My Favorite Writing Techniques--Part II

I spoke of many things in the last article that I think are important to a good story. Now I want to suggest a few things I neglected to mention there. One that is important to a writer is to become best of friends with your spell-checker. It is waiting patiently and wants desperately to be your friend. I have often forgotten to use it and later see misspelled words that stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. It can be very embarrassing to send a manuscript out for critique, only to afterward see the thorns instead of the roses you intended for the reader. I have had days when my typing rate goes to tortoise speed and my words appear to be hare-brained. On those days, when I feel like all my fingers are stuttering and tied together, I depend on the checker a lot more (provided the brain is working and I remember).

Another suggestion concerns rewrites. A good rule of thumb is to never rewrite when you are tired, cranky, or too soon after you have just finished the rough draft. Give it some time--rest and take a breath of fresh air. I assure you that you will be better for it and so will your manuscript. You will be more open to fresh ideas when you are well rested and your mind has been allowed a recess break. You will see errors more easily (spell-checkers are still not perfect).


The next suggestion may shock you a bit. All of the techniques that you have so recently come to know, love and appreciate ... forget them. You want to get past the mechanics of it all and learn how to write without examining and analyzing every step. You are not discarding the rules, just using them in such a way that they become transparent and user friendly. They must become tools that you don't consciously notice, just like using a manual shift in a car becomes second nature after awhile. Your readers will be equally blessed by the results. You will be living by the rules, not just writing by them.

Bury yourself in the story and the characters. Don't just get acquainted with them—know them. You must in some way be them for a time, or at least become a close observer of the film that is playing out in your mind. As you improve at this, you will be able to come back to your story after an interruption and watch it unfold again, just as if you hit the play button from where you left off.

If the story is legitimate, the characters will have a life of their own. I know this from experience. As I was writing Shining Armor, there came a point early on when the characters came to life and I literally wrote as the characters themselves told me to write. I was as much in the dark about what would happen next as was the intended audience. The turns and twists that came next made me gasp, but they were believable and in a strange way, logical. I was left saying, "Wow! Amazing ... "

So, the lesson is: learn, absorb, then forget the techniques. Somehow, in a wonderful and mysterious way, it just works.

Good luck in your own endeavors.

Steven O’Dell may be reached at: pointedwords@gmail.com

Excerpts of Shining Armor—Books 1, 2 and 3, may be read at: yourownnovel.blogspot.com