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What to do with your story (writer's advice)

Writer's picture: Melissa Galindo LealMelissa Galindo Leal

Hello. So, in another previous post I’ve talked about what I’ve been through when it comes to writing a novel and many other miniature pieces. In the first few pieces I tried when I was in middle school, I found out that most times my story fell flat. And true, the more experienced you are as a writer, the easier it is to portray feelings, make the environment as true as it can be, so for a first writer, it is challenging, but I will try to ease that up on you so you don’t make the same mistakes I made.


1. Take your time learning new vocabulary.


Even if you’re a native English speaker (which wasn’t my case) it’s safe to say I’m sure there are a lot of words you still don’t know, or even if you do, you don’t actively use them, and that’s a main part in writing. When describing a scene, a character, a mannerism, you don’t want to use elementary verbs, and sometimes it is even useful to have words that stick to your mind to have a clearer sense of what’s going on. As I sometimes think of it, writing is a craft, yes, but it has its own language, too.


How I overcame this wasn’t by reading a dictionary. Instead, I spent months reading books similar to the one I was writing and taking vocabulary and pace from a known author to further spread mine. It did wonders. I learnt new words in different contexts, was able to get a better grip at how to define and explain scenes, and overall gave me so much ideas as to what there is to do with rhetorics, dialogues and description. A few ones I recommend:

  • King’s Cage by Victoria Aveyard

  • Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer

  • A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving


2. Stick to your overall draft—but don’t.


If you follow me on Instagram, you must’ve seen by now a small video I posted about writing tips, similar to these but quite different. In there, I explain how keeping a journal or notebook about your characters, settings, time line and plot helps me so much. Also, doing this is pretty common. Writers, sometimes, sketch the story they want so they don’t forget the key points whenever they’re writing the first draft.


What I like to do before starting to write something is to sketch it, too. Define the number of chapters, what I want to happen in the overall story and then fitting those into specific chapters, make sure there’s a time line easy enough to follow and leave open endings just when I need to. This is a great exercise to get to know your novel better, come up with plot twists and have a ruler that can guide you through the writing process. However, this ‘sketch’ is merely that, a

sketch.


Far too often I get these ideas when I’m walking, working out, showering, when a song comes on, and those aren’t original plans I had intended for my draft. And that’s okay. You can add them into your sketch, erase some old ones, and overall, just perfect it. Delete some, add some, collide chapters, whatever works for you, the sketch is just an outline, not the entire book.


3. There’s no right or wrong way to describe a character.


In a thousand videos and articles, I’ve read about how a character must have motives, something peculiar, strengths, weaknesses, and while that’s true in the real world, the one you write is much more infinite, and therefore complicated. I can get lost in the sea of what my character lacks or overflows in, but that’s not the truth. The more you write a character, the better you know them. Sometimes, they may even take you by surprise. And that, folks, is the wonder of writing. So no, you don’t have to have the pet-peeves of each character before you finally embark to write the damn thing. More over, it’ll come naturally, and if you stick to it, the characters you’re writing will have more definition than the ones that go through that rough ‘drafting’ process of figuring out who they are before they’re even on paper.


4. Your first draft (especially when you’re writing it) is always the worst.


I’m sorry to break it to you, but it’s true. The very first draft will seem far-fetched, with holes, unfinished, leave you wanting more. And that’s because you still have to mold it, in future drafts, so it is actually a story. The way I like to see it is, the first draft is just a sketch with actual words and sequences.


I’ll go into detail about editing and drafting in a future post, but for now, know this. No writer’s first draft is amazing. There’ll always be open-endings and things you could’ve explained different. And that’s totally okay. No one’s rushing you to finish it, only yourself.


5. Be patient. Writing ANYTHING takes a lot of time.


Toward the end of the first draft, when you’ve probably written for months on end, you may get impatient. Get the urge to finish it all in one night. Believe me, I know. But that, my friends, never works. Instead, try it easy. If you feel like you’re getting exasperated, take a break. Leave it as it is for a week, two. You have time.


When you rush a scene, a chapter, you feel it. Maybe not you, as the author, but the person who reads it often does, and that’s not a nice feeling. Give yourself time to soak in what you’re writing, and be patient. The least you count on it, the quicker it’ll be done. And if for some reason you can’t finish it, maybe that’s also meant to be.


So, there it is folks, five tips I wish someone would’ve told me when I started writing ‘seriously’ back in middle school. These are encouraging for me because nothing is easy, especially not when you’re creating something out of thin air with only your imagination there.


If you liked it, let me know. I’m planning to make another one of these about the writing process in general, cons and pros, and stuff like that.


If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading.


Profuse greetings, Mel.


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