“My words sound better coming from my hands than from my mouth.”
Unknown
I cannot tell you a story. Well, I could, but the significant question is can I keep your attention? Maybe, maybe not.
When you’re a writer you learn how to write a hook, and that you should use a hook at your chapter ending. It’s part of the structure you need to put together to keep your reader engaged. Sometimes writing to the structure goes beyond your writing voice.
Once you’ve written about a million words, you start to see and hear your unique writing voice. It’ s something you worked to achieve and you do not want to do anything to jeopardize it. Authors struggle against the editor who tries to edit it out of the story. But how exactly do you allow editing without jeopardizing your voice?
Truth be told, it’s damn difficult.
Most of us find the zone when we sit down to write. If you need to warm up, and I often do, you slip right into the zone somewhere around the second or third page. It’s different for each of us. But once found, the zone is the heaven where all good stories reside. They wait for us to trip into the garden of paradise and enjoy the moment. Because, that’s what it seems like, a moment in time.
When we read–and most authors are avid readers–we become lost in the story. At least that is the goal of every author for each reader to find his own way, at his own pace, with a separate interpretation. What a story means to one of us will not resonate with every reader. Like small hidden gems, the “moments of universal truth” shine through in varied places for each reader.
Each chapter should be formed to build on the story that comes before it. Not in an episodic manner, but rather as a new layer of character, influence of backstory, or personal insight as to why our characters become who they are meant to be by the story’s end.
So many of the “writing rules” are really guidelines meant to improve our writing. But even viewed as guidelines, they confuse the beginning writer. It’s as if you’re juggling, with too many balls in the air.
Show don’t tell.
Anchor the reader and your characters in time and place.
Don’t give too much backstory too soon.
Begin with a hook.
End with a hook.
The best advice for new writers? Write the damn book. You will quickly learn, good books are not written but rewritten