Ideas come to me when I least expect it.

Sometimes at work or when I first wake up, I’m feeding the cat or I’ve had too much wine. When it happens I let it take over and go with the flow.

I’ve realized I’m that person that writes chapters out of order. This isn’t that uncommon and if you can write your last chapter first you probably have an advantage as you know where your story’s going. You have something to write towards rather than striving onwards following an unknown mirage way off in the distance.

Your beginning should mirror your ending to a certain extent so knowing how things pan out helps in doing that.

I have found writing my chapters out of order lets me discover my characters . Ill be lost in a creative bubble, writing… writing.. writing…. The bubble pops and I’m done and I read it as though for the first time and I’m like WTF…. I didn’t even know that about my main characters that I’ve nurtured and planned and helped come to life. I was so invested and still I never knew that was part of your story ????

This is awesome, it makes the writing journey so much more fun, like an adventure. I’ve fallen in love with writing all over again..!!!

Try it, See if you do too..:)

I need to learn how to write dialogue

This I believe is my biggest weakness and therefore my biggest challenge to overcome. If the dialogue is bad the stories going to be worse. Even just knowing how to punctuate and format my dialogue in my story telling seems confusing.

You need to use quotation marks, and a dialogue tag but don’t use the same tag too often or it becomes repetitive. Action that occurs before or after the dialogue in your story needs to be in separate sentences and you should start a new paragraph for a new speaker. The paragraphs need to be indented too…

Ellipses are used to indicate the trailing off of speech. Then there’s the whole part about if a characters ramblings go on paragraph after paragraph you need opening quotations at the start of each paragraph but end quotations only at the end of the entire dialogue.

For your discourse to be interesting and natural its best to cut all the small talk, less is best, this goes for dialogue tags too and action beats. Don’t be too elaborate. And the advice we all hear that to be a good writer “show don’t tell” applies for dialogue as well and pretty much means you should mask the information you want your audience to have in your characters conversations.

A proven method to see if a conversation is realistic and enjoyable for the reader is to say it out aloud, even record it and play it back to yourself.

So no matter how daunting it might be to write dialogue when you feel like your not just out of your depth but drowning, remember your characters voice is an integral part of their adventure, your readers want to hear it.

The only way to become truly great at it is to do it…. over and over again.

Wish me luck 🙂

Everywhere I look it seems creating an outstanding character arc is crucial to an amazing story line.

I’m going to share what I’ve worked out so far……

You can have positive arcs, negative arcs, flat arcs, destructive arcs and so on and so fourth, but it is always about the development of the characters inner self and the journey they take to get there.

Begin by asking yourself this question….. What internal and external motivating factors are influencing your characters behavior and actions? The answer tells you why your character does what they do. Will your character persevere against all odds and become the hero of your tale or will they fall from grace and destroy their own happiness?

Your character needs a challenge to evolve into something different, for better or worse. Deciding on which way they are headed has more to do with the message you want to convey to your audience, your lead character usually the protagonist drives your story line onwards, while the antagonist gets in the way and trips them up. This conflict is what makes the story interesting.

I now have to work on this for Liora, I think she’s an anti-hero protagonist evolving along a positive character arc with a twist.

This is my first attempt at writing a blog.

I have thought about writing one for a long time, just as I’ve imagined writing my first novel too. I’m not novel writing ready just yet but intend to blog about my journey of writing my first book.

There’s quite a bit to learn to create a story that is enjoyable, believable, and with a pay off at the end for the reader to feel invested and satisfied.

I’ve also been researching about creating a good character arc which I don’t really understand right at this point.

I hope to use this blog to help me get my book started and keep myself motivated by sharing it with you.