I’m always reading, researching, and learning new things. Some may be implemented in a future story. Sometimes I take a deep dive, while sometimes I only look up enough to have a character talk about it or do something related to it and not make it sound like I’m relying on memories or what others have told me.
I did a lot of researching about various locations around the U.S. when I worked for a blog writing company that wrote blogs and website content for businesses all over the country. I can write about these activities and places like I’ve been there before, or even as if I live there and do the activities all the time.
I know more about LED lighting than I care to admit. I know just as much about architecture and construction as my husband who has been in the business for coming up on 30 years now. So when you read a character who’s a construction site foreman or an architect, know that I know everything, and exactly, what that person’s job entails, even if all you read on the page is the architect meeting with a client to go over plans. If there’s dialogue? That dialogue is backed by actual vocabulary and discussions had in the architecture and construction industry.
Since my upcoming debut is a murder mystery, which utilizes a gun sometimes, I briefly looked into things like types of guns, ammo, and the technical forensics like entrance and exit wound sizes and typical blood spatter patterns. Interesting stuff. None of which you can tell I’ve used. I hold back from giving a lesson on the mechanics of the type of gun used, and skip the scenes where the detective fires the gun to check if, indeed, the weapon found is the same weapon used in a crime.
Now, I’m diving a bit deeper into the world. When my husband’s company held their holiday gathering at a local indoor shooting range, I was unsure at first. It has been years since I’ve held, let alone fired, a gun. In fact, I’d decided before we got there that I wouldn’t. There was too much stacked against me. My excuse: I’m left-handed and everyone else, including the instructor, will likely be right-handed. There won’t be anyone to show me how to do things properly ‘backwards.’
But.
The instructor at the range wouldn’t let anyone not shoot at least a few rounds. When I tried to excuse myself this way, he wasn’t having it and encouraged me to come up, then showed me exactly how to do everything without once faltering in a way that would suggest he hasn’t worked with a lefty before.
Everything went well. I enjoyed it. It encouraged me to look into classes and learning the right way. As I looked into that, I’ve looked into the right firearm for myself. And the differences are interesting.
No, I’m not going to tell you what I’ve chosen, how much I’ve practiced and where, or anything like that.
Many writers and editors will say working with an outline is easier and (possibly, in my opinion) quicker. For these reasons, I’ve been trying to outline as much as possible. It has meant I’m not missing as much as I might if I were to just write what comes and arrange it later. It was also lauded as the best way during the writing workshop I attended at the end of last year.
But.
Having an outline doesn’t mean you have a completely easy path toward your goal. Sometimes the words get stuck between my brain and fingers that want to type them out on the page. Sometimes I just don’t have time to finish an entire scene or chapter in one sitting, and it’s somewhat difficult to sit down and finish it before moving on.
Another method taught during the workshop was writing for at least 10 minutes a day. With an outline and that 10 minutes, I am guaranteed to have a novel-length story by the end of the year.
But.
I don’t always have those 10 minutes – sometimes I have five, sometimes I have 10, sometimes even more. I also don’t want to be drafting this story for an entire year.
But.
I ran into a chapter and scene that just wouldn’t end. For a couple weeks, all I had was those 10 minutes. The first few sections of the chapter went well, I was able to pick up and carry on and finish scenes and sections. Until the final scene.
Those 10 minutes a day were not productive at all, so it seemed. I would sit to review and keep writing, only to have a few more sentences or a couple paragraphs completed. I stopped counting the minutes and started counting days. It took about two weeks to get through that last scene to the point I felt good about closing it out and moving onto the next chapter.
Why did the writing of this scene not end? I don’t know. With my outline and the words in my head, I knew exactly where I wanted it to go. Still, I just couldn’t move the action forward. It wasn’t a particularly difficult scene in terms of what was going on and the characters involved.
I’m trying not to dwell on it, because now it’s done and I don’t need to worry about it until I go through and edit before moving onto the next stage in the publishing process.
Whew.
There are other things that I’m finding actually more difficult since I’ve started down this road of planning before writing. I’ll talk about those some other time.
For now, let me know if you’ve ever experienced this – a multi-part task that you could only get done little by little yet still felt you’d made no progress.
Everyone has ideal work conditions, even creatives like writers, musicians, and artists. Some can work in complete chaos and use it as background or white noise to keep their focus on the work. Others need complete silence.
I tend to fall into the latter category. If you see my screen and one of my novels or short stories is the main window, please save the conversation for later if you can. I’m currently at the height of my creativity for the day and I really need to get these words written before I lose them. Forever.
I’ve never had the greatest memory, so if I don’t say something or write something down now it will be lost in the back of my mind until something, possibly years later, jogs the memory. You see the light bulb go on over my head as I run to my computer, or even grab my phone out of my pocket or purse to jot the item down before I forget again.
Having quiet doesn’t guarantee I’ll remember a silly comment or passing idea, but it gives me the focus I need to make sure everything I want gets down on paper. If you enter my workspace when it’s just me, the only things you’re likely to hear is the hum of my computer tower and the clicking of my mechanical keyboard as I type. That’s how I like it.
However. I share the space with my husband. A man who is vice president of a company he will one day take over and be president/CEO. He has a number of other tasks that require constant communication with other people – the ones out in the field making things happen. It means a second set of keyboard keys clicking along, with the added disturbance of periodic, yet frequent and long, phone calls or online meetings.
He talks while others listen. He listens while others talk. He speaks loudly and suddenly sometimes, startling me out of my ‘zone,’ causing me to start over to some extent. He finishes a call, only to pick up another.
Our son comes home from school. He needs help with homework, or wants to tell me about something cool that happened during his day. It’s only 12:30 p.m., so after he talks to me, he goes into the kitchen to make lunch. Cupboards and drawers open, the fridge maybe. If it needs heading up, the microwave opens, buttons that make digital noises are pressed and the hum of cooking starts, followed by the blast of beeping that alerts him the food is done. Another open and close of the door.
When they’re both gone, or asleep, there is blissful silence and I fly through page upon page, sometimes completing an entire chapter or more. Even working in a quiet, public place like a library or the lounge at my apartment complex has some bit of noise to distract. This is not to say I don’t love them and want them around, I just work better in the silence.
Another disturbance: color. We’ve lived in apartments for several years, where the ability to paint is limited, and so we keep the ‘apartment white’ or ‘apartment gray’ that exists when we move in. Which is fine. There’s no splashy or vibrant color to distract from my singular focus. There are rules about making holes in the walls, keeping us from hanging many photos or artwork. Again, fine. I’d get caught up in staring at them, processing the memory rather than focusing on work.
What’s your ideal work environment? Quiet? Noisy? Something in between? Do you work from home? Let’s talk on Facebook!
What is slang? According to Merriam-Webster, it is “an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed typically of coinages, arbitrarily changed words, and extravagant, forced, or facetious figures of speech” or “language peculiar to a particular group.”
The latter definition is what most people think of when they think of slang, and attribute it mostly to generational groups. Some slang sticks and becomes a part of language that just about everyone knows. In the 1980s, there was slang for words indicating coming and going (bounce, split, jet), yes (for sure, no doy, word), cool (awesome, bodacious, fantabulous), and more. Some of these have stuck around, while others my teenage son looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.
In the 90s, we got gems like “balller,” “rad,” and “totally tubular.” In the 2000s, we added slang related to the digital age like TTYL (talk to you later) and BRB (be right back). The 2010s brought on both new words and new meanings to existing words. “Ghost” for example, doesn’t mean a spirit from the afterlife, but when someone just disappears without another word like a text, phone call, or other communication.
Today’s slang includes things like “based,” “baddie,” “crash out,” “glow-up,” and many more.
You may know some or all of these words, or none at all. But would you want to see them in fiction, especially a story that claims to be taking place in the ‘present day’? When I first started writing my debut novel coming this summer, I considered talking to teens like my son and his friends to find out what they were saying and what it meant. Then I had second thoughts.
If I want my book and the ones that come after to stand the test of time, do I really want to add the slang of today? Not really. Unless I intend for it to be historical fiction, but I am choosing to write ‘present day’ stories that can be dropped into any time period in the future and still be readable by the people who may find my book.
All this slang I’ve spoken about will be a thing of the past no one will remember fifty years from now. To have the teens in my books talking about “rizz” or or being “baller” would definitely pull the reader out of the world. So I’ve decided not to use current or outdated slang outside of specific contexts.
What are your feelings about slang in books? Are you “here for it” or would you rather not have to keep a slang dictionary close at hand when you’re reading for fun?
