E is for Endings

Writing 'The End' is such a lovely feeling. You've actually completed something you're pleased with to the point that you feel you can bring it to a close.

I did another post about endings, or rather, about finishing things, last month, but this is a slightly different. I can finish a story without feeling like it's ended properly. Sometimes it tails out, or feels a bit flat, or I feel as if it's not been properly resolved.

The stories without 'The End' have something missing from them. Essentially, even though they're finished, they're not ended. They're less-than-first-drafts. Very fleshed out ideas but still with something missing. For me, writing 'The End' means that I'm happy with the story, even if I know it's only a first draft and there are all sorts of things I need to tweak and improve. The End is a sign that I know the basic story is complete, like a baby having been born, and what happens next is the growing up stage of the story's life.

D is for Death

I don't know why I decided today's topic would be death - it was just the first thing that came to mind.

I've only ever written one character's death that I can remember, although I've mentioned that characters have died, or had bodies in my stories. I think perhaps the reason I've shied away from writing character deaths is partly because I haven't felt they're needed for the story, and partly because I wouldn't know how to do it. With the one character I did kill off in text, the death happened as I was writing with no planning beforehand. Perhaps that was why I found I could write it out - because I was just writing it as I was picturing it in my head.

However, looking back through stories that I've written dead characters into, in some of those cases the stories might have been more dramatic with at least some description of how the deaths happened.

My challenge from today's post is to write a character's death.

I might be quiet for the next couple of days - I'm travelling...

C is for Colours

Just a short post today. Colours are all around us and can add huge amounts of detail to a story. A woman is just a woman until you add in her hair colour - a limp brown, a vibrant chestnut or a sun-streaked blonde. Colours can bring a character or a setting to life, and make even a dull setting more interesting.

Today's challenge is to write about something that's one colour, like the sea or sky, or dirt, and describe it in great detail.

B is for Beginnings

Once upon a time there was the beginning of a story... Ever since I started studying creative writing it was drummed into me that beginnings are incredibly important. If the beginning doesn't interest you then you won't keep reading.

I'm a journalist by profession, and beginnings are vital for my work as well. The difference between the two types of writing are quite marked though, and that's especially obvious in the beginnings. In newspapers you have to get the main gist of the story in the first two paragraphs. In fiction, if you did that it would make for quite a bland story and not be as interesting.

In a way, I see newspaper writing as putting in the bare bones of a story. An article could tell you that a man was taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation after his house caught fire. What it won't tell you is how the man escaped, what started the fire, the heat of the blaze, how the smoke smelled, or how the man felt - scared, gasping for breath, relief when he gets out, and so on.

My challenge from today's post is to take a newspaper story and flesh is out to make it into a short story.

A is for Antagonist

Antagonists are the driving force behind any story. The main character has to have something to overcome or fight against.

I have to admit I don't think I'm very good at creating multi-dimensional antagonist characters. My better (in my opinion!) antagonists are not people but situations, institutions or regimes. I find it much easier to write about a character fighting to try to get out of a difficult situation than to write about them fighting against a person. Even when I have a person as the antagonist I still find that they're representative of an institution or regime.

I think my challenge from this post will be to try to create some antagonists as characters in their own right, rather than have them appear only as a necessary plot device.

And....

A is also for Arlee Bird - the guy who came up with the idea of the blogging A-Z challenge! I'm looking forward to trying this for the first time, so a big THANK YOU to Lee for starting the challenge :)

The April Blogging A-Z challenge 2013

I need to give myself a kick with my writing again, so during April I'll be attempting the Blogging A-Z challenge, and since my blog is about writing, the posts will be writing-related as well. I'm not sure what I'm going to include in each post yet, but the idea is to write a blog a day (except for Sundays), each one on a theme starting with a different letter of the alphabet.

The posts will all be linked here once they're written:

April 1: A is for Antagonist
April 2: B is for Beginnings
April 3: C is for Colours
April 4: D is for Death
April 5: E is for Endings
April 6: F is for Fantasy
April 8: G is for Genres
April 9: H is for Heroics
April 10: I is for If
April 11: J is for Jazz Night
April 12: K is for Kansas
April 13: L is for Lists
April 15: M is for Music
April 16: N is for Novels
April 17: O is for Open University
April 18: P is for Pantsing
April 19: Q is for Questions
April 20: R is for Romance
April 22: S is forSettings
April 23: T is for Tropes
April 24: U is for Unwritten
April 25: V is for Vampires
April 26: W is for Who, What, Where, When, Why (and How!)
April 27: X is for Xenophobic (or the writing equivelant!)
April 29: Y is for Young Adult
April 30: Z is for Zzzzzzz

I've started, so I'll finish...

Pre-Editing (aka Finishing)
We all know that March is NaNoEdMo, but there's an important step that must be done before reaching for your editing goals: finishing that novel. How hard is it for you to finish a novel? Does it leave you with a sense of closure or a yearning for more? Do you finish as many novels as you start?
 
So many questions in this month's WriYe topic!

How hard is it for you to finish a novel?

If I'm enjoying the story or I've got a time limit, like NaNo or April Fools, then I can usually finish a novel. The problem for me comes when for whatever reason I don't finish the story in the target time. When that happens I'll take a break from it for a couple of weeks and then find it very difficult to get back into it again because other things will have taken over.

Does it leave you with a sense of closure or a yearning for more? 

It depends on what the story was. If it's one where I love the characters then I'll usually want to take them on another adventure once I've finished the novel. Thief was a good example of that. I started with a Camp NaNoWriMo story that had an ensemble cast and once I'd finished I decided the more minor characters had so much more potential that I started Witness. That's currently on the back burner, but I want to get that finished before the summer, and then there are still more characters from that world that I'd like to explore.

However, if I've found the story more of a struggle to finish then I'm less likely to have a sense of yearning and more likely to just feel satisfaction at having finished the project - and dread at the thought of editing! ;)

Do you finish as many novels as you start?

No - I've always got at least one novel on the go, so therefore I've never finished them. I do try to finish ones that I start but some just don't get finished for various reasons - lack of inspiration, losing interest in the story, finding that I don't like the characters or the plot as much as I thought I did when I started, etc.