Have you ever read a book that conveys an interesting concept but the story didn’t keep you invested to the end? Or a story where the cause was seemingly really important but you found yourself not really caring if they won or lost?
It’s most likely because the story was too focused on the concept or cause, and not on the character. In other words, we cannot care what happens to a character’s world, until we care about the characters who live in it.
You’re writing, speeding through scenes in a gush of inspiration, when your characters reach the town, mountain, forest of _______ and your (metaphorical) feet suddenly sink into the time-sucking swamp of naming.
Quick poll.
How many of you when you roll out of bed in the morning find your house and writing project in perfect order?
There’s a rich aroma of rainforest coffee wafting through the quiet and dark house as you sit down to your clean desk and boot up your laptop. You pull up your documents and immediately your fingers start flying over the keyboard. No hunting around for your charger, no searching for that character chart you filled out yesterday, or your hand drawn map—it’s all there and ready to go.
If “that’ll be the day…” is your response, this post is for you.
Getting organized is often the bane of a writer’s existence. But it doesn’t have to be. Here are a few helpful tips I’ve picked up along the bumpy writer’s road.
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We often overlook scent in our writing, opting to create our characters and worlds through sight alone, but that’s a cheap version of the human experience.
Have you ever passed a stranger in the airport and been slammed with homesickness because they’re wearing the same cologne as your husband? Cried because that shirt still smells like the loved one who’s now gone? Felt like you were home despite the miles just because a certain candle was lit?
Scents are tied to memories and memories are inextricably linked to emotions. Good stories elicit emotion in their readers by making the characters and the world real in the same way that readers experience their own world– through their five senses.
Here are some words to help you incorporate scent into your writing.
Some people call it a muse, while others say they get their inspiration from everyday things: people or events that catch their imagination in just the right way. Sometimes it’s something as simple as reading a story that ends differently than you’d wanted it to, sparking your imagination into how it should have gone, if the pen was in your hand[i].
Wherever your story idea emerges from, the next (and sometimes worst) part can be determining if the idea is worth keeping. I don’t mean jotting down a note to yourself about an idea – that’s never a waste of time.
The Spinning Pen 