3 Ways to Increase Your Writing Productivity

Coffee can increase productivity over short periods. It can also increase trips to the toilet.

Image © Idea go

So you want to increase your writing productivity, eh? Don’t we all! I’m not claiming to be an expert, but here are three tips and techniques that have helped me massively. Maybe they could help you too.

1) Get up at the crack of midnight.

Ok, maybe not midnight, but try to get up as early as you can manage without adversely affecting your sleep. Recently, I started going to bed around 9 or 10pm, and getting up at 5am. This gives me a few hours in the morning to do nothing but write, without worldly distractions.

For maximum effect, I recommend showering immediately to wake yourself up, and drinking copious amounts of coffee – but not a drop of caffeine from six-hours-to-bedtime onwards. You’ll need deep, perfect sleep to keep up the routine. And for those who have difficulty getting out of bed at the best of times, try putting your alarm on the other side of the room, so you have no choice but to leave the bed!

This is a harsh but rewarding regime.

2) Turn off Twitter!

So, you’ve cut out the distractions that you can’t normally control by writing in the middle of the night – what next? Well, that just leaves the distractions that you can control, mainly because they’re self-inflicted!

Twitter is the worst culprit here, but reading the news, checking up on your regular sites, anxiously clicking ‘refresh’ to view your latest blog traffic – these are all completely unnecessary activities that are not only eating into your writing time, but also putting you in entirely the wrong frame of mind.

And if you’re anything like me, then as soon as you start playing around in that browser window, you’re lost. Regardless of how much you struggle to focus on the writing, you will find some excuse to keep shifting back to the browser every few minutes. It’s a total productivity killer.

There’s only one solution – for those few hours that you’ve set aside to write, turn the clock back to 1989. No internet. Not one page. Not one tweet. You’ll thank yourself for it.

3) Do something you hate.

Well, maybe not something you hate – I wouldn’t necessarily try to force you into something horrendous! – but I genuinely believe it’s beneficial for any creative person to have something in their lives that they wish wasn’t. For you, it may be your menial job, the housework, or the weekly shop. For me, it’s my menial job, the housework, and the weekly shop.

I’m never more motivated to write than when there’s something unpleasant preventing me from doing it. That passion for not doing the hated activity can be translated into a passion for the writing.

For example, I’m paid not much more than minimum-wage – this means that my employer values a whole hour of my time at approximately the same level as the supermarket values a dead chicken.

My time is worth more than that. Your time is worth more than that. I’ll be writing as soon as I get home, in the impassioned knowledge that at least I am valuing my time appropriately.

Did you find these suggestions helpful? Have any of them worked for you? Got any better ideas?! Click ‘comments’ below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

Writing – The Best Medium for the Creative Author

The world is in the palm of your hand. Be careful with it. If you think you’re going to sneeze, pass it to Bernard.

Image © Danilo Rizzuti

I’m a creative person, and always have been. If you’re reading this, you probably are too. I make no claims as to the quality of anything I’ve ever produced, but I’ve always been driven by an instinct and a passion to create. Ever since I was able to write and draw, and particularly since I was able to use a computer, I’ve been producing stories, poems, pictures, comic strips, animations, 3D characters, dioramas, and music.

At least 90% of the these things have been awful.

My mother liked them, but that was probably a given. Part of the trouble with trying to do everything is that you end up being good at nothing. I desperately needed wider recognition, and for that I needed to excel at something. I took a degree in computer game design.

It seemed perfect. I already had a million ideas for great games knocking around in my head. The course took my creative instincts, moulded them, and sharpened them. I understood the key creative principles and rules of the medium. I knew how to make a great game.

At least, I thought I did. After completing the course, it turned out that no-one wants to employ someone who knows all the principles, but has few practical skills. I’d been taught how to create 3D models, texture, and animate to an acceptable level, but acceptable isn’t good enough for a professional game studio – you have to be the best.

What I hadn’t realised while I was at university was that the people who were bound for success were focusing like laser-beams on the one element of game design that interested them, and becoming very, very good at it.

In retrospect, I don’t think this was ever going to be an option for me. Not only am I a total control-freak, but the creative impulse is too strong – if I can’t be the sole creative force behind a project, I at least need to have the biggest, loudest voice. People on creative teams tend not to appreciate that.

So it turns out that writing is a more perfect fit than I previously imagined. Why? Because I get full creative control, whilst having to be very, very good at only one thing – the writing.

Yes, I know we can break writing down into various subsets of skills, but as a single discipline it’s entirely possible for an individual to master. The same can’t be said for computer games or film – argue the merits of the auteur theory if you like, but writing is the benchmark against which all notions of the ‘auteur’ or ‘author’ must be measured.

Generally, most media production only allows you to be a single element of a much wider process. For some, that’s fine – they’re content to become masters of their particular domain. For others, that’s just not enough – they want to master the whole process, to become creators of whole worlds and everything in them, to set themselves above the gods.

For those people, writing is surely the only medium.

How do you make your creative voice heard? Is writing the only suitable medium for the lone author, or are there others? Why is writing the best fit for you? Click on ‘comments’ below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

Writing Fiction – Do the Research (but don’t be constrained by it)

These headphones are conducting rigorous research – are you?

Image © healingdream

I recently finished the first draft of my novel, and I knew immediately it would need a lot of changes. I’d been constructing a unique fantasy world as I wrote, and the world I ended up with was a lot more complex than the one I started with – more complex, but not necessarily richer.

Mainly this was because I’d gradually created a culture based on the technologies of nuclear weaponry, opencast mining, and basketry, yet knew almost nothing about any of those topics. Thorough research was needed.

A good research plan, followed rigorously, can enrich your fiction – its settings, histories and characters – by adding background detail. Even if the things you learn never make it onto the page, having the information in your head will give you more confidence in the topics you’re addressing.

It may even be the case that you’ve totally misunderstood a subject, and you have to make major rewrites. Irritating, but better to find out after the first draft than when an agent or publisher takes it upon themselves to check up on these things! Don’t assume you know about something just because it featured in an episode of CSI!

At the other end of the spectrum, the research may open your eyes to so many new possibilities that your imagination is fired up all over again, and you can’t wait to make those rewrites. I’m delighted to report that this is exactly what happened to me.

One important thing to note is that research should enhance your writing, but not smother your creativity. Don’t give yourself so much research to do that there’s no time left for the actual writing – be tactical, and only choose topics that are central to your characters or setting.

Also, don’t feel that you have to cram all of the fascinating new information you discover onto the page. Only incorporate the information that’s relevant to the reader.

Most importantly, don’t aim for perfect realism at the expense of a good story. Rich, detailed fiction benefits from being grounded in some sense of reality, not from emulating it – that’s called a ‘textbook’ or ‘the news’!

Are you a writer? How much research do you generally do? Do you make a research plan? And how deeply does your research inform the finished product? Click ‘comments’ below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

Writing Fiction - The Rule of Three

In Britain, the middle hand is very rude. Except when Churchill does it. Then it isn’t. For some reason.

Image © arztsamui

It’s been suggested that, because humans are wired to look for patterns, and because three is the minimum number of anything required to form a pattern, we naturally find structures of three particularly satisfying.

They’re short. They’re punchy. They’re memorable.

This is why narratives are often comprised of three acts, why fairy tales often include groups of three talking animals, and why characters often succeed at something on the third attempt.

This structure is now so ingrained in the popular subconscious that people expect things to come in threes, even if they’re not actively aware of it. They’ll become confused and agitated, like lambs at a bestiality rave, if a character takes four attempts to succeed at a task, or if the story unexpectedly concludes at the end of the second act.

As writers, we need to use this information to our advantage. I wouldn’t recommend making every element of your story crop up in threes, because that would make it surreal and predictable (an unlikely combination, and certainly not a good one); just be aware of it.

Anything particularly significant should probably have a whiff of ‘threeness’ about it. Perhaps the hero only succeeds in killing the Dark Lord on their third encounter. Perhaps he (yes, fine – or ‘she’) must overcome three distinct barriers to reach the Dark Lord. Or perhaps the Dark Lord can only be killed by destroying the three component parts of his consciousness.

People expect it, like it, and remember it.

That said, you can also use your writerly knowledge of the ‘rule of three’ to work against the reader’s expectations, from time to time. Unexpectedly kill the Dark Lord on the second encounter, only for the reader to later discover that he’s transferred his dying essence into the hero’s mind, and must be battled one more time inside the hero’s own psyche.

Why not check your manuscript to see whether you’re working with the rule of three, or against it. I can’t honestly say it’s something I’ve had at the forefront of my mind whilst writing Gwillum Hobnail, so I’ll be looking out for it (or it’s absence) myself as I work on the second draft.

Do you use the rule of three? How closely do you follow it? Is it important, or just a load of old guff? Add a comment below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

How to Write a Layered Narrative–Some Suggestions

If you haven’t got the patience to write a layered narrative, simply create one by piling other people’s novels on top of each other.

Image © Paul

In redrafting my WIP novel, Gwillum Hobnail’s Affairs of the Undershade, I’ve come to the realisation that the structure of the narrative is a bit muddled. Having read it through carefully, it seems that I’ve been inadvertently writing three different, but linked, narrative strands – a primary narrative, a secondary narrative, and a meta-narrative.

By separating these out, both in my mind and on the page, I’m confident that I can tell a much richer story, much more clearly. The following principles could be applied just as effectively to a stage play, an epic poem, or possibly a very long scarf. Hopefully some of you will find them useful.

 

Primary Narrative

This is the main story, the one that’s driving the entire novel forwards. It takes up most of the word count, and is the primary focus of the reader’s attention and interest. It’s almost always going to be written in the past tense.

Every novel needs a primary narrative – that’s essentially what a story is. There’s plenty of excellent advice for general story writing out there, and all of it can be applied to the primary narrative, so without further ado, I’ll move on…

 

Secondary Narrative

This is a second, different, but related story, woven throughout the primary narrative. The two can be linked either directly through the narrative, or thematically. Sometimes it can be used as a ‘frame’ for the primary narrative, as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which begins and ends with Frankenstein searching for the Creature in the Arctic (secondary), during which time he recounts how the Creature was originally created, and how it escaped (primary).

Having a character from the novel narrate the story opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, because they can be recounting past events whilst simultaneously alluding to related events happening to them in the present tense.

Alternatively, the secondary narrative could take place within the same tense and time-frame as the primary narrative, but tell of completely different events. These events may appear unrelated until later on, when both narratives converge, as in Pulp Fiction.

In fact, Pulp Fiction layers numerous narratives in this way. You too could opt for a tertiary or even a quaternary narrative, if you’re brave enough, and think you can avoid confusing the reader.

Just remember – there’s no point in having a secondary narrative if it doesn’t relate to or enhance the primary narrative. If it doesn’t do either of those things, it probably needs to be a separate novel.

 

Meta-Narrative

I don’t know if there is such a phrase as ‘meta-narrative’ – I may have just invented it, but it works. This is essentially a story that isn’t told directly, but is implied by the information strewn throughout the primary and secondary narratives.

Essentially, rather than explaining a sequence of events to the reader, you are allowing them to slowly build up a picture of these events for themselves.

For example, Affairs of the Undershade is set in a post-cataclysmic world. The events that led to the cataclysm (which in turn shaped the setting of the novel) are never made explicit, but there are enough hints buried within the myths, locations and conversations of the primary narrative for the attentive reader to form a complete picture.

Crucially, nothing in the meta-narrative should be essential to the reader’s understanding of the primary narrative. You can’t assume that the reader will be that observant. It’s just enhances the primary narrative for those who are.

 

Finally, after all that, I’ll say this – be wary of over-plotting! It’s all about balance. Probably.

Are you writing a novel? What narrative structure are you using? Click the ‘comments’ button below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk

What Are YOU Looking At?

 

Image © Salvatore Vuono

Here’s a shocker – a post on my personal writing blog that’s actually about my personal writing, actually. No rants about our broken society or meandering diatribes on spoon-licking aliens this week. Instead, I have an interesting question for you, the answer to which has a direct bearing on my unusual manuscript. The question is this;

Can accurate visual descriptions ever undermine, rather than reinforce, the strength of a written narrative?

My protagonist, Gwillum Hobnail (who is also the story’s narrator), is blind. Not only is he blind, but he is slightly dim-witted, very susceptible to suggestion, and has only the most basic understanding of the world around him. Gwillum makes up for this with an overactive imagination. He fills the gaps in his knowledge and understanding with invented explanations, locations, words, and even people.

Despite all this, Gwillum is ultimately unable to give visual descriptions of his world, real or imagined, due to the fact that he doesn’t know what seeing is. When a visual description cannot be avoided, both Gwillum and I turn to his companion, Crawly Steve, a mute worm who communicates by tapping on Gwillum’s toes in code.

What I wonder is, am I doing Gwillum a disservice by regularly resorting to the one sense that he can’t make use of himself? Should I have the courage to rely on Gwillum’s limited senses and wild imagination more often? Will the narrative be stronger if the reader is truly forced to experience the world from Gwillum’s perspective? Or will the reader feel alienated without the touchstone of the visual?

I’m finally approaching the end of my first draft, and as time has gone on I’ve resorted more and more often to visual descriptions, and I’m concerned that the story’s unique selling point has been diminished as a result.

My current plan is to use draft two to re-establish the more eclectic and eccentric tone present in the first half of the manuscript. After that I’ll be sending it out to others for feedback – if they feel it needs more conventional visual descriptions, so be it.

So, what do you think? Can accurate visual descriptions ever undermine, rather than reinforce, the strength of a written narrative? Comment below, or e-mail pithytitle@live.co.uk.