USING YOUR LOCAL WRITERS GROUP TO ADVANTAGE…

Your local writers group has already used you…”ha-ha, made you join didn’t we?” So why not use it - to the fullest?  It’s not just a place to socialize, it’s a way to glom onto the tools and techniques that will improve anything you write.

I don’t care how far along you are in the craft of writing, there are lessons to be learned and relearned. No one’s writing is that sanctified that it can’t benefit from your local group’s collective critical eye.

For instance: punctuation - are you really sure you are using those devlish little marks correctly? Get out your STRUNK AND WHITE and review it. Then listen to what the group members have to say about the last piece of work you’ve presented. Who’s right? Maybe they’ve come up with a sharper app. of the rules.

And, oh yeah: structure. Ouch!… So many presentations have I heard all muddied up with run-on ideas, non-sequitors, and just plan nonsense. I’m talking about CLARITY. Is the scene set clearly? Does the reader instantly recognize what is happening and who it is happening to? Think filmic - if it were a movie, what would it look and sound like? Think in scenes; each scene being a little slice of movement toward an ordered, ULTIMATE objective.

OBJECTIVE: Each scene then, should have a REASON for existing. Why does the reader need to see this scene? The characters in it? Do you need more than two characters in a scene? Sure, you might have forty people in a scene - if they are relegated quietly to the background as scenery. But, even so,  only a few key characters (and the fewer the better) will be up front talking, arguing, or conducting the mayhem.

KISS rules: Keep-It-Simple-Stupid! Have you got six characters trying to converse all at once? Get rid of them and pare it down to two, or three at the most. Amazing how it will clarify what you are presenting to the group. Have you got too much going on in one scene? Cut it down until exactly what is happening becomes CRYSTAL CLEAR to your group readers. You can’t get applause for your work, after reading it out loud, if the group has been distracted in a struggle to understand it.

POV: Point of View. Pay some real attention to who you are focusing your readers on, and how. Is this a first-person narrative all the way through? Or will you, perhaps, have an omniscient narrrator setting scenes - then allowing the main characters, in turn, to present the various scenes from their personal POV? Are you using so-called “FLY ON THE WALL” technique, where the entire scene is described as though you were there, overhearing the dialogue and at the same time describing what you see happening as the scene progresses. If you haven’t deeply studied POV, you must do so. It’s vital to the  presentation of your writing.

Don’t confuse POV with VOICE. Voice is the rather ephemeral thing that creeps into your writing and identifies all that is on your page as YOURS alone. When you read Hemingway, then pick up a work by Mark Twain, you know you have been affected in two different ways by two very different gifted writers, each stamped with their own VOICE.

I’ve noticed that in the effort of trying to decipher just what it is that’s wrong with someone else’s piece, after it has been presented before the group, I have become more easily able to spot similar flaws in my own work - work I’d thought to be quite perfect…but not so! Weekly exposure to the work of others, good or bad, automatically sharpens one’s own work.

Frankly, I think 90% of the confused writing I see presented is haunted by a lack of structural CLARITY - jumbled scenes, overpopulated with too many diffuse characters - confusion as to what is being presented, relative to where the story seems to be headed.

Try this…

PROBLEM: What’s bugging these characters?

PURPOSE: What methods are they using to solve the problem?

CONFLICT: What or who is blocking their exertions?

GOAL: Exactly what are they trying to accomplish?

If you have all of the above firmly in mind, BEFORE you start to write your scene, it’s absolutely amazing how ordered your writing becomes. Coming up with the right answers to these four headings, in terms of the writing at hand, will require some strenuous thinking on your part. But if you constantly use the format above, you’ll find that a lot of your writing problems will vanish.