One of the most useful pieces of advice I was given early in
my writing career was ‘give your character a problem then solve it’. I was
writing for several children’s magazines at the time and often had to come up
with stories at very short notice so this advice was given me by one of my
editors. I found it really helpful and it got me out of many a tight spot when
I received a phone call at 11 pm to write a story that day and post it as the
editor needed it the next morning (this was in the days before email and fax!)
Of course the stories were very short and based around existing characters such
as Rainbow, Thomas the Tank Engine and Winnie the Pooh, but it can be a good basis for
longer stories too.
Every story needs conflict and if you think about it the
basis for stories is usually the character having to overcome some problem. I
often give this advice to my writing students adding ‘solve it in an unexpected
way’ as it’s good to have a twist at the end of the story so the reader doesn’t
guess the ending.
Other writers I’ve talked to said they often remember and still act on
writing tips they were given early in their career too. I like to pass on advice so a couple of weeks ago I asked authors to contribute to my blog post on
writing tips. They gave me varied advice from ‘don’t wait for inspiration to
strike, just write. You can delete the bad bits after’ (Ann Evans) to ‘avoiding
‘ly adverbs in dialogue tags’(Kimber Leigh Wheaton)
You can read the blog post here. http://karenking.net/blog/read_131090/tip-sheet-tuesday-authors-advice.html
Were you given good advice early on in your writing career?
What advice would you give to a new writer today?
Karen King writes all sorts of books. Check out her website at www.karenking.net
5 comments:
Thanks for that, Karen. One of the tips on your tip sheet that I've also found very helpful is uploading manuscripts to kindle for the first read through. It means I then read more as a "reader" and less as an "editor" so I get a better overview and am less bogged down in detail.
It's a great tip, isn't it, Emma? I think you're right and we can get too bogged down with detail that a reader won't notice.
Give your character a problem and solve it is great advice!
I think so, Kimber. It's come in very useful over the years:)
Yes, I've turned my WIP into an ebook and loaded it on to my cyber bookshelf to look at. I got so tired of scrolling down the manuscript pages and I wasn't going to print it all out - waste of paper! Trees cut down! And yes, you can look at it as a reader.
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