Tips for Increasing Your Writing Efficiency and Enjoyment

submitted by Carol Curtis Stilz

Over the past six months I have collected some tips from webinars, workshops, and reading. Many of these tips I shared with my students when I taught writing classes for teens and adults. Like my students, I needed to remind myself of what steps make my writing more efficient and enjoyable. Sometimes the enjoyment comes from meeting a goal or increasing my productivity or tackling a scene that I have put off writing. I’ve structured the remainder of this blog in steps. Don’t dismiss a suggestion until you have tried it at least once. These steps are not the ultimate “how to write” guide. They are intended to offer a buffet of possibilities to make writing for you more fun. Enjoy!

• Begin with an idea you want to write.
• Make a mind map around that idea.
• Write or draw on Index cards for everything that pops into your head. No editing here. Yes, you can use Scrivener or another writing program that allows you to move each idea around, to add and delete ideas too.
• Write one sentence that defines the story problem.
• Determine a turning point where character makes a decision that puts him at highest risk.
• Determine the crisis where the character’s actions seal his/her fate.
• Determine the ending or resolution of story problem, unless you like to surprise yourself as you write.
• Determine the beginning that sets up the story problem. You may choose to change the beginning.
• Create structure by placing index cards in order, making a fishbone diagram, or your idea of outline. This helps avoid the dreaded muddy middle.
• Remember to give backstory only when it is necessary to the reader or character now.
• Establish a writing time and place. Once you have found what is best for you, don’t change it.
• Set a writing goal for the day, number of minutes, number of pages, or completion of number of scenes.
• Write first think after waking up. I have coffee and feed and pet my cat first.
• On scratch paper, not your calendar, write things on your mind other than story. I call this monkey brain dump. Put it aside and look at it after you have written for the day. I do this step when sipping coffee.
• Write in 15 or 25 or 55 minute sprints. Set a time. Hands on keys and write steadily. When time rings, take 5 minutes to stretch, drink water, get in some fit bit steps. Avoid leaving the room if possible, and do not make phone calls, text, email, etc. No outside human contact. Then resume process until you have made your goal in writing for the day, either minutes or pages or scenes. Give yourself permission to write the scene that comes to mind that morning. You don’t have to work in chronological order if that isn’t your style. I call this my “patchwork quilt” process.
• No editing as you write. Edit after writing sprint, or later in the day, or next morning, or a time and place you set.

Choose the tips that work best for you. Enjoy the process and your success!

Conflict and Motivation by Sherry Roseberry

To my way of thinking, an excellent story plot is a blend of idea, characterization, conflict, motivation and emotion. Any writer worth her salt strives for a perfect mixture. Although, many fail to reach that end.

Some brew wonderful concepts that even Steven Spielberg would be proud to call his own. But, their characters are unsympathetic.

Others write characters to die for, however, the main threads and final wrap up are a little weak.

We’ve all read books that have deep story-lines where we did not bond with the heroine and we wanted to slap the hero. Above all, great characterization is what sells books.

Most of us see conflict and motivation as a sheer cliff we must climb. It is not paramount that a writer comes up with something so complex and intertwined that even she/he has a hard time keeping track of everything. You know the ones....

The heroine’s granddaughter married the hero’s grandfather’s butler who stole the crown jewels and shared the stash with his bride instead of the ex-employer, who is in reality a baby stolen from the gypsies because the Duchess was barren and now, unbeknown to the hero, he is next in line to be the new King of the Gypsies and is about to be kidnapped. Phew! Unless of course you’re hoping to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Use something simple. Example: she hates small towns because she’d been teased/outcast all her life/ridiculed by small minded people/has gone without. She lives for the adventure of being a big city news correspondent.

He has had it with the hustle and bustle of life as a big city doctor. He feels people have lost their compassion for their fellow man. He finds his haven in Small-Town America.

Bingo! Conflict and motivation.

To make things interesting, throw in a few twists and turns such as she inherited the town from an eccentric uncle. She decides she wants to raze some old buildings and replace them with a money-making shopping mall. He’s already in the process of turning the classic structures into a clinic and claims to have bought them from her Uncle before his death.

Not complicated.

It’s like cars. Think of plot lines as the nuts and bolts that hold the body together. Conflict is the engine. Characterization is the chrome-bedecked chassis and motivation the super-duper, steel-belted, road-hugging tires. Now, you have the car of your dreams. Well, almost. You need one more element to make it run. Fuel. And fuel is the emotion. Without it, this baby isn’t going anywhere. With it, she’ll purr like nobody’s business. And an editor will gladly throw money your way. To top it all off, you’ll keep those readers engaged to the very last page, dying for more.