R is for Reading

As you know if you've been following my blog, I'm on a big reading drive at the moment. My favourite genre to read is YA, although whether that's because I like to write YA, or whether I like to write YA because I like to read it, I don't know.

I've always heard you should read lots to be able to write well, so I think regardless of which way around the above is (does that sentence even make sense?!) the things I choose to read do influence the way I write - the language used, the style of writing, the subject matter, and so on. I don't generally read 'real life' stories, they always have some sort of fantasy/sci-fi in them, and that's what I write.

What do you like to read and does it influence your writing?

Q is for Quick sessions

One of the biggest problems I have is finding time to write around work, meetings, family, hobbies, etc. I often find I only have half an hour to actually sit down and write, and then I think 'well I can't do anything in that time' so I end up just researching (ie, browsing the web...) or doing character profiles for characters that never find themselves in a story.

Something I need to do is to get myself in gear for writing in quick bursts. When I do word wars I know I'm perfectly capable of writing 1,000 words in half an hour, but when it's just me and the blank screen, somehow I can't motivate myself.

So I have a question today - does anyone know of a really active forum or chat room for word wars so I can get motivated and war against other people and not just against myself?

P is for Plans

After two years of not writing as much as I'd hoped to at all I'm a bit wary of setting too many firm plans now for fear of disappointing myself...

However, I do find that I write better when I have something definite to aim for...

I think this is one of the reasons I enjoy NaNoWriMo so much - it's got a daily goal to aim for as well as a longer-term plan. When it's not November though, I have to set my own targets, and I find it much more difficult to keep writing. This ties in with tomorrow's post on Quick sessions...

Has anyone got any tips for reaching goals?

N is for Names

I really love naming characters, finding the right name for their personality or something that has a meaning that fits well or is suitably ironic.

One of my favourite websites for finding suitable names is babynames.net - it lists names by country, by popularity in different decades, by gender, and has a section of lists for specific types of people like tomboys, princesses, aristocrats or cowpokes!

If, for example, I'm writing about a teenage girl who's just discovered she's a witch, I can search the list of popular names in the 1990s and see the basic meanings of all the names. Jennifer means 'woman of white magic', which seems appropriate, and it also offers suggestions for similar names like Jenna and tells you where the name originates from - in this case, from Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur.

Have you got any favourite name websites?

M is for Missing punctuation

I'm a big fan of punctuation, so things like apostrophes going missing or finding themselves in the wrong place annoys me greatly.

A quick guide to apostrophes:

• Plurals don't need apostrophes. (ie. He took his dog's for a walk would be wrong. He should take his dogs for a walk instead.)
• Apostrophes go anywhere you take out a letter. (ie. In don't the apostrophe is there instead of the o in do not.)
• If something belongs to someone, then it should have an apostrophe. (ie. He dropped his dog's lead and the mutt ran away.)
• You can end a word with an apostrophe if it's got a letter missing or it's a plural possessive! (ie. Jesus' disciples, because it's very confusing to say Jesus's, or he dropped the dogs' leads and they all ran away.)

If, like me, you love punctuation and have been known to deface menus or other badly punctuated missives, or you want to know more about how to use punctuation, I highly recommend Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. It's amazing :)

L is for Limits

On a forum I use someone posed the question You're only allowed to write about one set of characters for the rest of the year. Which characters (your own or someone else's) would you write about?

It made me think about setting limits for writing. What about if I could only choose one place to set a story? Or one time of day? One type of weather? One room? One emotion?

Two years ago I was really into writing flash fiction, but that's fallen off recently. Today my challenge is to use a couple of the ideas above to write some flash fiction - a complete, short, one-scene story with a limited setting.

K is for Knowing

I remember when I was at school we had to write a story that conveyed an emotion. I wrote about a woman who was scared as she climbed over a wall and was about to break in to a house. I thought I'd done a good job with it but I got a lower grade for the piece that I'd hoped for, so I went to talk to the teacher about it afterwards.

She asked me very simply, 'what is she doing there'?

In concentrating on describing the emotion in the piece I'd completely left out any reason for the character to be doing what she was doing, and that made the piece unsatisfactory.

I knew when I was writing that the woman was a private investigator and she was breaking in to the house of a vicious crook to get evidence against him. It was one of her first cases and she was scared because she hadn't done anything like that before, and knew that if she got caught then she would probably be killed.

The problem was, I hadn't included any of that back story in what I'd written, so the reader didn't know anything about the character's motivation or why she was pushing herself to do something that was making her scared. Of course, if I'd put everything in then it would have been a whole lot of telling and still not a very good piece, so what I should have done was just drop a few hints about some things, maybe have the character remember something about the owner of the house while she was sneaking in, and let the reader fill in just a few of the gaps, rather than having to make up their own reason why the woman was breaking in.

So K is for knowing - how much we know as writers and how much of that information we pass on to readers, and at what points and in what way, can make a huge difference to how enjoyable a story is.

Also, on the off-chance that my English teacher Miss D'Auban, is reading this, thank you for the good advice :)

• Challenge - who has given you good advice? Share it with someone else!