It’s time for a new mini workshop! This weekly post is intended to help emerging writers find their voice, improve their writing, and feel more confident in their work. These workshops, which have gone through several phases, cover everything from point-of-view issues to motivation. You can see the whole series in the links at the bottom of this post.
This workshop session is about making something happen in your story; it’s about getting to the point.
Topic of the day: what’s the point?
We fiction writers are a troubled bunch, as a whole — plagued by too many ideas, too little direction, and more than our fair share of self-doubt and psychological torment.
And that tends to play out in our writing. We come up with a great idea about a girl who decides to walk from Manhattan to Miami Beach on a soul searching mission, and we spend 18 paragraphs providing the backstory before she starts walking.
Instead, let’s get her walking. Let’s see her in action. Let us readers walk with her a little before we hear about her painful past. There will be time for that later.
Does she have to get past the hobos of Hoboken? Let’s see it. Does someone throw a bowl of lettuce out the window at her as she navigates her way through Wilmington? (I only mention this because it happened to a friend of mine once.) Show us!
The point of her story is not the painful past, is it? That is the backstory. The backdrop. The point is the journey she needs to travel to get to a better place. We will only take an interest in that painful past when we see her in the now, on the journey, finding her way.
You can sprinkle in the past later in the story. Or you can show it to us through the phone call she has with her domineering father as she takes shelter from a hailstorm in Baltimore.
Get into the story through action. Help us readers see, right away, that there’s a reason to read your story — a person of interest, in an intriguing setting, who’s dealing with something. Otherwise, we will scratch our heads and ask “what’s the point of this?” And then we’ll set the story down and walk away.
That’s it for this mini workshop! I hope you find this information useful.
Want to work with writers and editors to improve your writing? @tanglebranch runs several “writers workout” workshops each week in The Writers’ Block on Discord.
The writing workshop collection
I’ve developed quite a few resources for writers during my time on Steemit. Browse the collection and see if you find a topic that seems particularly meaningful to you.
New mini workshop series
Short posts on specific writing topics:
- Mini writing workshop: What prompted that? (About writing from prompts)
- Mini writing workshop: Who said that? (Tips for writing dialog)
Mini workshops in 50-word prompt posts
Brief workshops, typically 3-5 paragraphs, at the top of prompt posts:
- Mini writing workshop on “tense”
- Mini writing workshop on the editing process (with a walkthrough example)
- Mini writing workshop on taking time to write
- Mini writing workshop on the power of editing
- Mini writing workshop on critique
- Mini writing workshop on fixing punctuation errors
- Mini writing workshop on mainstream publishing (with a resource for 50-word story authors)
- Mini writing workshop on voice and language (as compared to the importance of plot)
- Mini writing workshop about becoming a great writer
- Mini writing workshop on contests and challenges
- Mini writing workshop on what makes a story a story
- Mini writing workshop on demystifying story writing
- Mini writing workshop on 50-word short story writing process
- Mini writing workshop on the steps for writing 50-word stories
- Mini writing workshop on micro-fiction and writing succinctly
- Mini writing workshop on the “why” of writing
- Mini writing workshop on the challenge of micro-fiction
In-depth workshop posts
The original writing workshop series:
- Writing workshop volume 1: The beginning
- Writing workshop volume 2: Exploring voice in writing
- Writing workshop volume 3: Say what you want to say
- Writing workshop volume 4: Serial fiction projects on Steemit
- Writing workshop volume 5: Getting organized and actually writing
- Writing workshop volume 6: Tips for writing anywhere, anytime
- Writing workshop volume 7: Should you write historical fiction?
- Writing workshop volume 8: Prompts, contests and challenges – oh my!
- Writing workshop volume 9: Pushing through insecurity and writing anyway
- Writing workshop volume 10: Perspective and POV in fiction writing
- Writing workshop volume 11: Second person point of view in fiction
- Writing workshop volume 12: How to write your character’s background
- Writing workshop volume 13: What to do with all these voices in my head?
- Writing workshop volume 14: Write your story from a logline
- Writing workshop volume 15: Three tips for improving your fiction
- Writing workshop volume 16: How to accept criticism on your fiction writing
Thank you, as always, for reading, following, upvoting, connecting, HODL’ing, resteeming, laughing, sharing, and being you.
