Category: Magical Words

Magical Words: Sit Down, Shut Up, and Write!

Erin Penn

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

The title is a little harsher than I normally see from Edmund Schubert. He is the nice editor-writer I want to grow up to be, but in the Magical Word article “Sit Down, Shut Up, and Write!” on November 20, 2010, he lays down some solid rules in some no-nonsense language.

  1. Study is okay. Going to panels, being part of on-line communities, and other ways of learning the business and how to write is okay. But you REALLY want to learn to write – then write.
  2. Don’t drown yourself in writing-related activity, write.
  3. Read other people’s books to see what to do and what not to do, and then write.
  4. Great creatives like Mozart and Shakespeare didn’t write one masterpiece, they wrote hundreds of pieces of which some were masterpieces, quality emerging out of quantity, so write a lot.
  5. Great inventors like Edison and theorists like Einstein didn’t have just one patent or one theory paper, they had hundreds, producing regularly, therefore write constantly.
  6. It’s okay if you can’t write daily, or a lot at a time, write when you can and as much as you can when you can. Do the writing.

So Sit Down, Shut Up, and Write.

The comment section on the blog also has some good comments too – the URL is .

 

Writing Exercise: Secret, Wall, Loss, Desire

Erin Penn

Photo by Pete Willis on Unsplash

In a Magical Words post from December 5, 2011, David B. Coe postulates that “the most effective, memorable characters” have four attributes: Secret, Wall, Loss, Desire.

Secret – The character has something they are hiding from the world, or the world has hidden from them.

Wall – There is a barrier separating them from the world. (I think this attribute is necessary for main characters to give them the focal point of the story.)

Loss – The world has taken something from them in the past or present.

Desire – They have something they desire that drives them. (The loss puts the breaks on.)

He goes out to more specification, and then gives a number of examples of works being published in 2011.

WRITING EXERCISE: Examine your present work-in-progress (WIP). Does your main character have any of these traits?

My attempt: Robyn from Mom Eyes. Her secret is her powers, especially some aspects of her powers. Yes, as a child she is sharing the information, but maybe she really shouldn’t. Wall – her powers are creating a wall, but she already had a wall because of … Loss – losing her brother and her mother impacted her teen years. She will never forget to be kind because of it. Desire – not to be alone. To prevent others from experiencing her loss if possible.

Magical Words: On writing dialog

Erin Penn

Photo by Jed Villejo on Unsplash

If you have been with me for a while, you know how much I love dialog. “on writing dialog” by Catie Murphy, a Magical Words post from 10/28/2008 is one that has stuck with me for a long time. All the details I’ve talked about are here.

(Note this was early in the Magical Words, so proofreading is lacking, but the message is still great.)

http://www.magicalwords.net/really-i-mean-it/on-writing-dialog/

Writing Exercise: Theme

Erin Penn

Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash

I’m going to be honest with you. I really don’t understand “theme”. Theme is Big Literary Discussion, and I hated that part of high school English. I read to enjoy and escape, not figure out if the story was about the “futility of purpose” or “limitations of self-destruction.” To me, and my autistic-spectrum mind, the blue curtains were just blue. As an developmental editor, only once have I come back to an author and said “this is your theme” … and we needed that to pull together a story going off track. The writer hadn’t even known, but as soon as I said it (well, meandered through writing an email trying to nail the developmental issue until it hit me), he was like “exactly” … and hurried off our message-chat to fix the problem.

Sometimes my book club talks about themes, and I try to contribute. Mostly I restock my plate with the snacks everyone brought around that time.

Misty Massey wrote a Magical Words post on October 4, 2011 entitled “What Does It All Mean” discussing theme. Commentors included AJ Hartley and pea_faerie, both of whom are English college professors with doctorates – but they are also writers, so they know how to make discussion on theme interesting. (URL is: http://www.magicalwords.net/misty-massey/what-does-it-all-mean/)

For the most part for me, genre writing is about entertaining. To be entertaining, the reader needs to be engaged. Engagement happens when more than just balloons and explosions are happening, when there is meaning buried between the words even if the reader doesn’t see it, their hind-brain does. And that meaning often is a theme.

“People are equal.” “People are not equal.” “Be kind.” “Be forceful.” “Think of others first.” “Self-care before other care.” “Health is wasted on the youth.” “Old age makes one stagnant.”

All that wonderful jumbled mess that is life.

WRITING EXERCISE: Review you present work-in-progress (WIP) to see if you have any themes.

Magical Words: Grist for the Mill

Erin Penn

Photo by Josue Escoto on Unsplash

Laughter. Tears. New job. Old friends. Unexpected disaster. Planned joy.

All Grist for the Mill. The old saying “Write what you know.” doesn’t mean learn how to fight if you are going to write about fighting, it is knowing the emotions leading to the fight. Write emotions you understand, situations you have lived. You may never figure out a murder when a body is missing, but you have had to figure out where the TV remote has ended up.

In “Grist for the Mill: Emotion and Creativity”, David B. Coe discusses life events which impacted and found their way (changed to protect the innocent and guilty) into his writing. He closes the Magical Word post on August 26, 2013 with asking people to post excerpts from their stories where their personal life strengthened their writing. The comments are very poignant, and I highly recommend reading them.

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