fixed!

The third book in the Pictures of You series is now live to the internet! This book, Bishop Street, will be the longest in the series, coming in at around 300 pages, the length of the first two books combined, and will take roughly two years to complete. Due to its length, Bishop Street will be broken down into four parts, the first being Summer. Any guesses on what the other three will be called?

The second announcement is that Pictures of You is now in colour! That’s right, vivid technicolor brought to you by fancy computerized gadgetry! In addition to the new pages being produced in colour, I’ve been going back through the archive and colouring the first two books as well, posting them a chapter at a time. It’s going to be quite a task, but as of this writing, I’m a little more than halfway through Book One so we’re hoping it’ll be done quickly.

Which brings us to the third bit of news.  With the increased workload the colouring adds, we’ve had to ease up on the update schedule…but just a little.Instead of posting new pages every two days, we’re going to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. That means just one less page per two-week cycle, or 26 fewer a year. Nothing drastic, you can untie the noose from the rafters.

If you’re not already a reader, check out Pictures of You and meet the best friends you’ll ever lose.

The following is the sixth in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

You’re going to hate this part.

Like the devil, Review is known by many names. Revision, rewriting, editing…whatever you call it, you have to do it, and the reason is simple. You aren’t good enough not to. No one is. Some of you out there might be fans of Jack Kerouac and chanting his mantra, first words, best words, but it just ain’t so. Even you disagree and have no intention on ever rewriting a thing you write, you will still benefit from Review. How? Well, Review is more than just rewriting, it’s about examining your work and seeing how to make it better, whether it’s how to improve a specific story or how to improve your writing in general. Let’s look at The Big Red Pen, Critics, Criticism and Critique, Mentors and Fellowships, Rewrites, Re-Rewrites and The Final Draft.

The Big Red Pen

The first thing you’re going to want to do is read your work, preferably in a printed form with a Big Red Pen* in hand, circling mistakes and making notes in the margins as you go. This let’s you make changes later instead of interrupting the flow of reading by stopping to fix typos and plot holes. So what are you looking for? Well, simply put, everything that I talked about in the Composition tutorial…Spelling and Grammar, Story Flow, the whole bit. You’re making sure your story is clear and cohesive, making sure you’ve said what you want to say, that you haven’t included things that don’t belong or left out things that should be there. You’ve certainly had bad days while you were writing it where the words seemed to fall onto the page with all the grace and finesse of sandwich meat. This is your time to clean that up. Make sure it makes sense, make sure it reads well and make sure the words are your best effort.

*Red ink is the easiest to spot on white paper. You can be cute or artsy and use something else if you want, but when you go back later to make your changes, you don’t want to miss anything so make sure whatever you use will be easy to find. Your Review isn’t an art project, it’s to help you write better.

Critics, Criticism and Critique

One of the things I want to do in this tutorial is help you understand why Critique is such a good thing. No one is so good at what they do that they can’t improve, and no one is so skilled to do it without an outside perspective. Keep in mind, you’re very close to this work and you’ve imagined more about the story than you’ve put on the page. That creates the possibility (or probability) that you’ve left things out that you should have included. Maybe there’s a giant biologically engineered cat creature and you’ve neglected to explain where it came from. Likewise, there may be subtle or even not so subtle problems with your writing style that you can’t see. Having a third party give you feedback is the best, sometimes only way to spot them.

I’m one of the fortunate individuals who loves getting qualified Critique of my work, and if you’re serious about becoming a better writer you’ll do your best to love it too. It might help to tell the story of how I came to love being Critiqued.

When I was a young author in high school, I was convinced to join the school’s Writers Club. I was hesitant to join since I knew it was largely a poetry circle and I had no desire to hear the fumbling recitations of teen angst wrapped in a gauze of hormonal pretension. Too harsh? Well, a friend convinced me to join and at my second or third meeting, it was time for me to get the feedback on the short story I’d submitted for consideration the week before. Most of the students hmmed and hahed about this thing or the other, none of which really amounted to much. I sat there listening to the feeble interpretations of what story element meant what and thinking how they didn’t understand it at all when the faculty head that oversaw our meetings spoke up. It was unusual, since he rarely had much to say, he usually just sat there and let us Critique each other. I was more shocked when he proceeded to tear my precious short story into figurative shreds of fine dust. I mean, he went through it and roasted me good. Then he said something very key…he told me I had the talent to make it better by knowing these things.

That’s when I realized he was investing the effort in pointing these things out to me because he thought I could grow as a writer by fixing them. He wasn’t doing it with the others. That night, I rewrote the whole thing and I’ll be darned if he wasn’t right. If someone is going to take the time to pick apart every piece of your work and tell you how you can improve it, it means they have confidence that you can improve it. Let me state again, they have confidence in your ability to write well, even if you’re not doing very well right now. That’s a good thing.

Think of a Critique as a test run for your readers, a sort of contained focus group. Now, the problem with focus groups, why they have a bad reputation in artistic circles, is that they’re often too broad and indiscriminate…common folk who may not be entirely qualified to judge what they’re judging. This is why it’s important to select your Critics carefully, find people whose opinions you value and whose assessment will be honest. It does you no good to hand the work to your mother who might not be a reader of the genre you write and is likely to sugar coat a response to spare your feelings. Conversely, it’s not good to hand it someone who is particularly negative and will just point out everything that’s wrong, some of which probably aren’t. That’s just Criticism.

Criticism, as I’m choosing to define it for the purpose of this tutorial, is a generally negative attack. They don’t like this, they don’t like that, the work is bad and you should be ashamed for making it. You suck and so does everything you write. I could say a lot about being open to the negative feedback, and it’s good to be. I could say a lot about the problem being your perception if all feedback sounds like that to you, and for some it will*. There is also an unavoidable amount of feedback that is in no way constructive. A good Critique is one that has both positive and negative feedback, meaning it lets you know not only what you’re doing wrong, but also what you’re doing right.

To all new authors, I say get your work into the hands of as many qualified Critics as possible, and consider everything they have to offer you. Whether they go at it with their own Big Red Pen or if their feedback is more general, ask them to be thorough and honest. Not everything they say will be good advice, and some of it will conflict, but even when you evaluate the bad advice you’ll gain a better understanding of your strengths.

*If all the feedback you get is or sounds like negative Criticism, then there’s an issue. Either you’re too sensitive and can’t deal with the reality of Critique or you just lack the skills for what you’re doing. In either case, as difficult as it might be to face, writing might not be for you.

Mentors and Fellowships

It’s always good to have goals and ideals for how you want to write, and in keeping with that it’s often good to have someone to look up to, a level to which you can aspire. A Mentor is someone who is accomplished or knowledgeable in your field, at least in your eyes, whose work you enjoy and respect and who has an interest in helping you improve. Mentors are like the old grey wizard who walks with you and points the way when you lose direction, gives you advice and feedback and lets you in on the secrets no one else is telling you. Mentors are invaluable, if only to act as a model for who and how you want to be, in more than just your craft. I would urge everyone to find someone like this in their lives.

Another way to get reliable feedback is through Fellowship, meaning a group of like-minded people who share common goals and similar levels of skill. This is different from Mentoring in that no one person sits above any other, acting more like a round table where learning is mutual. I’ve been fortunate enough to have belonged to a number of Fellowships (as I am currently with my fellow Squids as well as with others) and I can say unabashedly that my work would not be what it is without each one.

Fellowship allows you to have your work Critiqued by people who are equally qualified, and also offers you a look at their work to help illustrate the strengths and weaknesses in your work as reflected in theirs. It also brings a level of inspiration and healthy competition, as when a Fellowship is functioning well, everyone becomes and stays eager to produce and share new work. It isn’t easy to find a group such as this (and one shouldn’t be forced or maintained if it isn’t working to everyone’s benefit,) but when you do find people with whom you communicate well and whose work you respect it will help you more than you know.

Rewrites

You’ve got red ink all over white pages, perhaps several copies of white pages. Now it’s time to make those red marks go away. It’s not easy to do Rewrites, as it requires you to reimagine your story, sometimes from the ground up. Rewrites can be as simple as changing some dialogue and reworking scenes to flow better or as complicated as a complete overhaul starting from the basic Concept (It may seem odd, but the best works I’ve written are the ones in which I’ve started over from scratch on the Third or Fourth Drafts.) It helps to have a process in place to do this, at least until you get the hang of doing Rewrites. While I’ve modified it over the years, the process I used when I was starting out went something like this:

• Spelling and Grammar – Find all the typos, mistakes and poor word choices and change them. These are quick and easy and helps get you in the right frame of mind. You should be doing this before you give your manuscript out for Critique.
• Dialogue – If dialogue is choppy or incomplete or just needs adjusting, do it now. This gets you a little more focused on changing what’s being said by, not just in your story.
• Scene Changes – Chances are you’ve either left necessary scenes out or written some that aren’t needed, or maybe just paced them wrong. Be aware of how changing a single scene can affect the rest of the story and make those changes when needed.
• Characters – Consider the notes on your story’s players, whether some are weak or cliché or too perfect or we don’t see enough of them. You’re going to need to adjust them, and this requires a more intricate revision. You may need to rework an entire section where they appear, or in some cases the entire story to facilitate these changes. Whatever you need to do to make the story function around these changes, you need to make sure the story still flows.
• Plot Changes – If there’s a problem with the overall Plot, anything from an inadequate Inciting Force to a confusing Climax or something more pervasive, make these adjustments. Again, be aware of how changing one aspect of the Plot will affect the story as a whole.
• Concept Changes – If you feel like the very core of the story isn’t working, you may need to start over. As horrifying as this can be, you have to go back to the first step and reimagine your Concept, rework your Tableau, restructure your Plot and rethink your Technique. This will lead to a Complete Rewrite.
• Complete Rewrite – It might happen, for whatever reason, that you have to do the whole thing again. Maybe you’ve changed your Concept, maybe you want to change the Characters or maybe you just want to try a different Voice. Rather than trying to salvage what you’ve already written, you might need to write it all over from the first word. Keep your older versions handy, though, and refer to whichever elements you feel you got right the first time. Keep in mind you’re still building on the work you’ve done…you’re not writing a second book, you’re just writing the first one again.

Re-Rewrites

You’ve made some radical changes to your story, reworked it and done major Rewrites. Now it’s time to do it again. Take that new manuscript in hand with your Big Red Pen and have a read. Circle the typos. Cross out the bad scenes. Change your protagonist’s gender. Hand it around to people whose opinions you trust and let them do the same. If you can still find things you think need to be changed, or if your second round of Critique still brings back significant notes, you’ll need to go through your Rewrite process once more. It can be painful, but remember why you’re doing this…to develop your skills and write the best story you can write.

The Final Draft

When you finish writing your manuscript (or script as the case may be), what you have is called the First Draft. That’s a big accomplishment, something very few people ever do. Whether you never touch it again or make a Second Draft or Third or Ninth (which I’ve done) you are now in an exclusive club. The bigger accomplishment, though, is the Final Draft at which you stop making changes and decide to let your story continue its existence in whatever form it’s taken. It’s often said that stories aren’t finished, they’re abandoned, and as cliché as it might be, it’s true. Writing is a mercurial thing and as such we could go on tweaking and editing and reworking it until we die, as some do. At some point, though, a good writer will decide that the work is good enough and step away from it, resisting whatever urge is in you to make more changes. It is possible, and in fact very easy, to over-edit and tweak out the personality and meaning in your work.

I find that the best way to make sure your Final Draft is the Final Draft is to leave it alone for a while. Don’t read it, don’t let anyone else read it, and for god’s sake don’t let anyone Critique it. Like a good chili, it’s best when it’s had a chance to settle. If you do leave it alone for a while and still can’t resist the impulse to make more changes, then it probably wasn’t the Final Draft. Even though I break this rule myself, until you have a clear understanding of when your own work is done you should avoid making changes after you decide to put the story down.

And then you’re done. Yep, that’s it, you’ve reached the end of your writing journey. Sure, there’s lots to do after you’ve done your Final Draft, like Solicitation, Production, Distribution, Advertising, Self-Promotion and so forth, but that’s not writing, that’s business, and it’s for a different tutorial. For now, kick back and enjoy the fruits of your hard work. Bear in mind that there is no part of this series that is absolute, and as you grow as a writer you will find yourself straying more and more from the lessons you’ve learned here.

This series wasn’t designed to give hard and fast rules for how to write well, but instead is meant as a guideline you can use to think about how you can write better. The rules by which you write and the rules by which everyone writes aren’t the same, and the difference between them is what distinguishes you from other writers. After all, a good writer knows how to follow the rules and a great writer knows how to break them, but you have to know the rules to know which ones you can break and you have to be good before you can be great.

Good luck!

The following is the fifth in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

You have all of your parts laid out before you. Your Concept is solid, your Tableau is set, you’ve worked out your Plot and you know the Technique you’re going to use. Now comes the hard part…Composition. Oh boy, now you actually have the write this thing! Well, believe it or not, this is the simplest part of the process. You know what you have to say and how you’re going to say it, you know who does what and when, you know how long you want it to be…if you’ve done a good job with the first four parts, then all you have to now is put the words on the page. In this tutorial, I’ll talk a little about the actual mechanics of writing, how to view the various stages of writing your story, and I’ll also look at Writer’s Block and some ways to avoid it.

First, let’s look at the more mechanical side of Composition with Spelling and Grammar, Vocabulary, Word Choices, Chapters and Things To Avoid…Generally.

Spelling and Grammar

Never lie to yourself, Spelling and Grammar are important. I can’t describe how important these are. If you take nothing else from these tutorials, please believe that these proper skills can make or break you. Pour Spelling is perhaps the best way to make yourself seem unprofessional. The best example I can give is the mistake in the last sentence. Did you notice it? Spellcheckers don’t notice when you use the wrong word if you’ve used an actual word, and no one should ever rely on them. Likewise with Grammar, people will notice if yours is poor. This isn’t to say your Grammar has to be flawless, there is a marked difference between proper Grammar and the kind of grammar that is acceptable in conversation, and ending your sentence with a preposition isn’t the end of the world. In fact, sometimes using perfect Grammar can hurt the story depending on how you’ve chosen to tell it. Still, the better your Grammar (including punctuation) is, the better your writing will be.

Vocabulary

As with Spelling and Grammar, Vocabulary is also very important and for many of the same reasons, but also for another. If your story takes place on a boat, how many times do you think you can use the word boat before the reader gets tired of it? Having a broader vocabulary will help you find alternatives…ship, vessel, seafarer, or more specific terms like yacht, catamaran or sloop. In addition to this are word choices, the words you use will have a great impact on how the reader takes the story, and they should always reflect the choices you’ve already made as to your story’s Voice. If your story is light, then the words you choose should reflect this, while if your story is dark and grave, the Vocabulary should be part of what demonstrates it.

Word Choices

It’s hard to know what rules to follow when dealing with something so subjective as actually writing your sentences, but this is the meat of what you’re doing, so it deserves attention. The first thing is that one sentence should lead into another with a certain fluidity, much like your Scenes. Each one should build on the last and progress the ideas you’re trying to relay.

Things To Avoid…Generally

The following is a list of things that are not rules you can’t break, but if you do them you should be sure that they’re done with purpose and to make a point.

• The infamous Run-on Sentence can be difficult to spot as a writer. I know I have been guilty of it more times than I’d care to admit, probably in these tutorials. A sentence isn’t a Run-on Sentence just because it’s long, though, as some would have you believe. A Run-on Sentence is one that offers one thought and then fails to end, instead making a protracted and awkward stretch into a second idea, one with at least a cursory connection to the first idea but which should indeed be in its own sentence, and a Run-on Sentence could be made into two or more sentences just by changing a comma to a period, and often could serve as their own paragraph. Yes, like that.
• The not so infamous Run-on Paragraph is another danger, though I’m not going to bother exemplifying it…I don’t have the room. Paragraph should be like a sentences, each one offering an idea and creating a flow from one to the next, and they should end when that idea is complete. Run-on Paragraphs are exactly what you’d think, paragraphs that go on too long and have too much going on in them. Again, not all long paragraphs are Run-on Paragraphs, and in fact I have seen paragraphs that were more than a page long and were right to be so.
• This sentence is a Non-sequitur. Actually, it’s not. A Non-sequitur is a break in the literary or conversational flow, a sudden and unheralded change of topic or idea, usually before a thought is complete. Spelling is very, very important! Alright, that one was a Non-sequitur. They can be used very effectively, but they should be used with equal rarity.

Next, once you begin writing longhand, let’s look at the various components that make up your story…Chapters, Introduction, Story Flow, Climax and Denouement…and how you should confront them.

Chapters

In the same way you look at sentences and paragraphs and paragraphs as conveying an individual idea in each one, Chapters should be divided into small stories that contain an individual thematic nature. You should already have spent some time evaluating these sequences while constructing your Episodes during the Plotting, and you should have a sense of how your Chapters will be structured while evaluating your Technique. Be careful, though, not to break a scene’s tension by ending them too soon, too early or in a wholly inappropriate place in the narrative. It’s generally good to end a Chapter with either a new twist in the story, a resolution to an ongoing idea or, even better, both. Refer back to your notes on Episodes often as you write, these are your most effective tools in setting the framework for your Chapters.

Introduction

This is a simple one, right? Wrong. Most writers will tell you that the beginning of a story is the hardest to write, and the reason is not hard to understand. The Introduction has a lot of jobs to perform and not long to do it. First and foremost, you have to begin the story, which begs the question how and where does the story begin? If you’ve done a good job constructing your Concept and Tableau, you’ll know more of the story than you’re actually going to tell, so at what point in the lives of the characters do you let the reader start watching? Does it begin with the Rebels stealing the secret plans or will you skip straight to The Empire chasing them down? This then begs the question of what characters do we get to meet when the story opens, and how long until we’ve met them all? The story’s beginning is also your chance to catch a reader’s attention and let them know there is something in the work that makes them want to keep going. While this doesn’t have to be dynamic or action-packed, it should be an indicator of what’s to come, be it through foreshadowing or just plain old excitement.

Story Flow

Once the story is moving along, it’s important to set a pace and keep it. This harkens back to the Progression I talked about in the Technique tutorial, but here you need to maintain it in words as well as sequence. Having an even and consistent pace is vital to keeping the reader interested as you begin to unfold the events that bridge Introduction and Climax. There’s going to be a lot of information and activity to come, and you need to make sure you’re not doling out too much exposition and not enough activity at any given time, or vice versa. You don’t want the story moving too slowly and the reader growing bored, nor too fast and the reader getting confused. Even the most action-packed story needs to pause for a breath now and then.

Climax

Ooh, the good part. This is the pay off of the story, the reason you’ve written it and the reason people are reading it, so don’t sell it short. The same rules of Story Flow apply, you need to keep the pace steady and consistent, but here you’re going to want to step it up a bit, build the tension…but be careful not to throw it into overdrive. A sudden shift in the pace will jar the reader, and while they won’t put the story down necessarily, they might not enjoy the ride. Think about a piece of music that rises to a crescendo versus one that just blasts loud noise at you suddenly. As you get closer to the Climax, you should be increasing the energy with which you write, signalling more and more what’s to come without giving it away. Most importantly, though, make it clear what’s happening. There is a level at which you can allow the reader to infer, but you should never be vague at this point.

There is a type of Climax that I want to address specifically, and that is something called deus ex machina, which means god out of the machine. This is when the Climax is brought about by an external force, like a god or an unexpected cavalry, and it happens without significant precursor or any kind of set-up.* Most of the time, though not all, this kind of Climax seems convenient and uninspired…usually because it is. Deus ex machina is very hard to pull off and is rarely an appropriate way to end a story. I recommend against it strongly.

*If you’ve laid the ground early in the story for an external force to show up, like sending a character off to find the cavalry or having a specific point of calling on a god to help, this is not deus ex machina.

Denouement

Okay, the story’s over, let’s all go home…hey, but wait! What happened to the guy with the hat? Did he get the girl and find his dog? The Denouement or Resolution is where everything slows down (including your pacing) and, usually, settles into the status quo. The reader has invested time into this story and these characters and they’re going to want to know where their future will take them, so give it to them. Your Denouement can be short and slightly cryptic if you choose, or it can be longer and detailed, but be careful. Too little information can leave the reader dissatisfied (as with a certain boy wizard story I could name but won’t) and too much can feel like you’re starting a new story altogether.

Finally in this tutorial, I want to take a look at one more important element of writing your story. It’s going to happen. I don’t care who you are or what you’re writing, at some point you’ll catch this dreaded disease: Writer’s Block. Your story is sitting there unfinished, perhaps unstarted, maybe even abandoned in the middle of a word. It’s a crushing feeling when you can’t/won’t/don’t want to write and it is the single biggest factor in failed writing. There are innumerable causes of Writer’s Block but sadly fewer cures. Here, I’ll talk a bit about tools you can use to prevent it, Patience, Determination and Writing Time, as well as How To Fight Writer’s Block when it comes along.

Patience

One of the most important personal aspects of writing is Patience. Writing is not an art form that is accomplished quickly and the rewards of it take even longer, which is not to mention the intricacies of detail or possible research that will require countless hours of your life. There is very little instant gratification like there can be with visual art or music, and every writer must be aware of this and prepare themselves for the long haul. Writing can be boring and thankless sometimes, and working under those conditions can (and will) become tedious. This is the brutality of writing, and if you don’t have Patience, chances are you’re in for a rough time.

Dedication

When I say Dedication, I don’t mean that page before the book begins with a pithy platitude that really just serves as an inside nod that nobody really cares about. I mean Dedication, devotion to your craft, the will, drive and determination to stick to the project and see it finished. I’ve already written in detail about Dedication in another essay (which I suggest reading) entitled Are You Serious? and as I’ve said there, I can’t overstate its importance. Dedication is the difference between people who want to write and people who write.

Writing Time

This is the most common piece of advice I give, and I’m afraid that it’s the least heeded. If you have trouble making time for writing, be it through time management or lack of inspiration, the solution is simple…schedule yourself time to write. However long and however often you decide, and be realistic, don’t schedule so much that you can’t meet it or so little that you’re barely doing it, make that the time you devote to writing. You don’t have to write during your Writing Time, but you can’t do anything else. No television, no computer games, no eating, no cleaning your room, no talking on the phone or texting…nothing. If you’re not writing during this time, you are staring at a blank wall.

How To Fight Writer’s Block

Sadly, there is no truly reliable way to get past Writer’s Block except time, and even that fails some authors. The best way to get back into the swing of the words, though, is to get the inspiration flowing again. Here are just a few ways to help you along, and each one of these methods has helped me many times.

• Write The End First - It’s not always a good idea to start out this way, but generally if you lose your way and referring to your notes isn’t helping, I’ve found that writing the ending can help. It reminds you where you’re going and you can figure out better how to get there.
• Write Something Else – Our projects can overwhelm us sometimes. Now and then, we need to focus on something else for a bit to rinse the mental palate. Working on another project or even just scribbling down nonsense can act like a glass of refreshing water.
• Back Up and Try Again – You’ve written yourself into a corner and you don’t know how to go forward. Maybe somewhere along the way, you took a wrong turn and you need to retrace your steps, find the place where you went wrong and try moving ahead from that point.
• Read What You Have – If you’ve lost the motivation to write, looking back at what you’ve written might jog your creative impulses.
• Take A Break – The best way to fight Writer’s Block is time, and sometimes nothing else is going to work. If you keep trying to get the words moving again and the ideas are still stalled somewhere between your brain and your fingers, maybe it’s time to let it sit for a while. It happens that you get too wrapped up in the work and words bottleneck, or maybe you’re just not happy with the way things are going but don’t know how to fix it. Take A Break. Most of the time, stepping away from the project can clear your mind and when you look at it again, you look at it with fresh eyes. Before you do, though, you should set a time limit so that your short break doesn’t become abandonment.

There you go! Now you should be well-armed to write your masterpiece and ready for some of the obstacles that will come along. Sound easy? Sound complicated? Well, it’s both, and that’s the beauty of working with words. Now that you’re actually writing that brilliant idea that’s been swimming in your head all this time, the only thing left is to undo it all when you begin your Review.

The following is the fourth in a series of six tutorials designed to help novice writers build a better story.

Okay, Technique…this one might have some people scratching their heads. To be honest, I scratch my own when I think about it sometimes too. Consider your work so far, Concept, Tableau and Plot as a song that you’ve written, and consider the next step, Composition as the playing of that song, then Technique is the equipment through which you’ll play it. The kind of instrument, the amplifier, your posture and so on. In writing an effective story, you’ll want to pay attention to your choices in Media, Chapters, Voice, Language and Tense. Technique is a subtle influence that frames your story and defines how your story will be told. It’s an important yet undervalued step that can help writing shine when done right or ruin it when done wrong.

As you read this tutorial in particular, it might help to remember something that might not occur to you…even this tutorial has been written with these things in mind.

Media

Writing is the base model for many different kinds of artistic work, including but not limited to prose, comic books, webcomics, playwriting (for stage) and screenwriting (for television, video and/or film). Each of these Media has different strengths and weaknesses, as well as different rules and guidelines with its own Techniques for writing them*. As a result, how you write your story will be influenced dramatically by the Medium in which you decide to work. Prose, for example, is wildly different from a comic script…in prose you can depict much more detail and emotion while script allows you to get across information in a more concise structure. Many of these also allow (or demand) collaboration on varying levels, and therefor require you to write in a manner that is both informative of your intended story but provides for interpretation by your collaborators.

Another important aspect of Media is that a story which works in prose will not always work as a script. For that matter, stage plays will not always translate well to the screen. Have you ever read a fantastic book only to see it butchered by Hollywood? Or Dark Horse? Consider the story you have crafted and ensure that the Media you choose is appropriate to the story you’re trying to tell. Understanding the unique needs of your chosen Medium is essential in telling your story well.

*I don’t have the space here to discuss the finer points of the various writing Media and the distinctions between them, as they are myriad. Look for another tutorial on this subject in the future, or for more immediate information visit your local search engine.

Chapters

For lack of a better term, this is the segments into which your story is divided. Are you writing a comic with 24 pages in each of four issues? Are you writing a graphic novel or a webcomic with more relaxed page counts? Are you writing a sitcom with a specific allowance for time and commercial breaks? Are you writing a series of tutorials on how to write a better story? It’s good to know how long your story sections will be and how many of them you’ll have before you start writing. It provides a stronger parameter for the Composition and gives you a good series of milestones to reach, and I’ll discuss this more in the next tutorial. See? That’s how Chapters work!

Voice

Essentially, this is the perspective from which your story is told. Whether it’s a secondary character or a god-like other party or even a story comprised only of dialogue and no narration, someone is telling your story. No matter how you tell your story, you will choose a voice, even if you don’t realize it. Most new authors tend to use a default Third Person narrative, or perhaps tell their tale from the view of the protagonist, but often it escapes us that there are other choices, and each of them has benefits and limitations.

• First Person – This is the protagonist (or antagonist) of your story, someone who experiences the events firsthand. This narrative style provides a closer connection with the events and the players in the story, and can make the story seem more real, but it can also restrict the narrator’s ability to relay certain information…if he or she didn’t see it, how do they know it happened? First person is best used in a story of personal journey or experience.
• Second Person – Second Person narration is rare and hard to write, but it is an option. Essentially, it relates the events in a story as happening to the reader. You move quickly up the stairs as the sound of footsteps follows behind you. Your heart races as you think “Where can I hide?” It’s used chiefly in Choose-Your-Adventure stories and is very effective in certain works, but it requires characterization that is very generic (the reader will have difficulty reading themselves with personality traits they lack) and limits the kinds of stories you can tell with it.
• Third Person Perspective – Whenever a secondary character in the story, a non-protagonist (or non-antagonist) is the narrator, this is Third Person Perspective. When done right, it can read much like you are saying to the reader Hey, let me tell you about this guy I knew once… The problem with this style is that it limits your narrator’s level of information more than any other. I recommend against this style, even with more accomplished writers, but there are stories in which it is the better choice.
• Third Person Omniscient – By far the most common style of narration, Third Person Omniscient is exactly that…a third party who knows everything. You know what the hero is thinking, you know what the villain is thinking, you know what the secondary characters are thinking, and you know every single action that takes place among them. This narrator can be an overseeing god or one of the characters who knows more than they would. The reason this style is most common is that it is the easiest to write with, but it lacks the personal connection of the others.
• Combinations – Many stories will have more than one narrative voice, and this can work very well in adding a dynamism, but it is tricky. A story with variable timelines would do well with more than one narrative style, but a story following a single protagonist on a single journey might not. Not every story is a good candidate for multiple narratives, and I tend to caution newer authors against it. As with my notes on Natural Progression in the Plot tutorial, it’s vital to make sure the Voices are complimentary.

Language

Language is tied very closely to Voice and is more than just the tongue in which the words are written. Think back to our examination of Characters in the second tutorial, looking at Demeanour and Speech Pattern. Your narrator will have these things as much as any character, and a good writer will understand the parameters of what the narrator and the narration will say. If your narrator is a young girl, the Language will usually be somewhat flowery and sweet, so using a lot of technical terminology would be inappropriate. Conversely, a dark and sinister villain telling the story wouldn’t describe something as being ‘delightful’…at least, not without a sneer. The personality of your narration should always inform your word choices, and the more you pay attention to this detail, the more coherent your narrative will be.

Tense

Also known as Past, Present and Future, you’ll need to decide if your story is happening as it is being told or if it’s already happened (or, for the more adventurous among you, if it hasn’t happened yet!) This sounds simple, and it is, but be careful. It’s a common error to switch Tenses without noticing during Composition. That doesn’t mean you have to use only one Tense or another when you write, but it does mean that when you alter tenses it should be meaningful and done with purpose. As with your Voice, it is possible and common to employ more than one tense, but different Tenses require their own considerations of Voice.

And there you go. Once you’ve decided upon your Technique, you have the tools you need to start your Composition.