5 Easy Steps to Better Writing

John Yeoman has a novel approach to writing—he suggests a lazy 5-step program to improving your writing. Lazy? LAZY???? Does the word even feature in any dedicated writer’s vocabulary? Aren’t writers supposed to slog all hours that God gives in order to squeeze out some creative scribblings that may or may not be the next Amazon bestseller? I must admit, I feel guilty if I miss a day of writing. I read the phrase “It’s like having permanent homework” somewhere and it’s true. However, John has some very good advice in his article, which I have reproduced here with his kind permission.


A Lazy 5 Step Program to Make Your Stories Glow
Yes, and a thousand writing mavens on the web will hustle to reveal it to you. Truth is, there’s only one formula that succeeds, time and again. And here it is... the 5-step program that most top authors use, although they’ll rarely spell it out for you.

#1. Don’t be afraid to write dross: We’ve all heard that we must write every day, and it’s true. But what shall we write? Perhaps we’re developing a story or novel. We know where it should be going, but we’re stuck for words. Solution? Write garbage. And write it fast.

Drop in the first phrases that come into your head. Your object is not to write great literature—just to get that wretched episode finished! There’s no point in playing word games. Not just yet. Probably you’ll junk that whole episode anyway at the final ‘cut’.

Amazingly, the garbage approach works. We have no problems going back to a page of rubbish and, with an amused sigh, editing it into something sensible. Writer’s block? Forget it. There’s no anxiety in this approach so our mind stays calm. We can hack out 1500+ words a day, without pain. Make it your goal to draft total nonsense for an hour. How can you fail? You can then have fun improving it later.

#2. Study television dramas: Now you have a great excuse for watching television. Study how the actors in sitcoms and soaps behave. Every five minutes, somebody will insult, distress or romance somebody else. Watch their faces, lips, and body movements. Also hear how their voices change. Jot it all down. True, the actors overact. But you could use that body language, toned down, in your stories.
Also take careful note of every ‘scene hanger’, the way an episode closes. Maybe it’s an unresolved question or note of alarm. That uncertainty will tease us into the next scene, even across a commercial interlude. Adapt those scene hangers and you’ll soon have a wealth of ways to link the episodes in your own stories, so the reader stays hooked.

#3. Act as a walking tape recorder: Christopher Isherwood inspired the phrase ‘I am a camera’. It described his work. He had reproduced, without judgement or interpretation, what he actually saw and heard in post-war Berlin. You can do that in conversations that you overhear. Take a discreet note of every colourful turn of phrase. Folk say the most amazing things that you would never be able to invent for yourself.

Okay, we know that ‘real’ people do not speak the way they do in books. But you may be amazed at how often people fail to complete a sentence, or reply to a question, or even speak coherently at all. Almost all communication is done ‘between the lines’. If you get that sub-text into your stories, your characters will seem ‘real’.

#4. Find something boring to observe: Boring? Yes. Here’s a wonderful way to make a walk productive. Stop at random, wherever nobody can see you. And just look. Are you staring at a shop window? A poster? A car-filled motorway or a placid park? And is the scene boring? That’s wonderful! Why? Imagine what a child would make of that scene, if they had never seen it before but possessed an uncanny gift with words. A bare brick wall becomes a magic landscape. A mundane street is an adventure to be explored...

Write a description of that scene, using all the five senses—as if you had never seen anything like it before. And pack all that sensual detail into one sentence. Now is not the time to be lazy. Use words that precisely convey the uniqueness of that moment. In effect, write a haiku.

True, this is a tough exercise. How can we describe, say, a graffiti-covered wall in words that make it fascinating? But it’s the key skill of a great writer. Master it and you’ll be able to ‘switch on’ this habit of perception instinctively.

I once had lunch with a popular UK author. ‘Look over there,’ she said. ‘Who?’ ‘The man with a face like a pork pie.’ She was describing her publisher, who had just entered the restaurant. I wager that phrase found its way into her next novel (if not her conversation with him). Point is, she couldn’t stop herself using colourful phrases, even in casual observations!

#5. Acknowledge that your story will never be perfect: Can you write a perfect story? Of course, not. Nobody can. Even Shakespeare’s plays have lines that make no sense at all, even to scholars. (Perhaps he was drunk...) Point is, you have to re-write a story at least a dozen times before it’s fit to present to anybody, let alone a publisher.

One painless way to do this is: get your story as good as it’s ever going to get (you think). Then drop it into a closet for a month. Drag it out and try not to laugh at how bad it has become, all by itself. That wonderful paragraph you spent hours on? Dross. And why do your characters drone on, and on...

The ideal time to re-write a story is when it has spent a year in limbo. Of course, you can’t afford to leave a story on the shelf if you write for a living. Professional authors have to make do with getting their work 80% perfect and letting their agent and copy editor tidy up the rest. Still, everything they submit will have gone through the ‘closet’ process a good many times.

Yes, there is a sure-fire formula for writing stories that succeed. It’s the one above and it has been around since stories began. Of course, no formula will work unless you have some writing talent. If you have, it’s just a matter of developing good habits, like those above. It's how every pro author started...

John's free book How to Win Story Contests for Profit and free 14-part course in story writing for the commercial market can be found at:

http://www.writers-village.org/writing-ideas.php

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Beware the Expert Reader!

Convincing the Expert Reader is hard, because whatever you write, there's always an expert reader waiting to pounce. But expert readers are good for writers. Yes, they really are because when you write with an expert reader in mind, you get your facts straight.

In many movies and books, some of the characters do the most uncharacteristic (or plain dumb) things. (See my previous post discussing the movie Prometheus) I hate it when something a character says or does just sounds wrong, or else I know it cannot be done. I happened upon a great article by John Yeoman of Writer’s Village: How can you make your characters’ actions appear plausible?

Many a good story has collapsed because a character did something that just didn't ring true.



Tom Hanks looks exhausted!

The plot of The Da Vinci Code, absurd enough from the start, topples into farce about halfway through the story. Why? All the action—spanning 180,000 words—is supposed to take place within the space of just 24 hours. Yet in that brief time the characters have run, flown and driven halfway across Europe and England.

Nobody ever sleeps! (Have you noticed?) By chapter 105, Prof Langdon is still making brilliant deductions, having been awake for 30 hours. Somehow, it doesn't 'ring true'...

Beware the expert reader

Every story has an expert reader who will embarrassingly point out that, for example, your 25 stone villain just could not have wriggled down a 15-inch wide manhole in a New York street, circa 1920, while disguised in a fire-fighter's uniform. But if you get even the tiny details right, that expert reader—highly impressed—will buy everything you write thereafter. And your story will also convey the 'ring of truth' to everyone else.

Q: How do you enhance your story with a 'ring of truth', effortlessly?
A: Make your story plausible and your characters 'real'

Helpful Hint: If you want your character to do something unusual, do it yourself.

Otherwise, you will never be able to convey—convincingly—how the experience looks, feels, hears, smells, or tastes to the character. True, you might not wish, personally, to flee a drug-crazed axman or abseil one-handed down the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai. But if it’s do-able, do it.

When I wanted my character to rescue a heron snarled high in an ancient elm, I scaled my plum tree. After ten feet, my hair was thick with dust, leaves, and insects. (I had never realised how dusty tree bark can become in dry weather.) My trousers grew green with mould and I became massively perforated like St Bartholomew with little twigs. Of course, I then got stuck. (Branches are never as close to hand in real life as they are in fiction.) My wife had to rescue me with the window cleaner's ladder.

On another occasion, I needed a thief to climb an old staircase with a lantern in his hand. So I did exactly that. I found it was necessary to step on the inside of the stairwell to avoid telltale creaking noises and to breathe very slowly (ditto). I also had to tread on the balls of my feet (ditto) and to balance myself on the banister by my left elbow. (I didn’t want to leave tell-tale finger marks.)

Have you ever dragged yourself across an attic floor, gibbering? In a different tale, I decided to have my protagonist explore the eaves of an old castle in search of dark family secrets. Luckily, I live in an old house. So I dragged myself across a blanket of 18th century dust. My knee went through one of the ceiling planks. Below it, I found an orange—perhaps the lunch of some bygone builder. The orange was entirely hollow. Its inside had withered away to leave only a perfect mummified shell. It nicely symbolised my fictional family—immaculate before the gaze of the world but rotten within.

You can't make these details up. You have to discover them.

So if a detective finds the full mark of a flat foot on a dusty stair, I realized, it had probably been put there for a deceptive purpose. Because people typically climb stairs on the balls of their feet. All these little points of observation found their way into my story.

When historical novelist Elizabeth Chadwick sets her stories in medieval castles, she visits them—with camera, notebook, and tape measure in hand. If she tells you that her hero in 1395 wriggled out of a kitchen window of Ludlow Castle that was exactly 15 inches wide, 16 feet above the courtyard and ten paces from the main gate, you can trust her. She’s measured it.


Climb that castle wall first!


That’s one reason she has a loyal readership. Apparently, some readers make a point of visiting the locations of her novels, just to check her measurements!

Don’t imagine it. Do it. Walk your story, as far as sanity permits. And readers will then believe you and your story.

So there you have it, dear writers (and readers). Never guess how long/high/light/far/heavy etc. something is. Do it yourself! Run from the Louvre to the Opera House (The Da Vinci Code), climb that mediaeval castle wall if possible, shimmy up that tree and really try to rescue the cat (Trust me, they don’t cooperate).

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