just as important to you as a writer as the relationship between characters is. Let the characters and setting interact. Let them influence each other. Let them work together.

Make it so that the reader wants to explore the setting through the eyes of the characters. Your story world should feel like more than the backdrop in a stage play, where the stagehands are throwing in only what’s necessary to the story.

Unless it’s instead, like one of those kindergarten plays where some kid lays on stage and plays grass.

That has its own problems.

Overcrowding your setting and building it out unnecessarily can be frustrating for its own reasons, like making your reader suffer through pages of purple prose.

Purple prose is a trope where you use flowery language and an abundance of adjectives. The descriptions are redundant and often describe things that won’t come up again. I’m sure we can all remember reading a page and a half describing someone’s sandwich (or other mundane object) which ultimately, doesn’t matter. Even if the sandwich is important to the plot, it does NOT need a page and a half. I promise.

When you’re writing, there are things you will know about your setting that the reader will never know. Just like there are things about your characters you will know that will never come up to the reader. These things are still important, but they are more for shaping the characters and setting as their own entity than to info-dump on the reader.

Just like no one wants to read a page and a half about a sandwich, no one wants to read that stereotypical introduction where a character looks in the mirror and describes themselves from head to toe. It’s juvenile at best, and at worst, off-putting. Unless your goal is to make it into a Men Writing Women or Women Writing Men subreddit, skip it. Or find another way to convey the information.

Treat your setting like a character. Appraise its personality and the way it presents to the reader. Give it more substance than just existing and looking pretty. Give it a history. Give it some significant lifetime events. Give it preferences, vibes, and presence! Make it feel real to yourself. Make it feel real to the reader without telling them every little tidbit.

Let your audience want to discover the setting just as much as they want to get to know your characters. Nothing commits people to a book or a series more than curiosity. Every piece you make them curious about is another piece that will make them come back to your work.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Murder and a Skeleton Crew

This post is about a lot of things. About the Bechdel Test, about killing your darlings, about disposable characters, about fridging a character’s partner, about running your story on a skeleton crew, and about how to navigate a cast of characters in a way that is optimal for the reader.

Let’s start with some definitions.

The Bechdel Test is a pop-culture guide designed to determine if a piece of writing or media has “significant” female characters or appropriate female representation. I’m neither here nor there on the applicability of this line of reasoning, but I understand the motivation behind it. For those of you who don’t know what the test questions are, they are as follows:

  • A piece of media or writing must FEATURE two female characters.
  • These two female characters must have at least one conversation with each other.
  • The conversation MUST NOT be about a man. (interpret: must not be about love interest)

Take from this what you will, but I want to highlight the fact that if you have added a girl best friend that exists solely for your other vanity character to talk about love with… maybe don’t. Maybe employ an internal monologue. A diary entry. A fight between the main character and said love interest. When a female character is added for what feels like the sole purpose of talking about another character… it’s sloppy. Find a different way.

Killing Your Darlings is a piece of writing advice where even though you LIKE having an element in the story, if it’s not adding to the story, take it out. Things that fall under this category are subplots, romantic partners, background characters, certain settings, or flowery descriptions. Ever read a “love triangle” where it’s really 2 characters that are into one another and then one sad sop you feel bad for because they are super in love with one of the other two and can’t catch a break or be included in anything plot-relevant? Take a GOOD. HARD. LOOK. Is this love triangle actually making your story better/more effective? Or do you just like it? Do you have a chapter where you explain a really cool magic tree, and you’re so proud of it, but it does nothing for the wider story? Maybe time to chop it down.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Disposable Characters fall into the category of “Killing Your Darlings” as well, but it is specifically about people you have written or created JUST to have them die and cause emotional levity in the story. Now, I’m not saying you should never kill your characters – but often if an author knows in advance a character isn’t going to make it through the whole story, that character isn’t as fleshed out as the rest of the cast and it’s really obvious.

Going hand in hand with Disposable Characters is the term “Fridging your Wives” which is a personal favourite of mine. I didn’t know the origin of the phrase until I was pulling articles/fact-checking myself for this post. If you’re curious, it’s from Green Lantern: A New Dawn when the antagonist shoves the dead body of the superhero’s love interest into a fridge for the hero to then discover later. It was to do emotional damage and propel the plot. The term “Fridge your Wife” now refers to when a character’s significant other is killed, hurt, maimed, assaulted, or otherwise traumatized to motivate another character. The issue with this is we’re not treating characters as people. We’re treating the person SOLELY as a plot device. It’s a lot of work to create a character simply simply to sacrifice them to get the hero off their butt. Think bigger. Think better.

The last definition before I talk about my point is Skeleton Crew. To keep it short and sweet, a Skeleton Crew is the minimum quantity of individuals required to successfully maintain an item or corporation.

So. The point of murder and skeleton crews is this: As writers, we are in charge of populating worlds and making them feel real. Lived in. Working. But this ultimately can bog down the progress of your story and confuse the reader. It’s exactly the same as writing dialogue. Real dialogue is filled with meandering, “um” and “wha-yeah-huh”s. But we don’t include that in novels. We want it to be clear and purposeful when a character speaks, while still maintaining that fascimile of reality. How many characters do you really need?

How many of you have read a fantasy novel where it felt damn near impossible to keep track of the characters because their names were unique in that fantasy-name kind of way? Or did you need to continually reference a list in the front of the book as to who was in which role? Or even worse, have you ever stopped reading and had to flip back a couple chapters because you have two characters mixed up?

All of these are symptoms of the same thing. Either the characters are so plentiful that you legitimately can’t keep track of who is who, or the characters are too similar to one another (or just don’t have a clear enough voice!).

Kill your darlings. Make a list of all the characters you make specific mention of in your work in progress. Divide them out into characters that are actually necessary, and characters that support the others. Find the fridged partners and the disposable characters, and try to figure out if there is a non-human way of motivating your protagonist or plot. If you can’t, that’s okay too, but think about it.

Something we did in theatre, was if there were not enough “background” actors to fill up the lines, we would just reassign lines to the background actors. The baker had the shopkeep’s lines, or the blacksmith became the general store so he could reference the price of apples. Townswoman 1 through 4 could be cut to two without it harming the clarity of the scene.

So look at your support character list again. How much of the information they provide to the protagonist can be delivered by someone else? How many of these roles can be combined to clean up this list – not only for yourself, but for your reader?

Now, obviously, if you have a sprawling space epic where your characters are going to multiple planets every chapter and are meeting with representatives from each of those planets, there’s no sensible way to combine roles. The places I’m asking you to target are the faces in the crowd, the people you have in your world that are just there to make it bigger.

In the space epic example, target the crew. How many crew members does the main character talk to and the audience are expected to keep track of and remember? Do we have to name your crewmembers and give them a backstory for them to show up on page and deliver bad news about the functioning of the ship? Or can the holoscreen flicker to life, the engineer sweating bullets as she tells the captain that the slipdrive is drifting and there’s nothing she can do? Can you decrease the size of the ship? Or is it important for it to feel busy and populated because you’re implying the military ship is heavily manned?

Does your story take place in a school? Can the school be smaller? How many professors do you need to actually make it operate? How many students would viably be accepted into the school at the same time? How much of this can you imply without directly mentioning and forcing the reader to keep track of your complicated roster?

Think about it, and take some names off your support character list, even if you like that character. Take some settings away if the same goal can be achieved by staying put. Take that cute subplot away that you worked on for a month, even though you love it. Kill your darlings. Strip your WIP back to a skeleton crew and press forward. Your story will be cleaner, easier to keep track of, and ultimately, the reader will thank you.

Everything you remove, put it in a file. Post it to your fanpages or your blog. Fans will find it if they want it. They’ll be delighted to see it exists, without the pressure of it being forced into the story.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Strategic People Watching and Stealing Everything That Isn’t Nailed Down

Okay maybe the title of this is a little dramatic, but I’m sure you’ve heard the joke that if you date a writer, you’re gonna end up in a book. Or that if you’re a Game Master for a tabletop RPG, you steal everything that isn’t nailed down. When I first heard this, I was in grade school and thought to myself: “The author isn’t doing a very good job if the person can recognize themselves as a character in someone’s book…”

Ah, young self. You missed the point completely.

If I had been an artist, I would have been one of those horrible people who thought copying/tracing as an exercise or as practice is against the law or something.

So let’s talk a little bit about people watching and stealing things. Ideas. Concepts. Characters.

Are you looking at your screen in disgust? Hear me out. How many of the most popular books right now are retellings of fairytales? How many websites out there host fanfiction from well-known series such as Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, etc? How many times are there “waves” of books of one central trope that become really popular? How many authors see these tropes and it inspires them to write their own take on something?

Hopefully you’re still reading after that explanation.

Characters and stories are MEANT to be inspiring. They’re meant to stick in your imagination, make you think about their wider world, long to know them, long to explore different scenarios with the same base framework.

So where does watching people strategically fit into this?

As part of creating a character, you should know their likes and dislikes. As part of that, you should know where they like to hang out. If that is a real place, and a safe place, go there! Don’t just assume you know what kind of atmosphere a place has or what kind of people hang out there from TV and other books.

Is your character a gym buff? Join a gym. Hang out on the bikes or walk on a treadmill. Put in your headphones but don’t turn on any music. What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear? What do you notice?

Is your character a regular at a bar? Find one that’s similar to the one you’d see your character at (if it’s safe to do so) and order yourself a drink and sit at a booth with a notepad! Copy down snippets of conversations. Sketch the lighting. Review the menu. Freak the staff out! But not in a creepy way, in a you-might-be-a-food/bar/beer-critic kind of way.

Does your character go to the park to think things out? Go to the park (if it’s safe to do so) and find a place you can imagine them sitting. Are there a bunch of bugs there? Does it smell like pine? Are there dogs barking? Would that annoy your character?

These little observations make the reader feel. Feel like these are places they have been to or could go to. Like your characters and story exist within a realm of near-possibility.

So strategically people watch. Steal everything that isn’t nailed down.

It’s an age-old tactic! How many legends and stories do you know that are similar to one another, with one or two details changed? Things such as names, local landmarks, or the result of such a story?

I mean, Joseph Campbell didn’t make all that money explaining a Monomyth for nothing!

So, I’d love to know… what are some of your favourite retellings of fairytales or other legends?

Posted on by seasonsshadow

What’s in a Holiday?

Whether you are writing something that takes place in our world or a world you’ve made up yourself, likely you’ll at least be mentioning some kind of holiday. Maybe it’s a feast day, a civic holiday, a festival, or a ceremony to honour the dead. Maybe you’re expected to spend it with your family, with your friends, or with your neighbours. Is there food involved? Do you bring some with you, or are you expected to fast? There are so many facets to holidays that I think it’s always worth thinking about the little pieces that go into making up a holiday, and how you can utilize real-word knowledge to build believable celebrations for your own story.

Anyone can make a holiday – but how do you get yours observed?

Who has heard of National Talk Like a Pirate Day? How about National Love Your Pet Day? Now what about Valentine’s Day? And Easter? These are all called holidays, but they all have different functions. Easter, you may get offices and city workers getting one or two days off to observe Good Friday and Easter Monday. Valentine’s Day, people know when it is, it is widely recognized, but it is typically not taken off work (unless you have big plans). National Talk Like a Pirate Day is more obscure. Most people don’t know when it is, why it came about, or what exactly you’re supposed to do to celebrate it.

You can actually register a day as a national holiday of your choosing, but it means next to nothing without widespread knowledge about what the day is for, what you are supposed to do with it, and when it is.

Here in Canada, we recently phased in a new holiday. National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

What is it for? To increase awareness of the First Nations children who did not return home from residential schools, and the ongoing and very real impact residential schools had on families. In Canada, the Gordon’s Indian Residential School remained open until 1996. I was 5 years old. This is not ancient history.

What are you supposed to do on this day? Well hopefully, you’ll attend some First Nations run events. Speeches. Reconciliation Ceremonies. Performances. Or maybe just look up an article about the history of abuses around you.

When is it? September 30th.

It took the Canadian government 2 years to phase in this holiday. Phase one was announcing the day as approved by the government giving the civil servants that day off, and encouraging events and demonstrations linked with the Every Child Matters movement. Phase two was to roll out the holiday as a civic holiday for salaried employees. It is now celebrated every year.

So. If you are making a holiday for your story, consider whether the government would approve it to be a civic holiday. If not, would there be any exceptions to that? How about backlash? Would the citizens work around this judgement, carrying out their celebrations in the evening when everyone had finished their daily duties? Or would they take it upon themselves to call in sick and celebrate anyway? In a capitalist and consumerist hell such as the one we currently live in, would they need to use their vacation to get the time off? Would this cause upset and dishonesty?

I’m not saying you should know the answers to all this. I’m just saying you should think about how a character REALLY FEELS about the holiday you mention, the holiday you create on a whim as an excuse to have a cool festival or a day off work. Holidays impact people’s emotions and mentalities regardless of who they are in the great machine that is society.

Why do we Celebrate the Days we do?

Do you live in a religious country? How many of your religious holidays are civic holidays? In Canada, there are two. Easter and Christmas. You still have to go to work and/or school on things like Ascension Day. What pushes a country to observe some religious holidays but not others? Why is it only Christian denomination holidays that are considered for civic holiday status here?

Well, Canada is (as of the 2021 census) 52% Christian or similar. That’s not a big majority, but it is still the largest of any singular other group. Besides. Those that don’t care about Easter (such as myself) can plug themselves into video games and thank the unrelated religious views for the extra day off.

At the end of the day, I can choose not to celebrate the holidays I don’t have any attachment to because our holidays are very centred around the family. Family events. Family dinners. Sure, some community events happen too, but there are rarely any social consequences for not appearing at gatherings. Not on a large scale anyway.

But what would happen if that wasn’t the case? What if it was a mandatory religious observation? What if they took attendance? What if there were very real and very severe consequences to skipping a holiday’s traditional activities?

Things to Consider When Making a Fake Holiday

What is the basis of the holiday? Is it purely a political observation? A religious observation? A seasonal festival? Something to do with your ancestors? The fertility of the land or people? Is celebration or observation restricted to a certain gender, race, religion, occupation, or class?

Is the holiday still celebrated in the spirit of the reason it was created? Are some of the older generations going to feel one way about the festival or holiday while the children feel another? Are there protests against it? Are there conflicting views about how to celebrate it? Does it cause a societal divide if certain characters are seen observing certain rituals or superstitions?

Does it matter to your character? Are they expected to be a part of it by their family or their peers? Would they prefer to stay at home and read or play video games while the world celebrates without them? Do they want to avoid certain people so they don’t have to explain for the millionth time why they’re not celebrating? Is it inconvenient because their favorite stores or attractions are closed?

Of course, the reader doesn’t need to explicitly know any of this. You don’t have to give them a background on the last 100 years of celebrations and a graph showing attendance. What it WILL do, is build up the environmental storytelling when your character navigates through the day, making comments that imply a world that lives on past the reader’s experience.

After all, you want to build a full world that the reader is eager to explore through the character, or you create a character that the reader is eager to explore through the story. And if you can manage both, you’ll be golden! These are the two most successful ways to retain a reader, and if your world lacks the depth created by social and societal interactions, that severely limits your avenues of interest.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Writing Craft – Is it Actually Useful?

I am constantly on the lookout for ways to improve my writing. Online classes, YouTube videos, writing clubs, craft books, peer review, essentially whatever I can get my hands on and fits into my schedule, I’m happy to try. Recently, one of my coworkers has gotten into craft books to help support her career development.

Everyone and their dog has written a craft book. A few examples are:

  • Stephen King – On Writing – A Memoir of the Craft
  • Neil Gaiman – Neil Gaiman Teaches The Art Of Storytelling
  • Ursula K. Le Guin – Steering The Craft
  • Ray Bradbury – Zen in the Art of Writing
  • Margaret Atwood – On Writers and Writing
  • Elizabeth Gilbert – Big Magic
  • William Strunk & E. B. White – The Elements of Style
  • Dean Koontz – How to Write Bestselling Fiction
  • Angie Thomas – Find Your Voice
  • Les Edgerton – Hooked

Which is in no particular order, just ones I remember passing in my sphere of consciousness within the last 6 months or so.

Some of those you probably have heard of. Some of them you might be seeing for the first time.

Now. Google a few of those titles. How many come up with results that say “This is the best advice I’ve ever read!” or “Hands down the best advice for writers out there!” or even “This is the writer’s BIBLE!”? Were there any books on that list that made you think, “Oh, I don’t like that author”? (I hope so, I tried to get a bunch of different styles in there.)

Are there some titles you would consider useless? Some you yourself consider necessary and important?

Here’s the problem. There’s already a Stephen King out there. There’s already a Neil Gaiman, a Margaret Atwood, an Elizabeth Gilbert. We’ve already had Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, and E. B. White. So taking your favourite author and emulating them based on their career, their advice, and their books will in the very best scenario, produce work that is just like theirs.

Taking your favourite author’s advice as gospel can produce some good results. But it more often than not causes a situation where you are trying to force your style, your thoughts, and your ideas into forms that they are not. I’m not telling you that you are perfect and amazing and I don’t know why you’re not a best-selling author already, I’m saying I do not agree with trying to make your style an exact copy of another person’s.

So go shopping!

I don’t really like Stephen King’s books, but he has some good advice. Margaret Atwood is emotionally intense and thought-provoking. She has captivated a good percentage of people with her books and her topics. That will never be me, but using some of the tools she speaks about has helped me write more emotionally intense scenes.

Pick and choose concepts from everyone. A little bit of this and that. Put it into your writer’s shopping cart and press “Check out”.

Gather your resources from as many different places as you can. Decide what resonates with you and what you can merge comfortably with your style.

Writing Craft books are a good resource for style shopping. But there are also hundreds of them to choose from. It can be intimidating to try and pick one, and it can be really easy to fall down a black hole of reading these books and their instructions and never actually get any writing done.

Set yourself a schedule. Pick one this month you’re interested in reading, and read it. Then take a month off. Write. Don’t look for your next book, don’t research new resources, just let the information digest and percolate into your writing and your life. When you are all done with your break, make a note in a study journal about the main piece of advice that stuck with you, and resonated with you.

Now that you’re done, pick up the book and read through it again. Wash, rinse, and repeat. If you didn’t like the one you read, didn’t think it was helpful, OR didn’t feel as though any of the advice resonated with you, move on. Head to the library or the second-hand bookstore. Get a new book. Do the same thing.

You don’t need to use every spare moment to study. Too many good pieces of advice slip through your fingers that way. Your brain can only integrate so much into your style and habits at a time. Be kind to your brain. Support it as much as you can. You’ll enjoy the process more and in turn, retain more.

Conclusion: Writing Craft books can be helpful, but only if you don’t take any one source as pure gospel and allow yourself the luxury to learn over time.

I’d love to know if you have a favourite craft book! Tell me in the comments below!

Posted on by seasonsshadow

When Can Distractions Help Us Focus?

While I am writing this, I am watching a show with my friend online. It means that I am going slowly, but it is also keeping me in one place to complete this post which I have been procrastinating for almost a week. Similarly, when I have book scenes to write, I jump into some related ambiance. If I am drawing or colouring then I load up the latest podcast from Morbid and listen to that.

At school, I caught all kinds of flack for “multitasking”. I was told that my attention span was short. I was told that I would do a better job if I just did one thing at a time and focused on that. I was told that I couldn’t possibly be retaining information from studying if I was also blasting punk rock into my ears.

Okay, maybe they were right about that last one, but that’s because I just wanted to sing all the songs and my textbook was really boring.

The average attention span for a single-factor task is about 8 seconds. Do you know what the average goldfish’s attention span is? 9 seconds.

Notice that I said a single-factor task. This would be something that stimulates your senses on a very basic level. Think of scrolling YouTube Shorts, or TikTok. Not mindfully looking for videos, but just letting the media come, one after the other. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to your interests, it doesn’t necessarily provide any information, but it does stimulate you visually. For a few seconds.

One more thing I want to touch on before I talk more about attention is why I put multitasking in quotation marks above.

Multitasking implies that you are actively attempting to accomplish more than one thing at a time. Please take note of the word ‘accomplish’ there.

Do I think I am accomplishing watching this show with my friend? Nope. It is on in the background, but I am more or less ignoring it while I write. I am accomplishing writing. I am not accomplishing active consumption of this show.

So then if this isn’t multitasking, what is it?

Selective attention is the ability to filter out stimuli that aren’t important in favour of stimuli that are important.

Part of the problem with attention spans is that there are SO many distractions available at the tips of our fingers. How many people have their phones around them at all times? How many different notification settings are there? Blinking lights, vibrations, sounds, little icons, screen activation, and the list goes on.

So when you have notifications coming at you, emails to check, noises coming from outside, maybe a pet distracting you, maybe a roommate or a child commanding your attention, it can be a lot. This is where the selective attention comes in. Get yourself a good pair of headphones. Find something that you can ignore. Put that thing on to intentionally ignore. While you are busy ignoring that thing, do your actual thing.

What’s the difference between this and multitasking? Multitasking you are doing more than one thing with the intention of making progress or consciously interacting with all the things you are doing. Selective attention is when you only anticipate making progress or being a conscious and mindful consumer of one thing, regardless of what else is happening. With our attention being pulled in many different ways, it’s super easy to interrupt your train of thought. Ping! An email. Bark! Your dog sees something outside. If you have one thing that is bigger, better, louder, and more forward than the other things, it drowns out all those little attention grabbers and distractions. Then you can commit much less effort to ignoring the one thing, and focus on your task.

Music without lyrics, ambient music mixers, shows you’ve seen before or don’t care about, podcasts that have hosts with nice voices, movies you’ve nearly memorized at this point, white noise, sensory videos for babies, and video game soundtracks are all great choices to actively ignore.

TL;DR – Multitasking is bullshit, but if you utilize one distraction to drown out the invasive attention-grabbing stimuli around you, and then actively ignore your selected distraction, you can conquer tasks easier.

I’d love to hear what kinds of things you do to help you focus! Let me know!

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Same, Same, Different

how to make an impact with lists

I don’t know about you, but I really, REALLY like descriptors.

For example, if I saw a puppy, I won’t stick with “Hey friends! I saw a puppy!”. Instead, I want you to know I saw the smallest, cutest, fuzziest, energetic, happy white puppy! Which is fine when you’re speaking about puppies. But when you’re reading or writing about puppies? Too many words.

By trying to give specificity to the kind of puppy I saw, I might as well be writing you a list.

The puppy I saw was

  • Small
  • Cute
  • Fuzzy
  • Energetic
  • Happy
  • White

It’s clear, and for how many words I have there, it is well laid out. The problem comes when you can’t break your paragraph within your literary work to make a list like this. Yet, mashing all these words together puts you into a structural faux pas anyway. There are many ways to avoid this. I’m going to explain my favourite way – same, same, different.

A lot of people have heard of the rule of three. It’s a psychological and marketing trick, taking advantage of the human brain’s habit of seeking out patterns in things. For some reason, the number three is a fan-favourite pattern. Maybe because it’s related to the triangle, which is the strongest shape? That’s purely a guess, of course.

Anyway. Lists of three words feel complete. They make our brains feel happy when they read them. So if you use three descriptors to market your product, people will instinctively have a higher opinion of it than an identical product using more or less words.

Three words to make an impact. But which three words?

This is where the “same, same, different” tactic comes in.

Can you see it in these popular phrases?

  • Sex, drugs, and rock and roll
  • Stop, drop, and roll
  • Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Short, short, long. Same, same, different. Stop, drop, and roll. -op word, -op word, not an -op word. Same, same, different. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. L-word and short, l-word and short, not an l-word and long. Same, same, different.

I saw the cutest, happiest, white puppy! -est word, -est word, not -est word. Same, same, different. Try it out! Let me know some sets of three that you’ve come up with. I’d love to hear about the examples you’ve used!

Also, because I’m not a jerk, here’s the puppy I’ve been talking about! His name is Mochi.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Inspiration, Creativity, and Writing Prompts

One of the things my new job has given me is an appreciation for the use of writing prompts. Don’t get me wrong, I utilized this tool when I was bored or wanted to do a writing exercise, but I had never considered it useful beyond that. Now I write for 7 hours a day (more or less), 5 days a week, and I have been gifted with the revelation of how writing prompts can be a weaponized tool against stale characters, stale scenes, and writer’s block.

We’ve all heard the advice of “just get something down,” in one iteration or another, right? Using brackets when you’re stuck [Hero does something clever], throwing the general idea down in all caps “I can’t believe you think I’m a child! I’m SOMETHING THAT’S NOT THAT, and it’s time you recognized it!”, highlighting a section, flagging it with comments, whatever, just keep going. Sound advice, right?

As one popular meme says, “Well yes, but actually no.”

Returning to where I’ve left off in a section can be like arriving in the bedroom to find my coffee pot. Why is it there? What was I doing? What were my intentions with it?

This is to say, I feel like returning to a section I’ve left off to insert content can be choppy and ultimately confusing for me and the reader.

So! Weaponizing writing prompts. Have you ever seen those “642 things to write about” books? I’ve had one since 2016 (ish) and I picked it up in the situations I mentioned in my opening paragraph. When I wanted to do a writing exercise or was bored. Admittedly, these things didn’t happen often, so roll forward to 2023, and maybe 50 have been filled in?

My plan was to write 1 full page, back and front, every day. Without fail. No matter what. I would not go in any set order, I would just flip through until I found one I thought I could do and then do the page. I’d flip through again, and select a second page, for a total of one, back and front equivalent, page.

May 31, 2023. I FINALLY got the thing completed.

I learned a few things from it. One, this necessity of having to do a set number of writing prompts really raised my productivity. Two, my willingness to push the traditional script boundaries has not only been more prevalent but has been met with more acceptance. Three, I feel as though my wit has become a little faster, a little sharper.

Most of the prompts were fun, and I challenged myself creatively to fill in the space provided with each exercise. There were definitely ones I kept passing again and again because I just had no ideas.

For interest’s sake, the two that remained until the last day, the ones that I found most challenging and least inspiring were “Find a passage in your favourite novel. Re-tell it, using only one-syllable words.” & “You are suddenly unable to recall any words that are not proper nouns. Excuse yourself from a very formal dinner party without drawing much attention to this fact.”

So, even though some days it was a slog to come up with something I thought was good, I can say I recommend this exercise. If you’re not the kind of person who wants to go out and buy a book, take one of your thousand blank journals, and grab some prompts from the internet. My personal favourite is whoever runs the writing prompt Tumblr (now apparently available on facebook?) I’ve left the URL in my reference section.

If you are at all extroverted, then I recommend taking it one step further. Go to an improv class. Having to come up with and actually articulate ideas on the fly with other people providing input is a bit scary, but trust me, by the end of it, you will be a faster brainstormer. You will feel less stigmatized about throwing out ideas which you feel may or not be good at. Let others build off of you, and in turn, build off them. Learn different ways to approach lines of logic by paying close attention to the other participants and how people react to their ideas.

It’s worth your time, I promise.

If nothing else, it will make you a little more brave, socially. If you’re anything like me, every little bit helps.

References