writeworld:

writeworld:

Anonymous asked: I feel very frustrated because I feel that I have forgotten how to write a story. My mind is full of ideas but I don’t know how to put them on paper and this makes me feel very angry with myself. Sometimes, I think that I have read so much advice that I am confused. Right now, I’m just writing character profiles. But I want to write stories, but I can’t. What do you guys recommend that I should do?

I don’t think we’ve addressed your particular predicament yet, so I’m going to do that now.

Listen, this is normal. What you are feeling, this confusion and sense of being overwhelmed, it’s completely normal.

Try this:

• Walk around with a notebook or a few scraps of paper tomorrow and jot down ideas in your free time. Try to keep your ideas small, like a sentence or even just a phrase. “Johnny finds a secret door.” “Sanga won’t do her chores.“ 
• Mind map. Write down those little fragments of ideas and, if one strikes your fancy, circle it and mind map it while the idea is still fresh in your head. Again, try to keep your ideas in phrase-to-single-sentence format.
• Take your ideas and your mind maps and write little scenes. Maybe they are just clips of dialogue back and forth. Whatever you like. Write out fragments of the story now instead of fragments of the idea. Keep it short (or not).
• Expand. What happens between those little fragmented scenes? Maybe more little fragmented scenes, maybe chapters of story. Don’t think about it too much, just let the words flow. You don’t have to edit at this point. Don’t overthink your style or plot or character development. Just write.
• Fill in. Everything that you haven’t written to complete the story? Yeah, write that in. You probably think it’s boring or else it might be really hard for you to write since you saved it for last. Write it anyway. No one said writing was easy.
• Edit. Go through and streamline your story. Throw out stuff that didn’t work. Break up your action with exposition and vice versa (unless you don’t want to). Insert scenes or characters or plot points for clarity.
• Proceed to next story. I don’t know what you want to do with the one you’ve just finished, but you do whatever you’re going to do with that one then move on to planning the next idea.

That’s a basic writing process. If that doesn’t work, let me know where you got stuck and we’ll go from there.

Some other tricks that I think might help:

• Instead of trying to come up with some awesome beginning, just write "Once upon a time” and start somewhere. Literally anywhere will do.
  • “Once upon a time there was a coffee cup named China who was lactose intolerant.”
  • “Once upon a time they were fighting and he punched her in the face.”
  • “Once upon a time no one liked Garson Homily because his parents were weird.”

  The cool part about “Once upon a time” is that you can put it in front of any idea just to start writing that idea. It removes the pressure, the necessity to begin a sentence, because by the time you finish typing it you’re already four words in. And you can delete it later! I use it all the time when my fingers are stuck just hovering over my keyboard.

• In our article This Is a Towel: Beginning and Developing Plot, we talk about three ideas (the first three under the link list) to expand plot. You mentioned that you write character profiles, so you’ve probably got characters in mind. Use these quick and dirty tips to come up with plot for those characters.
• Writing well means writing often. In Lift Yourself from a Writing Depression, we list some methods for just developing the habit of writing every day. For you, it may be to try to write something in a narrative format every day. Writing is not like riding a bike. Once you learn what works for you, you can still fall out of practice, so it’s important to write often. Very few writers can get away with long periods of time away from pen and paper. Write a story or a piece of a story every single day whether you feel like it or not. Make yourself contribute or complete a narrative. Write drabbles. Work on your saga of Fred the Unicorn. Whatever. Just write.

Thank you for your question! Please don’t hesitate to shoot us another message. I hope some of this helped!

-C

Do you have a writing process? What is your method for writing stories?

writeworld:

Anonymous asked: “What would be the best way to write a character who develops PTSD? She was abducted for a couple of weeks, and I thought it’d make the story more realistic. She’s a pretty strong character, but I’m also stuck with how her colleagues, especially one who’s particularly close to her, could help her.

This is a very good question. Writing a character with a psychological disorder can be confusing and difficult at first, it is definitely not impossible.  

A tip you often hear is, “Write what you know.“ That’s great, but sometimes you want to write something that you don’t know. Rather than producing a very inaccurate/unrealistic depiction of a serious mental disorder, it’s best to learn everything you possibly can about it. That said, I’m glad you asked!

I want to give you something to chew on:

Fiction is the means by which we can escape reality by immersing ourselves in it.  

You are taking on the task of creating a character who develops a very human disorder, because you want it to be true-to-life, to be realistic. Great! Realism is a worthy aspiration. I’d be worried if a character who was abducted for two weeks showed absolutely no signs of damage from the experience.

The first thing I would encourage every writer to do—no matter what kind of character you are creating—is research. Always, always, research. We have an article pertaining to writing mental disorders. Hopefully that can answer some parts of the question, so once you’ve read that, proceed (or ignore us and proceed anyway)!

In this article, we will try to examine writing PTSD specifically, starting with how to research psychological disorders. Yes, that was plural. It is possible for a person to have more than one psychological disorder after experiencing a trauma. That is why it is important to brush up on a variety of disorders related to PTSD. You want to pinpoint the character’s symptoms so you can best depict her experience with the disorder.

• Find someone qualified. Do you know anyone (family/friend/acquaintance) who is a qualified social worker/therapist/counselor/psychologist? If you do, reach out to them. They not only possess experience in working with people who have psychological disorders, they can fact-check the realism of your story.
• Find someone who lived/lives it. If you know someone who is willing to talk about his or her PTSD, that person would be a terrific resource for you. Be very careful, however, of the way that you approach the treatment of a person’s mental disorder, especially in a dialogue face-to-face. Prepare specific questions, vet these questions through another person who knows your resource personally to be sure that they don’t cross a line, and remember that, while you strive to write something fictional, your resource actually lived/lives their trauma. Behave yourself and be respectful.
• Google! Search terms like “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” “Mental disorders,” and “Survivors of assault”. It’s important to learn about the disorder itself, and the people who actually experience(d) it. There are support groups online. We don’t want to say infiltrate them, but there are good resources and first-hand accounts of experiences with it that may benefit your writing.  
• Read up. Books covering a wide range of mental disorders can be found in most any book store–the most famous being the DMS-IV-TR. Self-help books are also a valuable place to look, although PTSD is best when treated with help from a trained professional. See also: Every TV show that brings in counselors after a traumatic event occurs. Not everything you see how TV is accurate, but that part is at least worth watching.

Researching the disorders in question will allow you to consider your character more realistically, which leads to more realistic writing.

Secondly, you need to research your character. That must sound odd, because unless this is a fan fiction piece and you can look up a backstory or biography, your character is original, a.k.a. created by you. Trust me, you’ve got plenty to do.

Questions to ask yourself on this front:

• What was the character like before the abduction? Was she very outgoing and gregarious? Shy and reserved? Understanding your character is key in terms of understanding how she will react to trauma.
  Let’s take a look at the meaning of psychological trauma, as explained by Dr. Kathleen Young:

  Psychological trauma is the result of extraordinarily stressful events that shatter your sense of security and result in you feeling helpless, alone and vulnerable in a dangerous world. (x)

  This is important because experiencing trauma in any case causes a change in the victim. It can impede the emotional development in adolescents, and snap an adult into a depressed, sometimes child-like state. You want to show that change in the character. Perhaps, your character is facing the hardships of piecing herself back together in the aftermath of the abduction – being “strong” as she was, the experience will undoubtedly be a blow to her perception of herself.

• What’s the character like after the abduction? How do you show these changes? In many cases, the effects are obvious (anxiety, nightmares, etc.) There will be more subtle differences as well. For example:

  Eva Mendez Kor, a Holocaust survivor (check out the documentary, Forgiving Dr. Mengele.) She experienced PTSD after her experiences in Dr. Mengele’s despicable twin research endeavors. Friends and family notice long-term effects from the trauma she sustained at Aushwitz. These include: a heightened sense of resourcefulness and never leaving her plate with food left on it.

  So, maybe your character is more alert of her surroundings, more jumpy, very sensitive to what are called “triggers” or, things that can set off the disorder such as; yelling, being touched, hearing about abductions, hearing a phrase or term used by her abductors, etc.

Now for that close friend of your character’s. Support is very important to the recovery from a disorder like PTSD. I would encourage you to go through the same research process that I outlined for researching the disorder to find resources on what a loved one can do to help a friend coping with PTSD. 

A couple of suggestions:

• Can this person be a confidant? Maybe he/she is the first person your character really opens up to about the abduction – that’s a great way to show that there is trust in the relationship.
• Is this person silently observant? Maybe this person takes special note of the changes in her character after the abduction and they have some kind of “unspoken trust” about it, where the moment she begins to falter, the friend is at her side.
• Or, of course, whatever you think of as an alternative.

Once you are equipped with all of your shiny new knowledge about your character and PTSD, the next feasible step is to write! Implement what you learn into your story.

A few links for you on PTSD:

• Support for/Symptoms of PTSD Women and Trauma
• Women and Trauma
• Checklist/Survey for Trauma (for children, but the symptoms are largely the same)
• Symptoms of PTSD
• What Causes PTSD? 
• National Center for PTSD – Effect on Family and Friends

Thank you for your question! If you want to know anything else about writing, feel free to send us a message via our ask box!

-H