Writing tips :)

[mizzy2k]

 I was compiling the BEST OF! tips list from my 3 year Scriptwriting course as a goodbye present for my Creative Writing class, and thought you guys might like it too! Of course some of it's rather obvious, but sometimes it's nice to have a checklist to look at. :)

• Dialogue should not drive a story.
• Show it, don't tell it. (Or as I like to say: spray it don't say it.)
• Readers like to interpret emotion and be proved right.
• Always question dialogue - is there a better way of getting the information across?
• BOOKENDING - end a story like you begin it! (It unifies the story.)
• Time clock device - giving something a deadline instantly adds tension (think: the bomb is going off in ten minutes! if the information doesn't get to the evil guy the hostages will die one per hour! if buffy doesn't send angel to hell, the whole world will go too in 20 seconds time!)
• All stories have a 'dilemma' and someone enmeshed in it.
• Empathy is ESSENTIAL.
• Art is from artificial. Writers choose everything deliberately.
• Drama begins with chaos.
• In a good story, dialogue is character specific.
• Beware 'writing on the nose' - readers hate reading exposition.
• There's always more than one way to write an incident/information reveal.
• Readers imagination is effective for 'filling in blanks'.
• Dramatic irony works well - consider letting the audience know more than the characters. (There can be humour out of this too.)
• Dialogue has two tasks - reveal character, advance story.
• Dialogue is at its least useful when it tells the story directly.
• Utopia means 'no place', dystopia 'bad place'. Utopias in fiction are always dystopias in disguise.
• Try and give scenes contrast and variety.
• Crank up emotions, let them fall a little, and then crank them up again.
• Writing is essentially re-writing.
• Get in late, get out early.
• Stories are life with the boring bits cut out.
• Good uplines promise things to come.
• Conflict, conflict, conflict.
• Don't give names to people who aren't going to be important.
• Writing style can't be taught - read, assimilate, experiment.
• Use language deliberately - walk, shuffle, skulk, stumble, stroll, amble etc. All have different collocations.
• A narrative is a chain of events, a cause and effect relationship in time and space. A narrative can be split into two areas: STORY and PLOT.
• Stories need closure.
• Big stories confront characters with the thing they fear most.

Often we are told a story out of order:

a) Crime conceived                 ]
b) Crime planned                    ]
c) Crime committed                 ] Story ]
d) Crime discovered                ] }
e) Detective investigates        ] } Plot }
f) Detective reveals a, b & c    ] }

Paddy Chayefsky's Rules for Locating Story.

Who is he/she?
What does he/she want?
Who or what is stopping him/her getting it?
How is he/she going to get it?
What do we (the audience) want for him/her?

Locating story potential:

1. Whose story is it?
2. What is the essential story?
3. The visual scope
4. The scale of the story
5. What does the story appeal to? (Senses/Emotion/Intellect)

Silvano Arieti's 8 Preconditions of Creativity:
1. Aloneness
2. Inactivity
3. Day dreaming
4. Free thinking
5. The recognition of connections
6. Gullibility* (innocent/unprejudiced)
7. Remembrance of past tragedies.
8. The will to put what has been discovered into action.

*Don't assume. See things from a different perspective