This month’s meeting took place in the second week of May instead of the first week. Don’t worry – next month’s meeting will be back to the first week!
Introductions and progress reports
We had new faces and familiar faces this month. As ever, it’s lovely to see new people coming to the meetings, and it’s reassuring when they come back.
Some of us have made progress since the last meeting, writing a scene here and a few thousand words there. Some of us have not fared so well. But there’s always this month for getting back to it.
One new face, the visiting parent of another new face, said she was struggling with seeing a different side to a nasty character. I told her I hoped I’d have the perfect tool to help with that in the free-writing session.
Free writing
I didn’t have anything in particular planned as this month’s prompt for the free-writing session, but, as stated above, I hoped to help out a struggling writer with a useful tool: the scribble chat.
I’ve recently learnt that people new to scribble chats can’t immediately jump in with deep questions, so I started right at the beginning, asking the chosen character about what they’re called and how they feel about it.
As it turned out, the struggling writer didn’t think she’d learnt anything, but she had: that her character is defensive. It wasn’t perhaps what she was hoping to find out, but that’s the way of the scribble chat. And if you really don’t like the way it turns out, you can always do it again.
Workshop
This month, we looked at things we shouldn’t worry about when we’re writing the first draft of any piece of writing.
The first draft is rarely a masterpiece that trips off the pen onto the page; rather, it’s a chance to get the story out of your head and onto the page. Only then, when we have something concrete to work with, can we set about turning into that masterpiece. It’s akin to the first pencil sketch an artist might make before picking up the oil paints.
We’ve looked before at how writing and rewriting the beginning of our story can block progress; there are lots of other things that can block the flow of the story to the page – that little voice telling us not to use cliches, complaining about terrible grammar and spelling, trying to think of the perfect word and so on.
The more we write, the more comfortable we will become at writing, and the words will come to us more easily. The more we write, the more likely we are to find gems in what we turn out.
Voice and style
Another thing that can stop the flow is worrying about your voice and/or style. Trying to force these won’t work; the best way to find them is to write. The more you write, the more your style and voice will develop. Once you’ve finished your first draft, you can go back and rewrite the earlier work to match the voice and style you’ve developed.
How do you know what your style is? It’s how you construct your sentences, what you write about, how you build a scene; it’s how your personality comes through. It’s what comes natural to you the more you write.
Structure
The structure of a story isn’t something that will fall into place immediately, but that’s ok. Once you’ve written down everything that happens, you can go back and work out what should happen when, where chapter breaks should appear, and where the tension will rise and fall.
Descriptions
When I’m writing my first draft, I pay little heed to describing things. I’m more interested in getting down what happens, who says what and who does what. The description can come later. Remember that large chunks of description are no more than information dumps, which might put some readers off. It’s much better to describe what’s important to the story; this is best done when you know what the story is.
Themes
Are you wondering what themes your story covers while writing your first draft? This is another thing that can come later. Themes, the big questions that you pose your readers without necessarily answering them, can be worked out when you know what questions emerge from the characters and the plot.
The throughline is a different matter, perhaps: it’s the question your story is striving to answer. Every chapter, every scene should include the throughline somehow. We looked at the throughline in our March 2023 meeting.
Details
Worrying about tiny details can hinder the progress of a first draft perhaps like no other. Instead of glossing over it to come back to later, we can fall down a rabbit hole of research, starting at when a given punk rock song was released and ending up at Australian moth species. One suggestion that a member gave us this meeting was to keep a list of all the things that need to be researched later. That way, we know we’re not going to forget about it, and we can keep going.
What if the facts, once we’ve found them out after having written the first draft, don’t work with the story? That’s not something to worry about now. Later, you can either modify your story to fit the facts, or you can use artistic licence to fit the facts to your story.
If you’re writing science fiction or fantasy, building the world is an important part of telling the story. There are different ways to go about this. You could build the world first then write your first draft, or you could build the world based on what works in your first draft. Either way, none of it need be set in stone: in a later draft, you can iron out all the wrinkles that don’t work, changing, adding or taking away your world’s rules as necessary.
Planning
If you like to plan your story from start to finish, don’t let yourself get hemmed in by the plan. Allow yourself the flexibility and freedom to go where the characters want to take you. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t matter: you can always change it, and the material might be useful in your next project.
Nothing to show
Even if you’ve got nothing on paper, you’re still working on your story. For me, there’s always a buzz at the back of my mind wondering what my characters are up to or how they’d react if I did this or that to them.
More than that, I have scribble chats with my characters to see how they feel about something, to probe their inner workings. I might not have written a thousand words this morning, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy working on my story.
Just like my story, yours will come too.
Everything has already been written
There might only be seven basic plots, but only you can tell your story your way. Even when we have the same prompt in our meetings, we all come up with something completely different. Don’t be afraid to tell your story. Your own life, experiences, feelings, which are unique to you, will inform your story and make it stand out from everyone else’s.
Criticism from friends and family
Friends and family mean well, but they can sometimes expect your story to appear as a perfectly written tome in a short space of time. This isn’t going to happen, unless you’re some sort of genius; never show anyone who isn’t a writer your first draft, and only let people who you know will be positive and encouraging into your half-written world.
Ely Writers is a great place to share half-baked snippets of writing: we’re looking for the good in all readings that we hear.
Readings
This month, we heard two pieces inspired by true stories. One was darker than the other, but neither were without deep emotion. Both had themes coming out of their ears, leaving the listener with plenty to think about.
Well done to those writers!
Next meeting
Next month, we return to our usual first Wednesday of the month, so we’ll reconvene in Prosper on 7 June 2023.
See you there?