When you have some ideas for writing, but you’re not familiar with the fancy words that writers use. 

Have you ever felt intimidated when you hear writers talk about their craft? I know I have. When I was hosting a live event recently, I realised that I was using some jargon that might not be clear to everyone. Maybe I was confusing them, or worse, making them feel like they don’t belong! Sometimes writers use words that you don’t know, and you start to doubt yourself. That’s not a good feeling!

Learning how to write… as you write!

Sometimes you might feel unsure about your writing skills. Maybe you don’t know when to use an apostrophe, or what some words mean, or how to spell and punctuate correctly. But that’s OK. You don’t have to be perfect to write well. Or maybe you don’t know the technical word for something in writing, simply because you’ve not encountered it before – that’s fine. Even I have to check things sometimes when I forget or get confused. And then there are those days when you have a great idea in your head, but you can’t find the right words to express it. That happens to everyone. Don’t let that stop you from writing, or make you feel bad about yourself. No one is judging you.

Practice makes perfect!

Think of it like this: you get a Marvel comic book as a gift. You don’t have to know everything about the characters before you open it. You just dive into the story and have fun with it. Maybe you’ll get curious and want to learn more about them later. That’s how writing works too. You don’t need to study it first, you just have a go at doing it. You learn as you go along. Don’t they say, every day is a school day?!

There are some things you should learn all about before you start doing them. There are certain jobs or tasks where you will of course need some background knowledge, qualifications – situations where someone might get hurt, or your actions affect others. But writing isn’t like learning to drive, at least not in that way. You’re not going to do any harm by having a go at writing. Maybe you will do it badly to start with, but you can always get better with practice. You can improve the ways you did it the first time around, but by playing about with ideas and making a start, you have already given yourself a great start.

Write what you want to write

So, just ‘doing the thing’ – in this case, writing fiction. If you want to, you can try to do everything by yourself – just start writing and learn as you go, improve your skills, solve problems along the way. Or you might want to join others who are also writing and get their feedback and help – my Book Forge community is a good option, which is all about sitting in the chair, spending time writing, and achieving your writing goals. It’s nice to have people who share your dreams and can give you advice and support. 

Whilst it can be helpful to learn some of the common terms, especially if you want to communicate with other writers, editors, or readers – it’s not a requirement. The important thing is that you are actually doing it. Don’t worry too much about writing jargon. It can be useful, but it’s not a must-have. Write what you want to write, how you want to write it. That’s what matters most.

What is a Writing Sprint?

Writing sprints are all the rage with writers and authors. It doesn’t matter whether you write fiction or non-fiction. They work whatever genre or sub-genre you write. 

A writing sprint is a closely focused period of time spent writing. Some writers do twenty-minute sprints. Others prefer half an hour or forty minutes. Most authors find that their words start running dry after this time period, but some keep going for an hour. There’s no right or wrong in this. Writers are human too (honestly!) and we are all different.

The benefit of writing in sprints is that it makes you get the words out. You know what happens to your writing time otherwise. You stare at the screen for ten minutes. Then you get up for a cup of tea. Then you decide to edit what you wrote yesterday (big mistake). You change three words. Then you change them back.

Or you decide you’re going to write the scene, produce twenty words, then go down a research rabbit hole about something. You spend an hour on websites searching for the perfect name for a character you’ve just invented.

You meant to get loads of writing done, didn’t you? You’ve got maybe another couple of hundred words to show for it. At this rate, you’ll be ninety before you complete this book.

How do I know this? Because I do it too. If I don’t sit down and set a timer, I’m done for.

How to do a Writing Sprint

Sprints are easy to do on your own. Decide what you’re writing and what you want to achieve (this fight scene between your Lead and Opposition; that arrival scene on the planet Norbling). Set a timer for a realistic period. Nothing fancy required – just your phone. Write for that period of time. When the time is up, check your progress against your goal. 

Maybe you’ve achieved your writing goal entirely. Maybe you managed half the scene. It doesn’t matter. Progress is progress. Let yourself feel good about it. Give yourself a reward or a break (that cup of tea; put the washing on if you care about such things). If your day allows it, come back and do another sprint, then another and another. It depends on your schedule/children/work/dog/mother-in-law and so on.

The Storytellers’ Academy

I keep this Facebook group quite small. It’s a space where writers feel safe to share their early drafts, to celebrate their wins, to get feedback (I run weekend challenges) and to be part of a supportive community of writers who care about writing.

Write a story that will make someone cry

Many writers wish they knew how to write a story that will make someone cry. They want to know how to make their readers feel such strong emotion that they sob while reading about fictional characters. Many such writers get part of the answer on their own: they understand that to make people cry they need to have characters in their stories who feel strong emotions themselves. However, they are often still missing a key part of the characterisation process. That key part is character resilience. 

Once you’ve created this character we admire, give them something to struggle with. Give them an event that’s really hard for them to cope with, because it challenges the thing they care most about. If they care most about their young family, threaten that family. If they care most about getting a promotion that they’ve worked for since forever, introduce a character who’s even better qualified.

OK. You’ve challenged your character and they’ve answered the challenge. What next? Your character now needs to encounter hardship and difficulties on their journey to solving the problem. Things have to be hard. You have to give them something that’s difficult to achieve. You also have to make the obstacles in their way tougher and tougher to overcome. Their emotions need to be stretched tighter and tighter as they start to crack under the pressure.
They might feel a great temptation to give up and let the bad guy get what he wants. They must sink into a pit of despair. And there must be a terrible loss. To make someone cry when they read your story, you must put your character through an event that is too much for anyone to realistically bear. But even that is not enough.

You must go a step beyond this. What will make your reader cry is not so much the fact that something awful has happened. What brings your reader to tears is your character’s reaction to this event. There will be the immediate despair, of course. But then he or she must show their true mettle. They must pick themselves up, look their defeat in the face, and face it anyway. They must be defiant and resilient even though it is surely impossible that they will overcome.

Again, The Hunger Games offers us a great example of defiance and resilience. Katniss loses a friend and ally. She initially despairs but then shows her true courage and is defiant in the face of the enemy.

It is the resilience of the human spirit that makes a reader cry, not the sight of a character crumbling.

Will your character finally overcome the obstacles to their happiness and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Maybe. That’s up to you. You’re the writer. In a sad story with a tragic ending, certainly your character won’t. But they’ll go down fighting. The key to making your readers cry when they read your story is always your character’s resilience. 

“I’ve got an idea… but I haven’t got a clue where to start.”

If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard those words! What is that fear of getting started all about? It can be different issues for different people, but the most common reasons I dig out of people are as follows…

People sometimes don’t think they’re good enough to be a writer – as if writing a story, never mind a whole book is something only the elite can do. Remember this – every famous writer had to start somewhere. J.K Rowling was about as poor as a person can be without actually being homeless. Charles Dickens spent some of his childhood doing very unpleasant, dead-end work in a factory. They both had ideas. What made the difference was that they made a start. What you come up with first might not be very good – but I wouldn’t mind betting that those authors’ early attempts would make their famous later selves blush.

Often, that person with an idea hasn’t done any creative writing since they were in school. They feel they’ve forgotten the ‘rules’. How about marathon runners who only began running seriously as adults? It’s the same thing. We can train our brains just as we can train our bodies.

Some people worry that they’re going to get it wrong because they were ‘no good’ at English in school. Writing as an adult, when you get to choose exactly what to write, is completely different from writing in school. You’re not being given marks out of ten any more – you’re being given a chance to put your own voice out there… and having your work checked for you isn’t cheating any more – it’s called editing and proofreading!

Occasionally, it’s as simple as a nervousness about the blank page – that empty new document staring back at you. Just start writing. Write anything. You don’t even have to show anyone that first attempt. The point is that the page won’t be blank any more.

You can always get help.