Tag: writing advice

Use Music to Inspire Your Writing

Every writer knows the struggle of summoning the motivation and imagination needed to make words flow onto the page. Sometimes, our muse needs a little ignition to get the creative juices pumping. One powerful way to inspire focused, emotive writing is through music.

Turning on some tunes that awaken your imagination can work wonders when writer’s block strikes. Upbeat songs provide energy and drive to power through difficult projects. Melancholic melodies summon pensiveness and sensitivity needed for heartfelt scenes. Your own personalized playlists can become a vital part of your writing ritual.

In addition to setting the mood, attentive listening to music unlocks new depths of inspiration. Analyze song lyrics for ways to convey themes more poetically in your prose. Study how musicians build tension and interest with their instruments. Allow the emotions of a chorus to unlock hidden feelings in your characters.

You can even match musical genres to different writing styles. Classical music promotes fluid, elegant passages. Punk drums up gritty, visceral action scenes. Try writing a setting while listening to music native to that location, like Argentinian tango for a Buenos Aires backdrop.

While writing, music provides a productivity-boosting cadence to match the rhythm of your typing or scribbling. Let the melodies and beats flow through you into the language. But for editing sessions, opt for instrumental-only tunes — lyrics can be too distracting when you require focus.

Build playlists that speak to the tone and themes of your current projects. Are you writing a steamy romance? Queue up some sultry R&B. Drafting a spooky thriller? Assemble eerie, atmospheric movie soundtrack hits. Treat your writing like the sensorial experience it is by letting music infuse your creative process.

Don’t feel confined to traditional genres either. Follow your distinctive musical tastes.

What are some of your favorite tunes, artists, or playlists for writing? Share your top musical inspiration hacks below!

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Elevate Your Descriptive Writing: Crafting Vivid Sensory Details

The key to immersive, transportive writing is top-notch descriptive skills that allow readers to fully visualize and experience each moment. Descriptive prose engages the senses to make settings, characters, and moments come alive. But taking your descriptive writing to the next level requires finesse and precision. Follow these tips to write rich, vivid sensory details.

Choose Strong Verbs and Adjectives

Reach for specific, impactful verbs and adjectives that convey clear sensations and qualities. “Sprinted” packs more punch than “went.” “Glistening” creates a distinct visual rather than “shiny.” Precision descriptors place readers in the scene. Avoid generic terms when more exact words exist.

Use Metaphors and Analogies

Crafting apt metaphors and smart comparisons elevates descriptions. For example: “The moonlight reflected on the water like a shining path of diamonds.” Metaphors make writing more vivid and memorable through unexpected associations.

Activate All Five Senses

The most immersive descriptions incorporate more than just the visual. Include details of smells, sounds, tastes, and textures. Allow readers to fully experience a scene through the protagonist’s senses. Sensory variety paints a multilayered mental picture.

Show, Don’t Just Tell

Allow well-chosen descriptors to demonstrate a quality rather than bluntly stating it. For example, show a character’s exhaustion through drooping eyes and sluggish gestures rather than outright saying “she was tired.” This makes the writing more dynamic.

Use Descriptors Judiciously

Adverb and adjective overload leeches power from writing. Be selective about which details to include. Crafting one or two vivid descriptors is better than cramming in generic adjectives. Precision beats quantity.

Polishing your descriptive writing skills takes time, but applying these tips will take your prose to the next level. Immerse readers by engaging their senses and abilities to visualize each moment. Vivid details invite them into the story’s world. What descriptive writing tactics do you find most effective? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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How to Write 100,000 Words in a Month

100k Words in 31 days requires: ~3,226 words a day, every day. If you do that for a year, you’ve written 1,200,000 words.

So how do you plan for success, to hit 100k words in a single month?

The three factors are: Writing Speed, Writing Time, and Planning.

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WRITING SPEED

To maintain a decent speed, I know ahead of time what scenes I am writing and what needs to happen. I use a timer to do nothing but focus on writing for 30-minute bursts, so I do my best to stay in the zone and let the words spill and tell the story.

What to do: Find your writing speed. Write solidly for a length of time (ex. 30-minute bursts) and figure out how many words you are actually writing per hour. That will be important to decide how much time you need to set aside every day to write.

WRITING TIME

More than speed, writing time is likely the most influential factor to word count. You have to have the time to set aside to achieve an average of over 3,000 words. Let’s assume you can really focus and get out 1,000 words in half an hour. 90 minutes is going to be almost in the zone. If you write slower, you’re looking at two.

If you do happen to write slower than this, daily writing is daily practice. You will get faster. If you measure your speed daily, you’ll see it.

Dedicating your time to writing might feel like a chore at times, but the payoff makes it all worthwhile. Think of what you can do with 100,000 words in a month as a writer: 1-2 novels, OR 5 20k novellas (perfect for serials), OR 10 10k short stories, AND for you short-short story writers, a potential of 20 5k length stories.

What to do: Take your writing speed and multiply it by the number of days in the month to see what you will accomplish. If you aren’t going to write every day, take that into account. Knowing what you can accomplish if you make the time is a great motivator to getting started on those days you don’t want to. But we’re chasing 100k words, right? You need to average that 3,200 words a day. How long is that going to take you?

PLANNING

I put planning last, though you need to know your projects before you even start. I have it last because Writing Speed and Time decide what you’re going to accomplish for the month. Planning also takes into account your goals. Use loose outlines to track your scenes. Keep a list of projects that you want to release within a certain time frame and a list of potential projects for the future.

What to do: Take a look at how many words you think you will write and decide what you’re going to write for the month, what you want to accomplish. This will help you maintain your momentum after each project. Always be ready to move on to the next book.

 

Note: This is a rewrite of an older blog post, making it less about my own writing and more about technique).

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My Favorite Point of Views

MY FAVORITE POINT OF VIEWS

My favorite Point of Views are First Person Present Tense, First Person Past Tense, Third Person Present Tense.

For First Person Present Tense, I’d originally used this POV because I thought it read better with romances that I was writing under a pen name.  I find it works very well for getting inside the head of one or two individuals through the entire book, allowing the reader to experience the emotions simultaneously with the character. I haven’t used this POV for any of my G.S. Wright novels.

First Person Past Tense at times reads like a journal. You’re hearing the story from the character in their own words. It contains all of their biases and emotions. It drops the reader into the story, while being therapeutic for the character. The character only knows the story from their perspective. I used this POV for Soul Sister, and it remains my most emotionally charged book to date. I’m revisiting this POV for the book I’m writing this week.

Third Person Present Tense is another POV that I enjoy using for books with a more romance-oriented twist. The book I’ve been working on for the past few months, and nearing release, is in this POV. I chose it because the book was originally more of a Romance in nature, but eventually also gravitated into the Horror genre. It takes the reader along for the ride with characters in real time, like watching the event unfold. I found it works equally well whether Romance or Horror.

Though in the past I used Third Person Past Tense, I’ve found myself drifting away from it. All of my older titles, Broken Things, the Hungry Gods series, the Apocalypse Witch trilogy, and the Spilling Blood Serial all fall into this POV. In the future, I am currently planning to use it less. It’s where I started, it tells a good story, but I find for me the other three POV’s work better for my voice, and what I want my story to sound like.

I’m not talking about the other POV’s. I don’t use them.

When you’re not 100% comfortable with your writing, when you find your tense shifting within your book (past and present tense jumping back and forth), pay attention to what your story is trying to tell you. You might find that you think you want to write in one POV, but the story wants to be told in another.

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