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BY LIZ CRAIN

GIVEAWAY: Liz is excited to give away a free copy of the second edition of her just released book, Food Lover’s Guide to Portland, to a random commenter. Comment within 2 weeks; winners must live in the US to receive the book by mail. You can win a blog contest even if you’ve won before.

The summers that I was 6 and 7 years old in early ’80s, I went to a day camp in the woods maybe 30 minutes or so from the suburbs of Cincinnati where I grew up. There were a lot of memorable things about that camp, as there tend to be, but without a doubt the most memorable was Mr. Brady—the camp nature guide whose office was the old barn across the way from the open-air dining hall—and his resident alligators. The seven or eight alligators ranging in age from a couple years to several years lived in a large, maybe 10-foot diameter, round metal trough topped with a piece of plywood.

One day, every summer, Mr. Brady would take the youngest, or maybe just the most docile, alligator out of the trough, put it in the bed of his old beat-up blue pick-up truck and drive it down the hill behind the barn to the creek, where 15 or so of us would be waiting with our counselor. What happened next is not a dream. I am still friends with one of the campers and can verify that Mr. Brady—longish white beard, rubber pants and suspenders, boots—would then spend the next 40 minutes or so of our nature session wrestling with the alligator in the murky creek. Our task: watch. And in the process scream, laugh and hug each other tightly.

I’m sure there were some teachable moments that I’m missing that occurred during the alligator wrestling. There might have been words about habitat and behavior in the wild and maybe even a little bit about how humans are not typically a part of the alligator diet. Of course, all I remember, and all I am sure that most campers remember, is an old man wrestling an alligator in the creek. By choice. He seemed to have no fear, and he seemed to genuinely love doing it.

Although I have changed the names and some identifying details of the alligators what follows is my own story of wrestling with alligators, except that the alligators are humans and the wrestling is being done with writing.

When I first started freelance food writing shortly after moving to Portland, Oregon, in my mid-20s, I said yes to just about anything work-wise that came my way, including waiting tables, nannying and working in a Montessori after-school program. I also covered a lot of writing territory. I wrote a corporate fitness manual without ever having worked in an office, smoking cigarettes and drinking most nights of the week and never setting foot in a gym. Clearly I was an expert. I also wrote website copy for a few hotel and hospitality companies, health and fitness articles for a smaller circulation magazine in Arizona and movie reviews for an online art and culture startup in New York.

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I tried my hand at a lot of different types of writing and, in doing so, did the opposite of what most writing manuals tell you to do—write what you know. Instead, apropos of an ambitious 20-something-year-old, I wrote more often what I did not know.

I always brought my limited life experience and subjectivity to the page, of course, and I researched and dug as deep as my usually too-fast-approaching deadline would allow, but let’s just say I was in all of these writing endeavors far from an expert. And that lack of expertise led directly to lack of confidence. That first year of freelancing I spent a lot of time researching and educating myself, but my primary motivator was a little off. I wanted to know the right things that, in my 20-something year old mind, translated to all of the things that would make me not sound stupid.

Nobody likes a snoop and that’s exactly what I was that first year of freelancing. My regular gig was ghostwriting food and drink pieces for AOL Online. For that, I’d visit restaurants, bars, clubs and markets in and around Portland and then write short profiles of each. I took copious amounts of notes about menus, inventory, décor and service in my tiny black refillable notebook, and if I ever caught whiff that someone was on to me I’d commit the remaining visit to memory as best I could sacrificing any more documentation to save face.

I would only ask one or two questions per visit, and then only if I thought I could get away with it without revealing anything personal. I’d avoid eye contact. My heart would race and my palms would sweat as I took ridiculous notes under the table about things such as the microgreens topping my scallops (“What are the little purpley-green spade-like micros? Mustard?”). If you kicked all that fear-built subterfuge down, I wasn’t being Ruth Reichl-like, in disguise in order to maintain journalistic integrity. I just didn’t want to have a real conversation with anyone that might reveal all that I did not know. Instead, I would go home after dinner and suffer through mind-numbing Google searches of  microgreens until I settled on the variety that looked the most similar before ultimately deciding not to use it in the profile anyway. No time wasted at all!

On those rare occasions when I did find myself face-to-face and engaged with folks who I was interviewing or meeting with for some sort of professional reason, I showcased what I knew as best I could and tried to hide what I didn’t know. In other words, I was a bit like 20-year-old Ira Glass in his early interviews with members of the cast of MASH, which he talks about on the “Cringe” episode of This American Life. The worst is when Glass asks Harry Morgan, who played Colonel Potter, a series of needling questions about why he’s never been the lead on any show. So painful.

This sort of bravado is inherently juvenile, but we’ve all done it. Here’s how I got rid of being scared of not knowing: I stopped using my tiny black notebook to take notes in in public and I got a big notebook. I stopped sneaking away to the bathroom to take notes—I’m sure that a few waiters had me pegged as incontinent—and started writing them openly. I stopped muzzling my curiosity and ended more sentences with question marks. I had more and more face-to-face interviews that I needed to conduct for seasonal food stories with weekly deadlines that I was writing—more projects in general. I no longer had time to digest the latest study just enough so that I’d sound smart, to make obscure references that were only tenuously related to the subject at hand (references I’d secretly hope no one would actually try to turn into a real conversation). All of these things that we do from time to time to puff our feathers when we feel intimidated or unconfident, and as a result, hide our truer selves.

After a year of freelancing, I was too busy with assignments to keep up appearances anymore. The real, vulnerable, curious and often ignorant me stepped out into plain view. It turns out that first year of freelancing I’d wasted a whole lot of time getting in my own way. I simply got out of my way and the decade since I’ve been more than willing to often be the fool or even, from time to time, when it seems helpful to the interview and subject at hand, play the fool.

In general, people love to be asked questions—personally and professionally. Ask away. Be brazenly curious. Be proud of not knowing. The less you know means the more you have to learn and that’s a big part of what’s most fulfilling, fun and interesting about writing—the learning. Don’t be a bore and always try to prove yourself and outwit others. No one is impressed and it’s tiresome. Show how ignorant you are—we all are!—and you’ll have a lot more fun and be a much better writer as a result. The best writers are the most curious risk-takers who want to burn and learn and live
life to the fullest. Stop being scared and be one of them. In other words, wrestle those alligators in the creek. By choice. See, I knew I could bring it back to the alligators.

*No alligators were harmed in the writing of this essay.

Liz Crain is a fiction writer as well as the author of Food Lover’s Guide to Portland and Toro Bravo: Stories. Recipes. No Bull. A longtime writer on Pacific Northwest food and drink, her writing has appeared in Cooking Light, Budget Travel, VIA Magazine, The Sun Magazine, The Progressive, The Guardian and The Oregonian. She is also editor and publicity director at Hawthorne Books as well as co-organizer of the annual Portland Fermentation Festival.

You can find more from Liz Crain on Twitter (@foodloverPDX) and her website, lizcrain.com.

BY WILL LITTLE

The starting gun is set to go off for the race to 50,000 words. At an average of 1,667 words a day, NaNoWriMo participants don’t have time to waste if they’re to reach the finish line. Yet many writers do just that—waste time, and plenty of it. Distraction derails so many NaNoWriMo writers that blogging about their failure has turned into an act of mass distraction—just another activity that writers would rather do than actually write their novels.

Of course, distraction has always been the curse of the writer. The fear of filling the empty space with words that matter is enough to put even the most talented off their food. Even disciplinarian Ernest Hemingway defrosted the freezer to delay the inevitable pain of putting pen to paper. But we should especially pity contemporary writers because the 21st century has put distraction everywhere they lay their keyboards.

Our study of 1,500 writers across the U.S.—conducted anonymously to keep people honest—backs this up. Just about anything can get in the way of writing, from the Internet to pets to DVD box sets and even ice cream in November! While the need to distract may be caused by putting off the pain of creating quality work, there comes a point when the excuses have to end and the writing must begin. To begin with the best odds of writing 50,000 of your own words by November 30th, consider these survey results and tips:

Step away from the browser.
Our survey found that 52% of writers claimed to have not finished their masterpieces because they spent too much time browsing the Internet. Watching videos of parkour gone wrong or reading the daily headlines is preferable to creating beautiful prose … at least in the short term. Consider buying or renting an old-fashioned typewriter for a month and nailing shut the office door with the computer and Internet router on the other side. Alternatively, disconnect the internet with software, such as Stop Procrastinating, to write just like Hemingway. But make sure you defrost the freezer first.

The November/December Writer’s Digest magazine 
is filled with advice for keeping the words coming. 
If you’re looking to increase your productivity or planning for NaNoWriMo, 
check out a preview in the Writer’s Digest Shop, or download it instantly.

Don’t feed the animals!
Or they’ll distract you. 7% of respondents claimed pets posed a risk to undermining their writing, with cats jumping on laps being the chief culprits. Consider hiring a petsitter for part of the month if your cat is especially fond of sitting on your keyboard.

Food, glorious food.
17% of writers surveyed said they’d eaten their word-count reward before they’d reached their day’s writing goal “at least once” during the month. That’s fine a time or two, but the habit of rewarding yourself for a goal you haven’t yet met can quickly spiral into marathon snacking sessions and very little writing. If you’re going to reward yourself with treats, here are some best practices for ensuring you stick to the goal: Put your treat into a container locked with a timer so you can’t access until you’ve worked your time. Enlist a friend or family member to withhold your goodies until you’ve completed the day’s work. Or consider that the real reward is reaching your daily writing goal—nothing more, nothing less will really satisfy you.

Honey, I’m home!
Partners, wives and husbands distracted 14% of respondents from laying down the lines. Netflix binges and leisurely cups of coffee were suggested as “creativity breaks”—a fancier term for “distractions.” If this sounds like something your significant other would do, there are solutions: Lock the door. Be clear about your goals. Set boundaries. And if those things fail, put a guard dog outside your writing room or have your partner sign a contract stating that he won’t disturb you while you’re writing—with a hefty fine to be paid if the contract is broken. Be creative about the fine; it doesn’t have to be financial. A massage every day for life would do nicely.

Work, party, work, party, work party …
22% of writers said they couldn’t summon up the creative muse because they were too tired from work or socializing. Try abstaining from partying for the month of November when possible (yes, we know it’s Thanksgiving) and look forward to celebrating with the mother of all parties on December 1st. If you’re tired from work, trying doing a half hour of exercise: it clears the mind and gives you energy to push through. Remember, it’s only for 30 days and it might just be worth it. You’re worth it!

Will Little is a writer and the creator of Stop Procrastinating, the app made by writers for writers to help beat procrastination. He also manages to write when his cat Moy isn’t sitting on his keyboard. Follow Will on Twitter at @stopprocras.

Photo by Jason Dunn, courtesy of a Creative Commons 2.5 License (http://photos.jasondunn.com/Logan/Logans-First-Halloween/10187418_RKHXSx#!i=701471756&k=ZMKnkbp)

This is the first year my 3-year-old has really gotten Halloween, so we’ve spent October seeking out any excuse for him to wear his costume and spend the day yelling “Boo!” As a result, at an array of fall festivals, we’ve collected a countertop full of pumpkins of assorted shapes and sizes; a small glow-in-the-dark bucket of unhealthy snacks; and, for the writer in the household (that would be me), one great reminder about developing characters.

The lesson came at a children’s Halloween parade at a local park. Costumed kids and their parents congregated by the gazebo waiting for the festivities to start. An announcement was made that the kids were to march behind a giant basketball character named “Hoopster” (how or why Hoopster became the recipient of this honor remains unclear) into the center of town, where storefronts were offering trick or treating.

We were surrounded by princesses and Power Rangers, scarecrows and jungle animals. Many of the costumes were homemade, some looking a little haggard or missing accessories, but the kids wearing them were playing their parts. The ballerinas twirled and curtseyed. The transformers stomped and zoomed. The superheroes posed, karate chopped and kicked. My little guy beamed at all of them, his fire chief’s hat on his head and bullhorn in his hand, ready to come to the rescue at the first sign of smoke or a cat stuck in a tree.

And then, at last, the moment we’d been waiting for: Hoopster appeared.

The parade couldn’t start yet, though. The ball portion of his costume was still deflated, and he stood off to the side fiddling with the thing while the kids milled around restlessly. Hoopster couldn’t get his inflating tool to work, and began tapping parents on their shoulders asking if anyone had a coin to help get the thing going. Apparently Hoopster had not done a practice run before game time.

Finally, the giant basketball took its place at the front of the pack, and the children fell into line, excited for the parade. Then, my son looked up at me, frowning for the first time all day. He seemed skeptical.

“Basketballs don’t have legs,” he said.

“True,” I said slowly, looking around. What else was there to say? It hadn’t bothered him that transformers don’t wear sneakers or lions don’t carry blankies or scarecrows don’t lick lollypops. So what had changed?

 The best instruction from Writer’s Digest on character development
is now available in a single book! Preview, order or download
Creating Characters: The Complete Guide to Populating Your Fiction now.

Developing Character So Readers Can Suspend Disbelief

Hoopster wasn’t really selling his costume, was he? He’d spent a pretty penny on an outfit that was actually a lot more over-the-top than anyone else’s. He’d probably felt like that was enough. But it wasn’t.

The problem wasn’t so much that Hoopster was having issues—most costumes have issues at some point, right? If he’d made a wisecrack about being left in the garage too long or even half-heartedly called out, “Oh no, how will I bounce now?” he probably could have saved face. But by letting the kids see that he was just a guy who couldn’t figure out how to direct the airflow into a big nylon sphere, he was inhibiting their ability to suspend their disbelief. His legs didn’t kill the authenticity; his lack of commitment to his character did.

What does this teach us about how to develop character? Well, a lot. Your character needs to be comfortable in his outfit from the very first scene. He needs to know how it fits, how it works, and who it makes him look like to everyone around him. And in order for him to pull that off, we as our characters’ creators need to know who they are, inside and out, from Page 1. We can’t let our own voices show through where we’re supposed to be writing as our characters. We need to commit to them, fully. We need them to commit to the story, fully. And only then can our readers commit fully, too.

Whether you’re writing a first draft or revising a complete story, as you work through scene by scene, make sure that your superhero has her mask tied tightly into place. Chapter 1 can’t show her off-kilter to the point that she hasn’t yet figured out that trick to keeping her cape from coming untied. And Chapter 10 can’t catch your cowboy without his hat or spurs because he got tired of messing with them and tossed them aside somewhere along the way.

You don’t want to let readers arrive for the parade to find that you haven’t yet fully inflated your lead characters. Make your characters sell the reality behind those costumes, however flawed they may be. If your characters truly believe that they are princesses, and behave as such, then your readers will be a lot less likely to notice—or care—that they’re wearing the wrong shoes or have lost the rhinestones out of their tiaras.

Happy Halloween!

Jessica Strawser
Editor, Writer’s Digest Magazine
Follow me on Twitter: @jessicastrawser

Writers are notorious procrastinators, and the trend is not limited to hobbyists or young, aspiring authors. We talk a lot about procrastination indirectly—setting personal deadlines, how to schedule writing time around life and family, how to write a draft—and fast!, how to write an outline for anything.

We also discuss wasting time rather frankly in our forum, and occasionally offer assistance to writers who don’t want to work, necessarily, but in a productive way. Sometimes we give direct examples of how to not procrastinate.

Famous time-wasters tend to fall into two camps: There’s the hedonistic band of enthusiastic lollygaggers, and there’s the anti-dillydallying brigade of outputters. The logic follows that non-famous writers follow the same pattern. For both sides, here are some thoughts and advice from the greats on the art and craft of wasting time—or not.

Pro-Procrastination

Mark Twain: “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”

Marthe Troly-Curtain: “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

Rita Mae Brown: “If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.”

Herodotus: “Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal, while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.”

Douglas Adams: “I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by.”

Ellen Degeneres: “Procrastination isn’t the problem. It’s the solution. It’s the universe’s way of saying stop, slow down, you move too fast.”

Dorothy Parker: “Live, drink, be merry, love the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow ye may die, but alas we never do.”

Jerome K. Jerome: “Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.”

Susan Orlean: I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.”

Auguste Rodin: “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”

The Writer’s Digest Retreat on the Water is your chance to escape the demands of everyday life and immerse yourself in your craft for a few purposeful and peaceful days. Enrollment at this Retreat is limited—you’ll enjoy the close mentorship of the instructors and the attention to your individual manuscript that only an event this small and exclusive can provide.

Pro-Productivity

Pablo Picasso: “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

Benjamin Franklin: “You may delay, but time will not.”

Charles Dickens: “Procrastination is the thief of time; collar him.”

Abraham Lincoln: “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

George Bernard Shaw: “If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.”

Oscar Wilde: “Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.”

Victor Hugo: “Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.”

J.R.R. Tolkien: “It’s a job that’s never started that takes the longest to finish.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.: “How soon ‘not now’ become ‘never.’”

Henry Ford: “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”

Which camp do you fall into? For myself, I’ll only say that this post was supposed to run yesterday.

Adrienne Crezo is the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. Follow her on Twitter @a_crezo.

BY MARTHA CARR

When I was a new writer and no one had commented on any of the words I’d strung together, the idea of a deadline seemed romantic. If I had a deadline that meant someone must have liked something I wrote and someone else must have asked for more.

Fortunately, all of that came true and I have had the pleasure of writing for The Washington Post and The New York Times and have had several books published.

However, a deadline also means a lot of responsibility and for writers with busy lives a due date can seem daunting, especially when talking about an entire book.

One thing became clear: Failing to turn in a manuscript on time has real-world consequences—not only for you as a writer, but also for everyone who’s waiting on your words of wisdom. There are publishing schedules and marketing strategies that are set up with the idea that you’re a professional writer who keeps your word. Miss a deadline without a good excuse and your peers will start to operate off the idea that you’re not very professional. If you’re not also a brilliant writer who says things that make everyone have to pay attention, your career may be short-lived.

But it’s not so easy to write on a deadline. You have to create a work plan, even know if you’re on time, ahead of schedule or dangerously close to not meeting a deadline. You also have to become your own project manager and figure out how to create a writing schedule that can breathe and change with your life. As you’ve probably already seen just as soon as you make a schedule someone else throws a wrench in it and you’re off doing something else for a little while.

I wrote my first three books raising a son on my own and then taking care of two elderly parents.

There were plenty of times I sat in a doctor’s office or thought about what to make for dinner for everyone while thinking about plotlines. I wanted to remain present and cheerful for family and friends, but for that to happen I had to find a strategy that would allow me to write and meet deadlines.

That strategy wound up consisting of three crucial steps:

1) You have to be reasonable with yourself and set realistic expectations.

How fast do you actually write? How much time can you realistically devote to writing in a day? How many days a week can you write without neglecting other areas of your life? Crunching these numbers will give you a framework for setting realistic expectations.

The good news is, even with small pieces of time it’s still possible to write a good book without years passing. I’ve been writing the books in The Wallis Jones series fairly quickly although I also have a lot going on in a day and even want to plan in a social life.

2) Ask yourself whether you can produce the manuscript or article in time.

Be realistic. Look at the total page count that’s needed and at the deadline, and count up the days before the deadline. Can you write enough pages per day to meet the deadline? If not, you’re going to have to either find a few extra days of writing or have a conversation with your editor, sooner rather than later. Sometimes, that’s necessary and shows that you’re on top of things and willing to work as a team member.  Not doing so can cause doors to slam closed.

My own answer turned out to be that I could write about three double-spaced pages in a day, three days a week.

3) To meet deadlines, you’ll need to glue yourself to your seat until that minimum number is hit.

If you’ve been reasonable with yourself, it may not always be pleasant, but it’s doable. In my case, sometimes, the words come so easily and I’m having such a good time working on my newest book, The Circle, that a lot more gets written. Sometimes, every single word feels like it was pulled out of somewhere murky and I struggle to hit three pages. However, I still do it and when the three pages are done, I get up and go find something else to do.

The last thing to keep in mind is something I mentioned earlier: Make sure that you’re still having at least a little fun and staying present with the people in your life. Both will feed your writing and make you feel more balanced in general. Then, writing and deadlines are a healthy part of your life, which will inevitably show in your work.

Martha Randolph Carr is the author of 4 books including The List — the first in her Wallis Jones political thriller series.  A professional copywriter and editor, she has written a weekly, nationally syndicated column on politics and life that has run on such political hotspots as TheModerateVoice.com and Politicus.com.

Her work has run regularly in such venerable publications as The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and Newsweek.

Martha is also a melanoma survivor, a Chi runner and an occasional skydiver — not to mention a descendant of Thomas Jefferson!

Few professions are as solitary yet as full of advice as writing. You do it alone, usually, but everyone you meet is an expert in what writers do, don’t do, should do, always do, never do, can’t do… Even Anne Rice, who shares her thoughts about rules below, once noted that her doctor advised her to change the title of Interview with the Vampire, to which her son, author Christopher Rice, quipped, “And he went on to write 23 bestsellers.”

Being that writing is such a strange job, if there are rules, they should come from those who do the job, too. Here, 20 bestselling classic and contemporary storytellers share their rules for writers. To kick things off, let’s use this shiny gem of good advice from Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay: “Ignore all of this as you see fit.”

1. Elmore Leonard for The New York Times:

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

And:

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

2. R. L. Stine at ThrillerFest 2014:

I write for kids, and I think there are definitely rules for when you write for kids. People are always asking me, “How do you know how not to go too far?” And I have one rule that I always follow seriously, and that rule is that the kid has to know it’s not real. I keep the real world out. The kid has to know that it’s a creepy fantasy and it isn’t something that can happen. And then I feel like I can do the story, because the kid knows that it’s just a story and they’re safe in their rooms reading it.

3. Margaret Atwood for The Guardian:

You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.

4. William Faulkner to an American fiction class:

I would say to get the character in your mind. Once he is in your mind, and he is right, and he’s true, then he does the work himself. All you need to do then is to trot along behind him and put down what he does and what he says. It’s the ingestion and then the gestation. You’ve got to know the character. You’ve got to believe in him. You’ve got to feel that he is alive, and then, of course, you will have to do a certain amount of picking and choosing among the possibilities of his action, so that his actions fit the character which you believe in. After that, the business of putting him down on paper is mechanical.

5. Zadie Smith via Brain Pickings:

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

6. Scott Turow at ThrillerFest 2014:

I think that you must be aware of the existing conventions. … That does not mean that you cannot reinvent them in your own way.

7. Jonathan Franzen for The Guardian:

Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.

8. Anne Rice at ThrillerFest 2014:

I don’t think there are any universal rules. I really don’t. We each make our own rules, and we stick to our rules and we abide by them, but you know rules are made to be broken. … [If] any rule you hear from one writer doesn’t work for you, disregard it completely. Break it. Do what you want to do. I have my own rules that I follow, but they’re not necessarily going to work for other writers. … The only universal rule is to write. Get it done, and do what works for you. There’s nothing sadder than someone sitting there and trying to apply a lot of rules that are not turning that person on and are not stimulating and are not making a novel.

9. Kurt Vonnegut, from his short story “Bagumbo Snuff Box”:

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

10. Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats via io9:

Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.

11. Neil Gaiman via Brain Pickings:

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

12. Alice Walker in an interview with Writer’s Digest:

[Y]ou have a right to express what you see and what you feel and what you think. To be bold. To be as bold with your vision as you can possibly be. Our salvation, to the extent that we have one, will come out of people realizing the crisis of our species and of the planet and offering their deepest dream of what’s possible.

13. Ernest Hemingway for Esquire, 1935:

When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing you were writing before you could go on with it the next day. … I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

14. Dave Barry in an interview:

Don’t be boring. [N]othing else that we try to do in journalism will work, if people don’t read it. … What readers know is that they could also watch television, or go outside, or just put the paper down. So it’s really important to keep them reading you. And I think that should be the most important rule.

15. Eudora Welty, from “Place in Fiction“:

One can no more say, “To write stay home,” than one can say, “To write leave home.” It is the writing that makes its own rules and conditions for each person.

16. John Steinbeck for The Paris Review, 1975:

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

17. From Henry Miller’s stringent daily routine:

Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

18. Rainbow Rowell for novelicious:

Don’t worry even a little bit whether your book is on trend. All the trends will be trending differently by the time you get published, so it’s pointless to overthink it while you’re writing.

19. Annie Dillard, from her book The Writing Life:

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

20. Joyce Carol Oates via Twitter:

Best tip for writers: not to listen to any silly tips for writers.

Adrienne Crezo is the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. Follow her on Twitter @a_crezo

Generating good, usable ideas can be difficult for any writer, new or established. While John Steinbeck may have been exempt (he famously compared ideas to rabbits, saying “You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”), we are not all on Steinbeck’s level. To those of you who can come up with something new and interesting at will, I commend you. For the rest of us, here are 31 prompts for the month of August.

Interpret these in whatever way works best for you. Do each one, or two per week, or five per month, or any number that feels productive for you. If you’d like to, share your links or short-short stories in the comments.

1. You have two characters. One is trying to convince the other that he is telling the truth, but the second character knows the first character is lying. How does this scene play out?

2. Write a short story in which a pill is an object of importance.

3. Tell a story using only letters your characters have written to each other.

4. Use these words: spider, lump, magazine, bread box, asbestos.

5. Sylvia Plath once write that “everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it.” Use your outgoing guts to tell a difficult story.

6. A local woman has just had her first baby. She is on the news because her baby is __________. Fill in the blank and then tell this story.

7. Your first line is: “In this town, everyone is named after an object.”

8. You’ve inherited enough money to retire. What do you do now?

9. A group of friends are walking down the street. They see something unexpected.

10. Your new neighbor introduces himself as La Bamba Flambeau. He is a mild-mannered, middle-aged man.

11. Fill in the blanks to create a piece of dialogue; then, use the dialogue in a short story: “If it weren’t for _________, I would never have _________.”

12. Your character wakes up very late. He thinks it is Monday, but it is only Sunday.

13. Write an optimistic character who is placed in a hopeless, unfixable situation.

14. Two characters discuss their hobbies. Neither is comfortable being friends afterward.

15. Use these words: frenetic, business card, notepad, bagel, walrus.

16. It is 10 years in the future. Write a scene about your character’s everyday life.

17. A poet is in his car when he realizes the lyrics of the song on the radio match the piece he wrote last night.

18. Winston Churchill said “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” Write a kind history for a no good, very bad character.

19. A spaceship has landed safely in the Pacific Ocean and the beings that step out look exactly like all humans… except for one disturbing difference.

20. 100 years ago, medical science eradicated all virulent disease. What is the world like now?

21. In this scene, a phone call derails a quiet dinner at home.

22. You’re a contestant on Jeopardy! Write the scene in which you win the game. Include the topic, answer and question.

23. Write a short story in which a painting is an object of importance.

24. Your theme: Nothing is free.

25. Your character must mail something today, but the universe is conspiring against his success.

26. Use these words: tin, monkey wrench, banner, water damage, award.

27. Your character did something embarrassing in college that her family does not know about. What happens when her teenage daughter finds out years later? When her husband finds out? When the local gossip hears about it?

28. A character is caught stealing. a) Make your reader feel sorry for the thief. b) Make your reader angry at the victim.

29. “This is not what I ordered. It’s moving.”

30. Today is someone’s birthday, but you forgot until just now. This person is very important to you.

31. Write a survival story.

Adrienne Crezo is the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. Follow her on Twitter at @a_crezo.

Image by ppdigital via morguefile.

The only way to be a writer is to write, right? This is the advice we give at WD, online and in the magazine. If you want to write, you must write. But sometimes getting started is difficult. Perhaps you have a fully-formed character but no idea what to do with him. Maybe your idea is a great plot, but you don’t know who the woman who must live it will be. I would argue that getting started—the actual act of sitting down and beginning something new—is the most difficult part of writing. (Your mileage may vary, of course, but for me, this is the hard part.)

Imagine my excitement this morning when I encountered the following paragraph as I read That Would Make a Good Novel by Lily King on The New York Times:

When I teach fiction I often start a workshop with one of my favorite exercises called Two Truths and a Lie. I tell my students to write the first paragraph of a short story. The first sentence of the paragraph must be true (My sister has brown hair.), the second sentence must be true (Her name is Lisa.), but the third sentence must be a lie (Yesterday she went to prison.). … The lie is the steering wheel, the gearshift and the engine. The lie takes your two true sentences and makes a left turn off road and straight into the woods. It slams the story into fifth gear and guns it.

Although this extremely useful exercise is not at all the point of King’s article, I think it deserves its own post here for those of you who, like me, have trouble with beginnings. So let’s do an exercise! This one is three-pronged:

1. Write the beginning of a story—three full sentences—using the Two Truths and a Lie method. The first two sentences must be true, and the third sentence must be a lie.

2. Carry that story out to at least 500 words. Write more if you’d like. Go wherever your lie takes you. Be ridiculous or be introspective. Whatever suits you.

3. Post your story on your blog, and leave a link here (with a title and your first three sentences to avoid being trapped in our spam filters) so that the rest of us can read it. 

BONUS: Tweet a link to your story, too! Use the hashtag #WD2Truths1Lie so we can all see your efforts.

Adrienne Crezo is the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. Follow her on Twitter at @a_crezo.

The following is the second in a two part, guest blog post from Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz, whose short story, “Poetry by Keats,” took home the grand prize in WD’s 14th Annual Short Short Story Competition. You can read more about Trupkiewicz in the July/August 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest and in an exclusive extended interview with her online. In this post, Trupkiewicz follows up on her discussion of dialogue with an impassioned plea: stick to said. 

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Welcome back! Part I of this two-part post talked about two key aspects of writing dialogue. First, dialogue isn’t usually the place to use complete sentences because most people in everyday conversations speak in phrases and single words. Second, effective dialogue takes correct punctuation so the reader doesn’t get yanked out of the story by a poorly punctuated exchange.

Remember, the goal in writing fiction is to keep the reader engaged in the story. But don’t give up on writing to spend the rest of your life doing something easier, like finding the Holy Grail, just yet. There’s one more key aspect that makes dialogue effective for fiction writers.

Problem: The Great He Said/She Opined Debate

In Part I, I mentioned learning from my grade school English teacher about complete sentences. Another subject she covered in that class was the importance of using synonyms and avoiding repetition.

To this day, that discussion drives me absolutely crazy.

Thousands of budding writers all over the world heard those words and deduced that they would be penalized if they repeated the word said in any work of fiction they ever wrote. So they dutifully found thesauruses and started looking up other words to use.

I’d like to submit that thousands of budding writers have been misled. Here’s my take:

Stop!

Do not touch your thesaurus to find another word that means said.

The attribution said is fine. In fact, when readers are skimming along through a novel at warp speed, the word said is just like a punctuation mark—it doesn’t even register in readers’ minds (unless used incorrectly, and it would be hard to do that).

But if you draw attention to the mechanics of your story with dialogue like this, you’re guaranteed to lose your reader in total frustration:

“Luke,” she opined, “I need you.”

“Raina,” he implored, “I know you think you do, but—”

“No!” she wailed. “Please!”

Luke shouted, “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You’re being so mean to me,” Raina wept.

With an exchange like that one, you might as well run screaming out of the book straight at the reader, waving a neon sign that says: HEY, DON’T FORGET THAT THIS IS ONLY A WORK OF FICTION AND THESE CHARACTERS AREN’T REAL!!!

Why would you nail yourself into your own proverbial coffin like that?

Here’s my advice. Don’t reach for the thesaurus this time. Leave it right where it is on your shelf. You might never need it again.

Instead, if you need an attribution, use said. If you must use something different for the occasional question, you could throw in “asked” for variety, but not too often.

An even better way to use attributions in dialogue is to use a beat of action instead, like this:

“I just don’t know anymore.” Mary folded her arms. “I think I’m afraid of you.”

Harry sighed. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “I’m not very good at this.”

That way, you know who’s talking, and you’ve even worked action and character traits into the conversation. It makes for a seamless read.

Two final thoughts:

First, dialogue cannot be smiled, laughed, giggled, or sighed. Therefore, this example is incorrect:

“Don’t tickle me!” she giggled.

You can’t giggle spoken words. You can’t laugh them or sigh them or smile them, either. (I dare you to try it. If it works for you, write me and let me know. We could be on to something.)

Of course, if you’re using said exclusively, then that won’t be a problem.

Second, let’s talk adverbs. If a writer can be convinced to use said instead of other synonyms, then he or she becomes really tempted to reach for an adverb to tell how the character said something, like this:

“I don’t want to see you again,” Lily said tonelessly.

“You don’t mean that,” Jack said desperately.

“You’re an idiot,” Lily said angrily.

The problem with using adverbs is that they’re always telling to your reader. (Remember that old maxim, “Show, don’t tell”?)

An occasional adverb won’t kill your work, but adverbs all over the place mean weak writing, or that you don’t trust your dialogue to stand without a qualifier. It’s like you’re stopping the movie (the story playing through the reader’s mind) for a second to say, “Oh, but wait, you need to know that Lily said that last phrase angrily. That’s important. Okay, roll tape.”

Why rely on a telling adverb when you could find a better way to show the reader what’s going on in the scene or inside the characters? Try something like this:

Lily turned away and crossed her arms. “I don’t want to see you again.”

“You don’t mean that.” Jack pushed to his feet in a rush.

She glared at him. “You’re an idiot.”

Beats of action reveal character emotions and set the stage far more effectively than an overdose of adverbs ever will.

Conclusion

While a challenge to write, dialogue doesn’t have to be something you dread every time you sit down to your work-in-progress (or WIP). The most effective dialogue is the conversations that readers can imagine your characters speaking, without all the clutter and distractions of synonymous attributions, overused adverbs, and incorrect punctuation.

When in doubt, cut and paste only the dialogue out of your WIP and create one script for each character. Then invite some friends (ones who don’t already think you’re crazy because you walk around mumbling to yourself about your WIP, if you still have any of those) over for dessert or appetizers sometime. Hand out the scripts, assign each person a part, and then sit back and listen. Was a line of dialogue so complicated it made the reader stumble? Do you hear places where the conversation sounds stilted and too formal, or where it sounds too informal for the scene? Does an exchange sound sappy when spoken aloud? Are there words you can cut out to tighten the flow?

And don’t give up your writing to search for the Holy Grail. While the search would be less frustrating sometimes, writing dialogue no longer has to look demonic to you. You know what to do!

Questions

In your current WIP, what sticking points and challenges do you find about writing dialogue? Is a character’s voice giving you trouble? Do you worry you’re overusing an attribution? Do you have a totally opposite opinion about adverbs? The rule about writing fiction is that there really aren’t many hard-and-fast rules, so don’t hesitate to share!

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Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz is an author, poet, blogger, book reviewer, and freelance editor and proofreader. She writes full-length thrillers as well as short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her blogs are Engraved: All About Writing (http://eleanoretrupkiewicz.blogspot.com) and Daily Poetry Prompts (http://dailypoetryprompts.blogspot.com) and you can find her on one of her websites at www.eleanoretrupkiewicz.com or Refiner’s Fire Editing (www.refinersfireediting.com). Follow her on Twitter: @ETrupkiewicz. She lives and writes in Colorado with cats, chocolate, and assorted houseplants in various stages of demise.

The following is a guest blog post from Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz, whose short story, “Poetry by Keats,” took home the grand prize in WD’s 14th Annual Short Short Story Competition. You can read more about Trupkiewicz in the July/August 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest and in an exclusive extended interview with her online. In this post, Trupkiewicz details the importance of creating realistic dialogue and punctuating dialogue properly in order to keep the reader invested. Even the slightest of errors can draw the reader out of the story.

To read the second part of this post, check back at the beginning of next week, where she’ll tackle “said” and other attributions.

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If the devil’s in the details, that makes dialogue for fiction writers one of the most demonic elements of a story or novel. Just thinking about it makes me want to shut down my laptop and take up another career. Something less taxing, like dedicating the rest of my life to finding the Holy Grail.

Think about it. It couldn’t possibly be any more frustrating a career choice.

On the other hand, without dialogue to break up the monotony, stories get wordy and dull. Paragraph after paragraph of description or action eventually bores a reader into throwing the book against the wall and declaring a moratorium on any future reading.

Which is a death sentence for authors.

The goal, instead, is to engage the reader so he/she never even entertains the possibility of tossing aside the book.

Here’s a quick-reference guide to writing effective dialogue in fiction.

Problem: What About Complete Sentences?

When I close my eyes, I can see my middle school English teacher, in a black broomstick skirt and print blouse, as she stressed the importance of “always writing in complete sentences.”

Any student hoping for a glowing report card would’ve taken the edict to heart. I started writing short stories in which the dialogue between characters read something like this:

                  “Good morning, James. It’s nice to see you again.”

                  “Thank you, Lisa, you as well. How have you been?”

                  “I’ve been very well lately, thank you, and you?”

Yawn.

Who talks like that?

Unless you’re writing dialogue in complete sentences for one character in your work of fiction, perhaps to emphasize a cultural difference or a high-class upbringing, few people really talk that way. What worked for Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice isn’t going to fly with today’s readers.

Now what?

I’ll let you in on a secret. You’re going to have to disappoint your grade school English teacher.

Try an experiment. Go to a public place and eavesdrop. It helps maintain your cover if you’re not obvious about it, but just listen to the flow of conversation around you. You’re likely to hear snippets:

                  “Hey, man.”

                  “No.”

                  “Shut up.”

                  “Get lost, will you?”

                  “Pregnant? Julie?”

                  “I can’t— no, I don’t feel—”

Not many of these are complete sentences, by grammatical standards. Where are the subjects and the predicates? Could you diagram these examples?

Sure—they’re called words and phrases, and they’re what people generally use in conversation.

It’s not a crime to use a complete sentence—“Get away from me, Jim, before I call the police”—but opportunities don’t come up very often. Dialogue will flow and read more naturally on the page if you train yourself to write the way you hear people around you speaking.

Problem: Punctuating Dialogue

Periods, commas, ellipses, quotation marks, tigers, bears … you get the idea.

Don’t panic. Punctuating dialogue doesn’t have to be complicated, and your editor and proofreader will thank you for putting in the extra effort.

Here’s what you need to know about the most common punctuation in dialogue:

• When dialogue ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation mark, put the punctuation inside the quotation mark:

                  “Sam came by to see you.”

                  “Come home with me?”

                  “I hate you!”

• When punctuating dialogue with commas and an attribution before the dialogue, the comma goes after the attribution, and the appropriate punctuation mark goes inside the quotation mark at the end of the dialogue:

                  Mom said, “Sam came by to see you.”

• When punctuating dialogue with commas and adding an attribution after the dialogue, the comma goes inside the quotation mark:

                  “She came home with me,” Will said.

• When you’re punctuating dialogue with commas and adding a pronoun attribution, the comma goes inside the quotation mark, and the pronoun is not capitalized:

                  “I hate you,” she said.

• With dialogue that trails away, as though the speaker has gotten distracted, use an ellipsis inside the quotation mark:

                  “I just don’t know …” Jenny said.

• When dialogue is abruptly interrupted or cut off, use an em-dash inside the quotation mark:

                  “Well, I don’t think—”

                  “Because you never think!”

• For a non-dialogue beat to break up a line of dialogue, use either commas or em-dashes:

                  “And then I realized,” Jane said with a sigh, “that he lied to me.”

                  “Without the antidote”—Matt shook his head—“I don’t think we can save him.”

• When the speaker has started to say one thing, and changed his or her mind to say something else, use the em-dash:

                  “I don’t want to—I mean, I won’t hurt her.”

Note that semicolons and colons are rarely used in most contemporary fiction. They tend to appear too academic on the page, and if you use one or the other, or both, you run the risk of reminding the reader that they’re reading a story. Try not to do anything that breaks that fourth wall and calls attention to the mechanics of the story itself.

Look for the discussion about the great debate between “said” and other attributions in Part II of this post.

Questions

What “rules” about dialogue do you remember from grade school, writing conferences, classes, workshops, or books? Which rules drive you crazy? Which ones do you find yourself struggling to solve? How have you tackled those frustrations? Share your wisdom so others can benefit—writing takes a community to succeed!

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Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz is an author, poet, blogger, book reviewer, and freelance editor and proofreader. She writes full-length thrillers as well as short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her blogs are Engraved: All About Writing (http://eleanoretrupkiewicz.blogspot.com) and Daily Poetry Prompts (http://dailypoetryprompts.blogspot.com) and you can find her on one of her websites at www.eleanoretrupkiewicz.com or Refiner’s Fire Editing (www.refinersfireediting.com). Follow her on Twitter: @ETrupkiewicz. She lives and writes in Colorado with cats, chocolate, and assorted houseplants in various stages of demise.

The following is a guest post by author Tony Vanderwarker:this piece