Category: description
-
NaNoWriMo Day 22: Starting with dialogue
When I start a scene, if I’m not sure what to write to start things off, I go to my default: dialogue. Then I add in some physical actions followed by interior thoughts and emotions. Then I layer in some description – I make sure the reader knows what the characters look like as close…
-
NaNoWriMo Day 4: the 2nd step
I’m done with steps 1 and 2 of my writing process. I’ll be spending the next week marching through step 3 which is expanding my scene paragraph summaries into 5 paragraphs. These 5 paragraphs are a brain dump of details I may or may not include down the road: scraps of descriptions, dialogue, interior monologues…
-
NaNoWriMo Day 2: My four-steps
Was my first day of NaNoWriMo 2022 was a huge success? I wrote over 1700 words. The story is coming along wonderfully and I’ve come up with some ideas as I’ve composed. During Preptober, I made a list of phrases describing scenes. I also compiled a list of characters for the two novellas I’m writing…
-
Friday’s Findings: July 2022 Camp NaNoWriMo Update #4
Working on more than one WIP at once Well, Camp NaNoWriMo will be over Sunday night. So far, I’ve written 25,7000 words out of my 25,000 goal. But one of my less tangible goals was to successfully navigate three WIPs simultaneously. I’ve definitely learned some things about writing three WIP at once. Good things. For…
-
Friday’s Findings: A Little Off the Top
Currently, I am working on my novella, Traption. I practice taking a little off the top at the beginning of each scene. I learned this concept from Jessica Brody’s Writing Mastery Academy course on revision. She recommends going through each scene to determine whether or not the scene begins at the “correct” place. She recommends…
-
Silas House and Where He Finds Inspiration
In a post from last week, I discussed weaving in backstory to avoid infodumps. Coincidentally, the day I posted it on this blog, I attended the Speed Art Museum that evening where Kentucky author Silas House spoke on the subject. One thing he said stuck out to me: “I believe there’s a very thing veil…
-
Friday’s Findings: Balancing Descriptions
Not too much, not too little. Not talking about the ranch seasoning powder I add to my tuna casserole recipe. I’m talking about description in fiction writing. I keep reading over and over: description isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. Whether it’s describing a character, a room, or a car, one or two descriptors go…
-
Avoid Infodumps: Dole Out Information
As I write my current draft for my WIP called Traption, I am trying to avoid infodumps. One way to avoid heaping a mound of story-stopping background details is to weave the information throughout the story. Use dialogue. Use a short flashback. Use inner monologue. Doling out the information a little here, a little there,…
-
What a Mess!
After thirty days of writing over fifty thousand words, what do I have to show? An incoherent mess of scraps of conversations, descriptions and exposition. It’s a mess. And that’s what makes my 2021 NaNoWriMo a success. The story is there, told all the way through. I just have to rework it and rework it.…
Andrew M. Friday 