Your videos always seem to find me when I need inspiration the most. The past few weeks have been tough sledding. I write for work, and I find myself dreading the writing I used to do for pleasure. It is like a damn in the middle of a rushing waterway. I have the thoughts -- but something is standing between me and the story I want to write. A part of me wonders if I am scared to sit down and really write it. As if there is something I am hiding away from even my own conscience. Perhaps that is the issue. However, your videos find me when I need them the most. When I need the wind in my sails again. And for that, I thank you.
Thank you so much! I'm really glad my videos come in useful. Writing is hard work a lot of the time and anything I can do to give another writer a hand is a success as far as I'm concerned :)
Wow, I thought I was the only one hating character descriptions in reading and in my writing... I skim over it as much as I can. Thanks for your input in that
With Character descriptions I find my style is often random. When I'm writing a story, one character might not get any descriptive details, while another may only get one or two, such as hair or eye color etc. Then lastly, there will be a character I'll describe in great detail. Not really sure why. But it seems to work for me.
Always good to hear you break down advice. I love that ideas notebook, I wonder if you'd be able to do a digital version and then it's easier to flip back if you can find a way to bookmark on the projects so theyre all kept together. Either way great video as usual!
I struggled every day for a year with my first book before abandoning it. The next book worked out well because of my struggles with the first one, and twenty books later I returned to the first one and fixed it. I literally wrote and published more than a million words before my skill had improved enough to deal with the problems of the first book. If I hadn't abandoned it I would never have gotten around to write the next book, so I believe it's true that we have a million words of bad writing in us that needs to get out before we are skilled enough to write well.
Alright now you need to make a video about your take on character description haha! Great vid, I love little advice lists from famous authors. Thanks for the inspiration bruv and happy writing
@@KierenWestwoodWriting yea man that’s other worldly right there. To me at least haha. Because seriously man, I love when the narrator just lays it all down. If they don’t, this is the main thing, if the narrator doesn’t give an in-depth overview of a characters appearance when they introducing that character, I am literally worried as I continue on, that after I have put together my mental image of them suddenly I’ll be thrown a curve ball in the form of, “and then John threw his long grey dreadlocks over his bare chestnut shoulder”, while in my head up to that point they were Chinese with a buzzed head hahahaha. You don’t have to take it there but you should mention that in the vid about it. Its a thing man. Its hard to re-switch your brain to imagine the character different after you’ve been doing it wrong. I think the narrator just needs to **tell**us.
For my character descriptions, my first question is always, "How does my POV character feel about this person?" This always informs my character descriptions because what we notice in other people is usually reflective of how we feel about them. The character descriptions then give us some insight into characterization of the viewpoint character, if that makes sense.
I think if you enjoy writing a million words, it is nothing. Completely agree learning is part of the joy, getting little nuggets of advice. Character description in some books works very well and, like you say, in others is a huge faux pa's.
Learning is definitely a huge part of it. Your right about character description there too, I hadn’t considered that it could work differently depending on the type of book as well but that’s a great point ☺️
I obviously don't know the context, but I wonder whether 'being at your best creatively' is also about what time of the day you write best, and then ringfencing that time. Again, sometimes you need to be flexible, but try to give yourself the best possible chance by realising your own rhythms.
Could very well be! For me it's first thing in the morning if possible. That way I feel much better for the rest of the day. It definitely makes a difference though, I think you're right.
@@KierenWestwoodWriting It's first thing in the morning for me too (think it was for Toni Morrison as well), but when my only time was 1-2.30 when both my kids were at school/nursery, I made that work too.
If you want to make a teaching point about a teenager, I think it’s appropriate to describe teenage development then put your point across to tell/teach the audience. I think they’ll have a better understanding of the lesson being taught
Hey dude long subscriber 🙌love your video's i had a query so here it goes I'm a little confused about writing a sentence in a flashback sequence so I'm gonna give a quick example.A palm abruptly to his chin pretending to zone out, scratching it.I'm a little confused about how to format this in a flashback sequence (the protagonist is at that time is laying on the bed ).... And one more so after something tragic this is how I describe her emotions- something inside her had shattered or should I just write something inside her shattered (pondering over the past at the moment) Thank you so much I do read alot but I guess something's just fly by the head 😅
Stuff absolutely passes me by too. We can't keep hold of everything! For your first Q - Can you give me a bit of context on that and what you're wanting to do? For your second question, it depends what tense you're writing in I think. 'Something inside her had shattered' I think is more fitting if she's recounting something that happened and the shattering also happened at that time. If however, the shattering is happening now, becasue she's remembering something that happened in the past, then the second one works better. The question is, I suppose, is she remembering how something inside her shattered, or is it shattering now? Hopefully that helps a bit!
@@KierenWestwoodWriting thank you so much dude yes it does help so the context for the first is I wanna describe a particular movement and I'm using the tense had but I wanna keep the description of the movement (that has happened in the past)short I can make it long but I wanna keep it short.. I don't know if it would be accurate to fit in a description like that ? A palm abruptly to his chin pretending to zone out , scratching it
