Weekly Rants: October 17, 2012

Greetings Fellow Readers! Welcome to another of weekly ranting. Are you enjoying 'Arcana Magi Memorial Vol. 3'? Good... good... Well I got one quick thing to talk about so let's get started.


-The Writer's Thoughts-

'Using ***'

Many of you may have noticed in recent works and those published on Kindle that I am using *** in between paragraphs creating a separation. Well this was born out of posting stories on Fictionaut. You see one of the problems I had writing there is that I write very big stories, not very short stories. You may have noticed the Flash Fiction set at around 500 to 700 words is normal practice there. It's not exactly my style because I like to write, a lot. What ended up happening was that writings would come off as an overwhelming wall of text with no page breaks to it. So as I tried to figure a way to make things easier, I ended up using this *** in between paragraphs. Eventually the web designers of Fictionaut made *** automatically separate the text further, which was a good thing.

So what does this have to with writing?

Well I learned that I could actually make my writing stronger using *** to separate scenes within a chapter. It's now becoming a standard form of writing for me. You see each chapter is now broken up into scenes where I can focus on 1 setting, play it out with beginning, middle and end, then use *** to separate the paragraphs and go into another scene. Each scene is like a mini-story within the story itself. It's self contained, creates pacing, and gives the reader and ease to take their time and take a break. Each scene will vary in length though I try to keep them at a one page minimum to allow development and growth of both story and character. I really like this method I am doing because it also eases my mind when I want to type and not feel blocked or stunted when I try to write.

Also it make it easy to change scenes between characters and be in other characters point of view. Their thoughts and actions added to the over all situation.

Keep in mind that this 'Scene Writing Method' has to do something. Something has to be happening in this scene and not be irrelevant to story. Their must be a purpose and not padded. I also feel it shouldn't serve as a platform to creating a centralize and separate B Plot irrelevant to the story. Unlike Screenplays, there are no time constraints, and you could fully flesh out the stories main plot, and its relevant sub-plot without skipping a beat.

I look forward to expanding this technique and make my stories more exciting and enjoyable for all readers out there.

So this concludes my latest rant. I thank you all for listening. Please join me on Facebook at 'The Written Works of H-M Brown'. The link is right there in the sidebar at the bottom where you can share your thoughts and post up up your comments.

Until next time...

See ya!