Tag Archive - Storytelling

Creative Storytelling Options for Those Who Don’t Like to Write

Today’s guest post is by Jacqui Murray.

When people hear the word “writing”, most think typing, maybe aching hands, but that’s the process. Not the product. In writing classes and seminars, experts told you to “write narratives using effective technique, pithy details, and well-structured event sequences.” Nowhere did they specify the tool to be used. Traditionally, writers accomplished these worthy goals with words, paragraphs, pages, and chapters.

But why?

Consider this scenario: You are required to draw a picture that describes the horrors of war, but you’re a lousy artist. The best you can do is stick figures and red flames. Or you feel a story nibbling at your brain, but your special needs prevent you from typing. You give up, decide you can’t write.

If you found a kernel of truth in this, take one of the free online quizzes that determine your best communication style. You might try the North Carolina State University’s Learning Style Quiz (four pages) based on Howard Gardner’s iconic Theory of Multiple Intelligences, It has become the model for mapping out learning modalities such as linguistic, hands-on, kinesthetic, math, verbal, and art. Understanding which you are informs your best communication method.

I’ll wait.

Done? Surprised your strengths are something other than keyboarding? Now check the options below and see which fits what you learned about your personal storytelling skills: Continue Reading…

The Key to Successful Storytelling Lies in Intuition

Whether you’re new at writing fiction or you’ve been at this a long time, there is a truth that may surprise you.

You have an intuition for story, something that’s been ingrained in you your whole life. And it serves you well—or it can—if you learn to listen to it and trust it.

When you first start writing fiction, you may doubt everything you write. You may second-guess whether your dialogue sounds natural or you characters are behaving believably.

Often beginning writers are so concerned with getting the words down and conveying the plot that they don’t stop to consider what their intuition is telling them.

Stop and read a paragraph you wrote out loud. Without judgment, consider how it sounds to you. Does it sound “right” or “off”? Continue Reading…

How to Put Passion into Your Writing

I’m reprinting a post I wrote years ago because, well, it bears repeating!

When you read a novel and you sense the passion behind the story, what does that look like? Do you ever start reading a book and feel it’s flat and formulaic, like the writer wrote it in his sleep? At very least, you can’t imagined he cared much for his story, or stayed up late nights writing because of the excitement coursing through his veins.

I often quote a particular line from a movie (I think it was Rich and Famous, so if you know the source and I’m wrong, please enlighten me!) that has stuck with me through my decades of novel writing: “If your writing doesn’t keep you up nights, it won’t keep anyone else up either.”

I think the highest compliments a writer can get (and the ones I love the most regarding my own novels) are when readers remark that they stayed up all night reading the writer’s novel, unable to put it down.

That’s not implying your writing should be keeping you up because you just can’t make it work or you are stuck or it’s just plain terrible. What I feel that line means is the writer is so passionate about the story he is telling that he can’t stop thinking about it, and he can’t sleep because he just has to put on the page all the wondrous words that are aching to get out. Or something like that. Continue Reading…

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