Dead Wesley Smith

Hints

• Do not give yourself permission to write sloppy
• Write Scenes (one at a time) & trust the process
• You must have a character and a setting
  • Readers read for characters, and characters have to be placed in settings
  • Depth is created when a character is firmly in a setting with opinions and all five senses and emotions about the setting. None of this can be achieved from the writer’s perspective
  • Take any character and put the character in a setting. Any character. Any setting Then climb into the character’s head and park your butt there and don’t allow yourself to type one word that doesn’t come from the character’s opinion or sensory feelings or emotions.”

Process Hints

• Remember, it is fine to write extra words.
  • Don’t be afraid to write in jumps in time and plot, just delete them later
• If you feel like you’ve gone in the wrong direction, just stop and look back to the point where you could have gone in another way - cut everything - and go that way
• When you get past the 1/3 section - just keep going! (About 10,000 words) the excitement has worn off, the fun, and there is no easy answer except to struggle past it
• Don’t write from beginning to end - we read linerarly, but we don’t need to write like it *** Outline as you go **
  • when you finish a chapter, write down quickly what you just wrote in a very clear format
    • I write on a yellow legal pad the chapter number, the viewpoint character, what happened in the chapter (one line summary) and how it ended

Remember you are only writing the draft of the book

• If your creative voice - not your critical voice - wants you to change something, change it. You write with creativity, respect it. As in, if you go, aw this would be a good idea, go and change it right away
• Write ahead, write in pieces, constantly loop
• Try cycling: “I will write a few hundred words, loop back, fill in some other stuff, take out some other words, write forward from the place where I lifted out of the timeline, then loop around again and do it all again. It feels to me at times like I am starting at the beginning and moving toward the end. But in all honesty, it’s more like digging a tunnel through a mountain.”
  • I start by claiming inside the characters head and get the emotions of the character and the setting, I write about 500-700 words then come to a halt. Instead of stopping, I go back to the first line of the story and cycle back through the story. Sometimes I add stuff, something I take it out, sometimes I just move through fixing mistakes. When I make it back to the end, the dreaded white space, I can usually go another 500 words or so. Then I do the same, 500 words behind where I stopped.
    • this helps create a more polished draft, and to help pace your creative brain.
    • When I’m really stuck, I’ll often go 1,000 words back, or sometimes even more, until my creative voice knows what will happen next
    • Cycling, knowing you will be done when you hit the end, makes you fix any problem or mistake instantly, the moment you see or discover the problem. So say a character says something to another character and your creative voice goes, “Damn it, that wasn’t set up.” You instantly pop out of the timeline and go back and set it up and then work toward the white space again.”

Write the next sentence

• That’s advice I gave to help you through the rough points, the stuck points. A key point to remember is that “next sentence” does not have to be the very next sentence the READER is going to read. It just needs to be the next sentence you are going to type.”