A lot of writing coaches talk about story structure and plots and inciting incidents, which is all well and good but Carrie is burnt-out this week.
Carrie: I have worked too hard and my brain is broken.
So, instead we are going to tell you what NOT to do. We are going to be the story police and harsh out the rules.
Carrie: I don’t like rules or broken brains, but let’s do this.
What Not To Do According To Conventional Wisdom Right Now
Do not start with dialogue.
This used to be super popular, but MySpace also used to be super popular. Things go out of style and it is not super popular anymore.
Here’s an example:
“I like elephants.”
“Awesome. Me too.”
“No way?”
“Actually, I am lying.”
EXAMPLE OF AWESOME
You’ve no clue who is talking, where they are or why they do or don’t like elephants and you probably don’t care. We want readers to care from the very beginning of the story.
An alarm clock buzzing.
Who even has an alarm clock anymore, actually? But no alarm clocks or cell phone alarms or whatever. Waking up is dull.
My alarm buzzed and I groaned.
“Another day, another dollar,” I said to my cat, Muffin.
Muffin hit me in the nose with her paw. She’s tired of my clichés.
Another Example of Awesome
The whole IT WAS ALL A DREAM start.
Unless this is a paranormal or fantasy where the dream is a key part of the power or the threat? Then it’s okay even if people say ‘never ever.’
Cough. You don’t want to be super invested in a story and then find out that it was all crap and not real even to the character.
Amazing thing happens. More amazing things happen. More amazing things happen for five pages. Oops. It’s all a dream.
Example of dreamy
Being dorky without meaning to.
This is when you accidentally make a super silly mistake or state something obvious in the very beginning of your story. Gasp! I know! You would never do that, right?
Spoiler alert: We all do this.
She knew she had to wear a mask in a pubic place.
Try to avoid the typos.
“I love to love you,” I think to myself.
This is an example. We all think to ourselves. Cut the ‘to myself.’
All narrative all the time.
There is no dialogue anywhere in the first ten pages of this story and instead everything is just a solid block of text in which I, the author, tells you exciting things – well at least they are exciting to me – about the story, but honestly it’s just a lot of navel gazing. Did you know that people get lint in their navels? Did you know that a lot of that lint is actually random fibers from your clothes, if you wear clothes, and dead skin, and then it gets stuck there and mixes all up together. I wonder if you care. I wonder if you care that I care. And so on.
Agh. Did you even read this example? It ruined our SEO readability score.
Writing Tip of the Pod
Don’t start off on the wrong writer foot.
Dog Tip for Life
It’s okay to start over.
SHOUT OUT
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License. Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Night Owl” by Broke For Free.
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Continue reading “Broken Brains and Where Shouldn’t You Start Your Story”