Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--I is for Ideas

It only takes two words to inspire an infinite number of story ideas. 

“Where do stories come from?” It’s the question writers get asked most. “Where did you get the idea for your book? What inspired you?”

I think the idea for all fictional stories starts with two short but incredibly powerful words: “What if?” 

There are what-ifs everywhere you look. Every person you meet, every story you read or see or hear, and just about everything you experience or have experienced is full of what-ifs. This is why I completely agree with something that Neil Simon wrote in his autobiographical book Rewrites (I’m paraphrasing), “Writer’s block isn’t when a writer has no ideas. It’s when a writer has so many ideas and doesn’t trust himself to choose the right one.”

There are so many ideas—so many what-ifs—everywhere you look that it seems impossible to me that a writer could ever have no idea what to write about. Why, I write at least a dozen story ideas in my head every day. At least. And I throw them out, because I don’t even have enough time to write the stories I’m already working on, never mind a dozen new ones every day.

A little imagination and two words are all you need to create infinite story ideas.

Here’s an example. Recently I was sitting with my husband in a courtroom, because he had a couple of unfair traffic tickets we wanted to contest. (We reached a compromise with the court, because the police officer who issued the tickets wasn’t available and taking it all the way would have meant my husband taking another day off work, which wasn’t worth the $58 cost of the remaining ticket.) We had to spend about three hours in the courtroom waiting for our turn. My husband thought I might get in trouble for using my cellphone, but even the bailiff was using hers. The first cases brought before the judge were those where defendants had lawyers, as well as drug-related cases that involved already incarcerated defendants. Instead of being brought in, those defendants appeared in the courtroom via some sort of teleconferencing arrangement on a large flat-screen TV.

I leaned in toward my husband and whispered, “I can imagine a story about a woman who comes into court because of a traffic violation and is shocked to see her missing husband on that screen.” My husband loved the idea and continued it. What if the husband was in jail pretending to be someone else? What if he married her while pretending to be someone else? What if he had other wives who had no idea where he was or who he really was? What if after she screamed in court, “that’s my missing husband,” he pretended not to know her? What if he really didn’t know her? What if the husband but had lost his memory in the same accident that led to his incarceration, and while the system believed and had been telling him for a year that he was someone else, she was the only person who could reveal the truth and that he was innocent? What if after his experiences even he isn’t sure she’s telling the truth?

By asking one what-if, I came up with a story idea. And by continuing to ask one what-if after another, my husband was able to hone it into a very interesting story idea. I’m probably never going to use it, because, like I said, I think of and then abandon at least a dozen of these a day. But this little event gave my husband a glimpse into how my mind works when I write a story—and how much fun it is.

And asking what-ifs really is!

Yes, hearing or reading or seeing stories is fun, but it’s even more fun when you’re the one who’s telling yourself the story and you can make it go anywhere you want.

Infinite story ideas are everywhere. All you have to do is ask yourself, “What if?” and then let your imagination do the rest. 

Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--C is for Creating Characters

Anyone can write a story. 

It's true, and if you've ever played pretend or with dolls or action figures when you were little, you know it. 

Illustration:  © Shevi Arnold, 2003

Unfortunately, many of us lose that ability when we turn into adults. 

So how do we get it back? How can creating characters and plots become easy again? 

There are two ways to write a story: you can create a plot based on a character, or you can create characters based on a plot. Like a noun and a verb are required in every complete independent sentence, a character and a plot are required in every complete independent story. If you have one without the other, you might have a vignette. What you don’t have is a story.

So how do you create a character out of a plot?

And how do you create a plot out of a character?

For the first, take your plot and ask yourself who might have the greatest need to do the things the plot requires and the hardest time doing them. Need and obstacles to achieving the thing that’s needed are great hooks. When a character has both, the reader will need to see if the character gets what he or she needs, and the reader will need to find out how the character will try to overcome those obstacles. It’s as simple as that.

For example, our plot is that someone has been murdered and someone else will figure out who did it. Okay, so our main character is probably the person who needs to solve the murder mystery. But why? Maybe our main character is a detective, and it’s the MC’s job, but that’s been done a million times before. Let’s go for something original. Maybe this person is an astronaut on a space station, and the murdered person is the only other person on the space station. Hmm… That sounds too much like a 2001: A Space Odyssey. Let’s keep looking.  Maybe our main character is a kid who was taken from her foster home, and the murdered person is her abductor. She doesn’t know why she was abducted, if the murderer or the abductor were on her side, or even who she can trust. That’s good, because it’s original, the need is great, and there are a ton of obstacles. 

There are millions of possible characters we can create out of this simple plot. Maybe that’s why so many murder mysteries have been written.

For the second, take your character and ask yourself what he or she needs most. Then create a story around him or her having to overcome obstacles in order to get that need fulfilled.

For example, if you created the character of Harry Potter but didn’t know what the plot of his story would be, you’d see that his greatest need was “to have a family.” You’d then have to create obstacles for him, such as his parents having been murdered, him living in the wrong world for a magical boy, the Dursleys treating him like an outcast, his parents’ murderer wanting to destroy him, and so on. The plot would be all about Harry overcoming these obstacles to eventually create a new family, the one he has in the end with Ginny, Ron and Hermione.  

Is this the only possible plot for a story based on the character of Harry Potter? 

Of course not. However, if you have a clear and detailed idea of who your character is and what he or she needs, the best plot for that character should be fairly obvious: create obstacles for that character and watch him or her overcome those obstacles in a quest to fulfill that need.

But what if you don’t have what you need to even start creating a story? What if you don’t even have a plot or a character?

I’m reminding of something the great playwright Neil Simon said in his autobiographical book Rewrites (I’m paraphrasing): “Writer’s block isn’t when a writer has no ideas. It’s when a writer has so many ideas and doesn’t trust himself to choose the right one.”

The answer to that is to simply stop asking yourself what the right one is and just go for it, right or not. 

As in improv, your answer to any character or plot you think of should be “yes, and…”

Will it be the right one? Maybe, but probably not. The thing is, though, that if you keep answering “yes, and…” to every plot or character that pops into your head—and you keep showing the character trying desperately to overcome obstacles in a quest to achieve a great need—eventually you will discover the right one.  

And in the meanwhile, like a little kid who decides a stick is a sword and that means she’s an awesome pirate on an adventure, you’ll be having fun. 

Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--A is for Action

Five days left to the A to Z Challenge.

There are only five days left to the A to Z Challenge for April of this year.

What’s the point in even starting this late?

I only found out about the challenge a few days ago. I noticed this hashtag on Twitter, and so I asked one of my friends who tweeted it. “What’s the #AtoZChallenge?” She didn’t answer me, but a few days ago I saw it again. So I asked again. This time a second friend shared the link to the website. 

The A to Z Challenge is similar to the NaNoWriMo but for bloggers.

As with NaNoWriMo, people commit themselves to writing something within a month. With NaNoWriMo you commit to writing a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. With the A to Z Challenge, people commit to writing a blog post for every day in April except for Sundays. 

People sign up in March and choose one of a variety of themes. There’s a theme for pretty much everything, from animals to writing. Even humor and personal writing are options. Bloggers then go through the alphabet based on their chosen theme. For example, a blogger who chose humor could write about airplane travel on the first, boogers on the second, and California on the third.  

 And because of Passover--and the fact that I only found out about this right before Passover--I didn’t have time to start working on it until last night.

Why start at all then? 

I mean, I’m not a time traveler. (Not yet, anyway. Not that I know of. Future me might disagree.) I can’t go back to the first of April to start writing and posting an article a day.

And very strangely, this segues very nicely into my first blog post. My chosen theme is writing, specifically, "writing words for nerds." 

And my first blog post in the A to Z Challenge is about...

  

A is for Action

You can edit a page of garbage, as writers say, but you can’t edit a blank page.

Recently, my blog has been a series of blank pages. 

You see, I want to use my blog to help other people, or as Gilbert Garfinkle would put it, “fix the world.” 

If you look around you’ll find serious posts about how to write funny, whether to submit your work to traditional publishers or indie published, a step-by-step guide to publishing a picture book, and lots more. 

So when it comes to writing a new blog post, I find it hard to compete with myself. I find it hard to match that same level of helpfulness as the posts I've already done. 

Yes, I could write a hilarious blog post about cats or about my book addiction. (I blame my heritage for the latter. I grew up in a house where we used bookcases in place of wallpaper, and one of my great grandfathers died when he tried to reach a book on a high shelf and the entire bookcase collapsed on his frail old body. I also have an uncle who died when he was packing up his books to donate them to a library. My family lives by the book and dies by the book.) I guess they could fix the world in a small way by giving someone a laugh. The more laughter there is in the world, the better. 

But how does that compare to helping people publish their books or make life-altering decisions?

It doesn’t.

But neither does a blank page.

So A is for Action.

A is for doing.

A is for writing those pages, even if they’re garbage.

A is for starting the A to Z Challenge, even if it is April 26^th and you only have five days left to write 26 blog posts.

It doesn’t have to be great. It can be absolute garbage.

The only thing it can’t be is a blank page.  

~*~

Now to start working on my next Writing Words for Nerds A to Z Challenge: B is for Books.  

Want to get it perfect? Why that's the worst thing you can do.

I've been teaching my home-schooled daughter a course on creating graphic novels. The course is partly about writing and partly about illustrating. Both are connected. They're both ways to tell a story. The story you want to tell is up to you.


My daughter has come up with a great idea for a story, and she's very excited about it. That's wonderful. She wants to be a writer someday, and this course will teach her a lot about that. I'm teaching her a lot about that. I've been an editorial cartoonist, and I used to edit a comics magazine. Each issue of Iton HaComics (The Comics Paper), which was a Hebrew comic book comprised mostly of American comic strips, included an article I had written on a comics related topic. I also have a teacher's certificate, and am an experienced writer, editor, and illustrator, so I think I'm a pretty good teacher when it comes to this topic.


We've been using You Can Do a Graphic Novel by Barbara Slater as our "textbook." Slater shows you don't have to be a great artist to create a great comic book. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning how to write and draw a graphic novel. It might be just a start, but it's a very good start.

There are some things the book doesn't get into, though, things like overcoming perfectionism. You might think perfectionism is a good thing--wouldn't it be great if we could all get it perfect the first time?--but perfectionism leads to fear, and as Yoda says,  “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” 

First you want to get it perfect. Then you're afraid that--surprise, surprise--you can't get it perfect. You can't. No one can, especially not the first time. It's impossible. Then you get angry with yourself and with your work because you can't do the impossible. Then you hate your work, so you give up on it. And then you and your work suffer. And that does lead to the Dark Side, because you're depriving the world of the gift you could have given it, and if you go around feeling miserable all the time, you'll make the world around you miserable as well.  

You suffer because you've given up on something before you've barely started. Creating a comic book--or a graphic novel, or a short story, or even a blog post--isn't about getting it perfect. No one cares if your character's eyes look gorgeous. No one. So stop obsessing over those eyelashes, and just get the story written and the pages laid out. You can edit later, but only if you actually write the darn thing. You can change the drawings around over and over, but it will be a lot easier to do if you didn't waste ten minutes drawing eyes you might have to edit out later. 

Look at Barbara Slater's artwork. It isn't gorgeous. But it's THERE. She's done it. She created something. So has Scott Addams, the creator of Dilbert; Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts; Cathy Guisewite, the creator of Cathy; and many other comic strip artists who don't draw particularly well. Maybe one day you'll be a great illustrator or a great writer. Let me tell you a little secret. Even then you will not get it perfect. It's an impossible dream.

So forget about trying to get it perfect. Let go of your fear. Instead, embrace joy. Because the truth is that writing and illustrating are a pleasure. They're fun. They're all about dreaming on paper. As far as I'm concerned, they're the most fun you can have. So have a ball.

What Every Writer Needs To Know

Do you ever experience writer’s block?

In his autobiographical book Rewrites, playwright Neil Simon explains that writer’s block isn’t when a writer has no idea what to write; it’s when a writer has plenty of ideas but doesn’t trust himself to choose the right one.

The main thing you need to know is that writing is about taking a leap of faith in your story--and yourself.

Detail from Toren the Teller's Flight, book two of Toren the Teller's Tale

Toren the Teller’s Tale is a fantasy novel about a magical storyteller and her struggle to accept the magic within herself. She has a hard time taking that leap of faith. It seems wrong. The world doesn’t approve. She loves her own magic, but trusting in it is scary, terrifying, in fact.

In a way, Toren’s story is the story of every writer. We all have fears. We all struggle to accept our own magic. But we have to accept it. We have to believe. Our stories need us; but, more importantly, our readers need our stories, although they might not know it yet.

In the following scene from chapter nine, Toren is attending a tellers’ gathering as a storyteller’s apprentice. What the others at the gathering don’t know is that she’s a girl disguised as a boy, and that her real master is a wizard who hired a storyteller to take her to the gathering so that she can learn about the magic of the storytellers.

~~~

“The first step to becoming a great teller,” one elder master said, “is to know your audience. You must know what they wear, eat, think and believe, how they live, how they die, and where their souls go when they slumber. Your story is a journey to a greater truth, and your listener will not join you on that journey if he doesn't see it as his journey. You must paint your story in such a way that the listener will see himself inside it.”

“So true, so true,” commented another. “A teller must study everything--from the smallest details of our mundane existences to our grandest hopes and fears.”

“Is that what a story is then?” one of the older apprentices asked. “A mirror showing the listener exactly what he is?”

A wave of laughter rippled through the hall.

“Of course not,” shouted a teller in the back. “That is the very last thing a story should be” He stepped closer to the platform so everyone could see and hear him. “Indeed, it must start with the listener, but it should take him far from his reality. In each person’s mind, he is the center of the world, for it begins and ends with his experiences, thoughts, and beliefs. The listener is the one and only hero of the story of his life. In his mind all other heroes and all other stories are insignificant. But in reality he is of no more importance than any other sorry soul of the millions who have lived or have yet to live. He is a drop in the endless ocean of existence, which carries us all where it will. Of course, you must never tell your listener that. If you do, he will throw you out on your ear. The only mirrors you should show him are those he sees in his dreams. You must say, ‘Look here you are in my story. The perfect hero, that’s you. You only need to close your eyes, and I will take you there.’”

A murmur of approval greeted his words. A few even applauded.

Giddy yawned. “Don’t you find this dull?” he asked me.

I raised a finger to my lips to tell him to be quiet. My real master’s words echoed in my mind. Pay close attention to everything the master tellers say, he ordered. You are here to learn about the magic of the telling. And so I did.

“Now, now,” countered the first elder master, “not all of our stories are dreams. Sometimes we lead our listeners through their nightmares and guide them safely through to the other side. Only two things remain constant: the listener is always the starting point and our goal is always the greater truth. The easiest stories to tell are the dreams or nightmares you and your listener share. Discover what you have in common, and from that common place of departure begin the grandest journey your soul will allow.”

“But what if you and your audience have nothing in common?” asked one of the apprentices. “What if you tell a story to a king, for example? Do you tell him a tale about royalty, even though you know nothing about life at court? It won’t ring true. And what about all the tales of princesses and daring knights? Surely, they’re not only for nobles. My master tells these tales to peasants all the time, and they love them.”

“Yes,” said another apprentice. “And what about made up stories, ones that deal with fantastic things that could never be true? Where’s the common starting point, and where’s the greater truth?”

The elder master said the answer to this question was obvious, and he turned it over to us. I hesitated at first, but when no one else spoke, I asked if I might be allowed to. He nodded.
“We all have common hopes and fears,” I said. Sol reminded me to raise my voice. I continued a bit louder. “From the lowliest peasant to the king, we dream of someone who will love us more than life itself. In her dreams, every maiden is a princess longing for love; in his dreams, every youth is the one who will win her heart. Even the king’s hopes and fears are as common as our own.”

“And what about fantastic tales?” the elder master asked.

“My master’s story was fantastic,” I replied. “And yet it’s true. A man wants a son to follow in his footsteps and may be blinded to a truth he doesn’t wish to see. A woman may know the truth and be afraid to speak it. And a child may suffer for not being what the world demands her to be.”

The elders smiled at my answer, but one of them shook his finger.

“Although what you say is true, young man,” he said, “I believe a story’s truth is even greater than that. One day you’ll see. You’ll think you are telling a story, but the truth of it will take over, and you’ll realize the thing you thought you created was always there--not in this place and time but somewhere in the infinite universe and as true as your own existence. We tellers are bridges from the past to the present, from the present to the future, from distant lands to here, and from here to everywhere.”

~~~

Realize there’s a journey your reader needs to make, and only you can take your reader there.

Embrace your own magic. Trust your story. Trust yourself.

Your story, your characters, and your readers are depending on you.