I have two blogs I want to talk about today because they have both provided me with some excellent writing advice – especially recently. Maybe you’ll find them to be useful too. In my last post I expressed my frustrations about the third draft of my WIP and how I couldn’t read past the first few paragraphs because I thought my beginning was so terrible!
First let me say thank you to those of you who gave me words of encouragement! I snapped myself out of it and dove into the fourth draft, starting at the beginning and writing notes about where I need to make major improvements and rewrites. Of course, I put lots of explanation points after “fix the beginning!!!!!” But once I got past that, I realized it’s not all bad. Some of it is good … if I dare say so (in my humble opinion).
Starting Over
I remembered reading a blog post that focused on how stories start. I went back to the article, Flog a Pro: Safe Haven and then visited the author, Ray Rhamey’s blog “Flogging the Quill.” Ray has a feature called “The Flogometer challenge” where writers submit the first page of their story to see if Ray and his blog readers would want to turn the page of the story to read more. He admits it is completely “subjective” but if his answer is no, he wouldn’t turn the page, he provides feedback on how to improve the beginning to help the writer grab the reader. His blog readers can vote on whether or not they would turn the page and they also leave constructive criticism.
I read about a dozen story beginnings and his feedback for each one to help me get a better sense of how to improve my beginning. Some of the feedback was harsh but accurate. I don’t know if I’d have the guts to put my beginning up there, but reading through those brave writer’s first pages helped!
I think I know what I need to do to fix the way my story starts. I’ll be working on that this week.
Who you calling funny?
The other blog I want to share with you is Wordplay by K.M. Welland. She gives high quality writing advice and in high quantity. I have a back log of articles to read from her, but this guest post by Gene Perret, How Humor Can Make You a Better Writer gave me a nice challenge that will help my writing. I know, for some, humor comes across so naturally in your writing but it’s definitely an area of improvement for me, so I’m going to accept this challenge and try to create “short, pithy one-liners” that are clever and humorous. If I ever come up with any, maybe I’ll tweet them out. I’m not very good at Tweeting, so this is my challenge to me: Work on humorous one-liners and tweet them. But please, don’t hold your breath! I do NOT want to be held responsible for anyone’s near death experiences 🙂
Do you have any funny one liners of your own to share? I’d love to see them! So far they are harder to come up than I expected!
Huw Thomas said:
I hadn’t come across either of the blogs mentioned before so thanks for the pointer. 🙂
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Arlene said:
Your welcome Huw. I have to say the Flogometer really made it clear to me that if I want readers to stick around and get to the “good” part of my story, I need to hook them right from the start. Thanks for stopping by!
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Shakti Ghosal said:
I do look forward to visiting your blogs.
Cheers
Shakti
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Arlene said:
Thanks for stopping by Shakti!
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Denise Hisey said:
Thanks for the links to some great sounding sites, Arlene! I’m looking forward to checking them out.
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Arlene said:
Thanks Denise. Hope you find them helpful!!
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Sheila said:
The Flogometer makes me think of Query Shark and just reading through the archives on Query Shark really (hopefully) helped my query letter. I’ll have to check these out – thanks!
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Arlene said:
I haven’t heard of the Query Shark, Sheila, thanks for mentioning it. I’m no where near querying but sounds like a good resource to hold onto! I hope it helped your query letter and can’t wait to find out! My fingers are crossed for you 🙂
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Sheila said:
Thank you – I’ll need all the finger crossing I can get! 🙂
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4amWriter said:
I’m in the same boat regarding humor. Off the cuff and in comfortable company I can be pretty amusing. But when I’m writing blog posts, not so much. I’m not a humor writer anyway, so I guess I shouldn’t worry too much about it.
Thanks for the links to the sites. I’ll have to check them out!
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Arlene said:
Good point. I’m (obviously) not a humor writer either so maybe I shouldn’t worry too much about it. But when it comes time to write “funny” characters, I sure hope they come across that way 🙂
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gene3067 said:
Three make overs and a new beginning? My hat’s off to you! That is determination. Your book/work is going to be stellar!
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Inion N. Mathair said:
Hi Arlene, great post! We’ve already copied the web-addresses down and will be checking them out. More especially the first. From everything we have learned in the literary world, the main objective of all the sites and the word out, is: If you don’t hook the reader within the first three pages, you can kiss success goodbye! We’ve heard it vary in length. Some say page one, others three pages some the first chapter. But the idea being is that you have to hook them early. Your determination is so endearing Arlene! You can really see your commitment and drive to perfect your work. The true sign of a brilliant writer who takes her work seriously. Can not wait to read your book! As for comedy, I wish I had something really great to write here for a one-liner. But like 4am, I’m afraid unless I’m in a scenario of lax, company and unplanned humor, I fall short. So I will leave you with the only funny thing I’ve heard as of late which came from my 16 year old son, who is a huge zombie/apocalyptic literature & movie lover. And it goes like this:
If a group of Necrophiliacs ran into a group of zombies, who would do the chasing?!
Yeah, I know, kinda sick, but still made us laugh! Hope it did you as well!
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Arlene said:
Your son’s question did make me laugh! He poses an excellent question – though not one I want to ponder for long 🙂
Hope the blogs help – they both offer excellent advise and suggestions. Thanks for your kind words … commitment and drive, I have! A great story? That is yet to be determined. But I have to admit, I have been enjoying the process along the way and that definitely counts for something 🙂
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