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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Off the Cuff / My Other Journal #757370 added July 28, 2012 at 3:37pm
Restrictions: None
A Twitter Mentor
For some time, I have been following a learned writer on Twitter for inspiration. I started following him--Frank Delaney--to read Ulysses with, through his weekly podcast sessions.
Frank Delaney is a writer with an Irish background and understands the Irish feeling better than I ever can on my own, and reading James Joyce by myself has always left me with the feeling that I missed something, even though I might have enjoyed the book completely.
While doing that, I came to realize that it wasn’t only reading Joyce, but it was Delaney’s in-depth look into literature and writing that made me follow him. I also enjoy this writer’s sense of humor regarding earlier writers as in this tweet. “Today, 1791, James Boswell published his Life of Dr. Johnson – with, of course, Johnson safely long dead.”
I haven’t tweeted at or bothered FD in any way and he doesn't know that I exist unless he checks his follower list, but I kept some of his advice in a word file. And some good advice it is.
Then I thought why not share a part of it in my blog, as some WdC writer may use a thought or two. Because the tips on writing are already tweeted for the whole world and there’s such a thing as retweeting, I don’t think this will be a copyright infringement.
If you wish to follow him yourself here’s his twitter page. Frank Delaney’s fiction is also sold in Amazon.
Here are a selection of Frank Delaney tips from the last two months in Twitter.
• Make your chief secondary character totally unpredictable. He/she will keep you and your novel on your toes.
• Give your protagonist your partner’s most irksome habit
• Looking for a title? Try a large old cookery book –because recipes have wonderful phrases and are often self-supporting metaphors.
• Looking for titles for your book? Try songs from decades past. Vaudeville, music-hall, operetta are rich in arresting and unusual phrases.
• People who are cheap can be more interesting than people who are not.
• "What is our most interesting emotion? The most compelling? Love? Jealousy? I'll put a bid in for remorse."
• How do your characters relate to their shoes?
• Don’t describe voices. You may have to read the audio book.
• Want to write a novel about a writer? Show us what the writer writes. It lets us into the writer’s mind – and is a shortcut into your own!
• When you describe a pair of hands, you describe the whole person.
• Take your protagonist to the doctor; you'll learn a lot.
• This is useful: List the scenes that will be most demanding to write, and schedule them for when you know you’ll be at your most rested.
• Repetition- of words, catch-phrases- reveals personality, but don't use it too often.
• Still can’t write? Begin drafting the story of your life as a biographer might. The objectivity (and the narcissism) will shake you up.
• Pace in fiction is like color in painting- disturbing if it's not right.
• It might be non-fiction, but it's still a story- so tell it.
• Looking for energy? Write a dinner scene for multiple characters and make one of them truly offensive. It’ll galvanize all the others.
• Be obsessed to uncover and read every fact that has been written on the subject.
• Great Research Sources: the archives of small-town newspapers anywhere in the world since printing began. All human life is there.
• Plot Driver: Imagine the best thing that could happen to a character you love. Write the opposite for them and enjoy the dynamic!
• Build confidence by being objective. Pretend someone else wrote your text and make yourself its kindly but rigorous critic.
• Be careful using dreams- they're often boring.
• Don't bother using your novel to slam an enemy: it'll be less readable than you think- and who cares?
• When inventing characters, give yourself the parents you've always wanted.
• Experts make great characters- Who doesn't love an expert?
• “Evil” is an anagram for “vile”-and also, for the adjective, “live.”
• Can’t find your way forward? Switch the point-of-view: e.g., write in the first person if you’re in third. It’ll loosen up everything
• Try and make us wonder what's happening to our protagonists when they're not on the page.
• Research Tip: “Never research one fact at a time: twin it with another, related fact and see how they help each other.”
• Secondary characters quite like appearing more than once.
• Make your major event happen at exactly half way; that's when the book starts turning for home.
• Make every chapter complete- and a cliffhanger.
• If there’s a fight, we have to feel the blows.
• When did you last steal from someone? And what was it? A pen? A diamond necklace? And why did you do it? Now write about it.
• Who was the last person who stole anything from you? Did you know them? If you did – recapture your feelings at the theft. Now write it.
• Who is the person you most dislike in your life? Study them and ask yourself why you dislike them. Now you have an interesting character.
• Make one of your characters very irritating – e.g., someone who only speaks in questions. Always. Never changes. Just - Questions.
• Potent Memory Dept.: What was the first food that you truly loved? If you have a meal scene, have your characters answer that question.
• Writing Tip: Take your three primary worries and give them to three characters. Watch how they address or resolve the problems.
• If your protagonist is about to tell a major lie – have the second untruth ready because he/she will need it. A lie has only one leg.
• Writing a historical novel? Choose a tangential figure – a prince’s accountant; a gunslinger’s daughter. Make theirs the worthwhile life.
• The Golden Rules: Are we (a) grabbed; (b) held; (c) rooting for someone? If we’re not – you’d better rewrite!
• Writing Tip - names of characters: If you haven’t given your protagonist the best name possible, they’ll tell you if you listen carefully.
• Writing Tip: It's all right for the characters in a novel to be optimistic or pessimistic. It's not all right for the novelist.
• Writing Tip: The simpler the style the brighter the light – but light, especially when bright, has complexity at its core.
• Writing Tip: In theory you shouldn't need italics for emphasis; your syntax and composition should do it. In practice it adds punch.
• Writing Tip: Try this: Make one chapter happen entirely inside; the next entirely outside; the third inside and outside.
• To check if a strand of your story works: Pull out the chapters of that strand: Tie them together as a single tale: See how it hangs.
• Writing tip: Lose the “-st” bit – i.e., “whilst” and “amongst” are great-grandma stuff – you’ll sound prissy.
• If you say somebody is boring – we’ll be bored, unless you amuse us with their boringness.
• Writing Tip: Suck out a difficult bit of draft and write it as a separate story. Then slide it back into the main text. Note the new energy!
• Don’t murder all your darlings – those great phrases are part of your talent.
• Short sentences generate tension; long sentences generate a mood of reflection.
• One detail – of a character or a room – is often enough.
• Make sure we have somebody to hate.
• Make us feel lonely when we’ve finished reading.
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