I haven’t written here for a long time as you know. I think about this place often, what it could be, who reads it, and whether I should keep it and continue or delete, just like I have so many other of my blogs.

During the time I’ve been away, my 3 novel has been written. It is both my most testing piece of work and my biggest failure. It was not a pleasure to write, as it’s complexity baffled me at times, and I wrote painfully most of the 30 days it took to complete. It’s bad but not bad enough to trash, it may be pigeon toed and only 3 legs, but that’s enough to prevent me from shooting it through the head.

I’ve also been reading a lot as well. I found a great, great read called, “Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time” by Jorden Rosenfeld. This took made me face up to viewing my chapters as scenes and help me consider how I should structure my sections in future. Currently I suck as writing chapters. With my 3 novels so far I didn’t know how to make chapters work, where and when to put them and how they could assist with my story, therefore I left them out, and just wrote continuously for 50,000 words.

I also found and started reading a great title called, ‘Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc: The Secret to Crafting Extraordinary Screenplays‘ by Dara Marks. This is a theroretical piece, showing how characters roles need to play out through a book. It’s a fantastic read, because it has what I’m looking for – pictures! The ‘arc’ itself, deserves to be printed out and displayed on my writing room wall, (I don’t have a writing room wall yet btw, but when I do…) so I can remind myself everyday. Anyways, I’m still reading that, whilst also getting myself associated with Franz Kafka while I’m at it.

The final book I’ve found but am yet to purchase is called ‘Break Into Fiction‘ by Mary Buckham. Another title that grabbed my attention because it has diagrams and steps to follow, and a few exercises to complete. Diagrams are rare in writing tutition books, but they really help me.

I’m searching for a way of visualising writing. I’m a visual person, and all this reading and writing is a barrier to me learning the rules and becoming better at this Art I’m trying to persue. I want to help other people like me, those that struggle with reading all the rules and want to see how to write instead of bloody reading about it.

I’m searching for a writing formula. There isn’t one I hear you cry. I know that, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try and find a visual guide that works for me. Maybe I’ll discover something? Something new, and people will be interested in what i’ve found. I think collating all the graphical visuals I’ve found so far will be a good starting point.

So I intend to do that here. Stick around and observe them with me. I’m going to write here regularly in future, I’ve said that before I know, but I promise to try harder in future, and I definitely won’t delete this place 🙂

until next time.