Confessions of a Premise Writer

by Rob Hines

That’s me. I’m a Premise Writer.

It sounds like a real job, doesn't it? Premise Writer. It almost sounds like you could make money doing that.

Nope. Not even remotely.

Trust me. Being broke does NOT look this good.

Premise writing is what I've been doing since I decided to start writing fiction, and I've only recently come to grips with this label. It’s a sickness, kind of like rabies, I think. You can cure it, but it takes some gnarly treatment and you should probably avoid people for a month or so.

Are you a premise writer? Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you have a billion ideas written in piles of spiral notebooks and/or an incredibly cluttered note-taking app on your phone?
2. Have you written any more than about a page or two of any one idea?
3. Do you waste time at work organizing your ideas in fun Google Drive folders instead of actually turning them into thought-out stories?
4. When you do write a story, do you tend to jump right to the “million dollar idea” and linger there for a while before jumping right to the end?
5. Have you had a story about a problem gambler who acquires a golden touch rejected because an editor feels “it all comes too easily” meaning the premise happens with no real conflict or consequences?

Okay, that last one is pretty much exclusive to me, but if you feel any sympathy pains for the other four, you may be a Premise Writer too. Hope is not lost, though. You and I can break from a fate of being buried in an avalanche of hoarded notebooks full of neglected concepts. The key is (cue dramatic music) OUTLINING!

Yep, there they go. The artists are leaving now. The ones who want their writing to be an expression of their inner beings have given up on me.

Okay, the rest of you? You’re professional writers. You’re the ones who know you have to plan a project to achieve consistent results (read: get paid to write)

I’m not dissing anyone who doesn't plan their writing. Hell, until about a week or two ago, I WAS one of those people. At least, I was that way in my fiction writing. My revelation came when I realized that I’m more than just a fiction writer. I’m a corporate writer too. I write copy for advertising, corporate blog articles, web copy, and even a corporate comic book! And you wanna hear a secret? I plan each of those projects before I write them. Why? Because I like to eat horrible food and my paycheck allows me to continue buying said horrible food. If I'm that committed to horrible food, why shouldn't I be just as committed to fulfilling my writing dream?

My cubicle-mate at the above-referenced day job is also a writer and he has published two non-fiction books (if you’re a baseball fan, you can buy one of them here). He’s a relentless planner when he writes and I guess I thought there were different rules for non-fiction. There aren't. Well, except for the whole factual thing.

No matter what you write, the best way to make writing more efficient and less torturous is to effectively outline your plot and your characters. I’m not talking about the high school research paper method with Roman numerals and A’s and B’s and all that. All I’m suggesting is you know what’s going to happen from start to finish as well as the major events in between. It may be a bulleted list. It may be a detailed list of acts and scenes. It may even be a mind map that starts with a central theme and bursts in all different directions. The key is putting your whole story on the page before you try to write 100,000 words around it.

I’m not saying it’s for everyone. I know many great writers just sit and write. Good for them. I’m a Premise Writer. If I do that, I will do a fantastic job of writing down a plot with terribly boring characters and little to no exposition or resolution. In other words, I will suck.

So now I’m outlining. I’m giving myself a chance to hear the story from start to finish and understand my characters so I have a blueprint to guide my actual writing. I’m giving myself a chance to not suck.

Words to live (and write) by

Well, at least not suck as much.

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A day in the life of a writer

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by Kelly DeBie

This month, we are supposed to be sharing our writing routines and habits with you all.  As a blogger with four kids, I absolutely have to have structure to my day in order to get anything done, let alone sit down and have uninterrupted time to write.

As I write this now, I am sitting alone in the living room after having sent off my youngest daughter to summer school. All the rest of the kids are still asleep, as has become the norm around here this summer. They sleep in, I peck away at the keyboard. It works, and I'm not asking any questions right now.

I thought I might share with you today how being a writer works, at least in my universe, on any given day. I'll have to warn you though, I very much have adult ADD and get distracted easily. Try and keep up.

3:30 a.m. - Wake up. Stare at the ceiling for a good long time. Struggle to go back to sleep because mind is racing so much. Tell self that you will write down that wicked plot summary that you just dreamt of when you get up in the morning. Yawn. 

4:30 a.m. - Repeat. Forget whatever awesome story you thought up an hour ago.

6:45 a.m. - Alarm goes off, hit snooze button every five minutes for at least half an hour.

7:15 a.m. - Hook up coffee IV.  Do dishes. Check dryer. Make mental note of the day of the week, what you have to write about, and whether anything is started yet.

Good morning, beautiful.

7:45 a.m. - Feed small humans, attend to their needs, shuttle them to and fro. Refill coffee.

9:30 a.m. - Take a deep breath and open the laptop. Check Facebook page, write some witty status update, send daily birthday wishes, open Blogger, check for comments, start new post. Stare at blank screen. Refill coffee.

10:00 a.m. - Depending on which day of the week it is, I'm either researching things, writing, ranting, creating a million hyperlinks or still staring at a blank screen. Tuesday is my designated rant day, appropriately titled Things That Piss Me Off Tuesday. Thursday is Nerdsday, where I write about something geeky I love. Fridays are for fiction when that group is going, which is on a summer sabbatical right now. I intended to run my Wonder(ful) Women series on Fridays instead, but got distracted by something shiny last week, so it ran Monday instead. 

10:30 a.m. - peck, peck, peck, peck. Finish pot of cold coffee. Think of something totally unrelated, but profound to write about later, add that to running topic list. Start three different posts before finishing the one you are supposed to be writing. Add a few paragraphs to current book chapter.

11:00 a.m. - Post for the day is usually published by now unless something else came up in the meantime. Which it usually does. Find news articles to write about, add to running topic list. Squirrel!

11:30 a.m. - Schedule status updates on Facebook for the rest of the day, share post, log off. Remember something, log back on. Shiny! Log off. See something on news, text it to self.

12:00 p.m. - Feed small humans, attend to needs, shuttle to and fro. Witness something insane, write about it on napkin in car.

1:00 p.m. - Read for an hour with the kids. Right now, we are doing a 12 week summer reading challenge, where we read the book first, then watch the movie version when we are done. This week, we are on To Kill A Mockingbird. Geek out for a while over reading favorite book, talk about notions of justice and inequality with oldest child who's eyes start to glaze over eventually. 

2:00 p.m. - Sit on youngest until he naps. (not literally, of course) Enjoy the fact that he still snuggles up in lap and falls asleep there, make sure phone is within arms reach. Check for comments, write witty status update, find news story, add it to running topic list. How did writers function before mobile apps? I'm imagining lots of napkins.

4:00 p.m. - Watch news. Yell and throw things. Scribble notes down on whatever paper is nearby with whatever writing instrument is available. It's usually an envelope and a crayon, by the way, and almost always gets lost, spilled on or thrown away before you can get back to it.

6:00 p.m. - Make dinner, do laundry, do dishes, wrangle small humans, think of some parenting issue to write about, forget it immediately, yell randomly out the window about putting pants on to at least one child.

7:00 p.m. - Sit on porch and read while kids play outside. Congratulate self on surviving another day of motherhood. Think of something witty to say, realize phone battery is dead. Forget whatever it was.

9:30 p.m. - Kids to bed. Check for comments. Get into some argument with a troll online. Give up and walk away. Add "troll fighting" to running topic list.

10:30 p.m. - Get ready for bed. Think of something great to write about. Send self a text or email.

11:54 p.m. - Actually fall asleep. Dream of plot line that you'll forget in a few hours. Repeat.

Sounds pretty glamorous, right?

50 Excellent Writing Activities to Cultivate Your Creativity and Craft

by Jesse Young

If you’re a good writer, you can succeed in any industry, no matter what kind of online degree you have. But even great writers sometimes have trouble organizing their work, polishing up the details, or even picking a cohesive idea to write about. Here are 50 excellent writing exercises to help cultivate your creativity and craft, from brainstorming to beating writer’s block and remembering your motivation.

Part 1 of 7: Brainstorming and Organization

Try these brainstorming exercises to map out your ideas, spur on your creativity, and plan your project.

1. Levels: Break down your topic sentence or main theme into levels to create subtopics and then single terms that you can explore individually with lists, charts or free-writing.

2. Free-writing: This traditional form of brainstorming involves writing down anything that comes to your mind even if you don’t think it makes sense. Set a timer for 10 minutes and write down everything.

3. Be a journalist: Ask the questions a journalist would ask if he or she were covering your story. This will help you develop a logical plot.

4. Close your eyes: This exercise worked for little kids and could help you, too. Close your eyes and think of keywords you’d like to expand upon, then open your eyes and write down your strongest memories and responses.

5. Describe any object in great detail: This brainstorming exercise challenges you to play with adjectives, make up metaphors, and study the nature of an object.

6. Choose a challenge: Make a list of challenges and then build your story around solving it.

7. Organize all the pieces visually: Whether it’s your to-do list, character family tree or essay research, map out your pieces visually on a chart.

8. Brain Writing: This group exercise involves writing down your ideas on a piece of paper, passing it to a facilitator, who then passes them back out in random order. Each person in the group will spend a few minutes adding on to the original idea or story, then passes it on to the next person.

9. Consider all the senses: Write down all the senses you’d experience if you were witnessing the scene in your story.

10. Plan projects week by week: Angela Booth recommends that multi-tasking writers schedule writing projects week by week in order to stay organized.

next week: Writer's Block