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How to incorporate deep point of view in your writing

Today, I’m going to explore in depth a very famous piece of advice for writers:

show, don’t tell.

Mastering the art of ‘showing’ in your writing can be the difference between being an average writer and a great one.

But what’s ‘showing’ and how can you incorporate it into your story?

‘Showing’ (also known as deep point of view) is writing as if you’re in the character’s head – you get to know everything they see, hear, feel, understand, and experience.

Everything is filtered through the character’s senses and how they view the world.

While ‘showing’ paints a vivid picture in one’s mind, ‘telling’ (also known as shallow writing) is simply stating what’s happened in the story.

Showing gives the reader a much richer and more interesting experience, which is why it should be incorporated into your story as often as possible.

And then there’s telling.

Here’s an example of telling in a sentence:

Sara felt cold, so quickly put her woollen coat on.

As you can see, this sentence is just simply stating the facts.

Now let’s edit it to incorporate showing:

Sarah shivered, teeth chattering violently as she hurriedly put her woollen coat on, hugging herself tightly amidst the biting winds.

The second example is a much stronger sentence, putting a more vivid illustration in the reader’s mind, as it shows how cold Sarah is, while the first sentence just tells us how cold she is.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
– William Faulkner

A story is a mixture of both showing and telling, and knowing which one to incorporate at any given time is crucial.

However, YOU the author are always the boss, and must decide on when to show and when to tell.

Generally telling is used for minor events in a story that aren’t dramatic or emotional, to move the pace along.

For example when:

Time has passed;
A character travels from point A to point B;
Sharing facts about backstory;
Sharing facts about the character’s world;
Sharing facts about the setting;
Sharing facts about mundane events.

Use showing for:

The character’s emotions;
The character’s attitudes;
Dramatic events;
The character’s sensory experiences, for example being hot and sweaty, cold and wet, thirsty or hungry,

As mentioned before, you’re the ultimate boss over your writing, so you can break the rules when you see fit, but try to use showing and telling as appropriately as you can.

If you continually ask yourself, how can I make this sentence better? you can hardly go wrong!

BEAUTIFUL WORD OF THE DAY: BIBLIOPHILE. Meaning someone who loves books (me!). Someone that takes their love of books too far is a BIBLIOMANIAC.

Now let’s talk about filter words. They’re words that put the character in the spotlight of the text, instead of the character’s experience.

They go against the show, don’t tell rule because they tell the reader what’s happening, rather than let the reader interpret what’s happening for themselves.

They include verbs such as saw, heard, listened, tasted, smelled, felt, touched, noticed, looked, etc.

They also include verbs related to thought processes, such as decided, knew, considered, regarded, realised, wondered, remembered, noted, thought, etc.

They state emotions rather than showing them, creating a less immersive experience for the reader.

Remember: don’t state – show!

Here’s an example of a paragraph with several filter words, which I’ve underlined:

I woke up and felt my head throbbing from the excess wine I had last night. I also felt sick in the stomach. I knew I’d be far too sick to go to work that day. I turned my head and looked around my bedroom. I saw my mobile phone lying on the bedside table, glinting in the sunlight. Time to call in sick, I thought.

Let’s try revising this paragraph, taking out the filter words and incorporating showing:

I woke up with an uneasy stomach and a pounding head. The wine last night really packed a punch. Going to work that day would be absolutely impossible. I turned my head, and the mobile phone on my bedside table glinted in the sunlight. Time to call in sick.

As you can see, the revised sentence is tightened up and much stronger as a result.

Imagine you’re in a stadium, watching your beloved team play football, when halfway through, a security guard suddenly whisks you away from the stadium, towards another room. Once there, he tells you which team won, gives you a polite nod, and then scurries you out the exit.

No doubt you’d be angry. He just deprived you of the sensory delights of the game, the excited jumping for joys and the looks of crushing defeat, the cheers and boos of the crowd, the anticipation of the final kick, the excited tone of the commentator, the tension of not knowing what the outcome would be, etc. It’s what you’ve paid good money for!

This is similar to what the reader experiences when the writer tells them what’s happening in the story.

They’re really just reading a report, while being deprived of all the interesting sensory details.

This not only distances the reader, it tells them that they’re not being trusted to figure out what’s going on for themselves.

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams. This is a comedy science fiction novel as well as a franchise! Originally it was a radio broadcast on the BBC, then it was later adapted to a novel, stage show, comic book, TV series, game and film. The Earth has been destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and Arthur Dent escapes the destruction with help from Ford Prefect (an alien writer for the travel guide The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). There, Dent’s adventures begin as he explores the galaxy with Prefect.

Filter words put distance between the reader and the story (also known as narrative distance) because the reader is being taken out of the story.

In other words, they’re not being given an immersive experience, where they feel as if they’re there.

When going over your draft, see how many filter words you can get rid of to improve your text.

It may not be possible or realistic to get rid of every single filter word, but see how many you can let go of.

They often clog your paragraphs up, making them unnecessarily wordy.

Showing, telling, and filter words all have their place in writing, and with practice, you get better and better at deciding where that place should be.

For further reading and examples on this, I recommend Fiction Editing Tools by S.A. Soule.

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Related post: How to improve your writing.

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How to improve your fiction writing

Writing is not an easy job. It involves lots of hard work and solitary hours bashing away at the keyboard, trying to create something interesting.

It can be lonely and frustrating, and you have to deal with other villains too, like writer’s block, self-doubt and procrastination.

I’ve definitely been there and dealt with all the common struggles writers go through (you can read about them in my previous blogs, From beginner to author – what I’ve learned, part 1 and part 2).

It can be a rough and bumpy road, this writing gig, but if you love it you’ve got to learn to deal with the bad stuff and just keep on going. Keep striving to be better.

But how do you get better?

In this blog I will share the many ways you can improve on your writing.

Practice

First and foremost, like any other skill, if you want to get better you’ve got to practice. It’s like building a muscle. If you want to get stronger, you’ve got to put in the work to get there.

Practice writing every day, or at least most days of the week, even if it’s just for five minutes. You can do this without having a writing project going on too. The more you write, the better you’ll get at it.

Want to write a novel one day but don’t feel confident in your writing skills just yet? Why not try honing your skills with writing prompts and/or short stories for six months to a year beforehand?

Write Now by Ellie Marney is chock-full of over 90 creative writing prompts for you to cut your writing teeth on.

Keep a journal

You can also practice writing by journaling every day. Sharpen your writing skills by describing a scene or a setting of your choice using all some or all of your senses – sight, sound, touch, taste and hearing.

Write down everyday observations, or just describe how you’re feeling on the day – this can have therapeutic benefits too.

Literature is also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.
– Julian Barnes

If you want to try something a bit different in your journal, experiment by trying a bit of free writing.

This is just writing whatever comes into your head, without any pausing or back-editing. This is both good writing practice and a good ideas generator.

Some writers do a bit of free writing before they start working on their novel for the day.

Keep it simple

If a sentence is too wordy, it makes it hard to read. Are there any words or phrases you can leave out?

Can the language be simpler or more direct? Can one word say what you mean instead of two?

Simple sentences are much easier to read than complicated ones.

Kill your darlings

Are you over-explaining things and adding too much detail?

Get rid of anything that’s not necessary in your story – be it a character, storyline, paragraph, sentence or piece of writing.

You may have spent a lot of time working on it and become attached to it and it might hurt, but you must do it. You must kill your darlings.

This is where you’ve got to be ruthless for the sake of a good story.

Go over your writing and if anything doesn’t move the story forward or need to be there, get rid of it.

Vary sentence length

Make sure you vary the sentence length so that your writing has a nice flow.

Keep a notebook handy

Jot down ideas so that they don’t run away from you. Keep your notebook handy at all times, so you never miss an idea.

WEIRD WORD OF THE DAY: HANGRY. Meaning anger caused by being hungry.

Get feedback from others

It’s essential to get another pair of eyes on your manuscript, as you’re often too close to your work to be truly objective. It’s surprising how many little errors you can miss, just because you’ve seen your work too many times!

There are many ways to get feedback.

You can get yourself a critique partner whose opinion you respect, or get feedback from members of a writing class, or from beta readers.

Part of being a writer is learning how to handle criticism and use it in a positive way to improve your skills. Having said that, you don’t have to agree with every bit of feedback you get.

A thick skin is a necessary part of the process, as not everyone will like your writing or give your book a positive review. Learn to roll with it, and always get your book professionally edited.

Read widely and often

It’s essential to read a lot if you want to be a good writer, for several reasons:

It expands your vocabulary;
You acquire knowledge;
You gain a better understanding of language;
You gain inspiration and ideas;
It teaches you how to be a better writer through learning what works and what doesn’t;
You learn more about your chosen genre;
It enriches you on a personal level;
Studies show it even increases empathy.

Read outside your genre too. The reason for this is that you may discover useful things in other genres that you may not have found elsewhere.

For example, you may be a fantasy writer, but reading an occasional thriller may teach you valuable lessons about pacing and tension that you haven’t found from reading your regular stuff.

The more you read, the more information there is to draw from, and the richer your inner world will be.

Cut out unnecessary adverbs

My Macquarie Little Dictionary definition of adverbs is “a part of speech comprising words used to limit a verb, adjective, or another adverb, by expressing time, manner, place, cause, degree, etc.”

Adverbs are words that often end in ‘ly’. It’s okay to use adverbs every now and again, but if you’re using them all the time, you’re most likely using weaker word choices.

Think you’re using them too much? Then try other things.

For example:

Instead of writing ‘she was really beautiful’, write
‘she was gorgeous’.

Instead of writing ‘it was extremely cold’, write
‘it was freezing’.

The first sentences use adverbs, while the second sentences use stronger word choices.

Show, don’t tell

Showing an emotion, person, thing or event through your words is stronger than telling about the emotion, person, thing or event.

For example, consider this sentence:

Cecilia was a nice person.

Then this one:

Cecilia devoted every weekend to driving around the city, feeding the homeless from meals she prepared with her own hands.

The first sentence tells us that Cecilia is a nice person, while the second shows us that Cecilia is a nice person.

Showing is much more effective and interesting than telling, however, having said that, stories are a mixture of both showing and telling.

It’s a matter of getting the balance right, of deciding when to show and when to tell in your story.

Most of us live fairly sedate, mundane kind of lives, where that sort of life and death, the enormity of those moments, most of the time, thank God, is not part of our daily existence. And so, the story then becomes, in some ways, a surrogate for that kind of intensity of experience.
– A.J. Hartley

Read your story out loud

Reading your story out loud can really help you pick up bits of your story that aren’t flowing well.

Keep a thesaurus

Sick of using the same words all the time, and want to find something different? Then keep a thesaurus handy, a reference book for finding similar words. You can check out a free online thesaurus here.

Learn from others

Learn from the wisdom of others, who’ve done everything and made all the mistakes before you. You could do a course on writing if you prefer learning this way, through the countless online courses available out there, or if a course isn’t your thing, you can get great tips by reading books on novel writing.

You could try reading Creative Writing for Dummies by Maggie Hamand or Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

Why do everything yourself and learn the hard way, when you can take a shortcut and get valuable advice?

There is so much help out there, so make sure you take advantage of it, but at the same time feel free to disagree with advice that doesn’t feel right to you.

Use software to improve your writing

Software like ProWritingAid and Grammarly give you feedback on your writing as well as provide regular writing tips.

Scrivener helps you organise your writing work and research, so everything’s there at your fingertips when you need it. It does many other things too, including allowing you to order your scenes and move them around easily.

Striving to improve is an eternal process. Never stop doing it, and happy writing!

Finally, before I go, it’s time for – drumroll:

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, this historical novel is said to be one of the best-selling novels of all time. Set in London and Paris against the backdrop of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. A French Doctor named Manette is held in the Bastille as a political prisoner and is finally released after a long 18 years to join his daughter Lucie in England. Their lives later become entangled with two men that fall in love with Lucie, and they find themselves drawn back to Paris during the height of the dangerous Reign of Terror.

It’s impossible for me to talk about A TALE OF TWO CITIES without talking about the opening first sentence, which has become very famous. It’s beautifully written and intense and I LOVE it! Here it is:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

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How to write believable emotions for your characters

characters, writing tips / Tania

This blog talks about how to nail your character’s emotions in your story, in other words, bring a sense of authenticity to their emotional self.

Why is this important? Why not quickly throw a character together without doing the slightest bit of research?

And why not have them act out their emotions in a way that suits you and goes well with the plot?

The simple answer is your characters need to be believable. If a reader doesn’t believe that a character would act in the way you’ve described, they’ll fail to engage with the character.

Readers want to feel engaged and connected to your characters. They want to relate to your characters on a personal level and have them evoke something in them, and they can’t do this if the characters don’t feel believable to them.

Believability is important to your story too, as it helps the reader feel as if they’re there in the world you’ve created.

Even if what you’ve created is complete fantasy, there still has to be an element of feasibility and realism (this is what the Harry Potter series has achieved, making the magical seem real).

Without realism in your world, plot and characters, your story will come across as one-dimensional and flat. You’ll also lose the mood of the story due to a lack of credibility.

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
– Carl Jung

Overall, believable characters are important because they increase empathy and engagement in the reader, drive the plot, make the story memorable and give the story credibility through realism.

So let’s get to the basics of creating a character’s emotional self.

Humans can differ a great deal emotionally. For example, some may be demonstrative and open, whilst others may be more reserved, uncomfortable in sharing their feelings.

Emotions can also vary in strength from person to person, so in view of this it’s important to do research on your characters, even if that means constructing a very basic character sketch.

Back story

Create a brief back story on your character, a history of what led them to be who they are. Decide on basic facts such as family, geography, education, money, social standing, social life and career.

Also include past traumas if relevant, as this will have a strong bearing on their emotions.

Include people who’ve been important to them, and experiences that have made an impact.

Do research and decide on their basic personality traits. For help on this, you may want to check out my previous blogs on the Myers-Briggs personality traits system and The Big Five personality model.

After deciding on traits, it’s helpful to imagine their emotions in real-life situations and conversations and imagine how they would react emotionally in each case.

Every day reactions

Imagine your character going about their daily life. How do they deal with minor irritations and setbacks on a day to day level? What’s their baseline emotional self like?

UGLY WORD OF THE DAY: Blateration. Meaning constant, idiotic chatter.

Determine their emotional range

Decide where they sit on the emotional expressiveness spectrum. Are they comfortable with sharing how they feel and showing their emotions or is the thought of revealing how they feel horrifying to them?

Are they uncomfortable with displays of emotion and keep their feelings under wraps? Or do they fall somewhere in the middle, between these two extremes?

Out there or reserved

How expressive is the character and how do they use their body language? For example, if they heard good news, would they be reserved and just smile, or would they be more animated, making excited hand gestures while hugging/squealing?

Comfort level

How comfortable are they in opening up? Are they naturally open, or are they open only with certain people? Or are they secretive and tight-lipped?

How do they react to stimulus

How do they react to various stimulus? For example, how would they react to seeing a large spider crawling towards them? Would they calmly kill the thing or would they scream in fear?

Emotional trauma

Is there a painful event in the past that your character hasn’t fully dealt with? Is there anything that makes them uncomfortable due to trauma? Emotional wounds have the potential to completely derail one’s life.

Insecurities

Does your character harbour any insecurities from childhood?

Remember once you’ve done your research on your subject and gotten a handle on their emotional self, keep their character consistent.

Don’t have them go off and do something completely out of character without any logical explanation.

Words are animals, alive with a will of their own.
– Carl Jung

How does your character react when under threat?

Decide how your character mostly reacts when under threat. They can only react in three ways: fight, flight, or freeze.

The fight reaction is when they confront the threat head-on, preparing to battle if necessary through fighting words or actions.

The flight reaction is when they want to run from the threat, quickly looking for the nearest exit to flee.

This could also be in the form of changing the subject in a conversation or using an excuse to leave.

The freeze reaction is when they neither fight nor flee, but freeze, unable to find the right words or actions to help themselves in the situation.

Decide what response your character tends towards.

YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE: Coraline by Neil Gaman. A dark fantasy horror children’s novella published in 2002. An 11-year-old girl called Coraline moves into a new apartment with her mum and dad and becomes interested in a strange door there. When she ventures through the door, she finds a parallel universe inhabited by alternate versions of her parents, who call themselves her “Other Mother” and “Other Father”. When Coraline returns to her apartment she finds her real parents have gone missing. She decides to journey back through the door to the parallel universe to go look for them, but the evil Other Mother awaits her.

How can emotions be shown in writing?

Emotions can be shown in various ways in writing, including dialogue, subtext in dialogue (hidden meaning behind the words), vocal cues, body language, thoughts, and internal body sensations.

Vocal cues can be powerful tools to show different emotional states. Volume can be turned up to a furious shout or turned down to a husky whisper.

Tone can be trembling due to terror, cracked due to oncoming tears or be a monotone due to repressed anger.

Emotions can distort reality and blind you to the truth – like when you’re first falling in love. Full of love chemicals, you fail to see the other’s flaws – they’re dimmed or non-existent, ‘cause there’s so much good stuff going on.

The scary and dangerous thing about emotions is that they’re like fires – if left untended, they can keep growing till they become very powerful.

Then before you know it, they become hard to reverse and/or control, so make sure you reach out for help as soon as you can if your emotions start to feel like they’re getting on top of you!

Here’s what Paul Ekman, a famous American psychologist, had to say about emotions:

“Emotions can override…the more powerful fundamental motives that drive our lives: hunger, sex, and the will to survive. People will not eat if they think the only food available is disgusting. They may even die, although other people might consider that same food palatable. Emotions triumphs over the hunger drive! A person may never attempt sexual contact because of the interference of fear or disgust, or may never be able to complete a sexual act. Emotion triumphs over the sex drive! And despair can overwhelm even the will to live, motivating a suicide. Emotions triumph over the will to live! (from Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life).

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Is your novel an immortality project?

the philosophy of writing, writing tips / Tania

Is your novel more than just a creative endeavor? Is it an immortality project?

In other words, is it your legacy, something you hope will flourish and live on long after you die? Is having an immortality project a good or a bad thing? And what do you do if the novel that was supposed to be your crowning glory and lasting legacy ends up as a total, dismal, utter failure?

American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker talks about immortality projects in his famous non-fiction book, ‘The Denial of Death’, published in 1973. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1974, just months after his death from cancer.

The book makes two main points:

1. Humans are able to imagine themselves in different scenarios. We’re able to reflect on both the past and the future and to see ourselves in other realities.

As we’re able to imagine a reality without ourselves in it, we can grasp that our death is inevitable. This causes death anxiety, with the fear of death underlying everything we do.

2. Becker says that we have two selves. The first self is our physical self – the one that eats, drinks, poos, pees, and sleeps. The second self is our conceptual self – our identity.

Becker claims that the prospect of death haunts and terrifies us on an unconscious level, so in order to compensate for the loss of our physical self, we construct a conceptual self that we hope will live on forever.

The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.
– Ernest Becker

Becker called our efforts to live forever ‘immortality projects’.

When I think of that term I’m immediately reminded not only of myself, but of several others.

I’m immediately reminded of my mum, who had many children, and my dad, who built many houses. I’m reminded of myself, working hard to get the best novel out that I could, and my brother and sister, who also wrote books (but non-fiction).

Were these actions the result of our unconscious immortality projects?

Historically, I’m also reminded of the actions of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a French novelist who wrote Dangerous Liaisons in 1782. He was a former military officer with a plan to write a work which departed from the ordinary, which made a noise, and which would remain on earth after his death.

He managed to achieve his aims, as he was considered for a time to be a scandalous writer and the novel he wrote was made into a movie starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich hundreds of years later in l988.

Becker says that most human action is taken to either avoid or ignore the reality of death.

Weird word of the day: ENTOMOPHAGY. Meaning to consume bugs.

The fear of death shapes everything, and civilization is a defense mechanism against this fear.

All of human civilization is a result of immortality projects – cities, governments, structures, authorities, technological innovations, sports, religion, politics, and great art.

He says immortality projects can be a terrible thing, for example when wars arise as a result of one group’s immortality projects clashing with another’s.

So, in light of everything, are immortality projects more of a good thing or more of a bad thing?

I think the most important question to ask is, what’s the motive?

If your underlying motive doesn’t hurt anyone and aligns with your life purpose, I think an immortality project can be a good thing, a good result of fearing death. Maybe it’s nature’s way of motivating us?

What, after all, is more motivating to get going than having a limited amount of time to do what you want to do?

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: Animal Farm by George Orwell. Two pigs named Snowball and Napoleon take over leadership when a boar named Old Major dies on Manor Farm. This book is supposed to mirror events leading up to the Russian Revolution and then onto the Stalinist Soviet Union. Orwell was a critic of Stalin. He believed that the Soviet Union had become a brutal dictatorship and, in his essay, “Why I Write” (1946) he wrote that he had tried to fuse political and artistic purpose into one whole with Animal Farm.

Okay, you’re off the couch and all motivated and roll up your sleeves and get working. But what if, after all that work, your immortality project ends up being a dismal failure?

Well, several points of opinion to throw out there:

You can always strive to do better next time/learn and grow from your mistakes/try another way/try something else.

Don’t take it all too seriously. There’s more to life than achievements. There’s experiences to be had – places to go, things to do and see and people to meet. A good life needs balance.

Achievements have nothing to do with your worth as a person. You have inherent value just by existing as a human being.

Becker argues against immortality projects. He says people should question their conceptual selves, and rather than trying to implement their immortality projects across the world, they should face up to the reality of their own death.

Being unrestrained by a quest for immortality then frees an individual up to choose their own values and live life in their own way.

So what is your novel really? A money-making exercise? A bit of fun? A creative outlet?

Or an immortality project?

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Use the five senses to improve your writing

General writing tips, writing tips / Tania

This blog is about how to use the five senses to improve your writing.

Our five senses surround us for every minute of every day, yet we tend to take them for granted, often failing to notice the little things.

Like a drop of rain sliding down a bright green leaf.

Or the relentless noise of city traffic.

Or the fragrant smell of a rose in your front garden.

In our time-pressed lives, we often get too busy to notice or even care.

But noticing those little sensory details and incorporating them in your novel can really help to enrich your writing, making it more interesting for others to read.

Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls this adventure Science.
– Edward Powell

Let’s look at some examples of this. Consider this passage:

She reached her chosen street and looked briefly at the map in her hands.

Now let’s add the sense of sight and touch to it:

She reached her chosen street, where drab grey buildings complimented the gloomy, windy weather, and looked briefly at the map in her hands.

Sound

Come up with fresh and inventive ways to describe certain sounds.

Does a cat ‘meow’? Or does it ‘yeow’? Or ‘greeow’?

Don’t be afraid to add silences and pauses when necessary, as these can lend atmosphere and dramatic tension to any piece of fiction writing.

Let’s take a look at the following passage:

“You’ve given us almost nothing to work on,” he said. “We needed important facts in this matter, such as names. More specific locations. Motives. You’ve failed, and I’m afraid the penalty for that is execution. Do you understand what I’ve just said?”

Now let’s change it slightly:

Adding a pause to the text has made it stronger and more interesting.

WEIRD WORD OF THE DAY: COPROLALOMANIAC. Meaning a person preoccupied with swearing.

Add the sense of taste

Two people are sitting together in a restaurant in a scene from the following passage:

Angela began to eat. She was hungry and the food tasted really nice. She felt a bit guilty, as she was just about to tell Tom she was leaving him for good.

Now let’s add the sense of taste:

Angela began to eat. She was hungry and the juicy, medium-rare steak topped with a thick rich gravy tasted really nice. She felt a bit guilty, as she was just about to tell Tom she was leaving him for good.

Touch

The sense of touch is important to any story, as we humans naturally tend to be a ‘touchy’ lot.

We shake hands.

We clap someone on the shoulder.

We hug. We slap. We kiss.

We touch our faces and stroke our chins.

Remember that skin can vary in texture as well. It can be rough or soft or moist and clammy, and everything in between.

Start paying attention to how different surfaces feel underneath your skin and think about how you would describe them.

Let’s take this passage:

He squeezed her shoulder and walked off to mingle at the party.

And add the sense of touch:

He squeezed her shoulder firmly, and his fingers felt dry and cold on her bare skin. She shivered slightly as he walked off to mingle at the party.

Smells

Add the sense of smell to your writing. For example, you can describe the musty smell of an old building or the sweet smell of an apple pie.

Do certain smells take your character back to childhood?

Do they evoke certain emotions, good or bad?

How would you describe different smells?

Points to remember

Use the senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell regularly in your novel to give it more colour and depth.
Continually look for fresh and different ways to describe how things look, sound, smell, feel, and taste.
The senses of sight and sound will most likely feature heavily in your novel. Don’t forget to include the other senses of touch, taste and smell too.

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: The Alchemist by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. A novel about an Andalusian shepherd boy from Spain named Santiago who travels to the Egyptian desert to find a treasure buried near the Pyramids. Along the way, he encounters various people who impart their guidance and wisdom. He learns about listening to the voice of his heart, following his dreams, and recognising the omens that the universe brings to him. His journey is an inspirational story about fulfilling one’s dreams and finding meaning in the journey.

Try this out

Keep a notebook with you at all times and regularly practice describing what your senses are experiencing.

This is great for improving both your writing and your description skills, even if you only do this for five minutes a day.

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From beginner to author: what I’ve learned (PART 2)

General writing tips, writing tips / Tania

This blog follows my journey from inexperienced writer to self-published author (catch up on PART 1 of this blog here) and the stuff I’ve learned along the way.

Let’s start with drafting.

Don’t worry about the quality of writing while drafting

I was a lone wolf during my writing journey – I didn’t have any writing friends or talk to any writing groups. I didn’t show my work to anybody either, except when the work was finished and I sought an editor.

So I didn’t have anybody around to tell me to not worry about the quality of first drafts. They are traditionally awful, but I didn’t know this at the time.

I thought that if the writing on the first draft was crap, it meant that I was a bad writer.

I didn’t know that the first draft just functions as a skeleton for your novel, to just get your thoughts out of your head and onto the paper.

This is where networking with other writers would’ve come in handy and chilled me out a bit more.

People say to write about what you know. I’m here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don’t know anything. So write about something you don’t know. And don’t be scared, ever.
– Toni Morrison

It’s just there to serve as a foundation for your novel and nothing more. You can always edit and improve your work as you go on.

There is so much room for self-doubt and insecurity with writing! Don’t add to it by bashing yourself over a badly written first draft.

Brainstorm to help with writer’s block

Recently I’ve discovered the technique of brainstorming, and how it can help writers suffering from writer’s block.

You can hit a block about anything to do with writing – plot, characters, world-building, you name it, and it can be crippling, time-wasting, and just plain frustrating.

I’ve tried brainstorming quite a few times now, and it’s helped a lot with my writing.

Just focus on the area you’re blocked on, set a timer for however long you want (be it five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty minutes), and type (or write) continuously on that subject, without worrying about grammar, punctuation and spelling and without any pausing or back-editing.

When you’re finished and you read over it, you may be pleasantly surprised at the ideas that come to you, ideas that were blocked before.

BEAUTIFUL WORD OF THE DAY: QUAIL. What you do when you shrink away from that which scares you, eg. I quailed at the thought of doing the job interview.

Procrastination is the writer’s worst enemy

Procrastination, I learned, can be a formidable enemy in writing as it can be deceptive.

We can be lulled into thinking that we have all the time in the world when in fact nothing could be farther than the truth!

The truth is, time is a precious resource. Try hard not to waste it, as you’ll never get it back.

It can rob a lot of precious work out of you and a lot of time as well. Grit your teeth and tackle that chore, even if it hurts (it probably will).

Procrastination and fear can not only stop you living your life, it can stop you from self-publishing your work.

Be highly conscious of how you’re spending your time, and if you’re wasting it, face your fears and do something about it.

Learn the art of balance when writing

It’s important to learn the art of balance in writing. At one stage, I got too obsessive about writing and realised I was boring others to death talking about it, so had to reign myself in.

Make sure you have a good life apart from writing. Writing is an isolating activity that needs to be balanced with social time.

If you need to socialise, go out and do it – don’t use writing as an excuse to not do it.

Don’t use writing as an excuse to not do ANYTHING you need to do. Self-deception gets you nowhere.

The importance of being consistent with writing

I’ve learned to have a consistent schedule in my writing journey. When I first started, my writing schedule was anything but consistent; it was all over the place.

Sometimes I’d leave my writing for days, weeks or even months before getting back to it again.

If I’d only trained myself to be more consistent, my novel would have gotten done so much faster.

I became more and more self-disciplined though as the years wore on, and often ended up writing on weekends and holidays.

Having said that, I wished I would’ve changed my writing schedule to two or three evenings a week after work (instead of writing on weekends) to get more precious social time in.

Sometimes it’s a constant juggling act.

On the positive side of things though, my writing experiences have really trained me to be more self-disciplined and persevering, and I’m grateful for that.

Define what success means to you with writing

What does success mean to you? The fact that it’s finished and you’ve self-published it? A few people are reading it? Getting pocket money? Being able to support yourself through your writing? Or something bigger again?

I used to think that success and the dollars was the B-all and end-all of writing, but now I think differently.

I think do what you most enjoy doing, whatever it is, and keep on doing it whether success comes or not, as our time here on Earth is too short for it to be any other way.

Use your precious time to do what stimulates you and fulfills you – and if that includes writing, well and good.

Keep at it, get it out there, and never stop trying to improve.

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t It? Using your time on Earth wisely.

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: FRANKENSTEIN, a sci-fi novel by Mary Shelley. A young scientist named Victor Frankenstein creates a living creature in a scientific experiment, only to realise that he’s created a monster. The novel originated from a light-hearted competition with friends. In 1816 Shelley was visiting friends in Switzerland when the group decided to hold a ghost-writing competition. The result was one of the most enduring horror stories of all time, as the the novel has had a significant influence on popular culture. The novel was published in 1818, when Shelley was just twenty years old.

Have a professional attitude with writing

Authors are now living in the most privileged age in history. We’re no longer reliant on publishing companies to get our work out there.

We can potentially achieve our dreams of success on our own, and countless authors are now doing so.

Just always keep your work to a professional standard. Revise, revise, revise, and after that, get it professionally edited. Do an outstanding book description and get an amazing book cover.

Important resources for creative writers

You can get editing and graphic design services from places like upwork.com and fiverr.com. You can also try 99designs for book covers.

Once you get a book cover, it’s a good idea to purchase an ISBN from your country, include a title and copyright page in your book and publish your book through a distributor (I recommend Draft2Digital).

You can market your book through social media and through other channels such as BookFunnel.

I’ve learned many things along my writing journey, and despite the ride being WAY too long, WAY too rough, and WAY too bumpy, my first novel finally got completed – The Darkness of Magic Book One.

Not ready for the writing journey to end though – not with all those crazy ideas still nagging in my head.

If you like this post, please share it!

P.S. NOTES FROM THE DESK:

WHAT I’M READING RIGHT NOW: so glad you asked. It’s Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. The pace of Musk’s life is completely insane. How can someone lead us into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration and artificial intelligence while still managing to have a love life and children on the side? And take over Twitter? And plan a colony on Mars? What I like about this book is that it also gets into the personal stuff, which makes it more engaging. If he manages to send people to Mars (and they survive), the legacy he’ll leave when he dies will truly be mind-blowing for mankind.

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From beginner to author: what I’ve learned (PART 1)

General writing tips, writing tips / Tania

I’ve dreamed of writing a book all my life, and eventually managed to achieve that dream by self-publishing my first novella.

I started out without a clue about what I was doing, and during my writing journey, I made every single mistake under the sun (and more).

But I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes, and want to share what I’ve learned with you.

Writing can be hard

I dreamed of writing a novel for years without actually doing anything about it, but the writing bug started scratching at me till I couldn’t stand it anymore, so at forty-one, I decided to try and have a go.

Being a beginner was a hard road to tread, and although I largely enjoyed it, I suffered along the way too.

Geez, did I struggle sometimes, and geez, did it take a long time to write!

It was often really hard, and going nowhere, and sometimes I kept going more out of sheer stubbornness than anything else.

And just to make it even harder, I didn’t listen to any advice about writing. I thought it would be better for me to learn for myself, and any outside advice would just negatively influence me.

Looking back on that attitude, how silly was that? I must’ve been temporarily insane!

A struggling and inexperienced writer not wanting help, with mountains of help out there available? What was I thinking?

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
– Stephen King

Help for beginner writers

If you’re struggling, you should definitely seek help and listen to the advice of others. You obviously don’t always have to agree with everything they say; just take on what feels right for you, as you’ll find you’ll sometimes read conflicting advice.

‘On Writing’ by Stephen King is a great book for beginner authors to read, as it gives a lot of practical and sensible advice.

All novelists should get their finished work professionally edited and proofread by someone else, but it’s also a good idea to get other people to read your writing too, and give feedback on it.

Get feedback from writing groups, or listen to people whose opinions you trust. There’s also professional software available to help you.

At time of writing,Scrivener helps you to organise (and also format) your novel and ProWritingAid can give you many tools, techniques, and tips to help you as you’re writing.

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Roaring Twenties, often called the Jazz Age. A millionaire named Jay Gatsby throws huge parties at his mansion in the hopes of luring his former love, Daisy Buchanan, back to him. He befriends a man named Nick, Daisy’s cousin, who arranges a meeting between the two. This leads to a rekindling of their romance, but things become complicated, as Daisy is married. This novel explores themes of love, wealth, class, and the destruction of the American Dream.

At time of writing Scrivener integrates with ProWritingAid, so they can be used together. Not compulsory to take on of course, but something to consider, especially if you’re struggling.

Nowadays we even have the benefit of artificial intelligence to help us out – like Sudowrite for example (at time of writing, an editing and writing software).

Get help with Pinterest

Several years after starting my novel, I swung from not wanting writing advice to reading every bit of advice I could get my hands on, and collecting that advice from all over the world – I discovered Pinterest!

I didn’t agree with every bit of advice I read, but some advice was invaluable. The blogs I read from Pinterest really expanded my knowledge and helped me in ways I could never have imagined – not only with my writing but with the marketing and publishing side too.

In my opinion, every writer should join Pinterest! It’s an absolutely indispensable tool – not only does it give you access to mountains of knowledge; it helps you with marketing and getting your books and blogs out in the world as well.

Learn more about Pinterest through the many YouTube tutorials out there.

Writers need to be readers

The age-old advice, ‘if you want to be a better writer, read a lot and write a lot’ is a must for writers. Taking on this advice while writing a fantasy novel, I decided to start reading fantasy (instead of just reading non-fiction all the time) and a whole new world opened up to me.

Since then, I’ve read a lot of wonderful fantasy novels and I really do agree that it helps you with your writing.

WEIRD WORD OF THE DAY: BLATHERSKITE. A person who talks for long periods of time without making much sense (hopefully not me in this blog!).

Plotters and pantsers

Now let’s talk about plotters and pantsers (some people are a mixture of both). Plotters are those who plan and outline the story, characters, and world before they start writing, and pantsers are those who ‘write by the seat of their pants’.

They write spontaneously, with no outline or planning before the story; they just write what comes to mind and see where their writing takes them (which one are you?).

I had a lot of trouble with plotting, so I tried to be a pantser, and all it did was make me more and more frustrated.

I just kept on writing and writing, with a story that was going nowhere, and after years of this, ended up with a 120,000-word document that made no sense whatsoever.

Frustrated but still determined to get a story one way or another, I assessed what I’d written and figured I could make a story out of about a third of it, so went with that, and slowly but surely, finally started getting somewhere.

It took years of trying to be a pantser to realize that at heart, I’m not a pantser at all; I’m more of a plotter, and the next novel is gonna be outlined a LOT, LOT more before I start writing again!

Outlining saves mountains and mountains of time, and I think all writers should do it – even pantsers would benefit from a rough outline before writing. Stay tuned for Part 2. of this blog next week.

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Why writers should be regular readers

General writing tips, writing tips / Tania

To most people, reading is one of life’s pleasures, a relaxing escape from the pressures of life, but to the writer, it’s something to be taken more seriously.

It’s a valuable and indispensable tool to their craft, an essential practice to improve with words, and if one is serious about their writing, they should be putting in the reading time.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
– Stephen King

Practicing writing to get better makes logical sense – after all, how can you hope to get better at your craft without practice?

But why read a lot? Can’t we just keep on going with our writing and leave it at that? After all, reading is time consuming, and life gets really busy, right?

Wrong.

Life can indeed get really hectic, but if you want to be a good writer, you MUST OPEN THAT BOOK AND MAKE THE TIME TO READ. I’ll outline now all the points as to why reading is absolutely essential to the serious writer.

Reading teaches you to be a better writer

Reading creates a sense of familiarity with the writing process. A good book teaches you about things such as style, narration, character creation, pacing, plot development, dialogue, and description.

With a good novel, we get to experience great writing and what can truly be achieved. It can inspire us to create better things. We also get to experience different writing styles and techniques, and get a sense of what works and what doesn’t work and why, and our knowledge only keeps growing the more we read.

Even the average and rotten book has something to teach us – it helps us to recognise poor writing, and thus we are able to steer clear of it in our own work.

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one. A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

– George R.R. Martin

Reading expands your vocabulary and improves your language skills

The more you read, the wider your vocabulary will be. You will also gain a better understanding of language in general and how to apply it.

Reading gives you inspiration and ideas

Writing is very limited if you only rely on yourself for inspiration. After all, an individual only has a limited amount of knowledge, ideas, and experiences to draw on. However if you read, you have an opportunity to jump into and experience the wonder of many minds. You tap into a vast well of ideas, knowledge and experience, which is a thousand times more stimulating than just relying on yourself.

UGLY WORD OF THE DAY: BROBDINGNAGIAN. Meaning very large. It originated from an island Jonathan Swift called Brobdingnag in the fictional book Gulliver’s Travels, where everything existed on a large scale. The islanders there were also known as Brobdingnagians.

Reading gives you knowledge

Reading gives you endless knowledge to draw on, both in non-fiction and fiction. This is great for research, as getting the facts right gives your writing realism and depth. Learning new stuff expands and enriches you and also happens to be very good for your brain (it helps if it’s interesting).

Reading teaches you about your chosen genre

Reading helps you get familiar with your chosen genre and learn what readers may expect from it. It’s wise to read outside your genre too – the reason being is that you may discover useful tips not found so much elsewhere. For example, you may learn about pacing more by reading a thriller novel and get valuable tips about applying sexual tension into your novel by reading a romance. Even biographies can be inspiring and give you great ideas, as truth, as they say, can be a lot weirder than fiction.

Reading teaches you to concentrate and be alone with your thoughts

Writing is an isolating activity, and one has to learn to be comfortable being alone with their thoughts for long stretches of time, and to be able to concentrate. When you read, you are practicing these skills. Being lost in a good book can be a meditative experience, as you can get lost in another world for a time.

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: The Call of the Wild by Jack London. Set in Canada during a gold rush, a pampered household dog named Buck is stolen and sold as a sled dog in Alaska. As he struggles to adjust to a new harsher reality and fights for survival, he transforms as his wild instincts begin to emerge.

My experiences with reading

I’ve always been an avid book reader, but before my novella I was mostly into non-fiction. Then I kept hearing of the importance of writers reading in their chosen genre, so I started reading more fiction in the hopes of improving my own work.

It opened up a whole new world of experiences for me, and pretty soon I was thinking, ‘what have I been missing out on, this is fantastic!’

Experiencing the creativity of others also encouraged me to be bolder and take more risk in my own writing.

The seduction of social media

In the last two years or so, I unfortunately got sucked in to the charms of social media. So much to watch, so little time. As a result, I’ve noticed that my reading time has decreased a lot, which has been disappointing. I’m currently working on being a bit more balanced – of not being so obsessed with social media and reading more. I’ve managed to cut down a bit. I’m still working on cutting down a lot more so I can get in more reading time. How surprisingly easy it is to sink into that rabbit-hole! Let’s all continue to fight to not fall into it.

If you like this book, please share it!

P.S. NOTES FROM THE DESK: talking about books, I thought I’d share a picture of a street library with you from my neighbourhood. It’s totally for free and the idea is to take a book and leave a book in its place. I like this miniature library, I think it’s really cute.

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Writing characters using personality theory

characters, writing tips / Tania

Write characters using personality theory

Crafting realistic, believable characters is vital to any story. The last thing you want is a cardboard cut-out, right? Or to model them on yourself. You want complex, unique, interesting characters with their own strengths and weaknesses.

But how do you do travel inside the mind of a character in writing, making them realistic, unique, and complex, without any psychology knowledge or training?

One notable way of developing a character is by adopting the personality theories of Myers Briggs.

This helps us develop different characters by allowing us to find out:

how different people perceive the world;
what energizes and motivates them; and
how they make decisions.

It all started with Carl Jung

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist and disciple of the famous father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. He realised that behavior could be anticipated if one understood the attitudes that people preferred.

In 1921 he published his theory in a book called Psychological Types. In this, he posited that there were three personality preferences scales and eight personality types.

Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers adapted and expanded on the theoretical work done by Jung.

BEAUTIFUL WORD OF THE DAY: LASSITUDE. Meaning tiredness, weariness, indifference, can’t be bothered attitude.

They claimed, based on their many years of study, that there were four personality preference scales and sixteen personality types.

The four personality preference scales

Each scale is based on four different aspects of personality. These aspects are called dimensions because each one can be viewed as a continuum between opposite extremes. They show two personality types that are opposite in nature to one other.

The four personality preference scales are:

Extraversion ( E) and the opposite type, Introversion (I)
Sensing (S) and the opposite type, Intuition (N)
Thinking (T) and the opposite type, Feeling (F)
Judging (J) and the opposite type, Perceiving (P)

Now let’s examine how we can use this theory to develop our characters.

Decide: is your character an extravert (E) or an Introvert (I)?

This is where your energy is directed in the world. Extraverts are those who direct their energy to the outer world of people and things.

Introverts are those who direct their energy to their inner world of ideas and information. Introverts enjoy spending time alone and this is how they ‘recharge their batteries’.

Extraverts, on the other hand, get their batteries ‘charged up’ by being with other people.

Decide: is your character a sensor (S) or an intuitive (N)?

Sensors prefer facts and what can be seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted. They like the real and the concrete and are orientated towards the present.

Intuitives look for the meaning behind things. They value their imagination and trust their inspirations.

They are good at interpreting facts and gleaning insights and are orientated towards the future.

Decide: is your character a thinker (T) or a feeler (F)?

Thinkers prefer logic and like being objective and analytical in their decision making.

Feelers prefer values and relationships in decision-making. They consider the effects of their actions on others and value empathy and harmony. They consider all feelings to be valid, whether they are logical or not.

I’ve always had a duck personality. Calm above water, feet going crazy below.

– K. Flay

Decide: is your character a Judger (J) or a Perceiver (P)?

Judgers like structure and derive satisfaction from completing tasks. They set goals and ensure they finish them on time.

Perceivers prefer a less structured lifestyle. They prefer to leave their options open and ‘go with the flow’. They change their goals as it suits them.

As beforementioned, there are sixteen personality types from the Myers-Briggs personality theory with their own personality type codes. They are:

ISTJ, ISFJ, INFJ, INTJ
ISTP, ISFP, INFP, INTP
ESTP, ESFP, ENFP, ENTP
ESTJ, ESFJ, ENFJ, ENTJ

No personality type is better or worse than the other and each of them has their own particular strengths and weaknesses. You can read more about it here.

Establish your character’s personality type code

Decide which personality styles your character prefers till you get a personality type code for them. You do this by putting the letters together in the order shown by the scales.

For example, an extravert (E), intuitive (N) feeler (F) judger (J) would be the personality type code ENFJ.

As well as helping to develop characters, Myers-Briggs personality theory can be used to fuel conflict in your story.

For example, an extraverted, sensor character would be more concerned with their outer world, and realistic facts and happenings.

An introverted, intuitive character would be more wrapped up in their internal world and would value their inspiration, imagination, and hunches.

Here we have the potential for conflict. These two characters see and react to the world rather differently and might have trouble understanding and respecting one another.

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Set in Kent and London in the early to mid-nineteenth century and with a diverse array of colourful characters. The book follows the journey of Pip, a young orphan boy who gets provided with money from an anonymous patron, thus allowing him to live in London and become a gentleman.

Be sure to reflect the different ways your characters see and react to the world in your story’s dialogue.

In the 1940s Katharine and Isabel began developing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test to measure psychological types, and it has been refined over the years.

Google ‘MBTI test’ and you’ll find several sites on the web where you can take the test to see what personality type you are.

So what personality type code do you think you are? I suspect I’m an ENFP.

P.S. Notes from the desk

I’ve been reading blogs from the popular writing website, thecreativepenn.com all week. It’s a fantastic resource for writers, and Joanna Penn is such an inspiration!

I’ve also been enjoying a free course called ‘self-publishing success’. It’s been interesting and informative and best of all, free. You can check it out here if you’re interested.

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Writing characters using the ‘Big Five Model’

characters, writing tips / Tania

Today I will talk about how you can use a widely accepted personality trait model in your writing to make your characters both interesting and believable.

A common challenge for writers is creating characters that are not only relatable but realistic, with multiple dimensions and strengths and weaknesses. How do you achieve such a daunting task, when you really don’t know what you’re doing? After all, you’re a writer, not a psychologist!

One great way is by adopting the Big Five Model (also known as the ‘Five-Factor Model’) of personality and applying this theory to your characters.

This model resulted from the contributions of many independent researchers and is a widely accepted personality theory today. It states that personality boils down to five core factors. They are:

Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

Take the first letter from each word and remember this theory using the acronym OCEAN. Or alternatively, organise the factors this way:

Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Openness
Extraversion

And remember it from the acronym CANOE!

This model ranks personality traits on a continuum. It recognises that most people are not on the extreme ends of the spectrum but lie somewhere in between.

Weird word of the day: DIGERATI. Meaning someone adept at computer technology.

For example, most individuals would not be classified as purely extroverted or introverted – but would be somewhere in between these extremes. Therefore, individuals are ranked by where they fall on the scale.

Now let’s explore these five core traits one by one because once you know these, you can rank where you think your characters would be on the trait spectrum.

Openness

This is how open an individual is to having new experiences and trying new things.

High scorers are curious, imaginative, and creative. They are open to trying and experiencing new things. They value their independence and enjoy learning. They love variety and are unconventional.

Low scorers are more practical and conventional. They prefer routine and the familiar and are more uncomfortable with change. They are more traditional and unimaginative in their thinking.

Conscientiousness

This is how an individual approaches duties and tasks.

High scorers like structure and have good self-control, allowing them to complete tasks and achieve their goals. They tend to be organised, self-disciplined, self-directed, and detail-oriented.

Low scorers dislike too much structure. They have poor self-control and self-discipline, which may lead to difficulty in completing tasks and achieving their goals. They procrastinate and are disorganised, careless, impulsive, and spontaneous.

Extraversion

This is how outgoing and sociable a person is.

High scorers are outgoing and enthusiastic. They are energised by being around others and enjoy being the centre of attention.

Low scorers are more reserved and quiet. They dislike being the centre of attention and get tired by too much social interaction. They enjoy solitude and reflection.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.
– Carl Jung

Agreeableness

Agreeableness includes an individual’s attitude towards others, and how they interact with them.

High scorers enjoy helping and complying. They are sympathetic and show empathy towards others. They are trusting and forgiving.

Low scorers are uncooperative and hostile. They are unsympathetic and don’t care how others feel. They are insulting, belittling, and demanding.

Neuroticism

This includes how an individual sees the world and also their propensity to experience negative emotions.

High scorers are prone to anxiety, stress, and worry. They may be shy, irritable, and moody. They may also experience excessive sadness and low self-esteem.

Low scorers are emotionally resilient and stable. They rarely feel depressed. They are calm and confident and don’t worry too much.

The Big Five Model was expanded in the early 2000s by a team of psychologists from Canada called Kibeom Lee and Michael Ashton. They developed the HEXACO model, redefining some aspects and adding a sixth trait, honesty-humility. You can read more about it in their book, The H Factor of Personality.

Honesty-humility

This measures individual differences in sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, and modesty.

As you would expect, high scorers in honesty-humility are sincere, fair, modest, and non-greedy.

Low scorers are sly, deceitful, greedy, pretentious, hypocritical, and boastful.

Now go ahead and create a great villain. Just add a touch of low honesty-humility with a dash of low agreeableness and a sprinkle of high neuroticism. Voila! You have a truly repugnant character with an anxiety problem, ha ha.

YOU SHOULD READ BEFORE YOU DIE: The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). In Wilde’s only novel, an artist named Basil Hallward paints a portrait of a young man named Dorian Gray. Dorian wishes that the portrait would age instead of himself. He sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty, and consequently suffers the effect of his evil and debauchery.

Where would your characters lie on the trait spectrums? I hope you have a few rogues in your story to make things interesting!

Using the ‘Big Five Model’ is a great way to explore how your characters differ, and how this could potentially bring even more conflict to your novel.

For example, a character high in conscientiousness would most likely find a character low in conscientiousness highly irritating to work with.

Have fun playing around with this theory, and happy writing.

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Get your novel done fast

writing tips / Tania

Write your novel fast, write your novel quickly, get novel done fast

In this blog I’ll show you a technique to get the first draft of your novel written as quickly as possible, and how to make the most efficient use of your writing time.

Common writing problems

You’re in despair because you’re totally out of ideas for your novel.

You can’t hit on any ideas for a plot, characters, setting or plot that you actually like, and it feels like you’re totally blocked.

You’ve started something that seems promising, only for it to lead nowhere because you’ve got no ideas for how it can be finished. So you throw it away and become more and more frustrated. Maybe take up bowling instead…

While we are postponing, life speeds by.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca

You’ve managed to start your writing project, only to find that it’s going along at an unbearably slow pace.

You’re editing it as you go along, as the writing is disgusting and sloppy and needs fixing up. It’s really eating into your time.

You fit in writing when you can, but it’s so hard to find the time! Life is so busy…

The brain dump

In previous blogs I’ve mentioned the brain dump, and how it can benefit your writing.

The brain dump can really help you when you’re suffering from general writer’s block, but it can also help you quickly generate ideas for effective plot, setting, and characters.

And it can be used to write the first draft of your novel.

What’s the brain dump?

It’s basically where you set a timer for five, ten, or fifteen minutes and type (or write) as fast as you physically can whilst focusing on the subject of your choice, with no pausing or back-editing.

Beautiful word of the day: INVEIGLE (middle symbol pronounced as ‘vague’. It means to deceive or draw someone into something.

It’s effective because it bypasses the conscious mind and accesses the subconscious, where all the creativity and ideas lie.

Keep in mind

Just remember, in the baby stages of constructing a story, keep the following important points in mind.

Basically, a great story needs 2 things:

(1) Conflict; and

(2) Stakes.

Without conflict, you have no story, as everything is going just fine. There’s nothing for the characters to strive for, as nothing gets in the way of what anyone wants.

Bor-ring!

Without stakes, nobody loses anything if they don’t get what they want. Nothing is that big of a deal.

Double bor-ring!

Always include conflict and stakes if you want your story to be interesting. What does your character stand to lose if they don’t get what they want? The girl? Their dream job? Their very existence?

Another important point to remember is that you’ll also need to create REAL characters with both good points and bad for your story (not convenient cardboard cut-outs), so you’ll need to take some time after doing your draft to do some research on them.

The three-act structure

If you’re interested in adhering to a formal structure, try the ‘three-act’ – a popular structure for novelists.

On a basic level, there are 3 acts:

Act 1. Sets the stage for the story. Who is your protagonist, and what sort of life do they lead? What are his/her goals, and the obstacles to achieving those goals? Here there is an inciting incident (something happens and the character deals with it) which kicks the story into motion.

Act 2. The stakes for the character are raised and the conflict escalates.

Act 3. The story comes to a resolution – either the goal is achieved OR the protagonist has failed OR the story ends on a cliffhanger, where things could go either way.

Brain-dump your plot

With those important points out of the way, let’s get back to the subject of brain-dumping. Use this method every day to get an outline for your novel:

Set a timer for fifteen minutes and type continuously, as fast as you can.

Focus on the plot of your novel and write down every single idea that comes into your head. Don’t worry about the quality of your ideas or the quality of your writing and don’t pause or back-edit.

When you’ve finished your brain-dumping session, you’ll find yourself with a page or more of writing containing ideas to use or discard.

Go over your writing and cut and paste the ideas you can use for your plot into a separate Word document and discard the rest.

Organise your ideas in your Word document so that they make sense.

Keep going with sessions every day (fifteen minutes), brain dumping and cutting and pasting and organising your ideas until you’ve got a rough outline for your novel (a rough outline is fine).

When you’ve reached the stage where you’ve got a one or two-page plot for your novel written down, start working on the first draft.

Brain dump scenes mentioned in your plot

You already have a brief outline of various scenes from the plot; now armed with that information, it’s time to brain-dump those scenes, so get typing!

Keep going like this, brain dumping and typing scene after scene, till you reach the end of the first draft.

YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU DIE: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Set in the future, a society is under the control of a totalitarian power led by a ‘big brother’. No-one is free from being watched, and two characters, Winston Smith and Julie, perform an outrageous act of rebellion by falling in love.

In true brain-dump style, type the first draft continuously, without any pausing or back-editing.

The key is: don’t worry.

Don’t worry about going back over your work to tidy it up. Keep moving forward, and keep the momentum going. Don’t stop till that first draft is finished.

Something needs fixing, changing, or more research? Hit a plot hole? Make a note in red of the problem, and what needs to be done. You can always go back after the first draft is done and work on it later.

You must train yourself to be okay with bad writing when you’re in the drafting stage, for the whole purpose of the draft is to organise your thoughts and get a structure going. Resist the urge to criticize yourself and call yourself a bad writer, as your work will only improve with subsequent drafts, and the only one who has to see your work is you.

After you’ve completed your drafts, you will then have to research things like character profiles, character motivations, and setting.

Set yourself a word count goal

Set yourself a word count goal for every writing session, and stick to that goal. What can you realistically and comfortably manage for your writing session? Five hundred words a day? A thousand? You’ll find that even five hundred words, when done every day, will see you making real progress. A word count goal also gives you a better idea of when you can roughly expect to finish your novel.

Embrace voice dictation

Voice dictation is amazingly fast, as you can speak so much faster than you can type! Every writer should try it, as you can get a lot of work done in a short amount of time. How do you activate voice dictation once you’re in your Word document? Simply press the Windows icon on your keyboard + H.

Stick to a schedule and form a writing habit

Work out your writing days, whether every day or a few times a week. Schedule a time in your day when you can write and try to stick to it – whether it’s early in the morning, late at night, or some other time.

Do this consistently and before you know it you’ll form a writing habit, and your writing routine will become easier to adhere to.

Eliminate distractions. If turning off the music, your phone or the T.V. helps you concentrate better, do it.

Set a deadline to get the first draft done in three months (or less), so you’ve got something to aim for.

How many drafts does it take to finish a novel? The average is between three to six. It’s a good idea to save 2 copies of each draft done – one for your records (to keep on hand if you need to refer back to it) and one for altering, adding, and playing around with, to turn into the next draft.

And that’s how it’s done!

In three months or less, you’ll have the first draft of your novel completed, and what an achievement that is!

The trick is to be consistent – you’ll hardly make any progress without consistency.

And once you’ve completed your novel, know that you’ve done you’re very best.

You’ve shown you’re writing to various people and received valuable feedback from their opinions.

You’ve got your novel professionally edited AND formatted and you’ve got a brilliant front cover, and you’re now working on the marketing.

It’s post-novel time now – this is the time when you need to train yourself to let go, to resist the urge to make changes to your book because you think it’s not ‘good enough’.

It’s the time to remember to let go of the idea of perfection, as it’s like chasing the sunset – you’ll never get there!

Embrace imperfection with your first draft, keep plowing ahead, and happy writing!

P.S. Are you the type of person that likes a challenge? NaNoWriMo is an organisation that issues a challenge every year: to write 50,000 words of a novel for November. They also have free writing resources, including a course where you can prep for the challenge.

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