Writing Tip Wednesday #2: Know Where You're Going

When I watched the trailer of the film "Rumble Fish" on Youtube, the Motorcycle Boy (played by a young Mickey Rourke), made a really profound statement: "If you're gonna lead people, you have to have somewhere to go." Sadly, although I really wished to view the film, I looked up some of the content on imdb.com and decided to pass on it, for reasons which I will explain later. That being said, the Motorcycle Boy's statement applies to writing just as much as leadership. If you want to write an excellent story, you need to know where you are going with it. The best way to do this is to make an outline. You don't necessarily need it during a first draft, but when you start revising, it becomes essential. Otherwise, you can wind up starting the story with how Drake went on a journey to the center of the earth to fight the Dragon of Tormented Souls and end with Natalie successfully completing her quest to discover alien cloning technology buried in the Arctic. You'll just have a bunch of interesting ideas thrown together which make no sense whatsoever.

An outline will not only help you stay on track, but will also save you time and energy in the process. For example, "AIR WARS" took me four years to write. However, the prequel I wrote to that, "Clan of the Sun", only took one. The difference? I knew the ending in advance. That simple decision to take a few minutes to figure out my destination saved me three years of my life! So now I always outline all of my novels.

There are many ways to outline. Some people only know the ending and try to work towards it, like I did with "Clan of the Sun." Others plan everything down to the last detail, describing the date and time, what the characters are wearing, even counting how many elves and Neptunians walked down the street during the scene. I lean more toward the middle. I write a 1-2 page paper with the beginning, middle, and end each summarized in 2-3 sentences. This is the most effective way for meto outline, because it gives me the flexibility to take the plot in different creative directions while giving me enough of a map to keep from getting lost in the Tangential Forest of Doom. You really just need to choose the method which is right for you.

Figure out where you are going with your story and what you are trying to achieve with it and you are on the path to creating a masterful tale.

Writing Tip Wednesday #1: Just Do It!

To quote J.R.R. Tolkien, "it's the job that's never started that takes the longest to finish." In nothing is this more true than writing. You can have characters so real that you can reach out and touch them, a setting so vivid that you can not only walk, but run and dance around it, and a plot so riveting that it would fill every theatre in the U.S. if it were made into a film. However, if you don't have anything written down, then these are nothing but elaborate daydreams. So stop spacing out in front of your computer screen! Type it up! Don't worry about making mistakes right now. That's what proofreading and spellcheck is for. Just get it out, so that you can have clay to make a sculpture out of, paint to make a work of art out of, a jpeg with which to create art in Photoshop with. That's what a first draft is: the material with which you will make your masterpiece!

"To Remind You That I Love You" finished, Hiatus from Writing, T-Bag on Breakout Kings!

Yesterday, after a grueling ten drafts, I finally finished "To Remind You That I Love You" and submitted it to Mindflights magazine. It's my best written short story to date and I even managed to sneak in some allusions to Beowulf, one of my favorite tales from my college English classes. Like "Heart of Flesh" and "Daughter of the Seven Seas", it is a Nineveh Academy story. Although it's the first one that is not told from Cassandra's perspective, she still is the key character in the tale.

On a sad note, I need to take a temporary reprieve from writing. There are some arrangements in regard to my life goals which I need to make, and which will require all of my attention for the next few months. So I will not produce any more fiction until summer. It's rough, but sometimes you got to make sacrifices in order to get what you want.

I've also got hooked on a new series called "Breakout Kings." Ever since "Prison Break" ended, I've lost a lot of interest in modern television, which mostly features dull sitcoms like "King of Queens", ridiculously offensive cartoons like "Family Guy", or smut like "Entourage." However, "Breakout Kings" is awesome, and tonight the convict was none other than the dastardly Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell, the archenemy of Michael Scofield on "Prison Break" and the most charismatic and entertaining character on the show. As I sat drinking a cocktail of cranberry juice and ginger ale, I was glued to my seat as I watched Ray and Charlie's team track T-Bag down after his third escape. There was a scene later in the hospital so touching that it almost made me cry (which I will not reveal due to spoilers) and another awesome scene with Lloyd and T-Bag at the end. In that scene, after spending the whole episode wanting to analyze T-Bag and his motives, Lloyd finally looks at him and says that the truth is very simple: "Some machines just come out of the factory broken. You are a broken machine." This echoes Alfred from "The Dark Knight" when, speaking to Batman about the Joker, he says "Some men just want to watch the world burn." In other words, that certain people are just evil for evil's sake, a truth that most of society doesn't want to face, but that we need to in order to deal with criminals properly.

What I would also love to see is for them to work Michael Scofield into the storyline somehow. A nigh impossible feat, considering that he is dead. However, maybe they could work him in through flashbacks from another character who joins the team to help capture the convicts. Hey, it could happen.

That's it for now. Until next time, stay posted.