Games Writers Play – Page 6 – Scott William Carter

Games Writers Play #5: Title Mash-Up

February 16, 2010January 21, 2010Scott William Carter

So far, I’ve been focusing mostly on ways to boost your productivity. Well, all that productivity begs the question: How do you keep coming up with ideas? Most serious writers learn very quickly that story ideas are a dime a dozen — they can literally come from anywhere. It’s what you do with those ideas that matters.

That said, having a bag of tricks you can use to come up with story ideas on demand is immensely helpful. The Title Mash-Up is a good one.

Here’s how it works in essence: Take parts of two titles of two stories and combine them into a new title, then write a new story about it.

That’s it. Take a couple anthologies from your bookshelf and type up a list of all the titles. Or, better yet, go to Amazon.com and do the same with anthologies you haven’t read — easier not to be tethered to the author’s original ideas when you do so. Then start copying and pasting a list of new titles. This works best with longer titles, ones that have conjunctions (“and,” “or,” etc.). Pick one and start writing.

I’ve used this one a number of times. I published a story in Asimov’s a couple years ago called “The Tiger in the Garden.” I’ve since forgotten the original titles I used, but I know that I used this game to get it, combining “The Tiger” and “in the Garden.”

The great thing? No two writers will write the same story. You might look at that title and think fantasy or a children’s story; I turned it into a science fiction tale about a terrorist computer hacker in hiding on a small backwater world, a man whose handle was “The Tiger.” Now he’s suffering a debilitating mental illness that’s crumbled his once brilliant mind so that he’s only a shadow of his former self. His only joy now? Working in his garden.

See how it works? The title is just a touchstone to get you thinking; to get you to ask questions. It’s a starting point, nothing more. Try it out.

(Hat tip to Dean Wesley Smith)

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Games Writers Play #4: Just Finish It

February 9, 2010January 21, 2010Scott William Carter

Everybody knows that old Nike slogan, right? Just do it. For the sake of writing, I’ve taken the liberty of modifying it slightly to “Just Finish It.”

In practice, it translates this way: No matter how you feel about the project at hand, you must finish it.

A lot of writers, especially in the beginning, suffer from what I’d term APS — Abandoned Project Syndrome. Novels, stories, articles, poems are all started with great passion, but somewhere along the way that passion dissipates. Maybe you don’t think that original idea was so good after all. Maybe it seems like more work than you anticipated. Whatever the reason, this is very common, and that’s when you have to push through those roadblocks and finish it anyway.

Most writers are the worst judges of their own work. It’s true. So whether you think that story or novel sucks or not is irrelvant. What is relevant is that it’s not a story or novel or essay or haiku unless it’s finished. If it’s not finished, it’s nothing. It can’t be sold.

If you’re starting out, here’s the real problem with abandoning projects halfway through: You never learn how to finish. I mean this in two ways. One, you never learn how to write the conclusion to your story — it’s like trying to learn how to play the piano while skipping half the keys. And two, you’re not learning the mental skills of seeing a project to its completion.

There’s also another benefit to finishing what you started: Most people receive a great boost from finishing a project, a boost that can propel them right into the next project. If you don’t finish, you don’t get the boost.

So finish what you start, whether you like it or not. In the long run, it’s doubtful you’ll be able to look back and know which projects you loved writing and which ones you hated –and even if you do it won’t matter because few writers can judge their work accurately.

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Games Writers Play #3: Track Your Word Counts

February 2, 2010February 2, 2010Scott William Carter

I learned early on that if I didn’t mark down, in black and white, how much I was actually writing, then it was very easy to lie to myself about my productivity. Oh, sure, I’d tell myself, I’ve missed a few days here and there, but overall I’ve been pretty good at cranking out the copy. The reality, however, was that it was easy to overestimate my word counts and underestimate how many days I was missing.

So what I do is use what I call a “Writing Productivity” spreadsheet. I use Microsoft Excel, but you could even do it by hand if you prefer. At a minimum, you’ll want columns for your daily word count, a monthly running total, an annual running total, and an area to jot a few notes about what you were writing. (Those notes can come in handy later, believe me, when you want some idea on what you were working on when, or how long it took you to finish a particular project.) I use Excel to calculate the results automatically, but you could use a trusty calculator as you go along too.

Tracking your word counts will help you in a number of ways:

It helps you see that you’re treating your craft seriously.
It’s another way to build momentum.
It encourages you to focus on something you can control (your productivity) rather than on factors outside your control (publication)

Here’s a link to the spreadsheet I’ve been using for the last couple years (minus my own word counts, of course). It’s pretty much good to go, though having a working understanding of Microsoft Excel is probably helpful.

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Games Writers Play #2: 25 Words a Day

January 26, 2010January 21, 2010Scott William Carter

Since starting with 500 words may seem like too much for some writers, here’s a different approach. I can’t remember where I heard this particular game, though I know I’ve heard it used by a number of successful authors. It’s really quite simple:

You just have to write 25 words a day.

That’s it. That’s your quota. If you hit 25 words, then you give yourself permission to quit. I reached that in the first paragraph, so you can see how ridiculously easy it is. And that’s the point.

See, most of the battle of overcoming our natural resistance as human beings to doing anything that requires discipline is just getting our butts in the chair. Once your butt is in the chair, the word processor is fired up, and the first couple words are typed, you’re already well on your way. Most of the time, you’ll actually find it hard to stop at just 25 words.

But not always. Maybe you’re down with the flu, maybe you’re out late partying with Jay-Z, or maybe the creativity center of your brain is just coming up empty, and if that’s the case, give yourself permission to stop at 25 words.

The key is keeping a streak alive. Creating momentum is one of the most powerful ways to boost your productivity. Once you’ve got a streak of even a few weeks going, you’ll find you don’t want to miss. Try it out. You might be amazed after a couple weeks how the pages have added up. It’s also a great game when you find yourself suffering from a long dry spell. Because no matter how bad your writer’s block is, you can always write a couple sentences, right?

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