Writers' Cavern

Here are the notes I took in Daniel Jose Older's class on  SkillShare . He talked about the fundamentals of storytelling: Character, Conflict, Context and Craft. Hope it helps. Character ·           Have a crush on your character. ·          Mention what details about them matter to their fellow characters. ·          These details will also matter to readers. ·          Your character must have a desire – it’s the engine of your story. ·          We don’t actually have to like a character. Conflict ·          Backbone of story. ·          Crisis is the element of conflict. o    What’s at stake? o    Why does it matter? o    What’re the consequences? · ...

B asically there are two types of writers: plotters and pantsers. A plotter is someone who writes down his ideas before writing the novel. A pantser is someone who writes by the seat-of-the-pants . They have a general idea in their mind and they just go with it. And the interesting fact is that you don’t have to be 100% a plotter or 100% a pantser. You can be both. It is important to figure out for yourself not only which one you are but to what degree. The truth about the titles is, there are a LOT of steps in outlining your novel. Way more than I could fit in this post. I will highlight the most important ones. ·                      SPARK: It is the moment where you get an inkling of an idea that you can incubate into a book. It could be a line, quote, character or some kind of situation. It varies from person to person and manuscript to manuscript. At this stage, write a p...

I was in high school when I wrote my first draft. I fell in love immensely with literature after watching Harry Potter series. J K Rowling convinced me of the magical power of literature to transform people’s lives. Ever since then I’ve been practicing the art of writing. Naturally, I have made a lot of mistakes as a young writer, which is understandable because I was totally new to the whole writing thing. And I want to share with you a few of my mistakes so that you can hopefully avoid them. Here we go. ·  THOUGHT EDITING WAS SIMPLE: Changing commas here and there or replacing words here and there to make the sentences sound prettier is not what editing is just about. It’s a lot more detailed. The first and foremost trait you must have while editing is patience. You need to prepare your mind for the possibility of striking out chunks of texts and re-writing them or even the prospect of starting from scratch. Yes, you heard me right. ·   DEADLY DEADLINE:...

Na tional   No vel   Wr iting   Mo nth is essentially a writing challenge. The idea behind it is to challenge writers across the globe to finish a 50,000-word novel in a month. While many of you are probably already prepping and getting psyched for the big event, this is my first year participating in it and I would like to share with you a few tips which I’ve learned from published authors. Here we go. ·  HAVE A PLAN : You don’t necessarily have to make a detailed outline. And what making a plan or prepping might mean to you will totally depend on your style.   If you’re 100%   pantser, maybe prepping just means knowing the basic premise for your story. Write a one sentence pitch before you write the draft so that you can ensure that your focus stays intact. Refer it while writing so that you can keep to the point of the story. And that still leaves the door to pantsing wide open, if that is what you want to do. If you are a hybrid writer,...

We love writing. Indeed, we might not even be able to think about a life devoid of writing. Nevertheless, we too are humans and won’t be able to perform a routine task on a daily basis like a computer. At times our emotions thwart our desire to pursue our dreams. In this post, I will be sharing with you a few simple steps that’ll help you write when you don’t want to. 1.    Break down your work In case you are feeling overwhelmed the first thing you must do is to break down your work and formulate a plan. Thinking about the volume of work, before even starting it, will discourage you from starting the work itself. Even after formulating a plan and you’re still feeling overwhelmed, you just have to take it one step at a time. If you isolate your problems and tackle them separately, then it’s a lot easier to digest what you have to do. 2.    Ask yourself why you’re dreading the writing Often the reason for not wanting to write is when you don’t real...