Tag: The Lord of the Rings

The Self-Aware Writer – Self-Awareness & Ideas

Posted on by Ian Dawson

You are an endless supply of ideas and stories.  You’ve lived life, have had good and bad experiences, and have grown from those situations.  How you interpret what’s happened to you can influence how you react in future situations, and this self-awareness and hindsight can help you create and develop stories.

Creating grounded characters and situations that others can relate to is a way to utilize self-awareness as a writer.  This is where your internal self-awareness comes into play by exploring and analyzing real-world events and emotions from your own life.  You can discover relatable moments that readers can connect to that will keep them glued to the page. 

The key phrase here is connection.  You aim to create characters that allow the audience to empathize and sympathize with them and their struggles or triumphs.  Even in fantasy stories, we are drawn to characters who have relatable emotions, goals, and setbacks.  While we all may not go on a journey like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, our Hobbit hero’s emotional arc allows us humans to relate and connect with him.

This week, take the time to sit and write down five or six events from your life that could be the inciting incident of a new story.  Take yourself back to those moments.  What was going through your mind at the time?  Feelings?  Thoughts?  What was your emotional journey through each of your chosen events?

These don’t have to be tragic; you can also utilize positive moments.  The key is to explore the realness of each situation.  How can those emotional beats be part of your protagonist’s larger character arc?  How would an audience empathize or sympathize with your character?

Only some ideas will hit, and only some life events are worthy of being committed to paper.  As you develop a keener self-awareness as a writer, you’ll gain perspective on when an idea isn’t worth pursuing over one that is.  

It’s all part of the creative process, the ability to prioritize ideas worth your time, effort, and energy over those that aren’t right now.

By digging into your life and past, you can mine stories that aren’t carbon copies of the latest bestseller or Hollywood blockbuster.

Once your story idea and characters are locked in, you can take the following steps: development and drafting.  We’ll talk about those in the next post.

Happy Creating, and I’ll see you next time!

Writing Tip of the Week: Story Pacing

Posted on by Ian Dawson

Have you ever watched or movie or read a book where at some point, you think: Is this EVER going to end???  Or a movie or novel just flies by and you think: Wait, that’s it? I want more!

Pacing in a story matters; it keeps you engaged as a writer and can help keep your reader engaged as well. How you pace your story is related to the type of story you want to tell and how you want to tell it. 

So, let’s talk about it!

Taking Your Time

If you are world-building, writing historical fiction, or creating a nuanced view of your story’s setting, you will want to take your time to set things in motion. Your task is to draw the reader in, give them insight into the world the characters and the story inhabits, and deliver detailed descriptions that help them fully understand where the story and setting take place.

World-building gives you lots of ways to describe and present expository information, but it should be delivered in a way that keeps the reader engaged and interested. Much like historical fiction, you want to ground us in the world without getting too bogged down in minute details that don’t have any real bearing on the story being told.  

Some novels that take their time and do it well are the Game of Thrones series, The Lord of the Rings series, and many of Stephen King’s works like It and The Stand. These works provide detailed descriptions of their worlds and still keep the reader focused and curious about where the story is headed.  

Getting Right to It

Jumping right into the action is another pacing method. You start in the middle of an action sequence or some other adrenaline-pumping event that still gives us information about the setting and characters. Still, we get this information in bursts and not long paragraphs.

If you’re writing a thriller, an action-adventure, or an exciting sci-fi epic, grabbing the reader with a flashy opening sequence will help hook them fast and keep them turning the page. Just make sure that you still take the time to deliver substantive information that relates to the rest of the story.  

A high-octane story with a ticking clock and high stakes would definitely benefit from a fast-paced style. You can always give the audience time to catch their breath, which leads us to the next section.

Charging Ahead, Then Pulling Back

This is the most commonly used in mainstream films and novels, and it’s a healthy combination of the two. You hook the reader with a fast-paced open, then pull back and give us some detailed exposition and plot information, character backstory, and description, then ramp things up again.  

There’s an ebb and flow to the storytelling, allowing the reader moments to take a quick breather before things speed up again.  

What’s Best for Your Story?

If you are working in a particular genre, I recommend reading books in that genre to see what the pacing is like. Do they hold your interest? Were there any points while reading that your mind wandered, or were you locked in and focused on the story the whole time?

If a novel has lengthy descriptions that interest you, how does the author structure those paragraphs to keep you engaged?  

If the novel has a faster pace, how does the writer deliver needed information with fewer words while still connecting with the reader?

During the drafting phase, experiment with pacing. Choose a scene or sequence from your story and write it using different pacing styles. Does one fit what you want to do better than the other?  

Editing and Pacing

While editing for continuity, spelling, and grammar are essential, reading for pacing is also important. If there are sections of you story where you lose interest, you have the power to fix those areas to avoid the same situation with a reader.

I recommend a Pacing Edit. After you’ve gone through and fixed basic issues, removed sections, added new material, and are happy with what you have, take the time to read through the manuscript and mark – don’t do any rewriting at this point – any areas where you lose interest or aren’t engaged with the story.

Once you have those areas marked, go back through and figure out why. Are the sentences too long? Is the paragraph lacking information needed to move the story forward? Do you need that section? If you cut it, would it impact the story?  

Once you have resolved these issues, read through again and see if the pacing has improved and keeps you focused.  

Final Thoughts

You know your story best and what pacing will help convey your story, characters, settings, and dialogue most effectively. Doing some reading research and experimenting with pacing can help maximize reader interest and engagement in your own writing.

Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!