A Little Bit of What You Need
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Bradbury Reminder
* The Novel Will Wrap Today
* A Little Bit of What You Need
* A Few Tips from James Lee Burke
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
"Look. I’m a writer. I don’t plot in advance, I just write." Michael W. Lucas
A New Short Story
"Regrets: A Primer" went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out.
This particular story is set in the Blackwell Ops world. It features a strong female POV character from a novel, but is not exerpted from the novel.
As always, if you enjoy this story, please tell Everyone. If you don't, shh! (grin)
Bradbury Reminder
Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your Bradbury Challenge story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
Remember, if you finish a story earlier in the week, you can send the info to me early too. It never hurts to avoid pushing the deadline.
The Novel Will Wrap Today
As rarely happens, I realized the novel would wrap today soon after I sat down and opened my laptop. It will feel great to have my first novel of 2025 behind me. Only 21 more to go! (grin)
I'll spell-check it, then sent it off to my first reader, then start the next novel.
A Little Bit of What You Need
If you want to be a writer, or if you are already a writer but you’d like to increase your productivity, here’s what you need:
A Character.
With a Problem.
In a Setting.
By the way, you’re fortunate to be reading this. At times when I’ve said this aloud, I’ve skewed it: “You need a character in a setting with a problem.”
Well, I suppose that could work if the setting is also another character. Or something. But you see my point. All you need are those three things: a character with a problem in a setting.
And you can go at it from any direction. If a character occurs to you, give him a problem and drop him into a setting.
Does the setting have to “fit” the character? Absolutely not.
The story might be a ton more interesting if the character does NOT fit the setting (or vice versa).
If a problem occurs to you, slap it on a character and drop him (or her) into a setting. You get the drift. Okay, so once you have that, what do you do?
Sit down and write it.
Here, want to give it a shot?
Sit down at the keyboard right now. Don’t stop to get coffee or feed the cat or check your mail or your email or your social media.
Sit down at the keyboard right now, and put your fingers on the keys, and write whatever comes.
Don’t edit anything. Don’t filter it. Don’t let the English teacher in your mind wonder whether you said it “right.”
And if you just said, "But first, I have to—"
No! Bad writer! Sit down at the keyboard right now, put your fingers on the keys, and write whatever comes.
Okay, because I like each and every one of you to one degree or another, I’m gonna help you out here.
1. Select from among these four names. Please select no more than two. (One will be your POV character.) If you don't like any of these, pick a name or two of your own:
James
Barbara
Jackson
Tammy
2. Select from among the following four problems. This time, please select no more than one.
Note that this does NOT have to be “the” problem of the story if your story takes off. This is just the problem the character has to deal with to get you started writing:
a door he/she just blocked open is closed
a water faucet is dripping until he/she goes to check and then it isn’t
he/she is set up on a blind date and arrives early to scope out the other person from outside on the sidewalk only to see his/her opposite number (maybe) doing the same thing
he/she just overheard a sibling talking about killing his/her parents
or divorcing them. Or whatever.
3. Actually, you can derive your own settings from the problems above. I think. I hope.
The challenge?
Write an opening. Should be around 400 – 500 words or so. Go shorter or longer if the story takes you there. But if the story keeps running, for goodness sake Write It!
You may write MORE than one opening if you want. If you’re really tough, you could probably get like sixty-four stories out of the little blurbs above.
Okay. Enough playing around. I just would love for you to not worry about, just write, and illustrate to yourself that you can do this.
Now, if an idea peters out when you start to write it, no biggie. Toss it and write another one. Either write the same one again (if you like it) or choose a different character, problem and setting and play again. It's a great game.
A Few Tips from James Lee Burke
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
How I Wrote a Thousand Nick Carter Novels Want some inspiration?Download and read this. I doubt you'll regret it.
Facebook Banned Me And You Could Be Next Good ol' AI is at it again. God how I hate Fear Culture.
It Isn't Always Easy Being a Writer...
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1050
Writing of Blackwell Ops 34: Solomon Payne
Day 1…… 2005 words. To date…… 2005
Day 2…… 2992 words. To date…… 4997
Day 3…… 3998 words. To date…… 8995
Day 4…… 4591 words. To date…… 13586
Day 5…… 4503 words. To date…… 18089
Day 6…… 4499 words. To date…… 22588
Day 7…… 2391 words. To date…… 24979
Day 8…… 2704 words. To date…… 27683
Day 9…… 4462 words. To date…… 32145
Day 10…. 4586 words. To date…… 36731
Fiction for January…………………… 45389
Fiction for 2025………………………. 45389
Nonfiction for January……………….. 11230
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 11230
2025 consumable words…………….. 56619
Average Fiction WPD (January)……. 4539
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 0
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………….... 104
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 271
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
The quote of the day reminds me of short writer's block I had yesterday:
"This feels like pulling teeth. I do not want to describe the room. I cannot imagine the room, it's all me shoving details onto the page. The room has no impact on the character, it just has cool stuff."
Then 5 seconds later I thought: "Do I need the character to go into the room? I can just have the other character fetch the needed item from the room?"
That helped. I was trying to force the characters to follow an outline I had in my head and that was clogging up the writing process. Also I was probably dehydrated because my thoughts become more dramatic when I'm stressed.
It's like building a fire! You need heat, fuel and oxygen. If you are missing one of those, you don't get a fire.
Fuel is the setting, Heat is the problem, Oxygen is the character! (My brain is weird today! lol But, it makes total sense to me right now.)
Not enough or the wrong kind of fuel (Setting descriptions), and it burns real fast and gone. Or it just smolders unless you can add a LOT more oxygen (the character carries the story) or heat (the problem carries the story).
Not enough oxygen (character input), and the fire fizzles and smokes. Boring, flat cardboard. (Okay, that one isn't the best metaphor)
Not enough heat, and the story is just a bunch of navel gazing. No action, no progression.
And the Critical Voice is a great fire-fighter! Dump sand or water on that fire! Take away some of that fuel! Throw a blanket on it! Or even, add way more wood, or too much oxygen, or use a blow-torch!
Now I need to go use some of this creativity on my writing, because my wood stack has been wet all week, my lighter is almost out of fluid, and there has been a really thick fog surrounding the firepit.
(Hey Harvey! See what I did there? I gave it a shot and wrote whatever came! (Okay, it wasn't a scene, it was a lecture, but it was creative writing!))