There’s a great guest post by Matilda McCloud on Rachelle Gardner’s blog today about avoiding on-the-nose writing. McCloud encourages writers to go beyond the obvious types of characters you’d expect to find in certain genres and to use real life as an inspiration for creating believable characters who aren’t formulaic. She says:
Observe and take notes in your daily life. Get away from your computer and don’t write only from inside your head.
As a fantasy writer, I must say that a lot of what I write is from “inside my head.” However, I like to think that most of it is rooted in real emotions, even if it doesn’t depict real events. However, there are moments when real life is exactly what I need to make my story come alive.
For example, as I was revising my dystopian MG novel yesterday I needed a scene in which a competition leads to severe injury. Suddenly I remembered an interview I’d heard on NPR about football injuries. I took one of the dangerous football exercises I’d heard about and adapted it so it would fit into my story. Voila! Inspiration from real life.
McCloud also talks about people writing books they think are easy to create, such as picture books:
We got a lot of stories like The Little [Fill-in-the-Blank] That Could; The [Fill-in-the-Blank] Under My Bed; Aloysius the Alliterative Animal; and so on. These are examples of on-the-nose plots—stories from people who are writing what they think is a typical picture book manuscript, but who don’t know a thing about contemporary children’s books.
She encourages people who want to write in any genre to really get to know that genre first. Once you see what’s out there, you’ll be able to start creating off-the-nose characters and stories, ones that don’t just retread familiar territory, but give readers something new and inspired.
- Categories: Craft, Resources, Writing Rants
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