Writing Tip #148 - Bring Your Story to Life

While there are some stories that move along at a breakneck speed, without any gaps in time or breaks (The Hunger Games being a good example), this is not true of most stories. 

This is why it’s important to learn how to transition between the different points in your story while “filling in the blanks” about what happened between point A and point B. 

That’s not to say that you want to completely summarize the events that occurred in that space of time (though that is a possibility). What usually works best is to reveal small tidbits here and there - that’s just enough to bring a dose of reality to your story without bogging them down with details. 

For example, in Harry Potter you get this a lot as the characters take a minute here or there to talk about their homework or think about things that have happened since the last chapter. Most chapters actually take place weeks apart, until you get to the later books where things are packed in a little tighter. 

The point in all this being, unless it’s a very action-oriented plot (as is the case with THG), it actually breaks the suspension of disbelief a bit to have one thing happening right on top of another, and etc., etc. Building in these breaks and transitions, and then throwing in a few little details to remind your readers that the characters were still going about their ordinary lives when the reader wasn’t looking, help to bring your story to life.

This tip is from legit-writing-tips on Tumblr

Writing Thoughts

How do you express thoughts from a character in your story? There are different ways you could do this. You could use quotation marks, but that could be confusing to the reader since speaking is in quotation marks.....is the character thinking or speaking? Apostrophes could be used, but the most common way and the way I prefer is writing thoughts in italics. Here is an example of speaking and thinking in one paragraph of a book I am writing:

Earth calendar year 1962. Age 5.1 years: She is going to help Daddy paint the fence. “Krissy, go get the paint from the shed, here is the key,” he says. She skips down the dirt road to the shed. The door to the shed is old and worn. Daddy should paint this shed door too, she thinks to herself as she puts the key in the lock. The key goes in but will not turn.  She tries and tries again, turning and pushing the key, wiggling the doorknob and finally in frustration kicks and kicks the door. By this time, she is red-faced and angry.

All three ways are acceptable, it depends on your preference.

Teri Saya