My first book is available for purchase

My first book Becoming is finally available for purchase at Lulu.com. Follow the link below to purchase a copy.

It will be available on Amazon, and book stores in a couple of weeks. I hope you enjoy it.

Regards

I am currently taking new feature requests for the next version of Novel Studio.


Following is a list of features I am working on putting in:

1. Plot planing, editing - this feature will drive your chapters layout and guide you during your draft writing
2. Character creation wizard
3. Add, edit, remove research articles
4. Synopsis planning and editing
5. Query letter planning and editing
6. Status of your project
7. Trashcan, for when you delete Chapters, Elements, Characters, etc..

If there are more features you would like to see, please feel free to leave me a message on the forum under feature requests on my web site (http://www.ronniebarnard.com), I will distill them into a set of requested features.

I want to start building the application early in March, so get your suggestion in early.

Writing Tools

I recently read a book about creative writing to further my novel writing skills, and came across fifty strategies on how to make your work sing like a canary…

The author is Roy Peter Clark and the book title ‘Writing Tools’, this is a great read, elegantly crafted and ‘humungously’ useful. The great thing about these tools is you already know most of them. But I want to highlight a few in this post, the rest you can find in the book.

Begin a sentence with subject and verb

This technique is called the ‘right-branching sentence’. Writers compose stories that become rich and easily readable and understanding flow from the prose like spring from the ground. The subject is often separated from the verb in prose, usually to tell the reader something about the subject, but these types of sentences can easily become unreadable and confusing, so take care should you use the separation technique.

Do not fear long sentences – use them well

Whenever you read about creative writing, scholars and teachers always says to keep your sentence length to a manageable less than thirty words per sentence, but sometimes one can use long sentences to slow down the reading, or create a sense of wondering through a forest, lazily creeping along the ground snaking to a known destination where we, as writers, want to suddenly. Jump on the reader. Speed up the pace. Faster and faster until the action scene is complete. Then we can begin the process of slowing down the prose, bringing the reader out of the action to a more relaxed state. I hope this paragraph explain what the author wants to explain, the first sentence in this paragraph is sixty seven words in total, followed by a couple of short sentences and then a longer, and even longer sentence. This creates a slow, fast, slower and final slow pace to the text. You can even use this technique during action scenes, to momentarily slow down – in a slow motion piece – and then continue the action.

Order words for emphasis

Imagine text as a road with a stop sign at the end. Punctuation marks are techniques to control the flow of traffic down the road.  The full stop at the end of a sentence is the stop sign at the finish of a sentence. This place and focus the readers mind on the last word of the sentence. Writers use this technique to emphasize important information they want to convey to the reader. The white space at the end of a paragraph following a period sign, place even more focus on the last word of that paragraph.

This can help you keep the reader’s attention focused on the prose, and help you carry your story through to the end.

The rest of the book has many techniques to help you as the writer, compose beautiful prose that will sing like a canary.

Language weavers

There is a lot of myth about writing: It's hard, you must be talented, and etc. the list goes on and on. Let me tell you now, it's all garbage. Anyone and everyone can write. Yes it's true that writing a best seller takes time and experience, but it is like any other thing in life, with time and practice anyone can become better at it. Some get better faster than others, some have a natural talent for explaining a story, its surroundings and characters that make them come to life out of the page, but believe me, their first books were not all that good, and over time they got better.

The advantage we have today is the internet is filled with so much information, that writers of old took months to investigate, reading through newspapers and other books, talking to companies, really doing the work by hand. These days it's easy, Doctor Google is your friend, and companies, white papers, newspapers and all sorts of other sites of information is available on the net… we are really lucky to have such a wonderful tool to our disposal.

Let me debunk the myths, right here, right now. Writing is not difficult, it is easy and like all things in life it just takes practice. Do you think that a pilot just woke up one day and he was able to fly five hundred people to the United States? No! He learnt how to do it and that is the same with writing.

Yes others are better at it, and some will never write a best seller, but everyone has a story to tell and it is up to you whether you want to put that story to paper. There are many awe inspiring authors out there that I really call story weavers, there use of language is just sublime and they have been going at it for many years, learning and WRITING story after story, teaching themselves the poetry of using a language to shape a story in the mind's eye of reader.

Rob Parnell has a writing course that I think touches on the surreal; his writing course is really inspiring. I suggest you have a look at his writing course and if you are serious about writing, he has some good techniques that will help you along your way.

My hope is, what you take away from this post, is there is no mystery in writing, no myths are true, and that you will find it easy to write, even if it is just your next letter to your grandmother.

Weave the language to the point where it forms poetry!

Scene writing

While I am busy with the novel writing course – which is going great – I decided to share a technique I worked on for developing a scene and then sketching that in the mind of the reader.

There is a couple of things to know and keep in mind about a scene before we start.

•  A scene has purpose and exist to move the storyline, plot or sub plot on – never write a scene just because you feel like it.
•  A scene has a focal point, something that you need to bring to the reader’s attention, or an event that sets wheels in motion… etc.
•  A scene has an beginning, middle and end
• The beginning of a scene must always connect to the end of the previous scene (Continuity)
• The end of a scene must set the stage for the beginning of the next scene (Continuity)

With these points as a rough guideline you can now proceed.

Let’s create a scenario for our scene. We are in a clearing out in the woods, there is a large lake to one side and the entrance to a cave. From this you can see we can describe the water, the shore, the skyline, the forest, boats on the water, birds in the sky… etc, and I have not come to my focal point the entrance to the cave yet. So the question is where to draw the line? When do you start to bore the reader with too much detail and when is it not enough.

You as the writer have a perfect picture of the scene in your mind, you need to convey that picture as best as possible to the reader without dumping so much detail that he actually gets bored with your book.

I came up with a technique for breaking the scene into small sections that will allow you to progress the reader’s attention towards your focal point. This will guide you to describing just enough detail about the scene to let the readers imagination do the rest.

Take three things that stand out to you from the mental image of your scene, the last one in the list is your focal point. Then describe three things about each of the first two focal points, that will gradually lead the reader towards the focal point. You then describe three pertinent points about your focal point, and voila you have a very good scene.

This is a guideline, and not the ultimate step by step guide on how to write a scene. It has helped me in the past, I hope it can help you.

Water everywhere

It is amazing how much water can be trapped above our heads. I am sure by now everyone is aware of the devastation that was unleashed on Queensland, Australia. Watching the waters rise on television from our home south of Brisbane is humbling to say the least. My heart goes out to those thousands upon thousands of people and families in dire need and my condolences to those families who lost a loved one in the floods.

The billions of cubic meters of water that now run down and flooding the Brisbane area, all came from the clouds above our heads. This is truly an eye opening event, that show just how small and insignificant our infrastructure and advanced technology really are.
One tends to think that we are invincible, and that our technology will save us from the worst.

This is just rain, what if this was a meteorite strike, or a volcano. We as humans are extremely
vulnerable in our “safety” and the walls we built can’t even stand up against rain, let alone what can come from above.

The situation here in Brisbane is not dire yet, with the water expecting to peak around 4am tomorrow morning, the worst is yet to come. Only time will tell what the future holds, and how strong communities really are. Other towns and cities already felt the worst and cleanup started.

We are looking ahead at tomorrow and Friday to understand the extent of the flood.

Writing course

I am taking a writing course at the moment... wow! what a nice change to the way I use to write a book. I agree with most of the Author's comments, but some of it is a bit over the top for my liking, but as he states; Each person is different, and what works for one does not necessary work for another.

What I am taking away from his course, is the ease of writing that he injects. It is sublime to find a technique that really works this well.

In essence it is about letting your subconscious do the work of creating the story. This is awesome.

I am going to write my next novel in this way and we'll see the outcome.