Writing Habit Archives - Stacy Lyn Jensen

Comic Books: The Second in the Write What You Love Series

a grayscale of a person reading a comic book

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Unlike screenplays, comic books have no specific format for manuscripts. There are no guidelines on how much writing makes up a ‘panel.’ When thinking about writing a comic book, you are a part of a team. If you are the writer, then there will also be an artist, possibly someone who does the lettering, etc. So, your job in comics is to write out not only the story, but what the panel is going to look like and what the characters are doing in each panel.

Comics took their formatting from screenplays. However, individual artists and writers made the format their own, using common sense rules and making the rest up as they went along. Some comic authors prefer to give their artists a lot of direction for each panel, and some do less.

Comic Book Formatting:

I found this article on comic book script formatting:

https://blambot.com/pages/comic-script-basics. It discusses how there is no standard format but also discusses what best practices look like. When writing a comic book it is best to keep in mind that there are other people that need to be able to understand what you are trying to do before you get to that final draft, so formatting is key, and readability is also important.

A couple of interesting bits from the article:

The artists need to know how the letters should look, each panel has a part dedicated to these instructions.
Every panel number is as important as every page number.
Indicate what kind of speech bubble you want in the script for each moment of dialogue.

Comic Books v. Graphic Novels

Graphic novels are similar to comics in many ways. They also have no specific format requirements for their manuscripts and follow the same idea of scripts with common sense additions because of their uniqueness.

Children’s literature and comics are similar in their ability to provide entertainment to people, no matter their ability to read. They can astound small children with the pictures, and then, as people grow, they can enjoy the richness of the narrative. Because of that shared ability I’m reminded of when I dove into children’s books and learned how publication works in that space. When submitting for publication in the children’s space, authors are only able to submit the words of their work, no illustrations. Even if you have amazing talent at illustration, the publishers have illustrators that they work with and they will choose the one that best fits the book.

I’m not going to say that it’s 100% the same with comics, but I would not be surprised. I’m sure that Marvel has a lot of artists that they work with, and even more that are just waiting for their chance, so I assume that when you submit a comic, it has to be only the script.

Something to look into next, I suppose. How to get a comic published traditionally.

Anyway, hopefully this is helpful for someone looking to get into comics.

Life is Busy: But Writing is Important

crop person reading book against blue sky

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When I was working on my bachelor’s degree, I was a creative writing emphasis in the English program. There were several types of writing that each writer had to study. It didn’t matter what you loved. You still had to study poetry, and creative non-fiction, and good old prose. Everyone in the program was going to write or had already written a novel. Everyone in the program loved to read and had strong opinions about old works. Life is busy, but writing is important.

Types of Writing

Creative Non-Fiction

Then, a lot of writers were seduced by other types of writing. This is why everyone has to take classes about different kinds of writing. Several people decided that they loved creative non-fiction. Think of a memoir, a memoir is written about a time in your own life while you are still living it. A person can jump around in time. One of the most popular memoirs, and the first, is IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote. This book is classified as creative non-fiction because sections of the book are written from the point of view of the killers. The story is true. It’s not fiction, Capote went to the jail and interviewed them to get the facts, and then he wrote the book as if he were them. Another example is Joan Didion, who was a famous creative non-fiction writer. All of her work is very moving. The point that a lot of students made is that pulling their inspiration from their life directly, instead of thinking about how to fictionalize it or hide it, made the idea of writing less stressful. When it comes to non-fiction, as long as you put “creative” in front of it, it can be okay. However, when you are using real facts, you need to make sure that you are accurate.

Poetry

Poetry got some students, but not as many as creative non-fiction. My poetry teacher loved my work. Poetry can be really satisfying because you can revise a poem 12 times and have a finished work in a day. You can write one word over and over again, and that can be a poem. Most of us learn about basic rhyme schemes in elementary school, but there are so many more. You can write a poem using first letter rhyming, or one where every word has the same middle letter. You can write a prose poem or an epic poem. It can mean nothing. It can mean everything. Poetry is very flexible that way. My teacher for this class used her own writing as an example.

Prose

Let’s talk about the kind of writing that most people go to college for. Prose. That “great American (or whatever country you’re in) Novel.” The first thing that they make you do, the first major class in the program, is literary analysis. I think that some people may get discouraged at this point. Some people get very excited here; they are learning to read closely and dive deep into a book. There are students who love to look for that second layer of meaning hidden beneath the words. Obviously, starting here is important because in order to understand the difference between a good book that has a formulaic plot and a one-dimensional character and a great book that shines in every way, one must study them. Personally, I learned so much about plotting by reading. I learned so much about what great writing looks like by studying it. Some of the first books we studied in that literary analysis class were THE GREAT GATSBY, THE TEMPEST, and several works of Edgar Allen Poe.

Anyway, any writing requires a degree of understanding what good writing looks like. But the biggest thing to understand is that editing/revision is what makes writing work. The first thing you put down, I always talk about it as the story I’m telling to myself. It may or may not make it into the final draft. But you don’t have anything to edit if you don’t write it first.

Life is busy, but writing is important.

Writing Creatively Regularly

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I was texting with my brother the other day. We were discussing our creative endeavors. He was talking about how he hasn’t felt inspired to compose a new song (I’m not sure if compose is the right word when it’s not classical). I asked him if musical prompts are a thing and told him how writing prompts have helped me. That writing creatively regularly is so important, but sometimes reading is the only thing I can get done at the end of the day.

It got me thinking, what things help to write creatively regularly? What are the best tips? Here are a few of mine that I keep coming back to when i find myself in a rut, or so tired that I can only think about reading for a few minutes before bed.

1- Fast Fiction

Just write a paragraph (250 words). It’s like when you begin exercising, you don’t want to try and do a 10k if you’ve been sitting on the couch for a year; you need to start small. Or, if you just don’t have time. You can probably write a paragraph at the end of the day.

2- Writing prompts can be your friend

Not inspired? Grab a vague enough prompt that you can go anywhere with it. There is a subreddit for writing prompts. This website has some interesting generators about plots. I haven’t tried it, but it could be fun.

3- Journaling is writing too

Don’t have any ideas? You’re still living. Think your life is boring? Well, describe what is so boring about it in detail. What did you have for breakfast and lunch? Did you go to work and talk to boring co-workers? What did you talk about? What did you do when you got home? Did you walk your dog, play with your cat, feed your fish, or take a nap? Those are all things that you did and that you can write about. These writings are all practice. If you’re new to writing, it’s good to write about anything and everything.

4-It’s okay to write ‘bad’

If you have an idea, but you’re afraid it’s too “stupid” or “bad” or “overdone” or something, write it anyway. It’s okay to write the thing. It’s okay for it to be littered with errors, and it’s okay for it to be something that you don’t want to show anyone. You still wrote it; you did it. It’s also okay to be proud that you finished it when you finish.

5- I’m afraid that AI will eat my words

Me too, friend, me too. But the monster isn’t going anywhere. So the choices are either stop writing or just deal. I’ve decided to deal.

6- Write at the same time every day

I like to write after everything is wrapped up for the day. So, the kids have done their homework, gotten bathed, dinner has been made and eaten, etc. Some people have a morning preference. I find, for myself, that having writing to look forward to is good. But if you dread the task you can front-load it.

7- It doesn’t need to be special

One of the best tips that I’ve been given is that writing doesn’t need to be special. You don’t need a huge desk in the perfect light or the perfect pen, laptop, or program. You can write with a pen that’s almost out of ink onto a coffee filter, and the words will still have impact. If you are struggling to write because you need everything “just so,” let go of the idea that writing has to happen in a perfect world because all of us are imperfect with lives that are even more so.

8- What is your best tip?

Finally, do what works for you. What is your best “writing regularly” tip? I keep on getting into and then falling out of writing. And even though I preach about how important consistency is, I struggle to maintain it myself.

The Long Way: An argument for not taking shortcuts

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I think we’ve all come across a million videos about a shortcut for better bread, or a worksheet to help you outline in ten minutes. I was thinking about this last night, and it occurred to me that no one is arguing for the long way. So, I’m gonna do it. Here you go, an argument for not taking shortcuts.

When was the last time you read an inspirational sports story? Did it talk about the athlete–who has achieved so much in their life. That they decided to call it quits every day a couple of hours early; and how they didn’t show up sometimes? Or did it talk about their shortcuts? No, these stories are always about the amazing perseverance, grit, and endurance the athlete has to reach their amazing level of success.

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Author or Hobby Writer

The long way

When you think about your writing goals, are you the kind of person that is looking for a quick fix to put a bandage on a problem for the moment? Or, are you the type of person that is looking to master your craft? The difference in these two ideas is really the difference between the author or the hobby writer.

Mindset Differences: The long way

A person with an author mindset. When faced with setbacks on their writing journey; they will for solutions. For example, if they are mentally exhausted and cannot imagine writing to their 1000 word goal. They may decrease the goal for a time. So, instead of writing 1000, they are writing 200. This may not allow for fast progress. But it will be progress.

A hobby writer may decide to stop writing for a while, or maybe they’ll see if they can find some tips and tricks to help them. But since the writing is a hobby, it’s not that big of a deal if they decide to stop for a while.

Rejection differences

When facing negative feedback, or rejection, there is going to be a difference in mindset between the author and the hobby writer as well. When receiving negative feedback, and author will take some time to process and then look back at their work to see if the thing makes the piece stronger. It’s also possible, when faced with several pieces of feedback from different sources, they may sort through them to find the ones that work best with their overall goals.

A hobby writer may find feedback to be a difficult and painful process, they may feel personally attacked or ridiculed. It is not that an author doesn’t feel these feelings. It’s simply that the author can put them aside in order to make their work stronger. The same basic things happen with rejection. The author can take it as part of the process and then move onward. The hobby writer will have a hard time with rejection, and take it as a rejection of themselves as a person.

Finishing a Draft: The Long Way

Once the author has finished a rough draft, they will put it away, and then start the revision, re-writing process after some time has passed, and they have gained some distance from the work. A hobby writer, once they have finished a draft, they may be so excited to revise that they start right away, or they may want to start querying/submitting, or they may even self-publish right away.

Everyone starts somewhere. Everyone wants to use shortcuts/has used shortcuts. The difference between a hobby writer and an author is time, experience, and mindset. It is perfectly fine to be a hobby writer. It is perfectly fine to be an author or aspiring author. My point here is that the long way around is normally the best way to get to where you want to be.

There are no shortcuts for writing and reading. Is there a time when you couldn’t hit your writing goals? What did you set them at so that they felt attainable?

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Inspiration Part 2

colorful polar lights over snowy mountain

In my last post, I talked about how I was going to talk about things that inspire me. I feel like it’s a little disingenuous to talk about those things without first talking about why it’s okay to find inspiration or look for inspiration, as long as you have your writing habit.

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First, let’s talk about times when waiting for inspiration may not be a good idea.

You have a deadline approaching.
You are in the middle of a piece of writing.
You are collaborating, and your writing partner(s) need you to write your part, so they can write their part.
Your editor/agent/publisher is waiting on your writing.

Essentially, when you have a piece that you are actively working on, you have a deadline, or you have someone that is waiting on you. You need to write, not wait for the inspiration to strike for the perfect piece of writing.

So it’s important to make sure that you have a writing habit when you have deadlines or when other people are counting on you. Because you can’t just sit around and hope to come across something that will inspire your best work in these cases. It’s always good to have the habit ingrained so that when you come to the point where you have to do it, you are already doing it anyway, so you don’t feel like it’s a huge deal to sit down and do it.

When is it okay to wait for inspiration?

You are in between projects.
You don’t have deadlines.
No one is waiting for you to write your piece.
You aren’t in the middle of anything.

In my opinion, if you just finished a draft, or you just turned something in. Go ahead and give yourself some time. Take a break. Inspiration should be something that you are constantly gathering while you are working on anything, at any time.

Tuck that inspiration away. Make a list on something. Say a movie had a great world, but it didn’t dive into an aspect, you want to know more. That’s inspiration. Write down the name of the movie. But, do NOT start a new project. Finish your current project, write to the end. Then, when you are done, go back to your list of inspirational things, and see what feels the best, what feels like the story you want to write?

If you have a list, you can go back to all the things that were inspiring to you, and you can watch them, or read them again, or look at them or whatever, and they can inspire you all over again. It’s important to allow everyday life to be inspiring, and to remember what is inspiring. But it is also important not to just sit and wait, to keep your writing habit and write every day.

So, in conclusion, it’s okay to look for inspiration when you don’t have a writing project. But it isn’t a good idea to wait around for inspiration when you have a deadline and others waiting on you. It is also very important to keep your writing habit and to write every day. So, even if you are in between writing projects, still write something.

Writing Inspiration: Folklore

One of the common pearls of wisdom about writing is to do it everyday. Another is that you aren’t supposed to wait around for inspiration. However, in my experience, writing inspiration is an important piece of the overall writing journey. And I’d like to start discussing this by talking about folklore.

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Writing Inspriation

Folklore

Folklore is something that is misunderstood. People think of folklore as the fairy or folk tales, or maybe the old wives tales that were told by the people of “long ago” and while those things can be helpful in finding some types of inspiration; I am thinking about the broader definition of folklore, the one that folklorists use today. The one that says that folklore is the expression of the body of culture shared by a particular groupd of people.

Definition

This definition means that folklore is everywhere. It can be as simple as a song that your work team plays every time a new member is added, or leaves. That is a piece of folklore for your team’s subgroup or group culutre at work. And as a writer, you can stuff that little piece of culutre away for future use in a story.

Writing Inspriation:

Folklore and the Internet

Another place rife with folklore and therefore inspiration is the internet. The internet has memes, which are folkloric, in fact, there are folklorists that study memes, meme-culture and where memes come from. You know those websites that discuss the origins of memes? Those have to have been started by folklorists, because they are fascinated–not only by internet-culture–but specifically by meme-culture. These are people who have masters degrees mind you, and they work “in the field” gathering information. Something to think about. I know I do. There are archives, in libraries gathering information on memes for future generations of academics to ponder and write papers on.

One of the internet places that I find absolutely full of inspirational, and also one that is completely folkloric, is the urban legend. There are almost too many to choose from. Typically, when these were told to one another, it was always someone’s sister’s cousin who heard the thing. But now it’s on websites where these legends begin. I want to take some time to explore the different sites, talking about the inspiration that I’ve found. And how they have inspired me and to what end.

Thank you for reading this far, I am looking forward to diving into the things thave have brought me writing inspiration lately and sharing them.

Feedback; Getting, Receiving, Believing

At the beginning of this month, I joined a group that is doing a year-long writing challenge. And, as part of this challenge, at the end of this week I am supposed to post up a chapter for feedback. I have the chapter. In fact, this exact chapter has been with a feedback group before. But, I find myself hesitant to post it.

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Feedback hesitancy Reasons

There are a couple of reasons. The first one is simply that I am a little weird about posting my novel writing attempts online. I’ve always heard that if you want to publish traditionally, that it’s a bad idea to post anything online. I think I’ll have to ask the site manager how this idea is handled. The second one is that, this is a new group of people. I haven’t been taking English classes with them, they don’t know my writing style and I don’t know theirs. I have no way of knowing what it was that they were trying to get at when I read their work, and no way to help them find a better way to find the words. How do I know how to trust their feedback? How do I know what they will do with mine?

Why give feedback

I guess the easiest way to answer these questions are to think about my own intentions when I give feedback on a piece. When I give someone feedback, I am always working from the highest idea my mind can get to for the piece. I assume that the person who wrote the piece wants it to be the best that it can be, that they have aspirations of grandeur for their piece. And, even writing that is struggling in one way or another. There is always a glimmer of a story that is trying to come out and breathe. That is where I will go when I give feedback. I find the thread of story, and I will build on the thread. I tend to ignore grammar. The reason why is because that one of my biggest weaknesses, and therefore I don’t want to correct other people’s issues.

Telescope v. Microscope

Also, when we are looking at the story in a rough form, we are using a telescope, we are going really far away to see the big picture, getting at the whole idea from far away. When you are looking through a telescope, you cannot also grab a microscope and address sentence-level issues at the same time. You always want to look at the big picture things, and then move downwards. This is relevant when we are talking about looking at writing in the rougher stages.

Strangers

The other thing that is important, is, since this feedback is going to come from people who don’t know me; I will need to keep in mind that some people just won’t understand my writing. If one person is an outlier and just doesn’t ‘get’ something, that doesn’t mean it has to change. I don’t have to take everyone’s advice. It is important to take in feedback and learn from it, and better my piece from it. But it is also important to kind of figure out what needs to stay and what has to go. A good rule of thumb is if several people are confused or bored by something, then it should be looked into. But if there is just that one person, then you don’t need to look into it, unless it bothers you as well.

Remember these things

Things to keep in mind when getting feedback from strangers: 1-they don’t know you from Adam (or Eve); so they cannot tell what you were trying to say at any given time. This is a good and a bad thing, while they may not know the best way to tell you as a person what they think you were trying to say; they will be able to tell you if they understood. 2-If the person who is giving you feedback is not doing it from a high level (think telescope, not microscope) they are doing you a disservice, if you are in the beginning stages, that is. I am not done with a rough draft, so that’s why I’m expecting a very high-level regarding feedback. I don’t expect any grammatical corrections. 3-When taking feedback from strangers, you will need to weed out the people that just didn’t get it. There will be people that, no matter how many times you hit them over the head with it, just don’t get it. That’s okay. Take their feedback with a grain of salt. Use the feedback that you see multiple times.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any feedback tips!

Horror-Tober: Horror Movie Madness

So this post does not have anything to do with books or writing AT ALL. But it is merely to “out” myself as a lover of all things Halloween and horror. Which, I suppose, shouldn’t be much of a surprise, if you’ve noticed the kinds of books I usually review or discuss. I do this thing that I like to call “Horror-tober” during which I watch a horror movie every day of the month.

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Horror-Tober

Horro Movie Watching

Last year, I was organized, and I had a calendar at the ready which had the movie for each day on it. That made things really easy, and I was able to just follow my own schedule, watch the movie I scheduled for myself, and it even made it so that my husband and I didn’t have to sit there after an exhausting day and figure out what to watch. Which is nice.

But, this year, right as the month started I caught a bug of some kind, and the bug has yet to let me completely out of its clutches. So, I have yet to get more than a vague list of different types of scary movies together and what streaming service they may or may not be located on. We have had several days when we’ve put a movie on and then changed it because we didn’t like how slowly the plot was moving, or the movie wasn’t doing what it was advertising, so, although I’ve put a movie on every day; I’ve not finished it each time.

Writing Challenge

In addition to this, I signed up for a writing challenge, where I need to make sure to record how many words I write toward my current WIP each day. That is super nice because I’ve made a lot of progress really quickly with that one step. I have had days when I haven’t written, but I am making up that time because I’m paying attention to how much I’m writing, and I am hopeful to have completed that first draft by the end of this year, which was my original goal.

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All the things

To sum up. My Horror-Tober horror movie month is going okay, I can provide anyone with a random list of movies, but I don’t have a wonderful calendar this year though, which is kind of sad. Maybe I’ll put up a final count, like these are the movies we ended up watching. That could be fun. And then I’m super excited about my progress on my draft since joining this writing challenge that requires me to record my word count at the end of the day. I guess, if you are ever wanting to join a writing challenge, but aren’t sure if it’s for you, do it, it’s like when you have to record your miles or your calories or something, you become more aware of them, and so they end up moving in the right direction.

Art from Artist: What Does it Mean to Separate the Art from the Artist, and does it Mean Anything for Writers?

Recently, the idea of separating the art from the artist has been floating around a lot. It comes up when discussing movies, there’s always another director or actor who did something awful. In the fiction novel world, there are times when authors are found to have troubling beliefs or ideas, as well.

When this happens, there’s discussion around two schools of thought on the subject. The first is to not spend any money on the works of the author. The second is: separate art from the artist. The idea is that you–as a person, can take anything from the art that is out in the world. Yes, the ideas of the person behind that creation matter, but only to an extent.

Separating the Art from the Artist

The second school of thought is the one I subscribe to. There is a reason for it, personally, I would hate it if something stupid I said online one day, some idea I had was taken the “wrong way.” Or someone read too much into something I said. And, I was labelled in some way.

If someone is asking questions and seeking understanding, then there isn’t a reason to be judgmental. You don’t have to agree with their belief system to enjoy their creation. You can support your local library instead of them by just borrowing instead of purchasing, if you don’t want them to profit off of you.

Summary

To sum up, in my opinion, it is okay to enjoy the art made by a person who has troubling ideas if it’s inspirational to you. You don’t have to agree with their belief systems in order to enjoy their creations. Take what you will from their works, and leave anything that doesn’t inspire you, behind.

Thanks for reading! What do you think?

Writing Habit, Time Management and Life

When I first decided to do a blog, I got into the habit of writing a post a day. That’s good, but then what about the writing of my current WIP? I got to the point where I was writing for my blog(s) and not doing the more creative writing that I went to school for, the writing that I find to be very important. The question became, how do you use your new writing habit, take up time management, and still have a life? I will discuss what I have done.

Writing Habit

In a previous post about habit-formation, found here: The Habit of Writing, I discuss how it’s important not to try to change everything all at once, and also how good it is to start small. I want to add to that idea and say that it’s also a good idea to prioritize.

Prioritize

I have recently learned that by trying to make sure that I’m posting every day, the more urgent–or creative–or whatever you want to call it–writing got pushed to the back burner, which is not where I want it to be. Because I knew that I wanted to be doing more writing for my novel, I had to re-think which kind of writing I was doing first.

Now, my writing life looks like 1-write AT LEAST X words for my WIP. I have an alert set to let me know when I have written enough. Then, and only then will I move on to post on one of my blogs. The next thing I have changed is to only post on one of the blogs a day. I have two of them. The first one is the actual website (this one) and the other one is a wordpress site, which I have continued to make content for even though I have a website that doesn’t have the .wordpress.com in the name. But, you know, whatever.

Time Management

The time management piece of this whole thing is that I have begun to use a calendar to show me what kind of time I have. What little pieces of time I can use throughout the day. I was hoping, when I started looking at blocking time out on a calendar, that I was less busy than I though, that isn’t exactly true, not if I want to do a good job, be the kind of employee that continues to be gainfully employed, but, at least I know now. I still end up doing writing at night mostly.

There are many ways to use the calendar method for blocking out time. You can plan to do focused work in the morning before you get busy, and I could, in theory wake up and do some writing before anyone in my house gets up. And, actually I used this method when I had only one child. My second one is a bit of an early bird and has a tendency to want to ‘help’ with everything, so that probably won’t work. But, it is a thought.

Conclusion

The ideas here are: 1-begin to block your time-out on a calendar, if you start to feel like you don’t have any time to write. Find those little pockets of time that you do have, and identify the blocks that will actually work for you to write. 2-Prioritize your writing life. If you find yourself working on several projects. Some of which are taking up a lot of time, but are not as high priority to you. Then, put the one that is the highest priority above the others. Only work on your other, lower-priority projects once you’ve reached a certain goal on the highest priority project. 3- Finally, keep your writing goals within reach. As with habit formation, make sure that you are taking baby steps before you are trying to sprint. Walk before you run, if you will.

Thank you for reading…this was my post about writing habit, time management and life. Feel free to share your tips for solving these writerly problems.