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

Inside Out or Outside In?

The class I’m taking on writing for video games recently raised a point I can’t stop thinking about. To put it plainly, the point was whether it’s better/easier to create a character from the inside out, or the outside in.

For context, when you are writing for a video game character you are often a cog in the wheel of production. Even as a head writer, you may not have any say in what a character looks like. You may not have a say in the way they are programmed to walk, to move, when they speak, or how much they can say. It is up to you to take every piece decided by the narrative director, the programmers, the artists, and the other writers and make a GOOD character out of it.

This is why looking from the outside in may be more beneficial.

It’s irritating to play a video game where the player character or the NPC don’t seem to jive with the surroundings. Their entire family was murdered by assassins, but they hire assassins on a regular basis? That’s a little sus. Oppressed by the local monarchy but is seen cheering earnestly in the crowd when royalty drives by? Hmm. They have a limp but it’s never addressed, it’s just an empty character trait? Boo. The character’s backstory says they were a lazy orphan, but yet they talk about their fond memories of lavish parties because it suits their archetype? Frustrating, and usually the catalyst for me putting down the game and doing a quick internet search because… did I make that up in my head? Or is it a narrative error? Either way, I’ve PUT THE GAME DOWN and have gone to do something else. Not the reaction a game designer wants.

So how could this apply to writing?

Not everyone just sits down to write a story and has the perfect character walk into their brain immediately. Not everyone gets to start with a character at all! In one of my most recent works, I had “NAME1” as a placeholder for 80 pages before I figured out who the late-stage character was.

Sometimes you have to start with the story you want to tell and build the character from all the bits and pieces you find along the worldbuilding way. Is medicine difficult, expensive, and risky? Maybe this gives your character a glass eye and a whole bucket of resentment that fuels their desire to overthrow the government with a secret society. Is education restricted to one gender of one social status? Maybe your character is neither of those and it made them start a study ring when they were younger. Maybe this leads to a core personality trait of being a patient teacher.

Planning a book, a short story, a game, or other media doesn’t always go as planned. It doesn’t always go in order. Being able to consciously flip your character design from internal to external could be a valuable way to unstick your writing process.

It could also make you realize something about your character that would cause some readers to be pulled out of their immersion.

This means there’s the potential for rewrites but it’ll be worth it. Having characters that feel real, in a world that feels real, relating to each other in a believable way, is SO valuable. Trying to put a bandaid on a plot hole or misalignment of character to their environment is very noticeable to the reader. Even more so than not addressing it at all.

I’m sure you could tell me many instances of a hastily-thrown-in paragraph or page explaining something that otherwise doesn’t matter at that point. Or matters to the reader but not to the character. Fourth Wing and Violet’s early habit of spewing history facts while trying to calm herself down in a dangerous situation comes to mind. It’s a lazy way to deliver exposition. How many people do you know that can rattle off a concise history of their school while people are trying to harm them?

I can’t even remember my name under pressure.

There also haven’t been many events in my life where I just lore drop because I think the people I’m talking to might need context. Can you imagine how weird it would be if everyone justified their thoughts with an immediate context comment? That’s not how conversation works. And when someone forces the pattern, you notice. For example, I had the following conversation with a landlord and it was jarring.

It went like this:

“There’ll be a dog coming for the weekend, we’re pet-sitting. Is that okay?” – Landlord

“May I ask what kind of dog? Big dogs make me really nervous.” – Me

“Oh, they’re little. Kickable size. Are you afraid of dogs because you were attacked by one?” – Landlord

First note, this is not in reference to the cute white dog I’ve previously posted about. Second note, I do not condone someone referring to a dog’s size as “kickable”. Third note, that comment made me uncomfortable. I now had the option to talk about why I was nervous about big dogs (spoiler, I was NOT attacked by a dog) or I could abruptly cut the conversation off.

Which can narratively serve a purpose, but certainly doesn’t feel natural. Another example would be a conversation recently had with a neighbour.

This is the FIRST time I was in a conversation with her and the second time I had ever met her. She talked about how she never cooks anymore. How her family doesn’t come and visit as much as she’d like. How she can hear the neighbour above her burp and fart and walk, and what he does with his girlfriend. How she wanted to insulate her ceiling. How one of her sons was going to open a shop now that he’d graduated from university. How she knows someone on the strata council. She showed me her house. She pointed out all the parts about it she thought were stupid. She gave me a cabbage and half a bottle of oil from her fridge.

Affectionally, she is now the crazy neighbour lady.

It was a non-standard interaction. It felt weird in real life, and it feels weird when you’re forced to read it.

So. Coming back around to my point. Write your characters from the inside out. Then write them again from the outside in. Make your characters bloom naturally within your book. Make your characters make sense in your world. Make your readers consider your characters well-built, and NOT the crazy lady next door.

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?