Writing – Page 2 – BELINDA CRAWFORD

The Worldbuilding Leviathan goes Spanish!

July 18, 2016 by Belinda Crawford

I love how many people have discovered the Worldbuilding Leviathan and I’m always quite chuffed (and just a little bit amazed) whenever someone drops me a line to tell me how useful they’ve found the template. One such person was Juan de la Cruz, who asked me if he could translate it into Spanish. I said ‘of course!’ … Read more

Skin (Hero, book 2)

October 7, 2014 by Belinda Crawford

Ok, so, I chucked out the 15k words I’d written for book 2. Again. I think this is the 4th time I’ve changed the entire plot (well, not the entire plot, just the specifics), but, trust me, this storyline is going to be way more awesome.

Writing loglines

March 4, 2014 by Belinda Crawford

Wizard of Oz logline – Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again. — Awesome, in a wrong yet funny way.

Right under ‘title’ on Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet, there’s a little box called ‘tag line’ (but should really be called ‘logline’), which, frankly, used to scare the whatsits out of me.

What’s a logline?

A logline is your short story, novel or epic fantasy saga, summarised in a single sentence. It’s your pitch, your calling card, the line you pull out whenever you’re asked what your book is about.

Why do you need one?

Because, if you’re standing in an elevator and someone says they’ll give you a million dollars if you can tell them what your book’s about in ten seconds flat, what do you say?

It had better not be ‘umm’.

Phase drafting and writing faster

February 25, 2014 by Belinda Crawford

Writing faster than greased lightning is one of the holy grails of writing, or, at least, it is in my world. The thought of being able to whip out a decent first draft in under two months makes me giddy, let alone one. While there are many methods that can help you do that, phase drafting is the one that works for me.

At it’s most basic, phase drafting is the step between your outline (if you have one) and your first draft. If you’re a pantser, it’s like outlining without actually outlining and if you’re a plotter, it’s a way to test drive your plot, fill in holes and follow any interesting tangents that come along. For a more comprehensive description, read ‘It’s Just a Phase’.

Note: the Self-Publishing Podcast team uses the same method, but with a different name, which they explain in episode 64 of their podcast. They’ve also provided a sample document, which is well worth the download.

Read more

Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet and Scrivener

February 18, 2014 by Belinda Crawford

A screenshot of my novel 'Crash' plotted with a beat sheet and Scrivener. — I love the beat sheet’s word count per beat.

About the same time I revisted the BS2, Jami Gold posted an excellent article about using beat sheets with Scrivener. What I liked most about the article was the idea of using the target word count for individual chapters and scenes to lay out the beats.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to word counts, I find big numbers like 100k pretty intimidating. One of the beauties of the beat sheet is that it breaks down these numbers into manageable chunks. For a 100k-word novel, however, some of those chunks are still 25k words, so I took the idea one step further, with Scrivener.

Advice for writers staring out

February 11, 2014 by Belinda Crawford

I recently received an email from a writer who’s just starting out, and they wanted to know if I could give them any advice. It’s the first time anyone has asked me for writing advice, and I was very flattered.

Since my first full-length work isn’t quite finished, I wasn’t sure how much advice I could offer. Then I thought back on what I’ve found the most difficult thing about writing and what’s helped me.

In my experience, writing a novel is hard. It’s hard, not because of the technical aspects of it, but because of all of the self-doubts that crop up along the way. You’ll probably find yourself thinking things like ‘I’m a cruddy writer’, ’this book is stupid’ and ‘I’m never, ever going to finish’, the sorts of things that totally discouraging you from writing. That’s why you need to be persistent, to keep writing despite the self-doubts, and stubborn, for when persistence fails you.

Blake Synder's Beat Sheet, with template

January 27, 2014 by Belinda Crawford

Cover of Save the Cat by Blake Snyder — If you want to understand how the beat sheet works, check out this book.

Best for those outling a new work.

What’s awesome about it

The word count for each beat

What’s not-so-awesome

It’s daunting, especially when your manuscript is half-written
No capacity to outline subplots

The awesome

When I first came across Blake Synder’s Beat Sheet (BS2), I was half-way through the manuscript for Hero and the word count for each beat made me to blanch. The idea of trying to shoehorn my (at that point in time) pantsed story into all of those little boxes (opening image, catalyst, black moment) with their prescribed word counts, was more than my brain could take, but when I went back to the BS2, a new story in mind, they appeared as godsends.

A world-building template for when you're on the go

September 21, 2013 by Belinda Crawford

World-building on my iPad — Just whip out the iPad and get world-building, while you wait for you morning hot chocolate.

Patricia C. Wrede’s Fantasy World-building questions are great, and the World-building Leviathan is equally awesome, but there are times when they just don’t hit the spot. Like, when you’re halfway (or more) into your novel and you need to sort out what a battle mage can do that an illusionist can’t.

Sure, you can jot down a few notes and whack them into a notebook, but if, like me, you can’t stand the thought of not being organised, something a little more structured is in order.

Normally, I’d turn to Scrivener, but, until the iPad version comes out, it doesn’t work so well on-the-go. Yes, you can sync your files to an external folder and edit them on the iPad (which works great for writing), but whatever file structure you’ve created in Scrivener is lost, and when I’m world-building I need folders, and not just any folders, but nested folders and lots of them.

And so, I set out to make myself a template in which I could make random notes, while still being organised, and that I could use just as easily from my laptop as my iPad.

First Draft in 30 Days – The Wiesner method

October 11, 2017August 24, 2013 by Belinda Crawford

The cover of First Draft in 30 Days by Karen Wiesner — That’s one seductive title.

When a book has a title like First Draft in 30 Days, it can be hard to pass up. If it’s sitting on the shelf at your local library, passing it up is practically impossible, which is why I picked Karen Wiesner’s book.

The idea that I could write a first draft, or in Wiesner’s case, an incredibly detailed outline (which she equates to a first draft), is seductive. So far, it hasn’t happened yet (mostly, because I’m currently writing the second draft of another work) but the dream remains.

Battling personal demons with a notebook

August 10, 2013 by Belinda Crawford

My notebook, where I excise my personal demons, turned to the page that reads 'trust your gut'. — The battleground, where I wage war against my personal demons.

Determining your writing process isn’t just about brainstorming and planning, it’s also about conquering the personal demons that are holding you back.

For me, writing has been as much about personal growth as it has been about learning the correct use of the semi-colon. It’s hard and scary, but in the long run, it’s more than worth it.

More than with your writing process, you need to find your own way to deal with the things that hold you back. Here’s how I’m dealing with one of mine.