Moving Away from Your Outline

You may be the best outliner in the world. You may know everything about your characters, from their hair color to their shoe size to the alignment of the planets at the moment of their birth. And then, along comes the all-powerful Muse, right in the middle of your manuscript, and whispers in your ear: "Hey, your outline is awful. Your protagonist needs to be a good singer. This character needs to die. The bad guy needs to win." 

And you say, "Hey, I outlined all this. I have my protagonist outlined, I need that character to live, and the bad guy needs to lose. What are you doing in my head anyway?"

Yet you find yourself putting your protagonist in the middle of a duet, killing that character you love, and ending the book with a declaration from the antagonist that he's now the king of the world. 

"But my outline," you whisper sadly to yourself as your fingers follow the Muse's directions.You spent hours, days, maybe weeks plotting this book. And now it's spiraling out of your control.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You may find that you were headed in the wrong direction with your outline. You may find that what you wanted to say wasn't what your outline told you to say. You may find your voice in this change. Remember, "a definition excludes the possibility for change."

You could also be steering off the road and into the path of a deer migration, which wouldn't be fun for anyone. 

My advice for when you don't know what to do with the changes? Make them anyway. Keep your outline handy, but it isn't the Bible, (Qur'an, Torah, etc.) You can change things about your plot and characters whenever you want. This is just an early draft. It's "shoveling sand into a box so that later [you ] can build castles," (Shannon Hale). Shovel all that sand into your computer, and take the time to reshape and mold it until you have a castle.

Don't be afraid to leave behind your outlines, and happy writing!

Staying Motivated During a Long Project

[This advice applies to all areas of life, but I'm going to assume that you come to my blog for writing advice. So I'm only going to be focusing on writing]

At the start of a project, you'll be super stoked. You could write for hours on end without stopping. And then, you stop. And you inner critic goes nuts, screaming "This is no good! You'll never be published! No one will like your book! You might as well jump off of a bridge!"

Do not listen to this internal critic. He's only out to destroy you, and your manuscript. Instead of letting him destroy your motivation, reenforce it. 

How?

Well, why did you start writing this book in the first place? To be a bestseller? To prove your parents (or anyone else) that you really can make money off of your crazy hobby? To share your unique message with the world? To enjoy seeing your work in bookstores? Whatever it is, write at least a page about it. Write about how someday, you'll be on TV, talking with famous TV personalities about the world you worked so hard to create, and listening to their glowing praise as you raise a glass to your international success. Write about the smug feeling that'll permeate your soul when your parents hold their copy of your novel in her hands, amazement and pride on their faces.Write about fans crowding you in bookstore, telling you how your book changed their lives. 

Write about what motivates you, every time you feel lackluster, and remember, write what you want to write. Get your writing into the world, where it will be recognized as uniquely yours for seventy years after your death, or whatever the copyright law is. Your motivation will guide your book to be everything you want it to be.

Happy writing! 

So You Have No Clue What To Write....

Well, neither do I. So I whip out my handy-dandy list of prompts (Which I'm just going to make up right now) and start working. Here are a list of prompts for every kind of writer's block:

Story Starters

"There he was. The one. The first boy she would ever kill."

"My timer broke a long while ago. But I don't care."

"My stupid unicorn refuses to heal me."

"After such a long time, she wondered if she'd ever see them again. She hoped not."

"This would have been the most cliche story in the history of the multiverse, if it wasn't for the three-headed dog that fell from the sky during math class."

"The dome is completely sealed. I never would have imagined that one night, I'd see something on the outside-- but I did."

What happens Next

"Gunshot"

"I woke to the sound of the the five o'clock news. [insert name here] laughed. 'Get up, lazybones,' he said. 'You're on TV.'"

"'I think it was me.'"

"He raised the staff, and I felt my mind go blank."

"'It's true', said a voice."

"Suddenly, the world became black and white. I rolled my eyes. 'This is the third time this week.'"

"'I had a dream this was would happen,' she said quietly."

A Strong Ending

"'You know what, maybe you're right.'"

"It doesn't matter what happened next. And by that I mean, that because of the the laws of death, I'm not allowed to tell you."


"Then he got in his car and drove away. I turned and went into the house, a PB&J the only thing on my mind."

"It'll happen. But not to us. I'll make sure of that."


I'm going to use three of these in a short story, because I feel like it. 




My timer broke a long while ago. But I don't care. I don't need a soulmate. I'd prefer a best friend, but those aren't real. 
I was at the grocery store, looking around at the happy couples. I knew they were only really happy because they could see in color. Those without their soulmate only see in black and white. and me-- I see a little of both. I read in a book about earth in the 21st century, and they had these animals called dogs who could see a few colors, but not all of them. That's how I see. Sometimes I can see in better color than in others. And today, for the third time that week, the world switched back to black and white. 
"Come on!" I shouted. Heads turned, but I didn't care "Not again!"
A man walked up to me. He seemed different. He looked perfectly normal, but-- in color. His hair was a vibrant turquoise. His skin was a fancy word called mahogany. His tee-shirt was purple, with pink skulls. His eyes shone like sapphires. 
"You okay?" He asked.
"You-- you're in color." 
"Isn't everyone?"
I stared at him. He was at least a foot taller than me, so I had to take a step back. "What do you mean? Your timer is broken." I pointed to the smashed screen on his wrist.
"The secret to seeing in color," he said, "Is breaking your timer. you forget you need a soulmate. You make it a point to love everyone. And someday, you'll meet someone you love more than anyone, not someone Fate told you to meet."
"How do I start?" I marveled at all the colors.
"Just look around. Think nice thoughts about--" he turned and pointed. "That woman there, with the pink hair. Isn't that a great color?"
I looked at the woman. I thought of the nicest things I could about her, and suddenly-- boom, I could see. In color. It was almost blinding, the variety of it all. I could see the crisp green of the apples, the soft yellow of the bananas, even the soft orange of my skin. I had never seen color before, and I loved it. I felt like opening my heart and pouring out the colors to the world, showing people that their timer didn't matter, if they just loved everyone. 

So, that story was incredibly sappy, but I had a good time. And that's what really matters in writing. So take some of my ideas and start writing having fun.

Stuck!

We've all been there. You sit down with your thermos of hot chocolate at one in the morning, a scene playing out in your head. It's going to be the most epic scene in the book. You sit down, and.... nothing happens.
The problem with writing is that ideas are ideas, and words on paper are words on paper. Your job is to translate ideas into words, and that's some hard stuff. So you stare at the screen, your fingers on the keyboard, watching your characters interact, and seeing none of that appearing on the page. 
So what do you do? You write. "What?" you ask. "The problem is that I don't know what to write."
Well, you're going to write the first thing that comes to your mind. Maybe it will be the start of your epic scene, or maybe it's about muffins riding unicorns. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you get your fingers moving. Just like a musician plays a simple song to get back into the rhythm of his music, you must type something in order to get back into the rhythm of typing something good. Soon, that awesome scene will come pouring out of you like water from a cleft rock. (Shoutout to my homie Moses!). 
Now, your scene won't be perfect, but don't be discouraged. It can always be revised.I'm not advocating laziness, but if you truly struggle get the words onto the page, get them on there, take a break, and come back to edit in the morning (the real morning, not one o'clock.)