What shall I write About?
I have 60 years of living an interesting life to look back on so I have no shortage of writing ideas. I’m not going to exhaust those ideas very quickly either. I have many experiences and ideas to call on – sometimes choosing can be a challenge. Don’t be discouraged by this if you are quite young just launching your writing career. Even young writers have a wealth of experiences to dig into to discover those little gems to write about.
I read the following quote a few days ago:
‘If you’ve survived adolescence, you have enough to write about for the rest of your life.’ Flannery O’Connor.
How about a few hints and ideas to get you started?
- Write about your most successful achievement so far.
- Write about a time you were very angry with your parents or siblings.
- Write about the time your parents were very angry with you.
- Write about your most embarrassing experience.
- Write about your proudest moment.
- Write down a list of your strengths and weaknesses.
- Write about your goals, ambitions, dreams and even fantasies.
- What needs to change for you to become a writer?
- Write about the person you admire the most.
- Write about the person who has influenced your life the most.
- Write about the things that inspire you.
- Write about the things that anger or disgust you.
When you have written several paragraphs using one or more of these ideas, think about how you can turn this into an article for a magazine. Perhaps you might use your piece of writing as a starting off point for a fictional story.
For example, say you wrote about your proudest moment. Take that experience and turn it into a short story. Because this will be fiction, you can change the details. Also change the names of people involved – to protect both the innocent and the guilty parties! Let your imagination soar. Give your character problems to solve, crises to survive or conflicts to resolve before that ‘proudest moment’ occurs.
Good writing.
Related articles:
- Short story starters – heaps of articles with dozens of ideas for short stories.
- Writing hints – plenty of articles giving hints and tips for writing.
Writing success – well, sort of
One of the assignments I had to complete last semester for my Master of Arts in Creative Writing was a research paper on some aspect of writing. Graduate students were able to negotiate their own topic.
Point of View
I decided to write my paper on the importance of ‘point of view‘ in any piece of fiction. I also planned to cover the different forms of point of view and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. An ambitious project; whole books have been written on the subject. I only had 2000 words. I must have sounded convincing however, because I received a Distinction for my paper (and only one mark off a High Distinction).
The importance of Point of View
Here is a small extract from my introduction:
Point of view is of vital importance to all writers of fiction. Point of view may appear to have little to do with plot or structure, beginning or ending and even characterisation, but it can impact upon the effectiveness of those elements. Point of view is how the story is told, who tells the story and how it sounds to the readers. ‘To put this most simply, point of view is merely a decision the writer makes that will determine through whose eyes the story is going to be told’. (Elizabeth George, crime writer) This is a fundamental decision that needs to be made by the writer right at the beginning.
The effects of Point of View
The point of view chosen by the author fundamentally affects the way readers will respond emotionally to the fictional characters. For example, if the story is told from the point of view of rapist, this will differ markedly from the story told by the victim. It will totally change the mood, tone and voice of the writing. It could also impact upon how the characters are depicted by the author.
I may write about this topic in more detail in future posts. Let me know in the comments or via the contact form if you’d like to read more on this topic.
Good writing.
A new food – CHARCOAL CHI KEN
1 Comment »2nd August, 2008; Category: Writing Hints
After 35 years in another life (as a primary school teacher) I guess I have always had a passion for correct spelling in anything written or published. I wince and groan at some of the errors that are allowed into final copies of our local newspaper. I would inwardly squirm when school newsletters were sent home with several spelling errors contained in the text. I delight (in horror what’s more) at spelling bloopers used in the captions on television programmes (‘programs’ for my North American friends).
When writing student reports while teaching I was especially careful to set a good standard. I remember one occasion when I sent print-outs of my reports to the deputy principal for checking. One came back with the following circled: ‘xxxx must check his spalling more carefully. Now that word spalling was accepted by my spell checker so I missed it. As it turns out, it is a building term and is also used in relation to sculpture. I learned a new word through my mistake. (Who says we never learn from our mistakes?)
A new kind of food delight
Sometimes a spelling mistake can lead to humour (“Humor’ me, my American fans.) Yesterday I was driving along Prospect Road in north Adelaide, South Australia. I had just seen several restaurants: a Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, Indian and several others.
Then I saw the following sign advertising a culinary delight they called:
CHARCOAL CHI KEN.
That’s strange, I thought. I’ve never heard of CHI KEN before. Must be some new Chinese food.
Then the penny dropped. As I drove closer I realised that there was a letter missing from their sign.
Good writing – and remember to check your spelling.
How to Improve Your Writing
My regular readers know that I am currently studying for my Master of Arts in Creative Writing.
One of the ideas impressed upon me by most of the lecturers and tutors last semester was the importance of striving to improve one’s writing. There is always room for change and improvement in any manuscript, whether that be a story, novel, article, essay or poem. The writer should always aim at producing the very best piece of writing. Careful editing, proofreading and rewriting are all part of this process.
How can we improve our writing?
There are many ways of improving your writing. Here is a list of some ways of making improvements. It is not an exhaustive list; I am sure you can think of many more. You can share them in the comments section. I’d like that.
- Check your spelling. Have a good dictionary handy – or access one online.
- Check that your work is grammatically correct. Let someone who has a good understanding of grammar check your work.
- Check that you have used the correct punctuation.
- Read out your text aloud; if you stumble over a word or phrase it may indicate that there is a problem with that sentence.
- Get someone else to read the text aloud to you.
- Watch out for obscure words; a simpler word may be better, and lead to better reader comprehension.
- Watch out for long sentences; they can easily ramble on for far too long and this can lead to reader confusion and hinder communication. Many readers will just give up and go to something else.
- Cut out
allunnecessaryand superfluouswords. Be ruthless. - Consider every word – have you used the right word?
The list could go on and on.
The most productive and effective way to improve your writing I’ve left out of the list above.
If you really want to improve your writing, just keep writing. The more you write the better you will become.
Good writing.
Where do you get your ideas for writing?
People starting out in the writing life sometimes ask this question.
Where do ideas come from?
I seem to have no trouble coming up with ideas for writing. They just seem to be everywhere. I usually have far too many story ideas to use myself – that’s why I often feature short story starters here on my blog.
My problem is having enough hours in each day to use all those ideas that just pop into my head. Then there are those things I see or hear or read that immediately present themselves as story ideas. The writer in me always has the “writer’s antenna” finely tuned for an idea. Here are some examples:
- While watching television recently there was a short item about giraffes. One short sentence gave me an idea for a children’s picture book. I can’t tell you here – I haven’t written the story which I think would be great so I don’t want anyone to steal the idea. (Sorry)
- I wrote a children’s novel once from inspiration received during a sermon at church.
- While travelling in my home state of South Australia we drove past a paddock full of lambs. From this came the idea for a children’s picture book.
- The phrase “Barney goes Berserk” popped into my head during a writing workshop. Who was Barney? Why was he going berserk? From that idea came the idea of a fish called Barney. I wrote a children’s picture book with that title – I’ll be sending it off to a publisher very soon.
- Some time ago I was thinking about my friend Harry. What if life had dealt (a fictional) Harry a severe blow? What would his life be like? A short story came from that idea.
None of these ideas may sound earth shattering at first. Each of them stayed with me long enough to germinate into a story. Sometimes that germination takes days or weeks, sometimes it may take years. When talking to an elderly relative four years ago I heard the voice of a character and knew that here was the idea for a novel for adults. At this point it is only an idea with merely a few sentences written down. One day I hope that this will blossom into a three or four hundred page novel.
Just one warning: when you have an idea for a story, jot it down. Unless you do that the idea may be lost forever.
Find an Ideas place
I recently read of one writer’s special place for getting ideas for writing. This author always had his ideas in the shower. So that he didn’t lose any ideas, he bought a waterproof notepad and pen from a scuba diving shop. If an idea comes during a shower he immediately records the idea. Brilliant.
Good writing – and may all your ideas turn into great stories.