Write the story you're trying to find to read
Been reading a book [ Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara? by Jenny Bond and Chris Sheedy ] off and on while waiting for lines and things this week.
(It's a little book, I sort of wish all books were this size because I just like the feel of it in my hands, and it fits right into my messenger bag.)
Anyway, it's full of mini-vignette's on how famous writers were inspired by various things or how they struggled to get these now famous works published. Some of it is stuff I knew, but some like on Tolkein being bitten by a giant tarantual as a toddler I didn't, which is kind of cool.
Am about half way through now and there was a recurring idea somewhere between Tolkein, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Margaret Mitchell's vignettes that I read yesterday about writing the story you want to read that has really stuck with me.
I hear all the time "write what you know", but this idea works better somehow. Write the story you keep looking for.
That's the story you should write, the one that you kept looking through Delicious recs or around Amazon for.
[For example - if you keep hoping for a friendship team building scene, or a first time scene, or a moment where the other character realizes they've seriously misjudged the hero, then that's the scene you should be building into your own story. Why are you writing about other stuff? Just because it seems more logical or whatever?]
Write the moment you would want to read in someone else's story.
[Side note - Think what helped this idea gel was I just read a ST 2009 story and all the way through I kept wanting them to reveal a secret from Jim's background that they kept referencing but never actually told and sort of left the friendship between him and McCoy just not cemented. The story never got to there it went somewhere else. Then again it could have been the traumatization of reading Prides Mate a really, REALLY bad book that I was hoping wanted to be like a type of Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson book but no it was definitely not. So bad!]
(It's a little book, I sort of wish all books were this size because I just like the feel of it in my hands, and it fits right into my messenger bag.)
Anyway, it's full of mini-vignette's on how famous writers were inspired by various things or how they struggled to get these now famous works published. Some of it is stuff I knew, but some like on Tolkein being bitten by a giant tarantual as a toddler I didn't, which is kind of cool.
Am about half way through now and there was a recurring idea somewhere between Tolkein, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Margaret Mitchell's vignettes that I read yesterday about writing the story you want to read that has really stuck with me.
I hear all the time "write what you know", but this idea works better somehow. Write the story you keep looking for.
That's the story you should write, the one that you kept looking through Delicious recs or around Amazon for.
[For example - if you keep hoping for a friendship team building scene, or a first time scene, or a moment where the other character realizes they've seriously misjudged the hero, then that's the scene you should be building into your own story. Why are you writing about other stuff? Just because it seems more logical or whatever?]
Write the moment you would want to read in someone else's story.
[Side note - Think what helped this idea gel was I just read a ST 2009 story and all the way through I kept wanting them to reveal a secret from Jim's background that they kept referencing but never actually told and sort of left the friendship between him and McCoy just not cemented. The story never got to there it went somewhere else. Then again it could have been the traumatization of reading Prides Mate a really, REALLY bad book that I was hoping wanted to be like a type of Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson book but no it was definitely not. So bad!]