The Inner Dialogue: A Method for Figuring Out Your Stories

So if you didn’t hear, a novel I’ve been working on since college is getting published, and I’ve been working with a professional editor to make sure that the story is the best it can be before publication. During the revision process, we agreed that the number of flashbacks in the story were actually getting in the way of the story, so I should nix them. Unfortunately, that meant a third of the book went out the window, and another third that relied on that first third had to go as well.

Yeah, that got me depressed for a little while, and it took a lot for me to climb out of that funk. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m actually here to talk about what happened with my story. Because you see, now that essentially the majority of the novel had been chucked out, I had to figure out where to go with the story. I couldn’t go the original direction of the story, because the flashbacks I’d tossed out were so essential to that direction.

Luckily, I was able to come up with a new direction for the story using a method that I’d never used before, which I call the inner dialogue. I can’t remember where I picked this method up,* but it’s stayed in the back of my mind for years, and I figured this was as good a situation as any to use it.

The inner dialogue is where you simulate a conversation with your inner writer (we all have one) when you’re struggling with what to do with a story. This could be trying to overcome writer’s block, figuring out why what a character is doing in the story feels wrong to you, having to rewrite a majority of the story, or any other issue you may be having during the writing/editing process of a story.

Here’s what you have to do:

Get a notebook and pen, or a typewriter and paper, or open up your preferred writing program on your computer. Imagine that you’re sitting down with your inner writer at a cafe, in your favorite writing spot, in a dark basement underneath a seedy dive bar, wherever you feel most comfortable talking to your inner writer. And have an honest conversation with them, writing down what you say and writing down what your inner writer says back. Think of it like texting, only you’re texting with a part of your mind you use for storytelling.

Bounce ideas off them, talk about the criticisms people have with the story, discuss what about the story is bugging you. Something about this method, writing out the problems and some possible situations to remedy this, allows your mind to open up and see new possibilities and solutions.

It might also make people wonder if you’re channeling spirits and doing automatic writing and/or if you’re having some sort of psychological crisis. But I think that’s a risk worth taking for finding what you need to make a story as good as it possibly can be.

Here’s an example conversation of me and my inner writer (who I’ve found to be very sassy during our conversations) discussing a hypothetical book idea I’ve been working on. My dialogue is written normally, while my inner writer uses bold letters:

So we’re doing this again, are we?

Yes, we are. Alright, let’s talk about my idea for a novel I’ve been working on. It centers on a group of cheerleaders.

I’m sure it does, you naughty dog.

Ha ha, very funny. Anyway, we’ve gone over what would happen to them once they arrive at the main setting of the story. But why does it happen? There’s always a catalyst that sets things up. Even if we don’t see it until the end of the story, there’s always something that starts the horror off.

Not always, baby boy. Remember The Haunting of Hill House? That really didn’t have a–no wait, that’s not right. The catalyst was that they entered the house for the investigation, and one of the subjects is mentally still very much a child, which puts her the most at risk to the house’s charms.

Yeah, catalysts in stories can be debatable or hard to pin down sometimes. But what could be a catalyst for this story. Why does this happen to these characters?

You were playing around with the idea of the setting being an illusion, weren’t you? Something created by the characters and the dark secrets in their minds. Can we do anything with that still? Maybe a variation?

You see where this is going, right? But it is very effective. I got ideas for this hypothetical novel just from doing an inner dialogue here in this blog post. And if doing it as a demonstration in this blog post can give me ideas for a novel, imagine what it can do for your work at home.

With that in mind, I just want to leave you with a couple of tips for doing this. You don’t have to use them, but I find them useful:

• Be honest and write down everything. It may be a lot of work, but you’ll find it helpful to write down everything in these dialogues. Especially if you want to go back and see what you’ve come up with. Any thought, any idea, could prove useful, so write them down, even if your thoughts are kind of weird (mine certainly are).
• Give your inner writer a voice. Like in your stories, the inner writer is also a character, even if they only exist inside you. That being said, you’ll want to give them a voice, motivations, everything you’d give a normal character. That way, they can speak to you just like any other character, and make the dialogue that much more effective.
  It also helps to give the inner writer’s dialogue some distinguishing characteristic, so it doesn’t get jumbled up with your own. A different font, italics, as long as it helps you differentiate, it’s all good.
• Mark the dates and times of the dialogues. Often these dialogues can last a while. Mine lasted two weeks while I was trying to find a new direction. So mark the date and times you had these dialogues in the document you’re using. You’ll find it very helpful for later.

Nobody wants to find out a story is flawed or that they can’t figure out how to fix its problems. But there are a variety of methods to overcome these issues. Perhaps the inner dialogue is a good one for you, and will help you write, edit and publish your best work. You just have to sit down, and commit to talking to yourself for a little while. You never know what you’ll unlock.

*For some reason I think it might have something to do with Stephen King, but I think I’d remember if I came across this method in a King novel. If you have any idea where it came from, let me know in the comments. I’d like to give a proper acknowledgement to whoever or wherever I got the inner dialogue.

Tips For Surviving NaNoWriMo

As we all know, National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, is just around the corner (though considering it’s done all over the world these days, it might need a name change). If you are not familiar with the tradition, it’s basically that every year authors try to write a novel in the course of a single month, usually one that’s around fifty-thousand words, and always in November. Of the authors that choose to participate each year, some do it independently, while others do it through an international organization that can hook them up with other participating writers in their region and even let them know about local events centered on helping authors during the month.

I’m on the fence on whether or not I’ll be participating this year. I’ve three other books at various stages of editing and I have to decide if one of those books needs to be rewritten (if so, then I’m participating because that’s basically starting from scratch). Even so, I thought I’d serve the writing community and do my civic duty by posting some notes on how to survive and get through NaNoWriMo with all your fingers still attached to you and your sanity somewhat intact.

Because let’s face it, writing fifty-thousand words in thirty days? I don’t know about the rest of you, but normally that many words takes me six to eight months. Cramming all that work into a month, we need all the help and advice we can get.

So first off, don’t get stressed about the word count. To get fifty-thousand words written in thirty days, you’d have to write approximately 1,667 words, or about 6.7 pages per day.* I know for a lot of writers it’s difficult to get that much out in a single day. The thing to remember is not to feel upset if you can’t force yourself to get that many words out per day. Remember, all good stories take time, and there’s no prizes for meeting daily quotas (the NaNoWriMo organization hands out badges, but they’re like the ones from Audible, nice to have when you get them but they don’t make much of a difference after you get them) or getting the full fifty-thousand words written out besides bragging rights. Besides, if you have to force yourself to put out words when your heart is not in them or just to meet a quota, your first draft might not turn out so well.

That’s another thing: remember that this is a first draft. And a rushed one, too. So if you look at what you’ve written and wonder what the heck you were thinking, that’s a normal reaction to a first draft. They’re supposed to be full of errors and passages that make no sense to you upon the second read-through. It’s during that second read-through that you touch it up and get it closer to the gem that you know it’s going to be.

Now that we’ve gotten the tips that’ll keep you in a good frame of mind out of the way, let’s cover how we actually survive NaNoWriMo:

Prior to November, research and prepare. We’ve still got twenty-two days till NaNoWriMo kicks off. During that time, it might help for you to get an idea of what you’re working on, where it might be heading, and maybe learn a bit more about the subject matter you’re writing, especially if it’s a topic you don’t know very well (like a murder mystery in Tang China or a coming-of-age story set in an ROTC unit). Now I know a lot of you might like to write by the seat of your pants, but just doing a little bit of prep can be helpful, especially if it means you don’t have to stop midway through writing because you realized you don’t know a thing about car maintenance and you lose four days because you got a car maintenance manual and needed to cram all that info in.

It also helps to prepare so that you can make plans in case you have to stop writing for any reason. Whether you need to attend a wedding midway through the month or you have to put the metaphorical quill down because you have a Poli Sci exam coming up you need to study for, having a contingency plan in case that happens can work wonders.

Speaking of which, while it is important to get out as much writing as possible, make sure not to neglect your life just to write. Many of us have day jobs, school, families, friends, and a variety of other things that require our attention. While it is important to write and maybe give up a few social obligations or fun outings to work, don’t neglect the real world entirely. I find the real world can not only give me great ideas for stories, but also reenergize me so that when I sit down to write, I’m not restless and looking for a distraction or yearning to go out and see the latest horror movie or something.

And while you’re working so hard, remember to take care of your health. In some ways, NaNoWriMo is like the last three weeks of a college semester: you’ve got a ton of work to do, only so much time to do it, and you’re willing to get maybe four hours a night of sleep and eat ramen noodles three times a day if that’s what it takes to get through it on top. I’m advising against that. There are no consequences to not getting out the full fifty-thousand words, so your health shouldn’t be a consequence of trying to. Get plenty of sleep each night, eat healthy meals, and get some exercise too if you can, even if it’s just going for a walk. You’ll find you’ll have more energy for writing if you do, believe me.

It’s also healthy to take an occasional break. We all need time to recharge and let our brains focus. So if you feel approaching burnout or writer’s block, or if you can’t figure out where your story should go next, or if you’re just so tired of writing about a princess trying to cover up her father’s murder so she doesn’t have to marry against her will, then maybe a trip out to the movies or to the bar with your friends or some fun family time or an all-night Mario Kart tournament with your roommates might be what you need. Studies actually show that ideas come more easily to you if you’re distracted, so there’s even more reason to take a break right there.

And if you need a little motivation to keep you going, reward yourself for certain milestones. For every five-thousand words or so you put out, reward yourself with something fun. This could be a favorite dessert, watching Netflix for a little while, whatever you want. Give yourself something extra special when you reach fifty-thousand words and/or finish the book (I suggest some wine, some celebration music, and later a good movie with a friend). You’ll find it much easier to write if you have something to look forward to after all your hard work.

And let’s not forget to build a support network around yourself. The NaNoWriMo organization attempts to do this by putting you in touch with other participants in your area and with community events, but whether or not you decide to participate in these events, you should still have people around you encouraging and cheering you on. Friends, family, lovers, authors you’re friends with online or offline, they should all be there for you. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have people cheering me on and willing to read my work every time I publish during the rest of the year. Imagine how motivating it’ll be when you know there’s a group of people standing behind you when you do the writing equivalent of a 5K.

Finally, take a long break when you’re done. Not just from writing so you can get your creative juices to recharge, but also take a break from whatever novel you were working on once you’re done. I always feel that a month or more between drafts allows for writers to come back to their first drafts with fresh eyes so they can see where they made mistakes in the first draft and correct them. If you start editing immediately after finishing the first draft, you can only see it as the baby you just poured so much time and energy into and miss quite a lot. Better to take a break and let it lie until you’re ready to look again.

I’d like to wrap it up here and wish everyone participating next month good luck. Whatever you do to make the month of November one of the most productive and crazy of the year, I hope you found these tips helpful and that you have fun trying to get a full novel out in thirty days.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year?

What tips do you have for getting through the month and writing as much as you can in so little time?

*That’s if you write like I do, which is Times New Roman, 12 point font, and double spaced on 8.5” x 11” paper. Otherwise it varies.

Writer’s Block – Guest Post

Today I have a great guest post from Terry Compton (a fellow Ink Slinger’s Anthology author – look for that to be released October first).

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Writer’s Block

Or maybe just a slight impediment

writer’s block can feel like a brick wall

That blank computer screen just sits there and stares back at you.  Words flit through your brain but not words that will make your next scene come alive.  What do you do to break this?  I’d like to share a couple of ideas that work for me and then see what others do.

I usually have two sorts of blocks; too many possibilities or the transition from the scene I’ve just finished to the new one in my head.  I should tell you that I’m a seat of the pants writer.  You know, the one who has an opening scene and a vague idea of where you want the story to go.  The characters then drag you around in their big adventure.  I don’t know if these techniques will help those who outline their story but anything is worth a shot if you’re not getting words down.

I’d like start off by saying that I learned these tricks at the local authors’ group.  I don’t know a dangling participle from a dangling worm.  Oh, wait, one of them has to do with fishing.  I do know about that, but back to the subject.  One of the members of the group has been involved in screen writing and other types of writing for over twenty-five years.  He says there is only one cardinal rule in writing:  DON’T BORE YOUR READER.  Now let’s look at my two problems with that in mind.

How can too many possibilities be a block?  Sometimes after your protagonist (or even your antagonist) has finished a task in your latest scene, it will seem like they stand at a crossroads with five or six different paths ahead.  Which path do you choose?  Should they go to the beautiful beach to improve their sun tan?  Maybe press ahead to the next task in their adventure, or do they need to meet the latest heart throb?  And so on and so on.

What I’ve learned is to go back to your storyline.  Where is your character going?  What is their driving goal?  Are they too exhausted and beat up to continue?  Do they need to go to that beach to recuperate?  I’m trying to look through the DBYR filter more.  My sub-conscious sometimes quits throwing ideas out and I suddenly realize its saying, “Ho hummm.  Borrrring.”  Consequency, it’s time to go back and move your character in the most direct route along the storyline to the end goal.

Unless you’re adding a twist.  Then maybe they need to go to that beach to get such a bad sunburn that they will be handicapped in the next part of their adventure.  Or step on that poisonous jelly fish that will leave them hopping on one leg as they continue.

Go back a few pages and look at where they have been and what they were doing.  Come up with something that threatens or impedes them but keep them striving for the goal they need to reach.  Look through the DBYR filter and follow what your sub-conscious is saying.

But what about that transition scene between completing the dangerous task and getting to the character’s big wedding two days from now?  How do you bridge scenes like that which are so completely different?

Look at your character.  What have they been doing?  What is their state of mind?  Are they totally exhausted and beat six ways from Sunday.  Maybe they need the rest but maybe not all they’ll need.  Maybe they find out there’s a general transportation strike that will keep them from their destination.  How can they make it?  Or go back to the jelly fish and sunburn.  How will they ever be able to function at the wedding without being able to wear clothes or hopping on one foot?

Are they exuberant and ready to go?  Then it’s time to add trials and tribulation to their lives.  Readers want to worry about your characters.  Can they make the wedding or is the former suiter going to lock the church so your character can’t get in?  During the transition, keep your character under duress and stress.  If they aren’t, put them there.  A reader (or your sub-conscious) worrying about your character won’t get bored.

DBYR can be a great filter for any sort of block.  Look at how many obstacles your antagonist, weather, outside forces or even character flaws can put in the way.  Make sure the character is trying their best to go in the most direct route to their goal.  Unless they need a side trip to add a twist to the plot, then make sure there is a logical cause for these things to happen.  If the character is going to the beach after stopping the bank robbery, why?  Did their boss send them away?  Did they get a reward?

If you’re blocked, think of a list of obstacles.  Keep adding to them each day and then put your character through the wringer.  Good-bye block, hello happy reader and sub-conscious.

What do you do to overcome your block?

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Terry Compton has raced stock cars, rode horses across the Scapegoat Wilderness, fished and hunted most of his adult life while working at several different jobs. He is an Air Force veteran and served in the Air National Guard for several years. He is currently the owner, chief welder and installer for an ornamental iron business where he has made several award winning metal creations and is now turning this creativity to writing.

Terry loves to read science fiction, westerns and mystery stories. Some of his favorite authors are Clive Cussler, Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, Andre Norton, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Louie L’Amour, Zane Grey and Anne McCaffery. He is currently learning about ‘indie’ authors who are publishing e-books.

Terry currently lives in Montana with his wife and a dog who thinks she is a short furry people.

Writer’s Block: 9 Tricks to Recovery

For those of us who’s very survival is based on our ability to write the next word, the dreaded Writer’s Block is one of the most feared malady of a writer’s life. It is that point when you are tired, when have no interest in your work and future work only seems to make it worse, and when doing your work becomes harder and harder to do until you don’t even want to see it again.

Writer’s block is like a virus, once you contract it, it can become debilitating and if not treated, difficult to recover from. Over the 14 years I’ve been writing I’ve pricked up a few tricks to keep myself from catching writer’s block and recover from it when I don’t catch it in time. They might require some fundamental changes to your routine depending on your life.

9 Tricks to Recover from Writer’s Block

1) Take a vacation. This one is my favorites, but this one doesn’t mean that you have to leave the state, go camping, or plan an elaborate retreat. (I don’t know about you, but a vacation doesn’t mean the same now that I’m older as it did when I was a kid.) It just means that you step away from your work. You can go somewhere else, go to a café with a friend, take your kids to the park, be lazy, get some house or yard work finished, watch a movie/TV/Anime, walk around, relax, take a drive, and/or read a book. Sometimes just a change of scenery can make all the difference.

2) Take care of yourself. This is one I need to work on. There are never enough hours in my day, and I’m constantly going from one project to another without stopping to breathe. I’m learning that I have to take care of myself and my talent, I’m healthier physically and emotionally, which makes me better able to be cope with stress, be happy, and less likely to burn out. Sometimes taking care of ourselves just means taking a step away and relaxing.

3) Accept Failure. Not only is no one perfect, but what fun is perfection. Failure is where you learn and grow. It is the stick by which you can judge your progress. And one person’s failure, can be another person’s success…or at least the path to success.

4) Join a support group or Find a Writing Partner. A writing partner can help kick your ass into action and keep you motivated.

5) Be careful of criticism. We need to learn to handle criticism as writers, however, during the creative process you don’t need a critic sitting on your shoulder. Let your creativity have free reign at the beginning stages and criticism at the later stages, once you have revised and edited your work. Another tip, give your work to someone you can trust to give you an honest opinion and constructive criticism (this means they don’t just tell you what is wrong, but also what you did right).

6) Find your balance. Don’t overload yourself with too much work. Take a break. Explore new venues. Change topics, scenes, and even genres. Spend time with your family. Whatever you need to do to find balance in your life and your writing. Even if that means taking a little more time to write.

7) Explore your reasons. Writer’s burn out for a reason, figure out why it happened to you. Every situation is different. Try to identify the problems and work to improve them. A good way to do this is through guided journaling or free-writing. Figure out what matters to you and how to get it. Remember, writing about problems is a different process than talking it out or thinking about them.

8) What’s your motivation? Are you an extrinsic motivator or intrinsic motivator? If you are an extrinsic motivator, then you are motivated by things that come outside of yourself, deadlines, other people’s evaluations of your writing, or the need to pay the electric bill. However, if you are a intrinsic motivator, then you are motivated by things inside you, challenges you make for yourself, self-made deadlines, finding pleasure in your work.

9) Change it up. The best way I’ve found to overcome writer’s block is to write something just for you. Trying different forms of writing. Maybe write in another genre.

Creative people hit the point eventually where they feel tired and can’t find any interest in their work. If you have experienced writer’s block and wish to add anything, please comment. What are some ways you have employed to recover from burn out? Or keep yourself from falling victim to writer’s block?

What is Writer’s Block? And how can you avoid it?

There might come a time in your writing career that you meet Writer’s Block. Say hello to the symptoms. 😀

You’re drained. There comes a moment in every writer’s career when they’ve pushed themselves so hard to accomplish things that their mental and emotional self can’t keep up anymore. You tire easily and can’t see yourself writing another word.

Writing no longer holds your attention. There will always be those moments when you are working on a story or article and you realized that it no longer interests you. But writer burn out is when you start to lose interest in your work and you can’t see yourself continue with anything else.

The thought of writing fills you with dread. Working becomes harder and harder. Writing becomes stress in overdrive. You get sick just thinking of the blinking cursor on the page.

The good news, I have 6 Tips to Help you Avoid Writer’s Burn Out.

1) Do something active. If the words refuse to come, doing something active can help to reboot your mind or give you a chance away from your writing to think about it. Take a walk, exercise, or do some housework.

2) Explore new topics or styles of writing. You can also change topic, stories, scenes, or even genres. A change of scenery, even if it’s just in your writing, can help stave off writer burn out.

3) Schedule one or more days off each week. This mini vacation will not only allow you to catch up on the house or yard work, but give you a break to renew your batteries and keep you from overworking yourself.

4) Take a break. You can take a spend some time with family or friends, 10 minute break, a reading break, a stretch break, meditate, take a nap, or watch a movie.

5) Don’t overload yourself. It can be so easy to take on more than we can handle. Between the writing, promoting, blogging, other jobs, housework, and social networking, it can be too much if we don’t space it out. Scheduling when to do something and giving yourself app time to accomplish it can keep stress at bay.

How do you ward off writer’s block? What to do when you already have writer block?

Tricks to Recovering From Writer’s Burn Out

First, I want to define burn out for those who are new to the discussion. It is that point when you are tired, when have no interest in your work and future work only seems to make it worse, and when doing your work becomes harder and harder to do until you don’t even want to see it again. Burn out is like any virus, once you contract it, it can become dilapidating and if not treated, difficult to recover from.

There are a few tricks I’ve learned over the years to keep myself from catching writer burn out and recover from it when I don’t catch it in time. They might require some fundamental changes to your routine depending on your life.

9 Tricks to Help Recover from Writer Burn Out

1) Take a vacation. This one is my favorites, but this one doesn’t mean that you have to leave the state, go camping, or plan an elaborate retreat. It just means that you step away from your work. You can go somewhere else, go to a café with a friend, take your kids to the park, be lazy, get some house or yard work finished, watch a movie/TV/Anime, walk around, relax, take a drive, and/or read a book. Sometimes just a change of scenery can make all the difference.

2) Take care of yourself. This is one I need to work on. There are never enough hours in my day, and I’m constantly going from one project to another without stopping to breathe. I’m learning that I have to take care of myself and my talent, I’m healthier physically and emotionally, which makes me better able to be cope with stress, be happy, and less likely to burn out. Sometimes taking care of ourselves just means taking a step away and relaxing.

3) Accept Failure. Not only is no one perfect, but what fun is perfection. Failure is where you learn and grow. It is the stick by which you can judge your progress. And one person’s failure, can be another person’s success…or at least the path to success.

4) Join a support group or Find a Writing Partner. For more information look up support groups or read my article on Writing Partners at http://stephanniebeman.com/articles/the-writing-buddy-system-by-stephannie-beman/

5) Be careful of criticism. We need to learn to handle criticism as writers, however, during the creative process you don’t need a critic sitting on your shoulder. Let your creativity have free reign at the beginning stages and criticism at the later stages, once you have revised and edited your work. Another tip, give your work to someone you can trust to give you an honest opinion and constructive criticism.

6) Find your balance. Don’t overload yourself with too much work. Take a break. Explore new venues. Change topics, scenes, and even genres. Spend time with your family. Whatever you need to do to find balance in your life and your writing. Even if that means taking a little more time to write.

7) Explore your reasons. Writer’s burn out for a reason, figure out why it happened to you. Every situation is different. Try to identify the problems and work to improve them. A good way to do this is through guided journaling or free-writing. Figure out what matters to you and how to get it. Remember, writing about problems is a different process than talking it out or thinking about them.

8) What’s your motivation? Are you an extrinsic motivator or intrinsic motivator? If you are an extrinsic motivator, then you are motivated by things that come outside of yourself, deadlines, other people’s evaluations of your writing, or the need to pay the electric bill. However, if you are a intrinsic motivator, then you are motivated by things inside you, challenges you make for yourself, self-made deadlines, finding pleasure in your work.

9) Change it up. The best way I’ve found to overcome writer’s burn out is to write something just for you. Trying different forms of writing.

Creative people hit the point eventually where they feel tired and can’t find any interest in their work. If you have experienced writer’s burn out and wish to add anything, please comment. What are some ways you have employed to recover from burn out? Or keep yourself from falling victim to burn out?