Category: Blog (Page 19 of 25)

3 Tools That Will Improve Your Writing

November 28, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Though pretty much everything we write can use a fresh paint job every now and then, we need to stop somewhere. And the better we get at writing, the less time it takes to get to that stopping point.

Fortunately for us, there are tons of tools designed to help us improve. Here are three that I’ve found especially helpful:

Hemingway App

Though I only recently discovered Hemingway App, I’ve used it extensively. In fact, I’m using it to review this blog.

Just copy your writing and paste it into the Hemingway window. The app crawls your piece for complex sentences, adverbs, phrases with simpler alternatives, and even passive voice. As an example, here’s an early draft of this blog:

hemingway-1

The highlights illustrate exactly where your readers might stumble over your writing. The app even recommends more precise words to try in place of complex ones.

And the best part? The Hemingway web app is free.

Trello

As soon as I saw this, I knew I would like Trello…

trello-1

The truth is out there.

Anyway, there’s way more to this app than just good humor. It’s free to create an account and easy to get started.

Once you’ve logged in, start by creating your boards. These might be general topics, projects you’re working on, specific mediums you write in, anything like that. Trello’s cool because it’s so open ended.

trello-2

As you can see, I’ve divided my boards up into different forms of writing. Once you’ve set yours up, click on any board to add your projects.

trello-3

Within my short fiction board, each white card represents a different story. I attach my project files to each card so I can access them at any time. Plus, doing so provides a backup of my work in case my hard drive crashes (please don’t let that happen, universe).

trello-4

The card structure also allows you to track your notes on every project, as I’ve done in the above screenshot. I find it’s the best way to keep my writing organized.

Scrivener

I’ve written about this one before, but I think it’s worth another look. Put simply, Scrivener is the perfect tool for novel writers.

I’ve written manuscripts on Microsoft Word, and though it works, I don’t think it’s the best option. With Word, it’s difficult to get an overview of your piece without scrolling through every page. If I want to change the sequence of the chapters, it’s a real pain to copy and paste thousands of words at a time. And for ancillary stuff like character bios, I have to create new documents in other windows.

In short, Word is fine, but it’s not designed for writing novels.

Scrivener is. It puts everything your novel needs in one place.

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You’ve got your main workspace in the middle and a whole lot of other stuff surrounding it. The folders on the left represent your chapters. You can divide them into smaller sections or group them within different parts. You can also add character bios, setting descriptions, and even web pages with relevant information.

When you’re ready for feedback, you can export your piece into a ton of different file formats, including Word, Pages, .pdf, .mobi, and more. That’s right—Scrivener lets you make e-books with ease. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, ask any indie author what it’s like trying to format an e-book. It’s a pain, and Scrivener makes it easy.

What Tools Do You Use?

Let me know in the comments. There are tons out there and I’m always looking for more!

Why I Use WordPress

November 14, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Want to start a blog or a website? If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, free, and customizable platform, I recommend WordPress. Here’s why:

It’s Easy to Use

If I had to code my website, I wouldn’t have a website. Which is a big reason I dig WordPress.

To be fair, there are many other platforms out there that allow you to create websites without coding knowledge. And, to be even more fair, I haven’t used any aside from WordPress. But I’m thrilled with what I’ve gotten out of the ol’ Press.

I set up this WordPress blog way back in 2011, and it was easy. I got started for free, chose a website name and then I was pretty much set. Easy stuff. I didn’t need to do much of anything to start blogging; the interface was (and still is) easy to use. I just wrote up my draft, saved it, and published when ready.

It’s Free

Blogging is essential for many writers. And saving money is essential for pretty much everybody. If you want a blog, you’d better do it on the cheap.

With WordPress, there’s no cost to get started and no charges to keep your blog going. As long as you’ve got “.wordpress.com” in your URL, you don’t need to pay anybody anything. And if you’d like to drop that part of the domain like I have, it’s only 25 bucks a year.

Don’t think I need to say much more about this one. Save your dough for something else.

It’s Customizable

I drive a Honda Element. I’ve been driving it for a few years now and I love it. It’s spacious, reliable, good in the snow, great for transporting objects of all sizes. But it’s also shaped like a shoebox. I love that car, but sometimes I wish I could change the exterior.

WordPress makes it easy to change how your site looks. There are tons of templates to choose from, most of which are free, some of which cost 60 or 70 bucks. You can also add additional pages to your website and open ecommerce platforms. All in all, it’s simple to get your site looking the way you want it to.

If you’re already on WordPress, you probably already know the wonders of using it. If not, I hope I’ve convinced you. Give it a try and see how you like it.

The Power of “What If?”

November 7, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Futuristic City

For writers, the future is fascinating.

Whether it’s Le Guin, Bradbury, or any number of other writers, one question has been at the heart of pretty much every story set in the future: “What if?”

When of my favorite “What If?” questions came from my dad: “What if every future film is made on a computer?” He thinks computer images are becoming so sophisticated that soon they’ll be indistinguishable from reality. Meaning it will eventually be far cheaper to draw an actor on a computer than to hire one. At which point, real actors will become obsolete.

I decided to explore this idea in fiction. It took a few drafts and some much needed criticism, but this idea eventually turned into a short story. It’s called “Thespian: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in Three Acts.”

This story was a lot of fun to write. It’s about a theater actor who loses his job to a computer. In this story, just as my dad predicted, technology has become so good that real actors have become obsolete. Our protagonist spends the rest of the story trying to get even with technology in general. Spoiler alert: things don’t go quite as planned.

With this piece, I wanted to inject a little satire into the whole dystopian future thing. I enjoy those stories, but I feel that most are a bit too somber. “Thespian” is more lighthearted, a little less concerned with doom and gloom and more interested in poking fun. It’s one of my favorite stories I’ve ever written, and I really enjoyed working on it.

Next time you sit down to write, try coming up with your own answer to “What if?” I think you’ll be impressed with the results.

The Value of Joining a Writing Group

October 5, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Moscow’s Sreda Literary Gathering, 1902 – Wikipedia

Just the other day, I finished a first draft of a piece I was working on and thought to myself, This is pretty darn good. I brought that piece to my writing group a week later, and after fifteen minutes of critiquing, I was reminded of this fact:

The first draft is never, ever good enough.

Little reminders like this are why writing groups are so valuable. Writing alone and never sharing anything with anyone works for some people, but if you want to write professionally, that’s not really an option. Somebody’s going to read your work, whether that be family members, beta readers, or your editor. And, as solitary as writing can be, sometimes it’s nice to get some outside input.

The writing group I’m a member of meets in Boulder every two weeks. Though we all write speculative fiction, everyone brings a differing perspective; we’ve got a pharmacist and mother of two, a couple retirees, a computer programmer, a landscaper, a guy who sells fruit in the midwest for four months out of the year so he can write for the other eight.

It’s these unique personalities that make our critique sessions so beneficial. For example, we’ve got one member who can find something to like in every piece and another member who can, without fail, pinpoint exactly what isn’t working.

Having these diverse perspectives in a writing group is key. “I liked it” is great and it makes you feel good, but it doesn’t improve your piece. Likewise, “You need to change everything because I hated it” doesn’t give you much to work with, either. The best writing groups are specific with feedback and judicious with both praise and criticism.

In addition, you’ll find that your fellow writers tend to have unique backgrounds that can help you out. The programmer in our group, for instance, challenged me on a character description in one of my stories: “The man who lived in A-2 looked like he’d just gotten home from work. Probably worked at a software company, from the look of his clothes; white and blue checkered shirt, along with a red tie and black pants.”

That’s a bit of a stereotypical description for someone in the computing field, now that I look at it. At the time I was writing it, however, I thought nothing of it. Good thing the folks in my writing group had my back!

Which brings me to my next point, the fellow writers in your group will see everything in your piece that you didn’t. They’ll see the inconsistencies that you missed, the subplot you forgot to resolve, even that killer theme that you didn’t realize you’ve woven into your narrative. It’s because writers often get too close to their work, to the point that they don’t even see the fine details anymore.

Writing groups can be hard to find, however, especially if you live in a small town. I found my group through Meetup.com, which has a whole category for writers. There’s also Codex—I’ve never used it, but I understand it’s an online community for writers. However, Codex does require that its members meet certain criteria, and it’s a specifically speculative fiction community. If you don’t meet the requirements or aren’t writing in a speculative genre, you might try a similar community like WritersCafe.

Also, Googling “writing groups” works pretty darn well, too.

So get out there, meet some fellow writers, and share your work. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Subconflict, and Lots of It

September 6, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Novels are cool, but they’re tough to write.

I’ve been working on manuscript about a rock and roll star who inexplicably rises from the dead. Think Mick Jagger meets Jesus Christ. I think the premise is interesting and I like the characters, but once I really got into it, I found that the story was slowing down. It just wasn’t interesting to me anymore.

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my story until some time later, while I was reading Lisey’s Story by Stephen King (all hail his majesty). I got about a hundred pages in and realized the key difference between King’s book and mine: he had tons of subconflict, and I didn’t.

Of course, conflict is one of the cornerstones of story. If people aren’t fighting about something, then you don’t have much of a plot. I don’t think I quite realized just how much conflict you really need to sustain a reader’s interest for three, four, or five hundred pages.

Let’s look at Lisey’s Story for a moment. As you might’ve guessed, it’s a story about Lisey Landon, wife of late author Scott Landon. As I mentioned before, there’s a lot going on in Lisey’s life. She’s still coming to terms with the loss of her husband, while also figuring out what to do with his estate. In addition, her sister Amanda is on suicide watch. Also, a mysterious whacko is after Scott’s supposed lost manuscripts. Oh, and Lisey’s also being stalked by some kind of cosmic monster which only appears in reflective surfaces.

I count five separate conflicts in there. And those are just the most prominent ones.

Managing all this conflict can be pretty tough. On the one hand, once you set up your dominos, you should probably give them a push, right?

But here’s the tricky part: oftentimes, some conflicts should go unanswered. When books resolve all their conflicts neatly, you might feel like everything was a bit too easy.

For example, at the end of Lisey’s Story (spoilers ahead!), Lisey never defeats the monster that plagued her late husband and has now set its sights on her. In fact, by the end of the book, the creature might very well still get her at any time.

That might sound like a loose knot, but it really isn’t. It works because some of the best fiction mirrors life, and in life, there are some conflicts you’re just never going to solve. (Although hopefully if you’re being stalked by a cosmic horror, you can figure that one out.) Plus, I think it’s a mistake to answer all your readers’ questions. Don’t leave them satisfied—leave them wanting more!

When it comes to conflict, the challenge is to balance resolution with open-endedness. I think you’ll like the results.

Tips for Writers on Getting Started

August 15, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

For many writers, there are few things less inspiring than a blank page.

Filling that space is one of the most difficult parts of writing. I know I’m not alone in thinking this; a lot of folks do just fine once they have something written. The issue is putting words on the page in the first place.

So what are some ways to get started? Here are some suggestions.

Don’t Think, Just Write

One of my favorite kickstarter techniques is to write anything. Promise yourself that you’re going to start with a five hundred word piece that won’t be seen or read by anyone ever again. Don’t worry about whether or not it’s good—it probably won’t be. The purpose here is not necessarily to write something great. The purpose is to warm up for the main event.

How does one discover a topic for this warmup piece? Get it from anywhere. The other morning I was drinking coffee from a mug with a turtle on it, so my story was about turtles. Just look around, pick out something you like, and roll with it. Sometimes that gives you exactly the spontaneity you need to get some words down.

Try a Writing Prompt

While I don’t especially dig these, a lot of writers find them helpful. Just type “writing prompt” into Google and see what comes up. You’ll probably find something to the effect of this: “You woke up to find you’ve switched bodies with your pet turtle, Butterton. What do you do?” Find a prompt you like and start writing.

Again, these don’t need to be exceptionally great pieces you’re coming up with. The point is that you’re writing, and that you’re doing some form of cognitive stretching. Keep it up and you’ll be ready for the heavy lifting.

Keep An Idea Notebook

Yet another way to fill the blank page is to reuse your old ideas. My mom encouraged me to do this and I think it’s brilliant. Buy a pocket-sized notebook and take notes on anything (no really, anything) that interests you. Jot down an interesting phrase you heard someone use, an idea for a story that wanders into your head, a weird news headline that would make for a great book. Whatever it is, write it down before you forget.

Revisit these ideas later. Use them as your own personal writing prompts. They’ll oftentimes give you a great starting point, and maybe, if you’re lucky, a piece you can be proud of.

Defeating the blank page is all about choosing methods that work for you. Likewise, it’s just as important to determine what doesn’t work for you. Discover your process, write, and repeat. And don’t let that empty page scare you.

SEO for Bloggers: A Crash Course, Featuring Wombats

August 1, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

So you’ve decided to start a blog about wombats. I salute you.

It’s a great blog. You’ve got some killer costume ideas for wombats, your favorite baby wombat pics, your top 10 favorite songs by The Wombats. This site is amazing.

Only problem is, you can’t seem to get anyone to visit it. It’s not that the content is poor—everyone loves wombats. It’s just that no matter how good your content is, no one will ever know about it unless they can find it. That’s where SEO comes in.

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym that stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s just a fancy term for improving your website so that it appears on the first few pages of search engine results. The better your SEO, the more likely folks are going to find your website when they search Google.

How Do I Get Started?

SEO might sound intimidating, but it’s actually pretty easy. Just use words on your website and in your posts that people are likely to search for.

In the case of your wombat blog, your top search term is probably going to be “wombat.” But what else are people searching for when they search for wombats?

As a shortcut, let’s head to Google and type your keyword into the search bar, then see what comes up.

Okay, now we’ve got some good data. Make sure to have some of these terms on the your pages, because these seem to be terms commonly associated with wombats.

Bonus: this is a great way to come up with some post ideas. For example: “Do Wombats Make Good Pets?” Or, even better, “What is Your Wombat’s Poop Telling You?”

Myth: SEO Is About Repeating the Same Words Over and Over

Allow me to digress for a moment. Once upon a time, I was fresh out of college and I was looking for a job—preferably one in writing. I found a company that defined themselves as “reputation management,” something like that. The basic idea was that clients hired them to flood the internet with positive content about the client in order to suppress negative stories that might be floating around the internet.

So yeah. Kinda shady stuff. I didn’t end up working for them.

Anyway, their SEO approach wasn’t the greatest. They were trying to get their stuff on the front page of Google results by packing each post with the client’s name and a few specific keywords repeated over and over again.

At one point, this might’ve worked—posts used to be ranked based on the number of relevant keywords they contained. But search engine sites quickly found that keyword packing generally yielded poor content. After all, one can only read the phrase “wombat poop” so many times before it becomes overwhelming.

The better approach is to find the right keywords, and then place them strategically throughout a webpage. Plus a little more. Let’s take a look at some other tips.

What Are Some of the Best Tools?

Google Trends is a great place to start. Just type in your topic and you’ll get a nifty graph that looks something like this:

This is perfect for tracking the popularity of searches throughout the year. Though nothing really jumps out from this graph, you can see that wombat Google searches were at their peak in August of 2014. That probably means this month will be a good time to post as many wombat stories as possible.

Scroll to the bottom and you’ll find related searches. This is another goldmine for keyword data—sort of like our search bar trick from before, only wombattier.

The more of these terms you include in your pages, the better your results will be. But remember: don’t force keywords into a post if they lessen the quality. SEO will help people find your content, but if they don’t like what they find, they won’t come back.

What Else?

Here are some other random SEO tips:

Use alt text on every image – As we know, Google indexes search results based on words. So if you’ve got an image with no words associated with it, Google won’t quite know what to do with it. When you upload your images, help Google out by entering alt text that describes the picture.
Link to Other Pages – Google places greater value on pages that have more links pointing to them. Obviously, you can’t force other people to link to your stuff, but if you write good content, they’re more likely to do so. Furthermore, if you link your own posts to each other, that still counts. Just don’t go overboard—at most three per post should do the trick.
Use search keywords in the title of your post – This is one of the first places Google looks when it’s indexing results for a search. It’s essential to have your top terms right there, front and center.

Try these tips and see how they work for you. Also, if you see a wombat, pet it.

There’s No Such Thing as Writing Too Much

June 27, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

A fact about writing: no one ever gets it right on the first try.

Trimming the fat is an essential part of the process. Every first draft has suboptimal word choices, hanging plotlines, bad dialogue, or even just too much writing. It’s this last one I’d like to focus on: if we know that we’re going to have to cut a scene, why even bother writing it?

Easy. Because cutting a few thousand words from a rough draft doesn’t mean the impact of those words won’t resonate in the final draft. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Pen and Paper For example, let’s say you’re writing a conversation between two characters. We’ll call them Roscoe and Winifred, because those names are fun to say.

Roscoe and Winifred decide to take a trip together, and they stop along the highway for dinner. Which reminds Winifred about this one time when she met an alien at a rest stop in Tucson. The alien informed her that an intergalactic fleet would be along on the first day of 2017, which just so happens to be the day Winifred and Roscoe are having this conversation. They pay for their meal, step outside, and boom…there’s the intergalactic alien fleet, waiting in line for milkshakes.

Success! You’ve set up a story—albeit a weird one.

But what if you extend Roscoe and Winifred’s conversation a little, just to see where it goes? Maybe Roscoe reveals that when he was a kid, he told all the other kids at school that an alien landed in his backyard, just so they would pay attention to him. He was lying, of course, but he confesses that it was nice to be popular, at least for a little while.

Is Roscoe’s confession entirely relevant to this chapter? Probably not—this scene is about Winifred and an alien landing, not Roscoe. But still, you’ve discovered something about your character that you didn’t know before: Roscoe was a shy kid longing for attention, and he was imaginative enough to manufacture it. Short Story Writer

As in this example, overwriting is a great way to flesh out supporting characters that might not get the attention your main characters get. Secondary characters are important, but there’s rarely enough space in a manuscript to lend to their backstory. So don’t be afraid to overwrite a little for the sake of supporting characters, and then cut it back later. The more you write about them, the more you’ll learn about them. And that will help them feel authentic to your readers.

Writing more than we think we need is never a waste of time. It’s like digging in the sand at a beach; there’s no telling what we’ll discover.

I mean, without Winifred and Roscoe, we’d never know that aliens like milkshakes.

New Flash Fiction Piece is Out!

June 20, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Homer

I’m very happy to say that I’ve got a new flash fiction piece published with Five on the Fifth.

As the name suggests, Five on the Fifth publishes five pieces of short fiction on the fifth day of every month. One of my favorite things about them is their flexibility. Some publications have pretty rigid guidelines for the types of stories they’ll take, but Five on the Fifth publishes all different genres, subject matter, and length.

Also, they were nice enough to publish my stuff. So as far as I’m concerned, they’re the greatest online magazine of all time.

My story is called “Wings,” and it’s a little on the creepy side. It’s only about 600 words, though I hope it still tells a complete story. It’s about a character’s obsession with flight, a creepy doctor with a thing for Mozart, and, more generally, it’s about the lengths that people will go to to get what they want.

I wrote this one a while ago, so it’s a little darker than what I like to write now. Still, I think it has a nice atmosphere and some suitably creepy moments. Also, flash fiction is cool and everyone should read more of it.

Click here to read “Wings.” It’s only 600 words, so why not give it a try?

4 Books Writers Will Love

May 23, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

For anyone who wants to become a great writer, becoming a great reader usually comes first. And if you’re going to be reading, why not read about writing?

Here are four books on writing that I think you’ll really dig.

#1: On Writing by Stephen King

Four books on writing? See what I did there? Anyway…

My girlfriend makes fun of me for talking about this book so much, but it really is brilliant. King discusses so much with relatively little space: his beginnings as a writer, his process, some of his greatest successes, some of his biggest mistakes. He even delves into personal territory, discussing the accident that nearly took his life and made him consider retiring from writing.

One of my favorite parts of this book is the honesty with which King approaches the subject. His recurring message is that not all writers are brilliant, innately gifted people. Many writers, like King himself, just work harder than everyone else. They love writing, they do it every day, and that’s what makes them special.

For writers, I think this is a great message. Essentially, King argues that hard work (with a sprinkling of luck) is going to beat raw talent, more often that not.

#2: Walking on Water by Derek Jensen

Derek Jensen is an interesting guy, and he has a lot to say about writing. Framed by his tenure as a college professor, this is a book not just about the technical aspects of writing—it’s about the purpose of writing, and what good writing should do.

However, this book is not just about writing. It’s about our education system, it’s about identity, it’s about independent thought. Walking on Water has a lot of depth to it, and for writers, I think it’s especially appealing. Unlike On Writing, it doesn’t necessarily offer specific ideas about the process. Rather, this book invites the reader to think critically about what one puts down on the page.

P.S. My favorite part is Jensen’s number one rule of writing, which is “Don’t bore the reader.” Seems like good advice.

#3: Creative Writer’s Handbook by Philip K. Jason and Allan B. Lefcowitz

Full disclosure: this book was assigned reading in college. Neither of these guys were my professors or anything, though, and this book has a lot to offer. Though maybe not as eminently readable as our previous two books, the Creative Writer’s Handbook is still a must-have.

The best part about this book is the detail. The authors go in-depth on a number of the more technical aspects of writing, including point of view, word choice, narrative, drama, mood, and dialogue. And it’s not just for fiction writers, either—there’s a section on poetry, another on creative non-fiction, and even a brief chapter on play writing.

As far as educational books for writers go, this is one of the best I’ve read.

#4: Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Maass

Full disclosure, again: I haven’t actually finished this one. But hey, even if the book ended where I am, I’d still recommend it.

Donald Maass is a literary agent in New York, so you know he knows his stuff. His insights into modern fiction are outstanding. In particular, I love the way he outlines the debate between literary fiction and genre fiction.

Essentially, Maass argues that the line between the two has been blurred, and that they both borrow characteristics from the other. Literary fiction sells the way genre fiction is supposed to, and genre fiction now emphasizes prose the way literary fiction does. And that’s just one of his many excellent points.

If you’re looking for insights into the modern publishing industry, this is a great place to start.

In Conclusion…

Read these books! And feel free to let me know if you have any favorites of your own. After all, one can never have enough books on writing.