Endings without a doubt are one of the most difficult parts to come up with when one writes a story. Also, endings might turn into beginnings if they left open for a sequel. In any case, my advice for you is to keep them positive. People love a happily ever after more than a sad one. Cynicism can’t always rule the day.
DAY 365 TIP: End your stories on a positive note or leave them open and let the readers wonder.
© H. G. Robert
Today’s writing tips are not from me, but from highly acclaimed writers. Enjoy!
“If you want to be a writer,” says Stephen King, “you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
John Grisham–a former lawyer best known for his legal thrillers–advices young writers to find their career, and adds that at first it won’t be writing. He goes on to say that at first you have to treat writing as a hobby; you write a page a day in your spare time.
Ernest Hemingway–winner of the Nobel Prize in 1954–advices that each day’s work should only be interrupted when one knows where to begin again the next day. This helps the writer avoid the morning agony of facing the blank page.
Kurt Vonnegut was a prolific American author known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction. He offers the following advice to aspiring writers: “Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”
Maya Angelou is best known for her series of six autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adulthood experiences. She says, “What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.’”
William Stafford, explaining how he managed to be so prolific, said: “Every day I get up and look out the window, and something occurs to me. Something always occurs to me. And if it doesn’t, I just lower my standards.”
James Patterson’s method is simple: “I’m always pretending that I’m sitting across from somebody. I’m telling them a story, and I don’t want them to get up until it’s finished.”
DAY 364 TIP: Look for tips for writers from writers.
© H. G. Robert
The method of “written cut-up” was introduced by the famous Romanian Dadaist poet, Tristan Tzara. He believed that all kinds of writing are in fact cut ups threaded together like in the work of a collage artist and are similar to different frames in a single film. So he gave the idea of cutting up a page into small pieces from a newspaper or an old magazine and stuffing them up in a hat. You can then lift the pieces, one by one to form a poem or a short story or just to get ideas.
DAY 363 TIP: All kinds of writing are in fact cut ups threaded together.
© H. G. Robert
