Three Thoughts about Writing a Book

Three Thoughts about Writing a Book

Brad R. Cook

Everyone has a story to tell. Those of us that write them down earn the moniker – Writer. Those that persevere through the publishing process become known as Authors. Here’s the secret, anyone can write a story. As a people, we have told stories since the dawn of time. People go into work on Monday mornings and tell stories of their weekends. We tell children stories to get them to go to sleep. The trick, and why some authors get paid the big bucks, is to make it a good story.

Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Stephen King said, “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Octavia Butler said, “First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

They said it best, but here are my three thoughts on writing a book…

1 – Be a storyteller

Writers are wordsmiths, gods of our own universes, grammar Nazis, and more, but beyond all of these we are storytellers. Learn the three act structure, the bell curve of story arcs, and writing in an active voice. These are important but what matters most is that a writer be an excellent storyteller. Everything else is fixable in edits.

2 – Write Regularly

Octavia Butler and Stephen King both emphasized this, why, because it is paramount to being an author. The only difference between wanting to be a writer and being a writer is putting words on the page. I try to write every day, when I have a deadline I will write several times a day. However, if you can only write once a week that is fine. Maybe a couple of hours every weekend is all you can manage. I promise if you stick with the writing eventually you’ll write The End, and there is no greater feeling than hitting that last period.

Guard this time like a dire wolf… everyone and everything will try and chip away at that time. The trick is to make it routine, then your muse, your body, and your mind will be ready to write when the time comes.

3 – Read

Read books in your genre, books by your favorite authors, even books on how to write. Read a variety of things, in different styles, different genres, and be certain to read for fun. Seeing how sentences are structured will improve your writing. Seeing what others are doing will let you know what are the tropes of your genre, the clichés, and what you can do that will stand out from the others.

I am a fan of authors rules, I read everyone I can get my hands on. I like to see what other writers think is important, but I also read books on writing. Like Stephen King’s On Writing, the Emotional Thesaurus, and Punctuation for Writers. But there are so many more. Remember, reading is fundamental…

So write. Revise. Write some more. Then Submit.

I leave you with this,

Brad R. Cook’s advice on writing – “The magic is in the rewriting.”

Do you have any advice for writers, a favorite book, or quote? Let us know in the comments.

Brad R. Cook, author of the YA steampunk series, The Iron Chronicles. Iron Horsemen - http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Horsemen-The-Chronicles/dp/0989207951 and Iron Zulu - http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Zulu-Book-Two-Chronicles/dp/0989207978.  A member of SCBWI, he currently serves as Historian of St. Louis Writers Guild after three and half years as its President. Learn more at www.bradrcook.com, on Twitter @bradrcook https://twitter.com/bradrcook, or on his blog Thoughts from Midnight on tumblr http://bradrcook.tumblr.com/

Three Thoughts About… Point of View and Storytelling

Three Thoughts About… Point of View and Storytelling

By Brad R. Cook

Having seen some movies over the holiday season, including the really big one, and then reading the backlash online, I wanted to talk about how writers use POV – Point of View. This isn’t a post about the differences of First Person and Third, or if Omniscient is better or worse than Limited, I want to talk about how writers use POV to tell stories.

1 – POV limits the storytelling to one or a couple of characters.

It doesn’t matter if you use First Person and switch characters from chapter to chapter, or if Third Person is used in limited or omniscient. By selecting one of these storytelling techniques, the writer is choosing to tell the story from a certain character’s point of view. Every story needs a main character, or maybe an ensemble of central characters. But every person in your story, even the poor side character that only walks into the scene with a glass of water, has a story, a life, or actions that take place off page, or off screen.

2 – Point of View filters all information to the reader

Locking in a Point of View causes the reader to see and feel the story through that character. What would Star Wars be without experiencing everything for the first time like Finn, or through the hope Rey sees in the galaxy around her? We experience the horrors and pain of the hunger Games through Katniss, and her interactions with the other tributes. As writers, we control the emotional journey of the readers, and that’s a good thing. We take the reader on a roller coaster through our books, leading them through the low moments and raising them up to heights of tensions and joy.

3 – Readers might think they want everything but they really don’t

Readers or movie goers might think they want to know what every character is doing when not in the scene, or every character’s back-story, but in truth, they don’t. Victorian novels, the really thick ones that everyone had to read in school, but really we just watched the movie. The ones we tell people we’ve read, but only really paid attention to in class. Except for some of us – I love those novels, as well as a small group of professors and literary types. Victorian novels are notorious for including characters that didn’t matter, or jumping into elaborate back-stories that made readers wonder where the plot went. The world has moved on from that kind of story telling – writers don’t get paid by the word anymore. Readers want the plot, the action, and the emotion, in a refined and polished story.

The trick is to give a reader everything they need. A main character may not be able to see everything a villain does, or every little moment of the story, but the challenge for us as writers is to find ways to impart that information to the reader. There are right ways (POV switches) and wrong ways (Info Dumps) to include what can’t be directly experienced, but that is something for another day.

I liked Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Sure it was overly nostalgic and made me ask a thousand questions as I left the theater, but part of that is a time and pacing issue, and part of it is that Rey, Finn, and Poe didn’t have all the answers.

Brad R. Cook, author of the YA steampunk series, The Iron Chronicles. Iron Horsemen - http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Horsemen-The-Chronicles/dp/0989207951 and Iron Zulu - http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Zulu-Book-Two-Chronicles/dp/0989207978.  He currently serves as Historian of St. Louis Writers Guild after three and half years as its President. Learn more at www.bradrcook.com, on Twitter @bradrcook https://twitter.com/bradrcook, or on his blog Thoughts from Midnight on tumblr http://bradrcook.tumblr.com/