Games Writers Play – Page 3 – Scott William Carter

Games Writers Play #17: One Page a Day = One Book a Year

May 11, 2010April 23, 2010Scott William Carter

One manuscript page — a double-spaced page with 12 point font — averages out to about 250 words. Most writers, once they get moving, can write 250 words in 10-20 minutes. Here’s the other amazing fact:

One page a day = one book a year.

That’s 365 pages. Or 90,000 words. All with only twenty minutes a day.

Whenever I’ve let myself get discouraged by how long it takes to write a book, or how little time I seem to have during the day to write, I remind myself of this fact. Surely I can find 20 minutes somewhere during my day.

And heck, if you’re writing for forty minutes, you’re writing two books a year and considered incredibly proflic by most of the world.

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Games Writers Play #16: Dictionary Diving

May 4, 2010April 23, 2010Scott William Carter

Your trusty dictionary isn’t just a great resource for spelling and word definitions. It can be a tool for helping you generate new story ideas. I call this technique “Dictionary Diving.”

Here’s how it works: Get a good, thick dictionary, one of the better ones, and then close your eyes, flip through the pages, stop randomly, and choose the closest noun to your finger. Write it down. Do it a second time. Now take those two words and turn it into the first sentence of a new story. Make it provocative, the kind of sentence that raises questions and makes the reader want to know more. Then write one page to see where the story takes you.

Now, if the story doesn’t speak for you, fine, toss it aside. It was just a page. You can always do it a second time. Here’s my two words.

Ghetto
Scavenger

And just for fun, here’s my first sentence:

The ash cloud moved into the ghetto over night, and all the scavengers hid in the abandoned cars with the windows rolled up so their eyes wouldn’t sting.

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Games Writers Play #15: Heinlein’s Rules

April 27, 2010April 27, 2010Scott William Carter

Here’s some powerful rules, originally created by noted science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, which have helped lots of writers get out of their own way. The longer you’ve been doing this — and by this I mean writing aimed at professional publication — the more you realize that though writers like to complain about the brutal reality of publishing, and about those nasty gatekeepers preventing their masterpieces from reaching readers, the truth is that the biggest impediment to success for most writers is actually . . . themselves.

“Oh, I didn’t finish that story. It wasn’t any good.”

“Mail it? Why mail it? They wouldn’t want this piece. It’s not right for their magazine.”

“Yeah, I’m almost finished. I just have to do a couple more rewrites and then it’ll be perfect.”

How often have you heard yourself, or another writer you know, saying something like what’s above? Well, Robert A. Heinlein had too, which is why he laid out some guidelines for achieving success. Here they are:

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it’s sold. *

Very simple rules, but trust me, very tough to follow. Each them addresses a common pitfall — not writing, not finishing, not mailing, and giving up too easily. The 3rd rule has caused by far more outcry and disagreement than the others. Rewrite? How can I not rewrite? Isn’t that what our English teachers told us was the secret to success? Well look, each writer has to decide for themselves how to apply these rules, but you might want to give them a shot before ruling them out. If you haven’t achieved the kind of success you want as a writer, what do you have to lose?

* Hat tip, of course, to Robert A. Heinlein. Originally appeared in the 1947 essaying “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction.”

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Games Writers Play #14: Five Minute Free Write

April 20, 2010April 16, 2010Scott William Carter

If you’re like me, there’s times when you sit down at the keyboard and every idea that comes to you seems hackneyed. The well has run dry. You can’t seem to think of an original idea.

Well, therein lies the problem, this tendency that writers have that everything must be original, and that everything they write should be autographed and framed on the wall. Sometimes you have to plow through thousands of words of practice before the original idea — the one that really gets you excited — emerges.

Here’s a technique I’ve used all the time just to get the fingers moving: Set your countdown timer to five minutes and write as many words as you can in that time. Don’t stop. Don’t judge. Just keep typing until the timer goes off. Then add up the words. If you like this technique, keep a running total of how many words you’ve written at each session. *

Now, you might be thinking, well, I could just type random words, but I dare you to try it. Our minds actually want to create order out of chaos. You might be surprised at where your typing takes you. If you’re pushing yourself to write fast — remember, don’t judge, just keeping pushing, the focus is on the number of words and not on the quality — you’re out-racing the critical side of your brain, the side that censors things for being “too weird.” But when I’ve used this technique, often those “too weird” ideas are the ones I’ve been able to turn into something I had a blast writing — and usually sold too.

The worst that can happen? Even if you don’t find anything in your free write you want to use, you spent five minutes — a whopping five minutes — warming up your fingers and shaking the cobwebs out of your brain. That’s valuable all by itself.

* Note: If you use Microsoft Word, you can click on File, then Properties to get the word count of your document.

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