8 Red Flags of Writing . . . or How Not to be a Failed Writer

1. Not reading and writing every single day: Do you want to know the ‘secret formula’ to becoming a good writer? Read and write for hours every single day for years. That's it. There’s no magic pill to swallow or special product to buy. It just requires two things most people aren't willing to apply: hard work and dedication. It may take you one year or twenty years or anywhere in between, but if you read and write for hours every single day then you will go from a bad writer to a good writer and, if you persist for long enough, eventually a great writer. It really is a simple as that, and don’t let anyone (especially yourself) convince you otherwise.

2. Not having a daily minimum word count: How do you know if you are a lazy writer who isn't taking your writing seriously? 1. if you get less than 1,000 words per day, and 2. if it takes you longer than 3 months to finish your first draft.

The average person types 40 words per minute. That's 2,400 words per hour. Now obviously you're not going to write nonstop like this all of the time, so we'll shrink it down to less than half of that at a bare minimum of 1,000 words per day—not per hour but per day because why not choose the slow and steady tortoise vs. hare route? So we'll go with getting 1,000 words per day written. That's 90,000 words in 3 months for your first draft.

Publishers have long since discovered that the preferred length of the average novel a reader is willing to invest their time and money in is 80,000 words (this of course varies by genre, as well when writing YA or adult fiction) which is why most publishers’ submission guidelines hover somewhere around this 80,000 word mark. And if you spend 3 months banging out that measly 1,000 words per day minimum for a 90,000 word first draft then you're golden like Ponyboy. Now you just need to polish it through revising, rewriting and editing—which you should also set as another 3 months as your goal for a total of 6 months from scratch to finish if you are a serious writer craving authorship. Anything less and you’re just being too lazy to function.

3. Editing while writing: You know who you are. You spend 10 minutes writing then 20 minutes editing what you just wrote, rinse and repeat, all while trying to make everything perfect the first go-around and after several hours you end up having only a couple of pages written at most.

The #1 rule to writing productivity is: write first, edit last.

Stop spinning your wheels by editing while you write because it only slows you down as well you will have to edit your novel again anyways—several times, in fact. Accept that your first draft is not going to be perfect (actually, convincing yourself that it’s going to be nothing more than a steaming pile of crap when you finish it helps relieve you from all the pressure of trying to make it perfect) and this will relax your mind which does creative wonders for your writing.

4. Procrastinating out the wazoo: Do you know what you’re doing by spending months or even years writing all of that backstory and world-building and charting family trees for every character and blah blah blah? You are convincing yourself that you’re writing when you are not actually writing. In other words you are procrastinating. Stop. First, most of that stuff isn’t even going to be in your finished novel but for brief references. Secondly, your job is to get us to care about your characters as soon as possible by establishing empathy and relatability, and until then we won’t care about the long and rich tapestry you’ve woven as their backstory. Sorry to break the news to you but that’s the truth. When you hit your readers from page one with block after block of boring backstory they will skip ahead if not close your book and pick a new one to read. Remember, if your backstory is so damn important then it wouldn't be backstory, it would be the story.

5. Using NaNoWriMo as your only excuse for writing: If you take your writing seriously then every month to you should be NaNoWriMo. I know so many unsuccessful writers who are lazy all year long and only write sporadically then get excited come October that they are going to write every single day when November starts. News flash: there’s nothing special about November! Again, if you take your writing seriously then every month to you should be NaNoWriMo.

An easy solution for those of you full of ‘too busy’ excuses: go to sleep half an hour later and wake up half an hour earlier. This gives you one hour of writing per day.

6. Planning too far ahead: I get it; you love reading series or trilogies and you want to write one right off the bat as your first go-around but you’ve never written or published anything before. I applaud your enthusiasm, I really do, but you’re putting the cart miles ahead of the horse.

A fun fact I adore about writing is that things will change while writing. All of those wonderful books you’ve spent weeks or months or even years outlining ahead of the first one you haven’t even finished yet can suddenly become null and void because a completely unexpected though undeniably superior scene pops into your head while writing or revising the first draft of the first novel in your planned series and demands you insert it for sake of story improvement, thus changing your story from that point forward in drastically unplanned ways because of that delightful moment of wonderful epiphany. This is why I always refer to plot outlines as starting blueprints only; they are not meant to be paint-by-numbers restrictions but a map of possibilities.

Planning too far ahead also leads you down the dark path of leaving things out (events, scenes, situations, characters, whatnot) from your first novel because you want to save them for future novels as yet unwritten while not understanding that you might be hurting your first novel in so doing.

Also, it is much harder to plot out a trilogy than a standalone novel.

I love using the most famous trilogy as example: The Lord of the Rings!

The midpoint of the Fellowship story by itself is the Council of Elrond when Frodo interrupts all of the arguing with his declaration that he will take the One Ring to Mordor . . . though he does not know the way. But for the overall trilogy, the Council of Elrond is not the midpoint but the Act 1 Key Event.

See the problem?

If you do not have a firm grasp on plot, then trying to map out an entire trilogy as well each of its individual books will lead only to confusion because the plot points won’t match up so they’ll get all jumbled in your head.

Even established authors have a hard time writing trilogies—let alone an entire series of novels—because of this, which is why most of them don’t bother.

That's why it is well-advised, at least for your first several novels, to plan them as standalones.

It’s also much harder to get potential readers interested in reading the first book in a series for several reasons. The series isn’t finished yet, and lots of readers prefer to wait until it’s completed before investing their time and money into it. Readers also have to worry about the series never being finished due to the author getting distracted by other projects (here’s looking at you George R. R. Martin) or even the author’s untimely demise because they’re old and accidents both natural and unnatural can happen (Robert Jordan, author of The Wheel of Time fantasy series, is a perfect example, though thankfully Brandon Sanderson swooped in to save the day while writing a great finish to the beloved series after Jordan’s death). As well the reader must worry that they might invest years in reading your unfinished series only to discover halfway through that they hate what you’ve done with the characters and/or story so that they don’t want to continue reading it anymore and now feel they’ve wasted all that time and money on a series they’ll never finish. Also, there exists the very real possibility that you write a mediocre first book and readers just won’t want to continue reading despite all that you’ve planned ahead for them to enjoy.

Focus on one novel at a time and make it the best you possibly can, at least until you get some experience under your belt. Only then should you try tackling writing a trilogy or a series.

7. Not planning ahead at all: Every writer starts out as a pantser so I get it, you mainstay pantsers enjoy not knowing what will happen in your stories until you write it. But there’s two problems with that: 1. failing to plan is planning to fail, and 2. specific plot points are necessary because other plot points demand it.

Picture yourself a comedian, with the Act 3 Climax the punch-line and everything in your story leading up to it the set-up of your new joke.

You tell someone the set-up then hit them with the appropriate punch-line and they get your joke while laughing. Because the punch-line matches the set-up. That is a well-plotted story.

Now take the set-up from one joke and the punch-line from a completely unrelated joke then combine them. When you tell your joke and no one laughs it’s not because they don’t understand your ‘artistic vision’, it’s because the punch-line doesn’t match the set-up so the joke isn’t funny a.k.a. the story makes no sense.

Never blame the reader for your bad story; they didn’t write it, you did.

Imagine Star Wars: A New Hope as the same story we know all the way up to Luke seconds away from blowing up the Death Star. That’s the set-up to your story joke, and because of it you already know the appropriate punch-line is Luke using the Force to make the otherwise impossible shot that blows up the Death Star.

Now imagine the same set-up but with a different punch-line: just before Luke can make the impossible shot, Darth Vader bumps Luke’s X-wing aside and blows up the Death Star instead.

You cannot have a triumphant protagonist set-up paired with a tragic protagonist punch-line (or vice versa) because that story makes no sense a.k.a. the joke isn’t funny because the punch-line doesn’t match the set-up.

8. Not leaving enough room for the reader’s imagination: Stop over-describing everything and everyone and leave plenty of room for the reader’s active imagination to fill in the blanks. This helps personalize your story to that particular reader because we all possess different imaginations drawing from different life experiences.

If I say my protagonist hopped into his ’98 Buick and drove away, one of you might imagine it as a faded-red jalopy babe-repellent sputtering along the road because that’s what you used to drive, while another of you might imagine it as a finely-tuned glossy-black sex-machine that hits zero to sixty in less than 5, or anywhere in between.

Obviously you want to describe all the essentials of your story, but make sure to leave plenty of blanks for the reader’s own imagination to fill in too.

It’s okay to give a simplified description of a character having long blonde hair or sharp blue eyes and leave it at that because the reader’s mind will automatically fill in the blanks while detailing the accompanying features with people they know, and often of themselves if they relate to or empathize with or admire the character enough . . . which is what you truly want to happen for them so they can feel as if experiencing your story firsthand even if only in their active imagination.

Never forget: the true joy of all stories is escapism.

The better the writer, the easier the reader’s suspension of disbelief.

The Motivation-Reaction Unit . . . or How to apply Sequential Behavior to your Characters

“Brr! It’s getting cold.”

Jeff shivered involuntarily.

A chilling wind blew in through the open window.

He hugged himself.

What’s wrong with this little piece of writing?

It’s all out of order, that’s what!

Because it doesn’t follow the natural process of normal human reaction that is cause and effect.

Here, let’s try that again:

A chilling wind blew in through the open window.

Jeff shivered involuntarily.

He hugged himself.

“Brr! It’s getting cold.”

Flows much better, am I right?

Because it presents the sequential process of action and reaction.

Or . . . feeling, action, speech.

When you experience a motivating stimulus you don’t decide to feel a particular way—you just do, because you have no control over your feelings, which is why love at first sight can be so stunning, or sudden fright so alarming, or indignant anger so abruptly intense . . . et cetera.

Action, though often instinctive, is controlled at least to a certain small degree.

And speech requires conscious thought, however minimal.

This is why the most natural succession of the three is feeling then action then speech. Any other order and something just feels . . . off. Wrong. Unnatural.

Case in point: you walk into a dark room, you flip on the light switch, and the room brightens.

The dark room doesn’t brighten before you can flip the light switch on, or before you can even walk inside of it to do so.

Another case in point: you aim a loaded gun, pull the trigger, and the gun fires.

It makes no logical sense if you pull the trigger then aim the loaded gun and then the gun fires.

Same with feeling, action and speech which makes up natural character reaction.

And that natural character reaction is the response to a motivating stimulus.

Motivating Stimulus = anything outside your focal character to which they react.

Character Reaction = anything your focal character does in consequence to the motivating stimuli that impinge upon them.

Put the two together and you have the Motivation-Reaction Unit.

Motivating Stimulus: A chilling wind blew in through the open window.

Character Reaction: (feeling) Jeff shivered involuntarily. (action) He hugged himself. (speech) “Brr! It’s getting cold.”

Now, can we tinker with it a bit?

Of course!

That’s one of the wonderful perks of being a creative writer.

Try combining them like so:

Jeff shivered involuntarily as a chilling wind blew in through the open window so that he hugged himself. “Brr! It’s getting cold.”

Or like so:

A chilling wind blew in through the open window.

Jeff shivered while hugging himself. “Brr! It’s getting cold.”

Or even splicing them like so:

“Brr!” Jeff said, shivering involuntarily while hugging himself as a chilling wind blew in through the open window. “It’s getting cold.”

But what you don’t want to do is this:

(speech) “Brr! It’s getting cold.”

(feeling) Jeff shivered involuntarily.

(motivating stimulus) A chilling wind blew in through the open window.

(action) He hugged himself.

When your focal character reacts in an unnatural way, something about it comes across as odd and out of place. At times we can’t put our finger on the precise reason why, but somewhere in our subconscious brain that burrowed worm of peculiar detection is wriggling while letting us know that this is not good writing because it doesn’t possess a sequential flow of cause and effect.

Which is where the two-part Motivation-Reaction Unit comes in:

1. Motivating Stimulus (instigates the)

2. Character Reaction (of)

a. feeling (then)

b. action (then)

c. speech

Let’s try again.

Motivating Stimulus: Suzie, the hottest girl in school, and still wearing her sexy cheerleader outfit after the pep rally, walked up to Jeff and asked, “Hey, can I borrow your lab notes for tomorrow’s exam?”

Character Reaction: (feeling) A tickling warmth possessing more than a smidge of carnal arousal flushed through him, blushing his cheeks a hot scarlet. (action) He smiled. (speech) “Sure.”

And remember, it is not required to have all of the reactionary parts, only that they occur in their natural order if they so exist.

Motivating Stimulus: A deer burst from the shadowed bushes and raced across the road.

Character Reaction: (feeling) Jeff startled tensed. (action) He hammered on the brakes while jerking the steering wheel sideways. (speech) “Oh crap!”

Can become . . .

Motivating Stimulus: A deer burst from the shadowed bushes and raced across the road.

Character Reaction: (feeling: unstated). (action) Jeff hammered on the brakes while jerking the steering wheel sideways. (speech: unstated)

It all depends on you the writer and how you wish to present the particular scene.

Just don’t forget that it makes no sense when you rearrange things out from their natural order:

Jeff hammered on the brakes while jerking the steering wheel sideways.

A deer burst from the shadowed bushes and raced across the road.

“Oh crap!”

He startled tensed.

Because a motivating stimulus leads to feeling then action then speech.

Anglo-Saxon vs. Latinate Voice . . . or How to Write with Style!

Anglo-Saxon words derive from the languages spoken by Germanic settlers arriving in England from the fifth century. Latinate words derive from the British Isles’ interactions with the Roman Empire and later medieval France.

Modern English is a mercurial mix of the two, breaking down to 60% Latinate and 25% Anglo-Saxon, with the rest being a mix of several other global influences.

So, what’s the real bloody difference when it comes to writing?

Voice, tone, and readability.

Anglo-Saxon words are short and straightforward, for example: think, pick, help, eat and drink. They have hard sounds like CK or the hard “g” and are also more concrete, which makes them easier to picture.

Latinate words are multisyllabic and cerebral, for example: imagine, select, assist, consume and imbibe. They are softer, flowery, and more musical.

Latinate words are often more nuanced and precise, and usually sound posher and more proper, while writing with Anglo-Saxon words is more direct.

If you need help differentiating the two, remember “short for Saxon, long for Latin.”

There was a period in English history when the language of the upper class was significantly influenced by the French, thereby Latin, language. While the lower class spoke Old English, which has primarily German influences.

Words of Latinate origin were the language of aristocrats and intellectuals, which come off as scholarly and sophisticated. Words of Anglo-Saxon origin were the language of the ‘common folk’, which come off as simple and blunt.

The distinction matters in various parts of your writing because it defines the tone and readability of your scenes. Action scenes are often better served with Anglo-Saxon words to afford them a sense of urgency and to provide a faster flow of reading. Exposition scenes are often better served with Latinate words to afford them a slower sense of nuance and to provide a more poetic flow of reading. 

It all comes down to description, really.

This also applies to dialogue in various ways.

Take the fantasy genre, for example. There’s a big difference in the way a well-educated noble speaks compared to an uneducated peasant farmer:

Noble: “I shall frequent the establishment a final time and imbibe in excess before taking my departure and retiring to my residence.”

vs.

Peasant: “I’m going to stop by the tavern and get drunk before going home and sleeping it off.”

or

Noble: “I’m well exhausted and exceedingly famished after spending the day laboring.”

vs.

Peasant: “I’m very tired and hungry after working all day.”

If you have your poor, unschooled peasant speak like a rich, well-educated noble (or vice versa) without a logical explanation as to why then you remove the believability of the personalities you intend them to represent.

Knowing this distinction also provides you plenty of options, because you can apply various subtleties to your characters by having your rough-and-tumble streetwise cop fighting a robber into handcuffs during one scene then the next you hint at his finer education at Harvard before he decided to drop out of college and take up the badge by showing him wearing a tuxedo and rubbing elbows with highbrows at a snooty wine-tasting extravaganza while he’s secretly scoping out a potential perpetrator. Or maybe the straight-laced CEO businesswoman, when relaxing with her closest friends, enjoys getting drunk and gambling while swearing like a sailor, which hints at her rather crude upbringing before her advancement into a more sophisticated path of life.

A great example of this is the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. One moment the eccentric detective is brilliantly deducing clues while deliberating with Dr. Watson then the next he’s bare-knuckle boxing while utilizing his superior intellect and martial skills to impressive effect against his physically intimidating opponent.

These distinctions add interesting depth to your characters, helping present them as three-dimensional persons of interest instead of flat and boring stereotypes, limited only by how you choose to apply them, as well influencing the tone and flow of your writing.

A quick list of examples of Anglo-Saxon vs. Latinate words include:

angry vs. furious

ask vs. inquire

baby vs. infant

begin vs. commence

belief vs. credence

belly vs. abdomen

burn vs. incinerate

cold vs. frigid

come vs. arrive

cry vs. lament

drink vs. imbibe

eat vs. consume

end vs. terminate

friendly vs. amicable

give vs. provide

go vs. depart

god vs. deity

green vs. verdant

ground vs. terrain

hate vs. detest

height vs. altitude

help vs. assist

horse vs. equestrian

job vs. profession

know vs. recognize

length vs. longitude

light vs. illumination

loving vs. amorous

match vs. correspond

mean vs. intend

meet vs. encounter

mistaken vs. erroneous

nightly vs. nocturnal

old vs. ancient

pick vs. select

put out vs. extinguish

rot vs. putrefy

shy vs. timid

sight vs. vision

smart vs. intelligent

stop vs. arrest

teach vs. educate

tired vs. exhausted

understand vs. comprehend

wage vs. salary

watchful vs. vigilant

whole vs. entire

width vs. latitude

wise vs. prudent

wish vs. desire

work vs. labor

youth vs. adolescence

Stephen King is the perfect example of a writer who relies heavily on the Anglo-Saxon voice while sprinkling in just enough granules of the Latinate throughout his novels to add vernacular spice to his stories. Because King’s writing comes off as conversational in that it almost feels as if he’s sitting there beside you and telling you the story while you’re reading it. He doesn’t use a profusion of complex words you have to pause and look up to define, or employ lengthy strings of purple prose in the hopes of impressing you with his extensive vocabulary we already know he possesses. Instead he keeps things elementary, and for that his books are beloved by millions of readers the world over and by people from every background imaginable.

Here’s a parting tip to keeping your sentences short and to the point like King when writing in Anglo-Saxon voice: if you are tempted to write the word ‘and’ or ‘but’ in the middle of a sentence, consider if it might not be better to close the sentence and start another.

*For further consideration on what is known as 'Anglish' please visit this link: ANGLISH

These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty . . . or the Easy Peasy Half-Hour Comedy Sitcom Plot Formula

Ever wanted to write a half-hour sitcom? Or just curious as to how their episodes are plotted out? Then let’s take a look at the easy peasy half-hour comedy sitcom plot formula, derived from pretty much every successful comedy sitcom ever.

The formula consists of five parts:

1. the Intro (first 3 minutes)

2. the Trouble (next 5 minutes)

3. the Muddle (next 5 minutes)

4. the Outcome (next 5 minutes)

5. the Outro (last 3 minutes)

*These numbers are not exact, mind, but averages, because some half-hour sitcoms might be 22 or 24 minutes long instead of 21, as well remember that the average half-hour sitcom has two or three commercial breaks depending on the amount of acts involved (either two or three). Most half-hour sitcoms are around 22 minutes long, with the remaining time devoted to commercials. The length of a commercial break varies by broadcaster, but is usually around two or three minutes. The average length of a TV commercial is between 15 and 60 seconds. Most commercial breaks last between two and three minutes with between four and six 30 second commercials.

1. The Intro (minutes 1-3): A short, introductory sketch that runs before the opening credits proving little more than the three-step combo of a single joke: set-up, delivery and reaction. Its purpose is to introduce the protagonist (especially to new viewers of the show) while presenting some aspect of their unique personality. This single opening scene serves as a quick joke to get the comedy ball rolling, and it can introduce the main obstacle to be overcome in the episode or have nothing at all to do with it—either way works.

2. The Trouble (minutes 3-8): The protagonist is right where we left them from the last episode, but of course a new problem or goal has arisen which forms the main plot of the A-Story. A plan is required to achieve the goal or resolve the problem needing overcome. Typically around minute 6 a subplot is introduced which features one of the minor characters as a sort of secondary protagonist in their own right, a co-tagonist; though not always necessary, this B-Story subplot can somehow link to the ultimate conclusion of the main plot.

3. The Muddle (minutes 8-13): The plan devised a few minutes ago to tackle the main plot is put into action, but it can’t work or else the episode would be over. There must be another obstacle, an unforeseen complication which requires an alternative plan or some amusing delay to the success of the initial strategy. With subplots in play, minutes 8-9 establish where we left off with the A-Story. Minutes 9-12 provide the middle muddle of the B-Story, in which the co-tagonist overcomes a minor obstacle toward their goal, then minutes 12-13 return to the A-Story and we see the main plan diverted.

4. The Outcome (minutes 13-18): The stakes are raised high for the desperate protagonist because they’ve already tried once and failed, so they initiate a last resort plan of action and it either works or it doesn’t. Minutes 13-15 reestablish the action of the A-Story, then pauses before the payoff of whether or not the backup plan will work. Minutes 15-17 conclude the B-Story, where the co-tagonist either succeeds or fails to accomplish their goal, and this outcome may or may not influence the outcome of the A-Story. Minutes 17-18 then show whether the protagonist succeeds or fails in the A-Story.

5. The Outro (minutes 19-21): Similar to the Intro segment before the opening credits, there is usually an Outro (sometimes while the closing credits roll), which shows the protagonist in the aftermath of that episode’s action. Nothing much has really changed, and life returns to where it started for the next episode. It usually finishes with a punchline at the end that harkens back to an earlier joke in the episode.

With half-hour-long television series episodes, you break down the story into three acts between the Intro and Outro, like thus:

Intro

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Outro

Intro: Is a brief scene that opens the episode with a stand-alone comical moment which may or may not also introduce the main plot point of the episode. You’ll recognize a TV episode’s Intro by the scene that appears before the opening credits.

Act 1: Is where the conflict of the A-Story the protagonist will be facing throughout the episode is introduced. You can also introduce the B-Story subplot if one exists (and sometimes even a C-Story subplot as well).

Act 2: Is where a series of complications, additional conflicts and obstacles stand in the way of the protagonist and their goals. They fail time and time again (failure is frequent and fine in comedy sitcoms because it’s humorous instead of frustrating, and we the audience don’t really want them to change), while the episode shifts focus back and forth between A-Story and B-Story (if it has any subplots to do so).

Act 3: Is the resolution of the conflict(s). The protagonist has learned from their failures and struggles in Act 2 and must now use that knowledge to overcome or hilariously succumb to the conflicts.

*note that some sitcoms employ only two acts: if the sitcom is of only two acts instead of three then the set-up of Act 1 and the rising action of Act 2 are blended into the bulk of the episode as a single act before the conclusion/resolution.

Outro: Is the scene at the end, included after the episode’s story has played out where one last gag or character moment is offered.

One Simple Question . . . or How to Plot your Novel in Seconds

I'll keep this short and sweet to stay in line with the theme of this post.

How to plot your novel in seconds depends on the Yes or No answer to the following question you should always start with before you even begin to outline: Does your protagonist eventually overcome, or surrender to, their dominant character flaw?

If yes (overcome), they are a triumphant protagonist with a false victory midpoint, a true victory climax, and a false defeat anchor point (all is lost) in between.

If no (surrender to), they are a tragic protagonist with a false defeat midpoint, a true defeat climax, and a false victory anchor point (all is joy) in between.

ERGO: end of Act 2A Midpoint --> end of Act 2B Anchor Point --> end of Act 3 Climax.

And what's so great about this is that your antagonist's plot points are the opposite of your protagonist's, meaning if you have a triumphant protagonist then you automatically have a tragic antagonist, and vice versa.

With this one simple question answered you've just mapped out the three most major key events of your story for both protagonist and antagonist, and all it took you was a few measly seconds to answer one simple question: Does your protagonist eventually overcome, or surrender to, their dominant character flaw?