Essay Online

Okay, so I didn’t really write a whole novel on my lunch hour. But I did develop a lot of the characters, locations and plot by taking a half-hour out of each workday to sketch some ideas. You’d be surprised with what you can get done in just thirty minutes a day.

First, a little background. I had a job that was driving me crazy. Corporate priorities at the company I worked for changed on a weekly basis. Projects I managed got cancelled halfway through development, blew up on the launch pad, or went on indefinitely without any measurement of success. My job had become more about shuffling papers and schedules than creating great work. I was frustrated. My thoughts turned to that novel I’d never managed to write.

But how was I going to write it? I never had time. When I got home from work every day, it was late. I was tired and cranky, unable to do much but eat dinner and go to sleep. Weekends were filled with taking care of the house, doing laundry, seeing family. I needed to come up with some kind of plan if I was going to get anything done. I began by promising myself I’d take a half-hour break each day at work, pick up a notepad and pencil and write down whatever came into my head.

Some days I went out for lunch, sat by myself at the juice bar or taco stand and wrote as I ate. On days when I’d brought lunch from home, I’d drive to a distant parking lot or side street and sit in my car, making notes. And on days when I couldn’t get out for lunch, I’d make sure to reserve a private half hour slot in the corporate calendar so no one could schedule me for a meeting. At the appointed time, I’d pick up my notebook, find a cubbyhole in some corner of the building where staff rarely went, sit down and start writing.

At first it was difficult to put aside thoughts of work. But soon enough, by implementing some simple strategies, I was able to write at least a couple of pages each day. Some days I just scrawled out lists of phrases, adjectives, names and on others I managed a few paragraphs of tolerable prose. But the more I did it, the easier it became. After three months I’d filled two notebooks with ideas for characters, situations, locations. My novel had shape. Rough shape, to be sure, but shape nonetheless.

There were other benefits, too, ones I hadn’t expected. Writing in my notebook for half an hour gave me a sense of satisfaction that helped alleviate the stress of my job. My afternoons became lighter, less dreary. I dare say I developed a spring in my step that hadn’t been there before. It also gave me the confidence to look for a new job, one with less time load, so I could dedicate myself to completing the work.

So if time is a problem for you, here’s ten suggestions on how to start a lunch-hour writing routine, including some tips to keep you on track.

1. Character sketches

Pick a character you’ve thought about. Or invent a new one on the spot. Start with a name. Is the character male or female? How old? Single, attached or married? What color eyes? What color hair? What do they do for a living? Where do they live? Start with the city or town, then add details. What does their house or apartment look like? Details make a difference. Keep adding as many details as you can. What kind of car does your character drive (if they drive)? What do they eat for breakfast? What kind of clothes do they wear?

2. Location sketches

Again, start from the general and work your way down to the details. You can start with a real location or imagine one, or start with a real one and move to an imagined one. Is the location outside or inside? Who’s there? If it’s outside, what kind of plants and animals might there be? Once you’ve come up with the idea, take a tour of the location in your mind. Walk through it, pause, look around. What do you see? Step through your senses as you look around. How does it smell? What does it look like? What do you hear?

3. Mix it up

Once you have a dozen characters and locations or so, try putting them together. What would happen if character A and character D met at location C? Why would they be there? Are they meeting there for the first time or do they already know one another? How does each respond to the meeting?

4. Schedule your sessions

Put it in your calendar system. It’s easier to make yourself write when you treat the process like all your other business meetings.

5. Get out of the cubicle

There’s too many distractions in your workspace. How are you going to be creative with all those responsibilities staring you in the face?

6. Turn off your cell phone

There’s nothing so important it can’t wait a half hour.

7. Get a pad of paper, and a pencil or pen

Computers are great for making things look nice. They’re not great for brainstorming. A pad of paper allows you to write in the margins, scrawl anywhere.

8. Pause, but don’t stop

Don’t spend twenty minutes deciding if your character prefers donuts to bagels. That can come later. Just pick one and see what happens. Writing things down, anything, pushes you forward.

9. Don’t worry about “writing”

This is not the time to critically assess the quality of your prose. In fact, you may not want to “write” at all in this first phase. Make lists of character qualities or location features. Make lists of names for characters. On the other hand, don’t be afraid to start writing, either. Go with whatever feels right that day.

10. Don’t worry, period.

If nothing much happens at first, don’t worry about it. It’s just a half-hour out of your day. At worst it was a quiet break. And you get to come back again tomorrow.

Have you ever read a passage and felt the breath of life, then was too speechless to describe it? That’s writing at its best. The method for creating such a moment comes from the use of emotions. Emotions are one of the single most important, touching, impressive and non-intrusive writing tools. It is often not recognized as a concrete tool, but as a feeling, a stirring, a capturing that catches the reader up in the fictive state.

My aim is to take the mystery out of it. Break it down and make it easy for you. I want to shorten the learning curve for conquering this bestseller-kind-of writing. When you set your scene do not describe it separate from the protagonist’s thoughts, feeling, observations, analysis. If we know how the protagonist feels about the description, the situation, we’ll experience it also. Feelings make us remember a character, a story, a plot long after the last page is closed. Good emotional impact resonates because you have felt what the character felt. On the other hand, description apart from your character’s feelings and observations are impersonal and cold, no matter how detailed and colorful they are. In other words, find smooth ways to integrate your character’s feelings into the description. Here are three examples:

THE MAYOR’S WIFE by Martha Tucker&ndashIndigo is in the hospital after she finds out her husband is dead. “Life, death, acceptance, rejection, ability to feel it and inability to bear it. She turned her face to the cool white wall and her body curled into a fetal position. She pleaded with God to return her to the state of unconsciousness. Devastation only comes to those who are conscious.

Something twisted her heart like a wringer. She turned back to the doctor to face what he had to say, not sure that this moment wasn’t still a dream. When he answered, her throat hurled a howl.

“Aaaaaaaa!”

The scream took her mind to a place that didn’t hurt so much as she felt the sting of a nurse’s needle.

This is the description could have been written separate from her EMOTIONS. Just a straight description of her in the hospital room. Indigo lay in the cool white bed. Everything around her was white. She turned to the doctor and stared, waiting for him to answer. He spoke in a deep voice and told her that her husband didn’t make it. She screamed loud.

THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS by T.H. Moore. In reaction to a ruckus his mother and father are having: Jalen balled his body in his arms and tightened his blanket, hoping she would just stop talking. What is she doing? Jalen sprang up and glared at the closed door…A blood-curdling scream jerked him out of bed like he’d been stung by a bee. His feet barely touched the carpet as he tore down the stairs. He froze at the sight.

Moore could have just described the dark room, the warm blanket and the yelling voice that stole in under the door.

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Here is how the master did it, and it has lasted well over 50 years&ndash“Now it was a cool night, with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees&ndashhe could climb to it, if he climbed it alone, and once there, he could suck the pap of life, gulp down the uncomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable vision to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been stuck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

Scott Fitzgerald interpreted his setting, the feelings of his young manhood, of the night, the life of it, the forever endearing kiss.

Now, it’s your turn to describe your favorite scene and lace it with emotions. If you’re going to be a bestseller-kind-of author, then you need to practice writing with emotions.

The End

You are welcome to publish this article in its entirety, electronically, or in print free of charge, as long as you include my full signature file for ezines and my website address in hyperlink for other sites.

bestsellercirclezinester.com,

.urbanclassicbooks.com

Thank you.

Martha “Marti” Tucker

Start your writing with conflict if you want to guarantee sales, grab an agent or publisher, get paid a big advance. Your protagonist wants something and your antagonist wants to block it. If you want to be the publisher’s star-of-the-month, just hand out a strong dose of conflict right up front. Bold like. Then, they’re wrapped up in your story and it’s too late for them to escape. Trust me, readers, agents and publishers are going to consider writing with a strong dose of conflict as good fortune for their company. Readers will not want to put it down. The big boys just might pat you on the head and pay you a six-figure advance.

As conflict is so essential to good writing, whether it’s fiction, or nonfiction, children’s books or memoir, it will aid your attention-getting cause. I suggest you start practicing the art of writing conflict right now for your openings. Read the examples and write your own:

• James walked in ready to crash and that’s when he saw the monster. (Antagonist wants to take protagonist’s calm time away)

• When I walked in, Emily had on my favorite blouse I was going to wear tonight. She stood there trying to apologize for tearing it.(Antagonist has blocked protagonist from wearing her favorite blouse tonight.)

• Jimmy worked ten hours at ten dollars an hour, and now John was saying he was worthless, he wasn’t going to pay. (John wants to take Jimmy’s earning away).

The sentences are off the top of my head and I don’t consider them profound or anything. But remember, my job is to make all of the big, foreign sounding things simple. My sentences clearly show characters in conflict. You can “feel” the tension. Your protagonist wants something and your antagonist wants to take it away. Your antagonist may not even be a person. It may be a rock against the door, keeping your protagonist from escaping the bad guy.

In my novel, The Mayor’s Wife Wore Sapphires, the mayor’s young wife wants to change the image of an inner city by making it the Black Camelot; her antagonists want to destroy the incubator idea that could make that happen.

It is conflict that grabs the reader’s attention. Eighty percent of all readers continue to read because of conflict. If there is no conflict, the story lies flat on the page, it falls apart and loses the reader’s interest. It’s yawning-kind-of dull. When conflict is present, readers perk up and wade through bad syntax, misspelled words, structure flaws, and bland dialogue to find out how the conflict ends. I’m not suggesting that you neglect any part of the writing craft, though. It’s just that conflict is one of the strongest elements of good writing, and all too often we lose the reader’s attention because we neglect that writing tool.

So, when you want to grab an editor, an agent, or a publisher’s favor, just allow them to feast on gripping conflict from the very first line and see your story rises through the slush pile to increased sales.

In the Mayor’s Wife Wore Sapphires, the story opens with two unknown characters, whispering in what seems like a clandestine place. The host balls the newspaper in rage and throws it on the dark wood table. We see that it states: Council Upset Rumored. Now the guest thrust his head out of the shadows and says that “In my country, his kind disappears without a trace.” He wants to take out the mayor; his opposition wants to fix the situation before the council meeting.

In The End Justifies The Means, the protagonist, Jalen, is trying to sleep; his mother and father are having a violent argument. He wants them to stop it; they get louder.

In the Color Purple, Celie’s baby is happy for giving birth to her baby; the antagonist, her father, is taking the baby to give her away. She is screaming, “No!” The father is already gone.

Agents and publishers are trained to recognize conflict, and they look for it. So take advantage of that now. Write conflict in your first line for practice.

THE END