Welcome back everybody! ((Hugz)) As I’m writing this, I’m hoping that I didn’t offend anyone or step on any toes as far as their writing process is concerned with Part One of this article. I’m writing these back to back, and it will be a short while before you guys get to see them, so my apologies if I sounded like I was singling out any kind of writing style or anything like that. I wasn’t, promise. These articles come mostly from stuff that I’ve found in my own writing over the years, and see even more clearly now that I’m going back and updating and re-editing stuff to make them as close to perfect as I can get them for publishing as ebooks on my site. (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/ if you guys wanna grab a few! Hehehe!) I’m putting my mistakes here to keep some of you from making the same missteps that I did when I was learning. That way, you guys can get a bit of an advantage, and do it a thousand times better than I ever could! Hell, a lot of you there already! So keep going, K?

That being said, we’ve still got a couple of writing cheats to cover with this article, and I’m going to pick up right where I left off last time as we get into the final four! So let’s hop right back into it, shall we?

#5- Speak No Evil - I cannot express enough how important it is for your characters to be able to talk to one another in a story. To interact in some personal way...whether it be as friends or enemies, lovers or rivals, students or mentors. It’s simply a part of creating good fiction, and I think that dialogue gives a good story a certain sparkle that can’t be accomplished with narration and well written prose alone. However, I also understand that writing dialogue can be a bit of a chore sometimes in certain situations. It can be awkward and clumsy and just feel unnatural when you’re trying to add it to your project in a believable way. BUT...sorry...can’t skip it! I know that there are going to be times when you want to, but it’s another one of those cheats that I think weakens your story immediately if you don’t at least make a sincere go at it. You know? The temptation to simply describe a great conversation that your protagonist had with their love interest or whatever...it can be useful in certain spots and in smaller scenes, but you can’t keep using that sin to shuffle past the work you need to put in to create conversations between the people you’re writing about. It very quickly becomes a disconnect between your readers and your characters. So, difficult as it may be at times, push yourself to making it a discipline when it comes to writing a story. It’s like the difference between having somebody describing a complete stranger standing on the other side of the street, and you having a conversation with a good friend.

Again, I know that this isn’t always an easy task for everybody. Some folks, writers especially, aren’t always all that ‘chatty’ or outgoing, and might have a few stumbling blocks when it comes to writing dialogue. That’s ok. But try this...

Go to a public place a few times a week. A park, the beach, a fast food restaurant, a shopping mall, a grocery store...as long as it’s public and has other people walking around. You don’t have to make any creepy introductions or approach anyone you don’t know, and you don’t have to necessarily eavesdrop on every word they say...but just go and get a feel for how people interact with one another verbally. There are no mind readers out there. They have to say what they feel and communicate out loud. Pay attention. Find the ‘flow’ in their words and see if you could possibly bring that into your stories the next time you sit down to write something. One of the big mistakes that I read in some fiction is coming from authors who feel like every word of a conversation has to lead to something in the plot of their story. Or that every question acts as bait for a predictable answer, which acts as bait for its own response. That can be one of the main problems when it comes to keeping dialogue from sounding stunted and uncomfortable. Depending on the relationship between the two characters that are talking in that particular scene, you should be able to control how comfortable or uncomfortable that conversation is going to be. Because that’s the leadership role that you’ve chosen to take, and not because you feel weird with dialogue. Find a way to learn how to make your characters talk in a natural way, making it a part of the story, but not so heavily concentrated on playing both roles and forcing it in a certain direction for the sake of your story. Practice. Everything takes practice. Just don’t run from make it a part of your story. Not only will you be cheating yourself, but you’ll be cheating your audience too. Not a good idea.

#6- Divine Destiny - While this can work in romance and relationship stories as well, it’s most evident in stuff like fantasy and science fiction. I’m not saying that you can’t use it for your own work, as I’ve used it in mine many times, but it can sometimes weaken your narrative if readers are made to believe that your protagonist is simply destined to win the day, no matter what. This is the ‘chosen one’. The one who brings balance to the force, or will save his enslaved people, or was prophecized to come to Earth and rescue the whole planet from total destruction. I understand that this is an attractive lure to a majority of readers, and can truly set the ‘hero’s journey’ into motion almost right away without much more needed to make the story work. But, believe it or not...if you don’t get the balance just right, this can also come off as a cheat code of the highest caliber. This is going to happen because it was meant to happen. Period. End of story.

Ok, then...what are the stakes, then? Where’s the urgency? When the motivation of your story is entirely left up to fate, then you instantly turn your main character into more of a passive observer of what’s going instead of having them be the driving force behind their actions and their quest to evolve to the next level. Your audience has nothing to worry about or stress over. They merely have to read long enough to figure out how the main character is going to follow the falling dominoes that are leading him to a happy ending that was already plotted out for him ahead of time. Done right, it can make for a pretty good story...but there are ways to increase the tension and make it a much more engaging read for your fanbase.

In my story, “Gone From Daylight”, I have such a character where his entire existence has already been written in the texts and prophecies ahead of time, before he even knew what they were. He is...for lack of a better term...the ‘chosen one’. But how can I take that idea and make it much more interesting for my readers. First of all...he’s given a choice as to whether he wants to follow this path or not. There’s nothing saying that he has to, and he still has a choice in the matter. (Which, like I said, keeps him from being just a passive observer in his own story) That’s the bare minimum, I believe, when it comes to that sort of story. Second, the prophecy that he’s following reaches beyond his previous knowledge of it, forcing him to wonder if all of the pain and suffering that he experienced beforehand was a part of his path. And what kind of sick purpose does that give his life if he was never in control to begin with? And third? What happens if him being the chosen one is destined to win the day, but only at the kind of cost that he’s simply not willing to pay? What if he saves us all, but loses everyone and everything that is important to him in the process? There we go! NOW we have a nail biting experience! The audience wants him to win, but might want him to abandon his fate altogether...and he can choose either one at any time. These little additions can make a big difference in how your story reads. Don’t cheat by saying your main character is the chosen one and it’ll all be ok. Well...then you just gave away the biggest spoiler ever! Hehehe! That’s just bad promotion!

#7- Well That Happened - When placing certain events, obstacles, and conflicts, in your story...there may be an urge to attack them, have everything boil over, feel satisfied with getting that off of your chest, and then moving on to the next issue that you have waiting for your protagonist just over the horizon. Hehehe...but wait! What happened to the big problem that your characters were just dealing with??? Sin number seven! Not properly closing all the loose ends from the issues you just inserted into your narrative and expecting them to just disappear with the next chapter. Honestly, you suck all of the credibility and power that your last major scene just had by sliding underneath it and leaving it behind you like it never happened. I have seen that before in some of the stories that I’ve read. (Not on GayAuthors though! You guys are consistently awesome! I’m actually impressed at how hard it is to find something that isn’t in my personal tastes!) If you’re going to showcase a conflict or a flare up in your story, treat it as though it has a certain amount of natural consequences. Nobody gets their heart broken or catches their long term boyfriend cheating on them with someone else, has one argument, says good bye, and starts life all over again. What? No way! That’s a cheat, for sure!

Those situations have lingering feelings behind them. They cause damage. Anger, fear, depression...don’t just close that chapter up and move on like it’s some TV sitcom. Deal with those lasting effects in a realistic way. If a character dies, if the protagonists smashes his car into a tree, if someone’s house gets robbed when they’re not home...these are problems that continue to have an impact on your characters for a while beyond the initial assault. Add that into future chapters. These aren’t things that can simply be forgotten about and smoothed over in a day or two. Explore those feelings, and demonstrate how they affect your characters for a decent amount of time before simply moving on to the next part of your story. In part one of this article, I talked about skipping over details and opportunities for character growth and reflection...this falls into a similar category. If you have something significant happen in your fiction, and don’t properly address it or at least give it some time to breathe before it fades away, then you weaken the effort and make your audience wonder why they took the time and energy to invest themselves in it in the first place. Definitely not a good look.

You created the problems and obstacles in your story...so deal with them. And have them be consistent with how things move forward from there over the next few chapters.

#8- Time After Time - Last, but not least...do not use time jumps to get out solving any of the problems listed up above, or any of the problems in part one of this article. Hehehe, you didn’t think I’d catch that one, did ya? Oh yes...I know that trick. And I’ve only used it a few times myself, but it was definitely a cheat, and I personally used it to avoid dealing with a few situations that I didn’t have the words or the inspiration to deal with at the time, as well as skipping over everything might come off as being boring or awkward. So, I’m guilty as charged. But I’m trying to get better about that. No more cheating….unless it’s a literary emergency. LOL! Like...making a deadline or just not feeling like writing that part out.

It’s a cake walk to simply add the words, ‘six months later’, and then basically give your story a reset and have everything go back to normal. Now...if you’re just cluing the readers in on a simple passage of time, that’s fine. But if you’re committing a literary sin and using this as a way to avoid the aftermath of dealing with a significant problem that you set up to punish your own characters (Meanie!)...then that’s cheating. If you’re going to use a time jump in your narrative, whether it be a couple of days, a couple of weeks, or a couple of years...don’t assume that your readers are going to magically forget what happened before you did so. Don’t think that you can just time travel into the future and come back without explaining what has changed since the problem first popped up in your project. What happened? How did your main character deal with it? What happens now? Why this particular jump in time? Six months? Why six months? See...when you make a time jump in your story, you’re basically pulling a magic trick that erases a significant amount of time from your story. And if you’re going to do that, the there are going to be questions. Depending on the length of time, you’ve left your audience out of a whole lot of character growth, conflict resolution, engaging drama, romantic attempts to get back together, character self reflection...there’s a LOT of story in there somewhere! If you think you can avoid some of the hard stuff by skipping ahead a few years and starting over...you’re wrong. That might be one of the biggest cheats of all if you don’t handle it in JUST the right way! So unless you’ve got some kind of brilliant plan in the works, this is the worst cheat of them all. I’m not saying that you can’t use time jumps in your story...but when you come back, you’d better have one hell of an explanation as to what happened between paragraphs 203 and 205! Otherwise, you’re going to have one hell of a frustrated audience to deal with. So let’s not do that, k?

I think I’ve rambled on enough for today. Again, this is all stuff that I’ve gone back and found as flaws in my own work, and some of you may see the same in some of your older work as well. These are all methods that actually CAN be used effectively if you know how to do it, and if you’re doing so with the right intentions. But there is always that temptation to cheat and cut corners every now and then, and I’ve, personally, figured that it’s best to avoid using any of these as a crutch unless it’s absolutely necessary. That’s not to say that I’m anywhere near being flawless, or that I’ll never pull a few cheats myself from time to time...but for the sake of effort and professionalism, I promise to do better.

Alright folks! Take care! Keep writing, and let me know if I missed any cheats along the way! I’ve always got more to learn myself, and that’s what makes this so much fun! Enjoy! And I’ll seezya soon!