There was an ebb and flow to our membership: new folks joined, and others dropped out as life circumstances changed. Overall, we had a core group of about five of us who stayed together throughout those seven years. We called ourselves “Quill and Coffee”, and this group played a huge part in my development as a writer.

What is a critique group?

A critique group (sometimes called “alpha readers”) is a group of fellow writers who read and workshop your book as you are writing it. You send them a selection of your writing, and they give you feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. They can see your book evolve from a fledgling idea to a completed project.

As you read their books, you learn to spot issues in your own writing and become better at editing yourself. Often it’s easier to identify problems in someone else’s work, where you don’t have as much at stake, and the feedback doesn’t feel so raw. By learning to give insightful feedback to others, you become a better judge of your own work.

Because critique partners or groups see your work as it develops, they have a sense of continuity with your project. They’ve seen different iterations of it and can tell you if the changes you make are actually working. Beta readers (who read your book front-to-back after it’s done) see a snapshot in time. They get the full picture because they’re reading the entire thing, but they don’t see the evolution that got you where you are. Critique groups are along for the ride the whole way, so they can give you feedback not just on your writing, but on how you are growing and changing as a writer.

How does a critique group work?

Critique groups can meet in many contexts and can take different forms. When Quill and Coffee was still going, we would meet in person at a coffee shop, but these days, with tools like video conferencing, you can form a group with people from around the globe and meet virtually.

The frequency of the meetings varies from group to group, but we found that for us, every other week was often enough to keep us accountable and productive, but not so frequent that we got overwhelmed. Not everyone submitted work for every meeting. Our group was small enough that each person could have a turn at critique at least every other session (so about once per month), which for us was just the right frequency.

In terms of the critiques themselves, we did not adhere to the “box” or “bubble” method, where the person being critiqued was not allowed to talk. Rather, the discussions were open conversations, with the author being able to participate and ask questions throughout their critique.

How do you start a critique group?

One of the best ways to start a group is by taking a class or participating in some sort of event or program (like a conference, online summit, or other situation where you might meet fellow writers). I’m personally partial to meeting writers through a class or workshop, because then you get a chance to see some people’s writing and also get a sense for how they give feedback. This way, you can decide whether they might be a good fit for you or not.

Once you’ve got a couple of people together, you need to decide on logistics and ground rules. Here are some questions to consider:

• How often will you meet and where? You want to find the right balance between frequent enough to stay accountable but not so often that you can’t make any progress in between sessions.
• Does the group have a particular genre or category focus? Our members wrote across various genres or categories, and we liked it that way. Some folks, though, might prefer collaborating with writers who play in the same literary sandbox.
• How many people will you have on deck for critique each session and what’s the deadline for submissions? We usually had 2-3 people each session, and submissions were sent a week prior to the session so folks had time to read and prepare.
• What format should work be submitted in? Also, how many pages or words should people submit at a time? We emailed each other Word documents of approximately 10-20 pages, which we then printed and handed back to the author with our written comments.
• How will you conduct the critiques? Will you use a “box” or “bubble” method, or something else? What role will the author have in the discussion?
• How will you add new members? Is it invite-only? Does a current member have to vouch for a prospective new member? That’s how we did it in Quill and Coffee.

The key with setting ground rules is that it be done early in the group’s existence. If you have parameters set, then as new members join, they simply follow what the current members are doing, and things tend to run smoothly. If you don’t establish those logistics early on, it can lead to misunderstandings and maybe even potential conflict. 

What happens when it’s time to say goodbye?

As our careers grow and change, it’s natural for the group to evolve as well. Sometimes, if members are developing at a similar pace, the group can adapt accordingly. For example, if several members are getting published and launching books around the same time, the group might switch focus from critique to supporting each other in the publishing journey.

On the other hand, sometimes people’s lives change—some folks move away, change jobs, start families, etc.—and individuals step away, or the group naturally comes to a close. That’s what happened with Quill and Coffee. I had my son in 2012, but was able to juggle the mom-preneur life with my critique group for a while. When my daughter came along two years later, things got a bit more complicated, and I had to step away. Around that same time, other members moved away and were no longer within commutable distance. Still others had changes in careers and could not make the usual meetings. And a few of our members sadly passed away.

Nothing lasts forever, but the impact this amazing group of writers made on me and my work has had a ripple effect, and I still see the effects of it to this day. They were part of my life at a time when my writing was fragile and new. They helped to nurture and support my creativity while I was just starting to find my footing. Some of my best writing memories are of times I spent with members of Quill and Coffee. 

This group also saw me through the traditional MFA program and in many ways had a deeper effect on my writing than formal education ever could. In fact, it was because of this group that I realized a lot of the MFA experience could be recreated outside the traditional classroom. I knew it was possible, because I had done that with my own critique group. In the end, you could say Quill and Coffee was part of what made DIY MFA possible, and for that I will be forever grateful.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: How a Critique Group Can Make You a Stronger Writer appeared first on DIY MFA.

Mistake #1: Treating your world like an empty vessel.

Your story’s world is not just a world for its own sake, it exists for the characters who live in it. While it can be tempting to get caught up in world-building and figure out all the intricate details of how your world is put together, if there are no characters in that world, then what’s the point? What good is a story world if there is no one in it?

I am a firm believer in character-centric world-building and crafting your world around a character rather than simply dropping them into a premade setting. I recognize that for some genres, doing preliminary world-building can be important for the writer to wrap their head around the story and understand the basic gist of how everything works. But, too much world-building before you start to write can be counterproductive. After all, you might spend so much time developing your world that you never get around to telling the story.

The other problem with treating your world like an empty vessel is that the world itself is shaped by the characters in it. If you don’t spend time exploring the world through your storytelling, you won’t see your characters’ impact on the story world.

SOLUTION: Experience your story world through your character. Drop a character into your world and let them explore. View the world through their perspective and see how they react to different aspects of it. Show us the world by having your character interact with it or run into obstacles along the way.

Remember, your character’s state of mind will shape how they perceive that world. If your character is feeling optimistic and happy, they will have a very different view of their surroundings than if they are feeling grief or fear. Show that story world by using the character as a lens.

Mistake #2: Thinking of your world as just a setting.

If the character is at the center of your story world, then the world is automatically more than just a nice setting. Most writers assume that world-building is all about the character’s surroundings or the overall structure of society. What they forget is that character interactions and relationships are just as important. Just as the protagonist’s internal state will influence how they perceive the world around them, so too will their relationships with other characters.

Supporting characters are a crucial part of your world-building. Notice the use of the word “supporting” rather than “side” or “secondary.” This is because I believe that supporting characters play an essential role in the story: to support the protagonist’s development. They may not see themselves as supporting characters, but for the purpose of the current story, their role is to support or impact the main character’s journey.

These supporting characters can have different effects on the protagonist’s arc. They can be allies, helping the main character reach their goal. They can appear as advisors, giving the protagonist information or warnings. They can even be adversaries or antagonists, creating obstacles along the way. The key is that these supporting characters are not just nifty little add-ons to the story. They serve a distinct purpose in the main character’s journey.

SOLUTION: Think about your supporting cast and ask yourself what purpose each character plays in the story. If a character doesn’t have a purpose, you need to ask yourself whether that character is even necessary. Or, if two characters are filling the same role, you might want to combine them or treat them as a unit (think of the younger sisters Mary, Kitty and Lydia in the first two acts of Pride and Prejudice). Similarly, sometimes you may want to use a supporting character as a stand-in for another, if the protagonist goes on a journey and a particular supporting character can’t go with them (think of Rue being a stand-in for Prim in The Hunger Games).

Think strategically about the role each supporting character plays and consider how each one helps bring your story world to life. Depending on the role that character plays in your protagonist’s arc, they will influence the way your world comes to life on the page. Don’t limit yourself by looking at your story world as just a setting. Think about how your supporting characters also contribute to that world.

Mistake #3: Assuming your world won’t change over time.

Your story world is not static but dynamic. As with our own real world, things will change over time. Not only will your character’s impressions of the world change as they grow and develop, but the world itself may undergo political, environmental, or logistical changes.

Think for example of the story world in the Hunger Games trilogy. Not only do we get different surroundings with each of the different Arenas, but the whole landscape of the world changes as the story evolves. At the beginning of the series, the nation of Panem has twelve districts plus the Capitol. We are told there was a District Thirteen, but it has been destroyed in the uprising that predates the Games. As the trilogy develops, we learn that District Thirteen has not been destroyed but has, in fact, hidden underground for seventy-five years. We also see District Twelve completely annihilated and turned to rubble. The whole world of the story is turned upside down as the trilogy evolves.

SOLUTION: If you find your world is feeling too static, try this exercise. Think of your story world and fast forward 100 years. What will that world be like in the future? Do some freewriting to capture your ideas, then rewind your story world back to 100 years before your story takes place. Again, do some freewriting to get your thoughts on the page.

Put what you wrote away for a few days, then come back to it and reread it. Mine it, looking for details you might be able to incorporate into your current story. If your story world is a certain way 100 years into the future, what detail could you weave into your story now to hint at that evolution? If your story world was a particular way 100 years in the past, how can you give clues about that history? Challenge yourself to make your story world more fluid and dynamic, rather than locked in time.

Mistake #4: Overloading the reader with your world.

One of the biggest world-building mistakes new writers make is the dreaded info dump. We write paragraphs upon paragraphs of exposition explaining the ins and outs of our story world instead of showing the character navigating that world.

It makes sense why we might do this: We worry that if we don’t give readers all the details about the story world right away, they won’t understand what’s going on. For this reason, it might be tempting to do a lot of world-building up front so that readers have the information they need in order to follow the events of the story.

The problem with this approach is that it can slow the story down and might even be (dare I say it?) boring. World-building without purpose can feel like nothing more than set dressing and it can pull the reader out of the story, which is the opposite of what you want. Ultimately, the goal of world-building is to immerse your reader in your story world, not pull them out of it.

SOLUTION: The way to solve the info dump problem is to keep your reader on a need-to-know basis. In other words, only give the reader information about the world that they need to know, when they need to know it. Whenever possible, try to bring your story world to life by showing the characters living in it, rather than relying heavily on exposition. When you show your characters interacting with the world, it feels more immersive to the reader.

Mistake #5: Going down the research rabbit hole.

Depending on what type of world you’re building, you may have to do research. The temptation here is to go down the research rabbit hole and learn everything you can about that world. The problem with this approach is that every minute you spend researching is a minute spent not writing.

I recently attended a conference where the keynote speaker shared his approach to world-building and research. He said he only researched details necessary to tell the story, rather than trying to learn everything about a particular subject. He said the only exception was if the topic was something he had a genuine interest in and would have researched for his own edification. Otherwise, he focused his research only on the information he needed to move the story forward. I thought this was an excellent insight.

SOLUTION: If you find yourself going down a research rabbit hole, use the TK trick. In book editing and journalism, TK stands for “to come.” What’s convenient about these two letters is that they very rarely appear next to each other in the English language. This means, if you write TK in your manuscript to mark a spot where you need more information, you can later do a quick search and find all the places where you need to fill in the gaps with some research. (You can also do the same thing by using brackets like: [Insert description of the house here.])

As you’re writing, if you find you need to research something, try to use TK and keep writing forward. This way you don’t derail your writing momentum by pausing in the middle of a thought to look something up. Later in the writing process, go back and look for all the TK spots. They will serve as a checklist of all the things you need to research so you don’t waste your time hunting for details that lead you nowhere.

There you have it, five world-building mistakes writers often make (and what to do about them). Remember that your story is layered with character, plot, and world all closely intertwined. Don’t think of your story world as just a backdrop for the action of your book. Rather, consider how that world interacts with the characters and the plot to make it fully three-dimensional.

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Five World-Building Mistakes (and how to avoid them!) appeared first on DIY MFA.

Spoiler Alert! This film was released in 2011, meaning that it’s been around for a while. In fact, a lot has happened in the MCU since the Captain first came on the scene. Obviously, it’s impossible to talk about a movie’s structure without giving away the ending, and this example is no different. There will be spoilers.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Captain America: The First Avenger.

PROLOGUE: The story begins with a prologue of sorts. Scientists discover a wreckage buried in ice and call in the military. As they explore the inside of the strange vehicle, they come across Captain America’s shield.

Next, we flash back to 1942 Norway, where an old man is hiding in an ancient stone church protecting something. Uniformed officers from Hydra burst in with a tank, knocking down a wall. They are looking for the mysterious thing the old man is protecting (the Tesseract). Johann Schmidt, the head of Hydra, finds the Tesseract hidden behind a secret panel in the wall, and takes it. The old man warns him that he cannot control the Tesseract’s power, but Schmidt kills him.

ACT 1: In New York, Steve Rogers is rejected from enlisting because of his small stature and many health problems. He wants to be recruited and serve in the war like his father did. (His dad served and died in World War I.) He is so desperate to be recruited that he has tried multiple times and has even lied on his recruitment forms.

Rogers and his best friend Bucky go to the World Exposition of Tomorrow the night before Bucky leaves for Europe. Bucky tries to set Rogers up with a girl so they can double-date but Rogers isn’t interested. He’s holding out for the right girl. He wanders away from the group and goes to another recruitment office. At the recruitment office, Dr. Abraham Erskine of the Strategic Scientific Reserve allows Rogers to enlist in a special program.

FIVE PROMISES: The five promises of act 1 get answered early in the story.

Character: Steve Rogers is our protagonist. He is physically small and weak, but he desperately wants to fight in the War.

Voice: As with most movies, there isn’t a voice per se but a mood. In this case, even while some parts of the film can be dark, the mood is largely optimistic. 

World: The bulk of the story takes place in 1942-1943, during World War II. While the story is set in the past, a lot of the Hydra technology feels futuristic.

Problem: Rogers wants to fit in the war, but he keeps getting rejected because of his health and small stature.

Event: The day before his best friend leaves for the War, Rogers finally gets recruited for a special, secret program.

ACT 1 (Cont’d): Meanwhile, in the mountains, Dr. Zola and Schmidt try to harness the power of the Tesseract. They are able to stabilize it and realize they can use it to power Hydra technology, changing the course of the war.

Back in the US, Rogers is in training and meets Agent Peggy Carter and Colonel Phillips. Rogers fails most of the physical challenges of training, but shows intelligence and strength of character. Eventually, Col. Phillips is convinced that he should be the one selected for the procedure to become a super soldier.

The night before Rogers is going to have his procedure, Dr. Erskine visits him in the barracks. Rogers asks why he was chosen and Dr. Erskine says: “Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength and knows compassion.” Erskine also tells Rogers about Schmidt, the first man to take the serum, and how that serum amplified his evil qualities.

The next day, Rogers is taken to a secret lab where Dr. Erskine and tech genius Howard Stark have rigged a machine to give him serum and turn him into a super soldier. At first it seems Rogers can’t tolerate the procedure and they almost shut it down, but then he protests so they continue. When the machine opens, Rogers has transformed from a scrawny, weak guy into a superhero.

RULE OF 3:  Rogers gets tested three times before he receives the serum, and all three times he shows strength of character despite his weak body. The first test is when he meets Dr. Erskine, who asks him if he wants to kill Nazis. Rogers replies that he doesn’t want to kill anyone, but he hates a bully. This answer shows Rogers’ principles and his motivation to protect others.

The second test occurs when he is in training. He and the other recruits are running past a flagpole and the drill sergeant challenges them to climb it and get the flag. All the other men try and fail. Rogers then loosens a pin at the base of the pole and it falls down, allowing him to get the flag easily. This moment demonstrates Rogers’ intelligence and his ability to see past the obvious answers.

The last test happens when Rogers and the other recruits are at back the camp doing calisthenics. Col. Phillips takes a grenade, pulls the pin and throws it at the men. Everyone ducks and hides except for Rogers, who throws himself on top of it. This action proves that Rogers will do anything—even sacrifice himself—to protect others. This is the moment that convinces Col. Phillips that Rogers is the best candidate to receive the serum.

PIVOT POINT 1:  Just after Rogers has his transformation, a man posing as a government official sets off a bomb and shoots Dr. Erskine. He grabs the one remaining vial of serum and runs. Dr. Erskine dies, and Rogers goes after the man. The external event at this pivot point is the bomb going off. The internal choice is Rogers’ decision to pursue the man.

A chase through the streets of New York ensues, and they end up at the docks. The man tries to escape via a Hydra submarine, but Rogers swims after and catches him. When Rogers throws the man up on the docks, that last vial of serum breaks and the man swallows a poison pill. He dies saying “Hail Hydra.”

ACT 2:  Meanwhile, back at the mountains, some of Schmidt’s superiors come to his secret base and criticize his work. It turns out that Schmidt has been planning a mutiny all along, and he kills them all.

After the chase with the Hydra operative, the US government assigns Rogers to help raise money for the war effort. Dressed as Captain America, he performs to packed theaters and also on screen. The show involves a lot of dancing girls and the Captain punching a guy dressed as Hitler. The civilians find his show entertaining.

Eventually, Rogers ends up performing to boost morale at an army camp a few miles from the front in Italy (1943). The soldiers are not interested in his show and throw tomatoes at him. Agent Carter stops by the camp and tells him after the show: “You were meant for more than this.” She tells him that these men have seen it worse than most in the war and that the majority of their unit has been killed or captured. Rogers learns that this is the same unit his best friend Bucky joined. He thinks Bucky may have been captured.

Col. Phillips refuses to plan a rescue mission, so Rogers decides to do it himself. With the help of Agent Carter and Howard Stark, he parachutes into enemy territory and takes on the whole Hydra base on his own. He releases the prisoners being held captive, but Bucky is not among them. As the rest of the men fight their way out, Rogers looks for Bucky. Dr. Zola and Schmidt are in the facility and they set off a self-destruct sequence. Just after Rogers finds Bucky, they run into Dr. Zola and Schmidt. Rogers and Schmidt fight briefly and then Schmidt pulls off his mask, revealing that he is Red Skull. Dr. Zola and Schmidt get away but Rogers and Bucky are cornered. Bucky is able to cross to safety via a wobbly beam, but the beam collapses and Rogers has to use his super soldier strength to jump.

Back at the camp, Col. Phillips and Agent Carter believe Rogers has been killed in action. At that moment, Rogers leads the freed prisoners into the camp, and everybody cheers for Captain America.

MIDPOINT: The rescue mission involves two temporary triumphs with the moment of self-reflection sandwiched in between. The first temporary triumph is when Rogers frees the prisoners and then finds Bucky. It feels like a triumph because it seems that Rogers has succeeded at his mission.

The self-reflection is implied during the scene where Rogers confronts Schmidt (who has now fully stepped into his Red Skull persona). The latter says: “You are afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind. Unlike you, I embrace it proudly, without fear.” The implication is that, because of their extraordinary abilities, he and Rogers are superior beings and the future of humankind.

Like with most movies, we do not have a true moment of introspection because we can only know what Rogers is thinking based on his dialogue, actions, and body language. That said, Red Skull’s words suggest that he is what Rogers could turn into if he allows his power to corrupt him.

The second temporary triumph is when Rogers arrives back at the camp, leading the prisoners. He offers to turn himself in for disciplinary action, showing his continued humility, but Col. Phillips lets him off the hook.

ACT 2 (Cont’d): While rescuing the prisoners, Rogers caught a glimpse of a map showing the various Hydra weapon factories. Co. Phillips puts Rogers in charge of destroying all the Hydra factories. Rogers assembles a team including several of the prisoners he rescued and his friend Bucky. Howard Stark gives his shield an upgrade.

With his team, Rogers starts taking down each of the Hydra facilities one by one. As Agent Carter and Col. Phillips watch video footage of their attacks, we see that Rogers carries a compass with a photo of Agent Carter tucked inside.

Rogers and his team plan to sabotage a Hydra train because they have intel that Dr. Zola is on it. It turns out to be a trap, and it seems like Rogers and his team are outmatched. Bucky falls from the train and into the ravine below. The team eventually takes the train and captures Dr. Zola.

PIVOT POINT 2: Rogers tries to drown his sorrows, but because of his superhuman abilities, he can’t get drunk. He blames himself for Bucky’s death, and Agent Carter tries to convince him that it’s not his fault. Rogers says he’s going after Schmidt and won’t stop until all of Hydra is dead or captured. The external event for this pivot point is Bucky’s death, and the internal choice is Rogers’ decision to go after Schmidt.

ACT 3: Schmidt’s secret base is in the Alps. He plans to cross the Atlantic in a giant, futuristic plane, using his Tesseract-powered weapons to attack the United States. Rogers and his team make a plan to storm the Hydra base. 

CRISIS: Rogers rides into the base alone on his motorcycle and for a minute it looks like he might be able to take on all the Hydra troops himself, but he is eventually outnumbered and is taken prisoner to Schmidt. While Rogers confronts Schmidt, the rest of his team storms in, which had been the plan all along.

Schmidt runs off, and Rogers goes after him while his team takes the base. Grabbing the Tesseract, Schmidt boards his spaceship-like plane and sets a course for New York. Rogers runs after the plane but can’t catch up until Col. Phillips and Agent Carter pull up in Schmidt’s fancy car. They drive Rogers right up to the plane, and before he leaps aboard, Agent Carter kisses him. The plane takes off with Rogers, Schmidt, and a few Hydra troops aboard. Rogers fights some of the Hydra troops and destroys a few smaller attack planes, then goes to the main control room.

CLIMAX: Rogers finds Schmidt in the control room, and they fight. During the altercation, he throws his shield at the Tesseract apparatus and breaks it. Schmidt picks up the Tesseract with his bare hand, and it slowly disintegrates him. He is destroyed by his own hubris.

Ending Type: Rogers starts out wanting to stop the global bullies (Nazis and later Hydra). He ends up destroying Red Skull (Schmidt) and thwarting Hydra’s attempt to take over the world. In other words, at the end of the film, Rogers gets what he wants, and he still wants that thing, so it is a happy ending.

DENOUEMENT: After Schmidt is destroyed, Rogers gets into the pilot’s chair. He radios his team, and they want to help him bring the plane down safely, but it’s going too fast. Rogers realizes he has to bring it down before it reaches a more populated area. He tells Agent Carter what he’s going to do. She tries to convince him otherwise, but he’s determined. They say some tearful last words as he brings the plane down into the ice and the radio goes silent. As the ice breaks, the wreckage of the plane gets buried.

The Allies win the war. His team drinks to Rogers’ memory. Later, Stark is on a ship searching for Rogers and the wrecked plane. He and his team find the Tesseract at the bottom of the ocean, but there is no sign of the wreckage or Rogers.

Suddenly, Rogers wakes up in a hospital. It looks like he’s in the 1940s, but it’s all a ruse. He figures out that the hospital is fake, so he breaks out and runs into present-day Times Square in New York. Several secret agents go after him, and he’s cornered. Nick Fury steps forward and tells him the truth: that he has been asleep for almost seventy years. The movie ends, leaving room for all the rest of the Avengers series.

CONCLUSION: Captain America: The First Avenger is a great example of a story in which the protagonist shifts archetypes not once but twice. At DIY MFA, we believe there are four main character archetypes: underdog, disruptor, survivor, and protector. These archetypes come from looking at the character’s type (relatable vs. aspirational) and what they want (either to change or preserve). When we consider both parameters simultaneously, we get the following matrix:

In other words, the underdog is a relatable character who wants to change something in themselves, their circumstances, or the world, while the disruptor is an aspirational character who seeks change. The survivor is a relatable character wanting to preserve something in themselves, their circumstances, or the world, while the protector is their larger-than-life counterpart.

Rogers starts out as an underdog. He’s just a regular guy from Brooklyn who wants to do his part and serve in the War. While he is relatable, he shows hints of greatness in the tests that create the rule of three. We realize that while he is not physically strong, there is more to him than we might at first assume.

When he rescues the troops being held in the Hydra prison, Rogers goes from underdog to disruptor, shifting his character type from relatable to aspirational. He continues as a disruptor throughout the time he is taking down the Hydra factories. In fact, he stays in disruptor mode until after Bucky’s death, when he decides to get revenge on Schmidt and Hydra. At that point, he becomes a protector archetype.

Revenge is a preserve-driven desire because it stems from the feeling that something bad has happened and justice must be served. Bringing the bad guys to justice and restoring a sense of order are goals with preservation at their core. After destroying Red Skull, Rogers cements his role as a protector by sacrificing himself and crashing the plane into the ice.

As with most character shifts we see in books and movies, Rogers does not jump directly from underdog to protector, but instead makes lateral moves. This is crucial because a diagonal leap across the archetype matrix means the audience must make two cognitive shifts at the same time. By making lateral moves from underdog to disruptor followed by disruptor to protector, the character evolves more naturally.

A jump across the diagonal could potentially feel unrealistic to the audience, making the protagonist seem like they are behaving out of character. This film is a perfect example of a protagonist who shifts across the diagonal, but does so in a natural, step-by-step manner.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of Captain America appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’ve written about why scenes are so crucial in the past and how those four essential story elements contribute to the story’s scenes. In this Writer Fuel, I’m going to hone in on six scene-related pitfalls writers might run into.

1) No Agency

One of the most important aspects of storytelling is that the character must have agency. Your book can’t just be a series of random events buffeting the protagonist to and fro. These characters need to make choices, and those choices must influence the events of the story in some way.

This is why a key moment in every scene is where the character makes a choice. This choice does not have to be earth-shattering. Every scene doesn’t have to be like Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games. The choice can be small and subtle, but still needs to be present. A scene without the character making some sort of choice will feel rudderless and static, like the story isn’t going anywhere.

SOLUTION: Give your character agency by creating a situation where they need to make a decision and that choice moves the story forward.

2) Slow-to-Warm-Up Storytelling

Scenes where characters start off with pleasantries and small talk might seem realistic, but they slow down the pace of the story. Characters don’t need to talk about the weather or “how about those Knicks.” The scene needs to jump right to the things that matter to the story. This is why so many scenes (and stories overall) start in media res or “in the middle of things.”

Remember, you’re not trying to capture reality in your storytelling. Let’s face it: reality is often boring and slow. Stories are like reality but better. The reader gets a sense of verisimilitude (that the story feels real) but that doesn’t come from mimicking reality down to the letter. Instead, stories are like a heightened reality, like if reality left out all the boring parts and only consisted of the good stuff.

SOLUTION: Don’t hem and haw your way into a scene. Start at the moment where things get interesting. The reader will suspend their disbelief. 

3) Too Much Backstory

It can be tempting to load up a scene with tons of backstory. After all, we don’t want our readers to get confused, so we might be tempted to give them all the information they need to understand what’s going on. The problem with this approach is that not all of that backstory might be relevant in that exact moment, and loading too much of it into a scene can feel like an info dump. Don’t get me wrong, backstory is important, but it should be used with moderation.

There are some backstory techniques (like flashbacks, for example) that allow you to share backstory in the form of an actual scene. But even flashbacks can slow the story’s pace if they’re not well-timed. Plus, if the flashback is not executed well, it can actually be worse for your story than if you left it out altogether. The danger zones for flashback scenes are the transitions, so if you choose to use this technique, be careful in those moments where you flash back to the past and then again when you return the scene to the present.

SOLUTION: Keep your reader on a need-to-know basis. In other words, only give the reader information they need to know when they need to know it.

4) Lack of Subtext

Most people (and most characters) don’t say exactly what they are thinking. They filter their thoughts, often to preserve their relationships. Like if a friend asked you what you thought of their positively hideous hat, you’d probably try to find something nice to say about it so as not to hurt their feelings. This is called subtext, when the dialogue isn’t strictly on-the-nose and the reader must “read between the lines.”

We create subtext in our scenes by having the character’s dialogue at odds with their actions, thoughts, or body language. At DIY MFA we talk about the four main ways to show characters on the page (thoughts, actions, dialogue, and appearance, or the TADA acronym) and subtext occurs whenever two or more of these elements are in conflict with each other. Subtext is interesting because it makes the reader more engaged in the storytelling. When a character’s dialogue (or behavior, or appearance) are too literal, there’s no room for inference and the reader might lose interest.

SOLUTION: Add a little subtext by pitting two or more of the TADA elements against each other. Make the character think one thing and say something completely different. Have their actions contradict their demeanor or body language. This adds depth and interest to your scenes.

5) Endless Crescendo / Abrupt End

One of the key elements of a scene is the “crescendo” or the ramp-up to the crucial moment. Sometimes writers craft a scene that’s all crescendo and it never actually reaches that key moment. (This key moment is usually a choice on the character’s part.) This endless crescendo can make the scene feel aimless, like it’s not really going anywhere.

A counterpoint to the endless crescendo is the abrupt end, where the scene simply evaporates after the character’s moment of choice. This lack of closure can leave a reader hanging and it can make the transition to the next scene feel jarring.

SOLUTION: Give a scene direction by having the character make a choice, and deal with the consequence of that choice. This not only gives the character agency, but it gives the scene an arc and sense of direction.

6) Out Of Place Scene

Sometimes we write scenes that seem really great in the moment, but as the story evolves they become out of place. This is why it’s important in the revision process to evaluate not just the content of the scene itself, but whether that scene adds to the story.

When I work with writers, I’ll often ask them to do a scene inventory, where they list out every single scene they have written with a 1-2 sentence summary of what happens in each scene. As part of this inventory, they must also state the purpose of each scene and why it’s important to the story. If they can’t state a reason why the scene is important, that’s usually a good sign that the scene might not be necessary.

SOLUTION: Go through your scenes and for each one ask yourself: “What’s the purpose?” If you can’t think of a good reason why the scene is in your story, consider leaving it out.

ONE CAVEAT: Even if a scene doesn’t make it into your story, don’t erase it entirely. Save it somewhere, in case it becomes useful later. You may not use it in this book, but it could become a great companion story or a “DVD extra” you include as a bonus for your superfans or newsletter subscribers. Even if it doesn’t end up in the final book, it can find a new life in some other form.

There you have it, seven scene-related mistakes to avoid. As with most writing advice, my suggestion is not to take these points too prescriptively, or it may squash your creativity. Instead, write your scenes with abandon. Have fun and follow the passion. Then, when you get to the revision stage, that’s when you should be on the lookout for these mistakes and rework your scenes accordingly.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Write Stronger Scenes by Avoiding These Pitfalls appeared first on DIY MFA.

What I realized was that this episode fit the three-act structure to a T, and this surprised me. I’ve done a three-act analysis of a TV show in the past (Murder, She Wrote) but there’s a key difference between that and The Office. Murder, She Wrote is truly episodic. Each installment is a standalone unit, with very few story threads carrying over from one episode to another. Of course, there are recurring characters and details, but if you watched a random episode of the show from the middle or end of the series, you wouldn’t need a lot of explanation to get up to speed.

The Office is different. Most of the episodes do have a main storyline that begins and ends within that twenty-two minute window, but there are also several threads that carry over across multiple episodes. Classic examples of this are the Pam-Jim romance or Jim’s evolving friendship with Dwight. These particular threads span the duration of the entire show, but there are also shorter story arcs that last only a season or a handful of episodes.

This is why it surprised me that even with these larger story arcs in play a single episode can still fit the three-act structure. Today, I’ll share my three-act analysis of “Office Olympics” with you, but first…

Spoiler Alert! This episode aired in October 2005, so I think the statute of limitations for spoilers has long since passed. But just in case, be aware that there will be spoilers. Note also that this episode is from the American version of the show.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of The Office (S2E3) “Office Olympics.”

COLD OPEN: The episode kicks off with a short scene before the opening credits. Sometimes these opening gags relate directly to later events in the episode, and sometimes they are completely separate. With this episode, it’s the latter.

In this cold open, regional manager Michael Scott is at the office before dawn and Ryan the temp comes in with a breakfast sandwich. He asks Michael why he needed him to come in early, and it turns out it was just because of the breakfast sandwich. Michael tells Ryan to enjoy having the office all to himself and Ryan replies that he’s going to take a nap in his car. This small interaction underscores how oblivious Michael is to the needs of his employees.

OPENING CREDITS: The credits begin with scenes of Scranton and the Dunder Mifflin building, followed by clips of the main characters at the office set to upbeat music. These clips are interspersed with b-roll footage of various office details like a copy machine, a water cooler, and a calculator. The credits emphasize that while this show might take place in a humdrum office for a paper company, shenanigans will ensue. And, of course, they do.  

ACT 1: The employees are stuck filling out expense reports—an activity that’s so boring, Jim keels over and “dies” at his desk. While Dwight is away from his desk, Pam and Jim throw things into his coffee mug. This is the first game that opens the doors to the whole idea of Office Olympics. Meanwhile, Michael needs to leave the office because he’s closing on a condo. While he’s out, the rest of the office needs to finish their expense reports.

The five promises of act 1 play out as follows:

Character: Michael Scott is the protagonist. He is an incompetent boss who thinks far too highly of himself and is clueless about the feelings or wants of his employees. While the show has several key supporting characters and later becomes more of an ensemble cast, in the early seasons, Michael is clearly the main character. 

Voice: This show is filmed in a “mockumentary” style, meaning that periodically the characters will break the fourth wall and speak directly to the camera in talking head segments. These interviews often lend context and commentary to whatever happened in the preceding scenes.

World: Dunder Mifflin is a mid-sized paper company. The show takes place mostly in the Scranton branch which includes an office and warehouse.

Problem: In this episode, the problem is that expense reports are boring and no one at the office wants to do them.

Event: Michael has to leave the office in the middle of the day, so everyone else is left to their own devices.

PIVOT POINT 1:  Dwight asks Michael whether he can go with him to the condo closing as his representative (external event). After some insistence on Dwight’s part, Michael finally agrees (internal choice). The primary storyline is Michael buying the condo. While there are several scenes that show what’s happening in the office while the boss is away, the important landmark scenes (pivot points, midpoint, climax) all revolve around Michael.

ACT 2: Jim goes to Oscar’s desk to ask a question and sees a scoreboard for a paper football game deskmates Oscar and Kevin like to play. He asks if there are any other games and finds out that Toby (the HR rep) plays a game called Dunderball in the office annex.

Note: The rest of act 2 includes scenes of Jim orchestrating various games interspersed with scenes of Michael at the condo. The scenes are woven together to create the feeling that both storylines are happening at the same time. For this analysis, some of the events from each storyline have been grouped together or rearranged slightly to avoid too many shifts back and forth. Keep in mind that both the condo and office storylines happen simultaneously with quick cuts from one thread to the other. That said, because Michael is the protagonist, the condo storyline is where all the key landmarks occur.

When Michael and Dwight arrive at the condo, Michael talks about what he envisions for his future. He wants this condo to be a home for a family. They meet the real estate broker and the head of the condo association. After Michael puts Dwight down for not understanding property ownership, we learn that Dwight owns a 60-acre beet farm.

It appears Dwight doesn’t think very highly of Michael’s condo purchase choice. When the broker asks Michael if he’s ready to sign, Dwight interrupts with various questions. When Michael shows off the bedroom with cathedral ceilings and cable readiness, Dwight warns him that the neighbors are loud and the walls are thin.

Meanwhile, back at the office, Jim tries to get his office mates to play games. Eventually, he and Pam come up with the idea for the Office Olympics. They have an opening ceremony using a scented candle as the torch and gold, silver, and blue yogurt lids as medals. Some of the members of the office want nothing to do with these shenanigans, while others are all too happy to participate.

SUPPORTING CAST: The Office is all about the supporting cast. While Michael Scott is clearly the protagonist, the humor comes from seeing the supporting characters react to his ridiculous antics. There are several supporting characters, each with their own unique quirks and personalities, but for the purposes of this analysis, here are a few key players:

Dwight: The top salesman in the office with a harsh attitude and a penchant for going overboard when enforcing the rules. He believes he’s second in command, but he has little true authority. He also frequently falls for Jim’s pranks.

Jim: A salesman who is a bit of a slacker, though he can be efficient when he wants to be. He is secretly in love with Pam and enjoys playing pranks on Dwight.

Pam: The receptionist who’s been engaged for three years. She has dreams of doing something artistic with her life. She sees Jim as a close friend and often contributes to the pranks on Dwight.

Angela: An accountant who is very conservative in her dress and opinions. She is also very judgemental and a stickler for following the rules. She does not seem to like Jim or Pam, but she is having a secret affair with Dwight.

Ryan: A temp who has not been working at Dunder Mifflin very long. We learn later that he is in business school and thinks he’s smarter than everybody else. Despite his studies, he’s a terrible salesman and knows very little about the practicalities of business.

MIDPOINT: Michael misunderstands the terms of his mortgage and begins to panic. Dwight continues to find things wrong with the condo. Michael starts to have complaints, like the condo ceilings are too low and there aren’t enough “hot people” in the housing development. He demands a price reduction or he walks. The broker says if he walks away he will lose $7,000.

ACT 2 (CONT’D): Back at the office, Jim and Pam orchestrate more games for the Office Olympics, like Flonkerton or “box of paper snowshoe racing”. Pam tells the camera that when Jim is really into something, he gets very motivated and does a great job. Unfortunately he works at this office so he rarely has reason to get that motivated. The officemates continue with their Office Olympics shenanigans, like competing to see who can hold the most M&Ms in their mouth. (Kevin wins.)

Back at the condo, Michael is sitting with Dwight on the floor of the bedroom, eating fast food. He says he’s glad he signed but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself that he did the right thing. He tells Dwight that as a reward, he can move into the condo’s third bedroom and pay Michael rent. Right away, we can tell Dwight does not like this idea.

Back at the office, Pam asks Angela if she has a game they could play. Angela replies to say she often plays “Pam Pong” to see how many times Jim gets up from his desk to talk to Pam at reception. Pam is self-conscious about her friendship with Jim being misconstrued so she immediately backs off.

WORST: We can use the WORST acronym to better understand Michael’s motivations, not just in this episode, but across the entire series.

Want: What Michael wants more than anything else is for others to like him. On the surface, it seems like what he really wants is a romantic relationship and eventually a family, but when we look closer, we find that his deep desire to be well-liked, especially by his employees.

Obstacle: Michaels’ primary obstacle to being liked is his own personality. He is narcissistic, inappropriate, and completely oblivious to the feelings, wants, or opinions of others.

Risk: He is willing to do just about anything to be well-liked. In fact, he is so desperate to gain the good opinion of others that he often does things that make people less inclined to like him.

Stakes: He doesn’t have much of a life outside of work, so if his employees don’t like him, he will be all alone.

Transformation: In the course of this episode (and the first two or three seasons) Michael doesn’t change much. As the series evolves, we start to see him evolve from wanting the good opinion of his employees to becoming a better boss, falling in love, and eventually growing into a more confident and happy person. It takes about eight seasons (and Michael leaving the office) for this full transformation to take place.

PIVOT POINT 2: At the condo, Dwight gets on Michael’s nerves (external event) by acting like he will be a terrible tenant. They get into an argument and Michael rescinds his offer (internal choice).

ACT 3: Pam makes a surprise for the Office Olympics closing ceremony: a series of origami paper birds. On the drive back to the office, Dwight continues to bother Michael, who eventually loses his temper. Michael tells Dwight that beets are terrible and he should “grow candy” on his farm instead. Once they arrive back at Dunder Mifflin, Michael goes straight into his office. 

CRISIS: The Office Olympics disband and everyone goes back to work. Jim reveals in a talking head interview that he closed two sales at lunch and finished his expense report in five minutes, making this day as productive as any other. Ryan throws away his Office Olympic medal and Pam looks hurt. Jim comes up with one final idea and asks Pam to play along.

CLIMAX: Jim goes to Michael’s office to congratulate him on the condo and invites him out to the main office. He awards Michael a gold medal in the Office Olympics for closing on the condo. Michael is moved. Dwight gets the silver medal and Jim takes bronze.

Ending Type: This is a happy ending. Michael wants nothing else except to have his employees like him and in the end they award him the gold medal (even though he has no idea what that medal even means).

DENOUEMENT: As Michael, Dwight, and Jim stand on paper boxes that serve as a podium, the national anthem plays and Pam’s paper birds “fly” out on a string behind them. Michael asks Jim why they’re playing the national anthem and Jim says because the condo is in America. Michael then asks about the origami birds and Jim deadpans that those are the doves. The scene cuts to the closing credits.

CONCLUSION: Series like The Office can have both individual episodes and longer arcs spanning entire seasons or even the whole series. This means there are multiple layers of the three-act structure in play. There can be a three-act structure for a single episode, but there can also be a three-act structure for an overarching story thread.

Take, for example, the Jim-Pam relationship. Act 1 of their relationship shows them as friends at the office while Pam is engaged to someone else. The first pivot point is when Jim tells Pam about his feelings for her and she turns him down (external event). He then chooses to transfer to the Stamford branch of the company (internal choice).

Act 2 of their story arc begins with them apart in separate branches, but then the Stamford branch closes and Jim (along with a few of his new officemates, including his new girlfriend) move to Scranton. Pam has now ended her engagement and it’s clear she has feelings for Jim. By the end of that season, Jim breaks up with his girlfriend and he and Pam go on a real date. The rest of act 2 is the story of their romance. They get engaged, buy a house, find out they’re having a baby, get married (the midpoint), and then start their family. 

The second pivot point occurs fairly late in the series, when Jim begins to feel unhappy with his career and finds out one of his college friends has founded a startup (external event) based on an idea Jim had in college. Even though he and Pam conclude it would not make sense for him to join this startup, he decides to do so anyway without telling Pam (internal choice). What follows is a series of events that put strain on their relationship. Jim has to spend time in Philadelphia and their marriage begins to break down.

Eventually Jim chooses to come back to Dunder Mifflin fulltime to preserve his marriage, but Pam worries that he may resent her because she’s the reason he left the startup. Jim gets the documentary crew to put together a compilation of clips that shows how he feels about her and he gives her a card he had written for her all the way back in act 1 but didn’t have the guts to give her at that time (climax). Eventually, in the series finale, Pam decides to put their house secretly on the market so Jim can take his job back at the startup and their family can move to Austin—where the startup is now located—and start a new life together (denouement).

We see this framework often in book series as well, where each book has an individual arc and then there are longer series arcs across multiple books. Sometimes the landmarks for the individual episodes  (or books) might coincide with a series arc landmark. Sometimes the arcs are completely separate. The key is to recognize that there are multiple layers to the story and to consider how the three-act structure applies at each layer. A show like The Office is a great study in how this type of story arc layering can work.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of “Office Olympics” appeared first on DIY MFA.

Like playing an instrument, writing requires practice. Sure, we can experiment and try things on the fly. We can repeat things by rote and hope something works. But if we really want to get good at our craft, we have to practice and we have to go about it in the right way.

There are four different components of practice—warm-ups, technique, repertoire, and performance—and all are essential for the practice to be effective. Let’s look at each of these components individually and how they translate to writing.

Warm-Ups

In music, these are the warm-up exercises you do to make your fingers limber and get them moving with elasticity. In sports, these are the stretches and routines you do to wake up your muscles so you don’t get cramps in the middle of the big game. Warm-ups are an essential part of a practice session because they get your body ready to engage fully.

In writing, we also need to warm up. Just as we need to get our bodies ready for music or sports, writing requires preparation of the mind. This might mean taking a few moments to think about the passage you plan to write that day or doing something to get your mind ready for creative work. For some, this type of preparation might be a sort of pre-writing ritual, like doing a few minutes of meditation, lighting a scented candle, or turning on a special playlist.

The key with warm-ups in writing is that we don’t just dive into the work cold. We take a few moments to prepare ourselves, therefore making our writing session more productive.

Technique

In sports, we do drills. In music, we practice scales and etudes. I remember when I was a teenager, I used to argue with my violin teacher. “What’s the point of these exercises?” I’d ask. “It’s not like I’m going to get up on stage at Carnegie Hall and play an A minor scale.” My teacher would just tell me to play my Bach. Of course, I would inevitably hit a tricky passage and start to stumble. She would then smile knowingly and say “There’s that A minor scale, Gabriela.” And, of course, she was right.

Contrary to popular belief, scales and etudes are not exercises in futility and they don’t just exist to irritate musicians (though sometimes it can feel that way). These exercises serve an important purpose because they allow us to isolate difficult techniques and practice them in a safe space. Then, when those same techniques come up in a difficult piece of repertoire, we’ll already have the muscle memory in place and the music will come more naturally.

The same thing is true in sports. You’re not going to perform a drill in the middle of a competition or a game, but if you’ve practiced that skill often enough, you’ll have it ready when you need it. The idea is to practice the skill in isolation first, until it feels natural and you can perform it on demand.

Writing also requires mastering techniques, and I am a firm believer in practicing those techniques outside the context of your work-in-progress. Why? Because if you use your current project as practice, you run the risk of breaking your book. Instead, I advise writers to use the Petri Dish technique. I’ve discussed this technique in the past, but what essentially boils down to is three steps:

1. Identify the thing you need to practice.
2. Do writing prompts that help you exercise that tricky technique.
3. Apply what you learned back into your project.

You can certainly use characters or the world from your current project in those exercises, but don’t put pressure on yourself to write something that will go directly into your book. Instead, give yourself the freedom to experiment and make a mess.

While musicians and athletes work on technique during just about every practice session, in writing we can get away with doing so a little less frequently. In fact, once or twice per week should be more than sufficient. Of course, if you run into a technique that requires more focused practice, you may need to increase the frequency of your writing exercises for a period of time.

Repertoire

This is an area that many writers neglect. They are so focused on whatever project they’re writing that they don’t think about broadening their repertoire. In music (and other performing arts), repertoire is a huge part of an artist’s development.

One of the most significant aspects of my musical education was the year I spent learning jazz theory and improvisation at college. Not only did I learn more about scales and arpeggios than I had ever learned playing classical music (and I played a lot of scales in my day), but it also stretched my mind in understanding how music is put together. I started hearing music differently because jazz gave me a whole new perspective. Playing outside of my comfort zone was one of the most impactful experiences of my musical career.

The same thing is true with our writing. We can sometimes get stuck in a particular genre or style and it can be good to shake things up a bit. I know several writers who do challenges or short story contests as a way to break out of their usual genre and try something new. And if writing in a different genre is not feasible, at least try to read a book or two outside your usual selections. The idea here is to broaden the scope of your writing so you’re not stuck on a single genre or style.

Remember, there’s a lot you can learn from genres outside your own. Romance and contemporary (book club) fiction are great for understanding character development. You can study mysteries to learn about plot, thrillers to learn about pacing, and horror to learn about tension and release. And, of course, when it comes to world-building, nothing beats science fiction, fantasy, or historical fiction. When you read outside your genre, you can see different techniques in action and apply them to your own writing.

Performance

Sooner or later, we need to put our words out into the world and to many, this can be nothing short of terrifying. Publishing our work—whether it’s an ebook, a newsletter, a blog post, or a freelance article—is a scary but necessary step if we want to build a writing career. Putting our stories out in the world is the writing equivalent of getting up on stage and playing a sonata.

The key with performance is understanding what kind of feedback to consider and what to ignore. In sports you might review the video after an important game and make mental notes on what to do next time. In music or theater you might study a recording of yourself so you can improve for the next performance. But in writing, things are a little bit different. Once your work has been published, once that newsletter has been sent or the magazine is out on newsstands, it becomes very difficult (if not impossible) to change things. 

One piece of advice I got early in my career was not to read my reviews, either good or bad. I think there’s something to that advice. Unlike watching a game tape or performance video, there’s not much we can get from reading reviews that will help us with the next project. When a work is pre-published, critique can be incredibly helpful. But once that work is out in the world, feedback becomes less useful because there’s very little we can do in response.

In sports and performing arts, performance gives us a goal and something to work toward. The same is true in writing. It’s important that we engage in performance by getting our stories in the hands of our readers and allowing our work to be read. At the same time, it’s also crucial that we develop clear boundaries on how to handle feedback and protect ourselves so we don’t derail our ability to produce more work in the future.

There you have it, a rundown of the four areas of practice—warm-ups, technique, repertoire, and performance—and how they apply to writing. When it comes to implementing these different components, I recommend a routine like this:

• Every day: Warm-up by keeping your hand in the game and spending at least a few moments thinking about your work. If you’re sitting down for a writing session, take a few minutes to prepare yourself and get in the zone.
• Every week: Try to do at least one exercise to help you build your technique. You can use characters from your work-in-progress if you wish, but don’t pressure yourself to write something that will definitely go into your book.
• Every month: Do one thing that pulls you outside of your comfort zone and expands your repertoire. This could be a flash fiction contest or reading a short story in another genre.
• Every year: Publish something. Depending on how you publish, it might be more often. For instance, if your main mode of publishing is a newsletter, your cadence might be more like once a month or every other week. If you’re publishing book-length work, once a year might be more your speed.

As with everything at DIY MFA, your mileage may vary. Try out the above routine and see how it works for you. If necessary, make adjustments. As we always say at DIY MFA, there’s no such thing as a “best practice,” only what works best for you.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: The Four Components of a Writing Practice appeared first on DIY MFA.

The IDEA Method

This signature DIY MFA technique is based on the premise that creativity is not some mystical process. It’s not about magic bullet ideas that you simply pull out of a hat. Rather, creativity is like a muscle that you must exercise and strengthen through repeated practice.

The IDEA Method also posits that idea generation is only a tiny part of the creative process. It’s not enough to have a great idea, you have to know how to put it into action. Idea generation is fruitless without implementation.

There are four stages in the IDEA Method: Inspiration, Development, Evaluation, and Action. As you can see, these four stages spell out the word I-D-E-A. (You know we love our acronyms at DIY MFA!)

Inspiration

This stage is what most people imagine when they think of the creative process. This is the stage where you come up with fresh new ideas. The other stages are where you build out those ideas and put them into action, but the inspiration stage is where idea generation happens.

The key to inspiration, in my opinion, is play. Have you ever watched and paid attention to kids playing? They don’t ever run out of ideas. It’s like an endless font of creativity and they are constantly coming up with new possibilities. They start with those magical words “let’s pretend” and suddenly they’re reenacting all sorts of adventures and playing endless games. The key for us as adults to tap into an never-ending source of ideas is to approach creativity through play. One of my favorite ways to get inspired through play is with the Oracle. I wrote a whole article about this creativity tool here.

Development

This stage is where the rubber meets the road. If inspiration is that initial jolt of creativity, development is where we dig deep and bring that concept to life. There are three components of this stage: imitation, improvisation, and incubation (or what I call the 3i’s of idea development).

Imitation is perhaps the most overlooked part of the development stage, but often the most valuable. This is the reality that we learn and create best when we acknowledge that our ideas exist in context rather than in a vacuum. Most of what we create is going to be a partial imitation of some other work that has come before. In fact, some of the most prominent artists and creatives use imitation heavily in their work.

Consider the impressionist Edgar Degas. Best known for his drawings, paintings, and statues of ballerines, what you might not know is that he was also in the habit of copying his own drawings over and over with slight variations. I discovered this when I went to a special exhibit of his work at the National Gallery in London, where I saw rows and rows of his ballerina sketches, virtually identical to each other, almost as if he had traced and retraced his own work.

Similarly, Vincent Van Gogh painted “First Steps, After Millet” imitating the pastel drawing by Jean-François Millet almost identically, only in a different medium (oil-on-canvas) and with his signature bright colors and swirling brush strokes. Artists of all types are constantly borrowing from each other and writing is no different. Imitation can happen both with an artist imitating someone else’s work or their own.

The key with imitation is that sooner or later, the artist moves from copying other work to improvising and making it their own. And if we’ve tried imitation and improvisation and we’re still struggling for ideas, the best thing is to pause and do something else. This is where incubation comes into play.

Evaluation

Once an idea is sufficiently developed, it’s good to take a step back and evaluate it objectively. This is not about letting the inner critic derail your process. Instead, the point is to take your writing project to a point where you have a critical mass, enough of it that you can determine whether it’s working. Bring your inner critic into the process too soon and you will derail your creativity, but you also don’t want to get so far along with your project that then if you realize it’s not working, you have to go back to the drawing board.

For every writer, the evaluation process will be a little bit different. Some writers have critique partners who provide this type of feedback throughout the writing process. Other writers might get a third or half of the way through their project, then pause and give it an objective look. The goal here is for us to avoid investing hundreds of hours in a project before we realize we’ve written ourselves into a corner.

Action

Finally, after we’ve figured out if the project is working, we simply need a plan for putting those words on the page and getting to “The End.” Here is where I like to do a little writing math and reverse-engineer from the end goal to where I am now.

Suppose you’re writing a novel and you’ve written about 20,000 words already. For a typical novel, the typical word count for most genres and categories is 80,000. This means you have 60,000 words to go before the end. Suppose you want to finish this book in 4 months, that means you need to produce 15,000 per month which amounts to about 3,750 words per week. If you write five days per week, you just have to produce 750 words per writing session to reach your goal.

For some writers, 750 words per session might be easy, but for others it might be a stretch. If you’re in the latter camp, you might need to work your way up to that 750-word pace. This is where I recommend the ten percent rule. Choose a word count number that’s super-easy, so easy you could probably knock out that word count in your sleep. Suppose that easy number is 500 words. Take that number and add ten percent (so 550 words).

That extra ten percent might not seem like much, but it’s enough to make you sit up a little straighter and lean into your work a little bit more. It’s not so high as to set you up for failure, but just enough challenge to keep you engaged. Eventually that baseline-plus-ten-percent number will become easy. At that point, you simply add another ten percent (now 605 words). Keep adding ten percent as each new baseline feels easy until you reach the goal of 750-words per session.

The point of this exercise is to avoid setting pie-in-the-sky goals to motivate ourselves to work harder. The truth is, though, when we set those high goals, we’re just setting ourselves up for possible failure. By working our way up from an easy baseline to a more reasonable goal, we set ourselves up for success.

Conclusion

The creative process is so much more than just that initial bolt of inspiration. There are three other stages that are equally—if not more—important. There is so much more to the IDEA method than the concepts shared here today. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our on-demand webinar Don’t Wait for the Muse which is part of the HUB lessons archive. You can learn more about the HUB here.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: The IDEA Method: What to Do When You’re Out of Ideas appeared first on DIY MFA.

But then there are those other times when the opposite happens. No matter how hard I try, the words just don’t come. I sit at the computer, stare at the screen, and I’m lucky if I can barely eke out a paragraph, much less a page or a whole chapter. Not gonna lie, I’ve been feeling very uninspired lately and the past couple of newsletters have been a challenge to write.

So, how did I get through it? After all, I must’ve gotten through it somehow or you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter right now. To understand how to get into a state of creative flow, we need to understand where creative flow comes from. Specifically, creative flow is based on four central concepts: the mind-work cycle, skill-based learning, practice, and community.

Mind-Work Cycle

The mind-work cycle is this notion that when we write we create a feedback loop between our brains and our writing. Our thoughts, experiences, and emotions (i.e., things coming from our minds) will naturally influence the words we put on the page. At the same time, when we write we process our thoughts and emotions and we also metabolize our experiences. This means that the very act of writing will in turn influence our minds.

Sometimes this feedback loop has a positive impact on our ability to find creative flow. For example, suppose you are writing a story loosely based on something that happened in your early life. By writing about this experience, you might work through some of the difficult emotions and maybe even “rewrite” how some events played out. This creates a positive experience at the page, which will make you more likely to want to continue working on that story. This feeds the mind-work cycle and increases your creative flow.

On the other hand, suppose that the memories and past experiences impact your writing in a negative way. This might make the writing itself more difficult and you may be less likely to want to continue with the project, thus impeding creative flow. Note that just because a project might bring up negative emotions does not automatically mean it will create a negative cycle. (After all, for some writers, sad stories can be more engaging than happy ones.)

The key here is to be aware of that mind-work cycle, to understand that our thinking impacts our writing but our writing also impacts our thinking. We want to keep track of that cycle so that when it’s going in a positive direction, we can ride that wave and be in that state of creative flow. But we also want to be able to step back and assess that cycle, to make sure we’re not moving in a negative direction and getting in the way of our own creative process.

Skill-Based Learning

One of the biggest fallacies about creativity is that it’s mysterious and amorphous, that there’s no rhyme or reason to it. As my high school English teacher would say: “Bull-honky!” Creative work—like writing—can be as technical and precise as other more scientific fields. And this technique doesn’t just apply to the craft, all those more abstract mindset-related components can be just as skill-based. The key here is understanding how skills are put together and for this I have two major sources of inspiration: Suzuki Method and Montessori Method.

The Suzuki Method was developed by Shinichi Suzuki as a method for teaching very young children how to play a musical instrument. It is based on the idea that all children are capable of learning music and that those skills develop in a similar way as learning language. One of the things that is central to the Suzuki Method is this idea of breaking skills down into their smallest components. Children aren’t expected to simply pick up an instrument and start playing. Each microscopic motion—from hand position to finger moments—is practiced in isolation first, then eventually strung together with skills building on each other. Progress may be glacially slow at first, but suddenly, you blink and the child is playing Bach.

The Montessori Method is also focused on skill-based learning. In this case, the emphasis is on children working at their own pace (often in groups of mixed ages) and using specifically developed Montessori learning materials. These materials are deliberately designed to help children explore various abstract concepts in concrete, hands-on ways. Students often work in a self-directed way, exploring different stations around the classroom. The hallmark of a typical Montessori classroom is how quiet it often is, with students sitting on the floor with mats rolled out in front of them, doing various activities individually or in small groups. These activities teach children specific skills, like how to do a pincer grip to hold a pencil. 

If skill-based learning can be used to teach very young children how to play a musical instrument or how to understand complex mathematical concepts, it can certainly apply to adults wanting to develop their creative flow. The key is understanding that creative flow is not magic. It’s a teachable, learnable skill. All it needs is practice.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I’ve talked about practice here and here, and I’ve also interviewed experts on the topic of deliberate practice. You could say I’m a little obsessed with the idea of practice. But how does practice relate to creative flow?

In the words of my late, great violin teacher: “Practice doesn’t make perfect, Gabriela. It makes things permanent!” She’d often say this to me after I’d spent a week practicing the wrong notes and had to spend the next two or three weeks un-learning and fixing the mess I’d made.

As writers, we often practice things without even realizing it. For example, I know a lot of writers who practice the art of not finishing a project. They get caught up in what I call Perpetual Chapter One Syndrome, starting project after project but not finishing a single one.

Other writers practice the art of procrastination. They get into the habit of pushing back and postponing their writing, which makes it that much harder to get back on track. Or, some writers even practice the art of not writing. They hang out together in coffee shops talking about their writing projects but they never actually get around to putting words on the page.

As creative people, we need to take a step back and look at our writing practice with objectivity. Have we created any writing habits that are not serving us? Are there aspects of our regular writing process that don’t seem to be working? Where have we practiced problematic behaviors and turned them into bad habits?

If we identify any bad habits, we need to find a way to break them, which often takes longer than it did to create the bad habits in the first place. This is why it’s so important to assess our own writing practice and try to avoid creating bad habits before they become too ingrained in us. It’s easier to avoid a bad habit than it is to un-learn it.

Community

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and it’s one of the three pillars of DIY MFA. Community is an important part of harnessing creative flow. Social accountability makes us more likely to meet our goals, Positive peer pressure of writing in tandem can help us knuckle down and get to work. And having a community’s support can help us build resilience and bounce back from creative disappointments.

Interestingly enough, community is also an important part of the Suzuki and Montessori Methods. In a traditional Suzuki music school, students often participate in group classes where they all bring their instruments and play through the repertoire together. If one student doesn’t know a particular piece, they sit down and listen while their classmates play. This type of environment creates motivation, where students are excited to learn new pieces because they want to play with their classmates. And for the students who know all the repertoire, these classes are a space where they can reinforce their learning.

In the Montessori Method, classes often mix the ages of the students. This means you might have a preschool classroom with children of ages three through five together. From a developmental perspective, these are vastly different ages. Yet, having these children together in the same class serves a very important purpose. When the children work together in groups, the older students set an example for the younger ones and show the younger students how to do the activity. The younger child might be learning from the older child, but the older one is also benefiting from the collaboration because they reinforce their knowledge.

In this way, both the Suzuki and Montessori Methods use community to help students learn. But community is not just for teaching young children. We as writers can use community as a way to learn and grow as well. For example, when we see fellow writers succeed, that shows us what’s possible and can motivate us to keep working, even when we feel discouraged. Community can contribute to our creative flow in any number of ways, which is why it is such a crucial part of DIY MFA.

Conclusion

Creative flow is not some mysterious, abstract thing that you have to figure out through trial and error or guesswork. Creative flow comes from developing concrete, learnable skills and building them into our repertoire. To achieve creative flow, we need to be aware of the mind-work cycle and recognize that our creative work impacts our minds as much as our minds impact our creative work. This means, if we notice a negative cycle happening, we need to break that cycle and course-correct.

In addition, we need to be aware of what skills we are practicing in our creative work and make sure that they are serving us rather than hindering. Practice can make habits permanent, so we need to scrutinize our habits and make sure we are not developing any that might get in the way of our creative flow.

Finally, we need to understand the role of community in our creative process and find a way to use it effectively. Whether we draw on other writers to help us hone our focus, or we use social accountability to help us reach our goals, community can be a great motivator. It can also be a source of support when we run into creative obstacles.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Where Does Creative Flow Come From? appeared first on DIY MFA.

Scenes are an essential component of storytelling because they are the fundamental building blocks of any story. Without scenes, all you have is a string of exposition (“this happened, then this happened, then this happened”). That does not create an immersive story experience for your reader. Scenes give readers the feeling that they are right there in the story, experiencing the events alongside the characters. If you imagine a story like a movie playing in your head, scenes are what create that feeling.

Why Scenes Matter

I like to think of scenes as the lowest common denominator of storytelling. A scene is the smallest possible unit that still contains all the essential elements of a story: character, plot, world, and theme. Any smaller unit than a scene—a paragraph or a sentence, for example—might contain a couple of those elements, but likely will not contain all four.

To me, scenes are the cellular component of the story organism. Just like an individual cell contains all the same DNA as the full organism, a scene contains all of the story’s “DNA” by representing all four storytelling elements. And just as different cells may manifest the DNA in different ways—a brain cell is different from a muscle cell after all—different scenes will highlight different aspects of the story, but they still contain all four of the basic components.

In other words, a scene taps into all of the five W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. The “who” is the character (or characters) present in that scene. The “what” is what happens, or the plot events of that scene. The “when/where” represents the world as it appears in that moment, and the “why” is the theme and how it is infused into the scene at hand.

I’ve had a lot of writers ask me: “How can I tell the difference between one scene and the next?” While this is not a hard-and-fast rule, I like to look at the 5 Ws, and when one or more W changes, that’s often a clue that the scene might be changing as well. For example, if a character enters or leaves the scene, if we change location, or if a new plot event comes into play, those are often possible indicators that we are shifting from one scene to the next. While this is not always the case, it’s usually a sign that we should take a closer look at the scene and see if it has indeed changed.

Scenes vs. Chapters

Another question that often comes up for writers is this distinction between scenes and chapters. For some writers, scenes and chapters are one and the same in that each chapter is a single scene. Still, it’s important to understand the distinction between the two, because they are, in fact, different.

If scenes are the smallest unit of storytelling, chapters are an artificial construct created by writers to deliver a particular experience to the reader. This means you can have many scenes within a single chapter or one scene spanning multiple chapters. Shorter chapters make the pacing feel faster while longer chapters can stretch out the pacing and increase suspense.

For example, in the novel Sweethearts by Sara Zarr, there are two timelines, one in the present and one in the past. The present-day timeline is paced with moderate-length scenes while the past timeline is one long scene stretched out over the entire length of the book. This creates a sense of suspense. The reader wants to keep turning pages to find out what happened in that intense scene in the past timeline.

Another example is the chapter break during the Reaping scene of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The first chapter of the book includes a few different scenes—Katniss and Gale hunting, Katniss and Prim at home getting ready, and the beginning of the Reaping scene. The chapter ends abruptly at the moment when Prim’s name is drawn from the tribute jar. The scene then continues into the second chapter, where Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place. That chapter break (right at the height of tension) builds suspense with a cliffhanger at the end of chapter one. Readers want to keep turning pages to find out what Katniss will do.

As these examples show, while in some cases you might have scenes and chapters that are equivalent, chapters are an artistic choice and a tool that writers can use to create a desired effect in the story. Scenes, on the other hand, are a fundamental unit of storytelling, not an artificial construct. 

Scene vs. Exposition

If scenes are the “show” part of storytelling, then exposition is the “tell.” Many writing teachers hammer home the idea that you should “show, don’t tell” but I prefer to think of it as “show and tell.” The truth is that showing and telling are both essential parts of storytelling. Scenes and exposition both perform important functions and one is not necessarily better than the other.

Scenes, as mentioned before, have a certain immediacy to them. The reader feels like they are right there with the characters, experiencing the moment at hand alongside them. Scenes have an immersive feel to them and oftentimes we don’t even realize we are reading when a scene really pulls us in.

Exposition, on the other hand, is great for skipping time or zipping from one location to another. If scenes are like the basic cells in a story organism, I think of exposition as the connective tissue that helps to hold everything together. Exposition is what allows us to say “Five years later” or “The next morning in Timbuktu.” It allows us to skim over the less important (or less interesting) parts of the story, until we get to another section that merits a scene.

Consider this example. Suppose you have a character who walks to work every day by the same route. The reader doesn’t need to know about every crack in the sidewalk or every random stranger that crosses the character’s path. If it’s a regular, ordinary day, the story can just say “He walked to work that day” and then craft a scene when things get interesting.

But let’s suppose, on a particular day, something dramatic happens on the way to work, like they meet the love of their life. Now it makes sense to craft a full scene, so we can capture that dramatic moment. Exposition lets us skip over the mundane, everyday stuff, while scene lets us dive into an important moment for the character.

The Elements of Scene Structure

At DIY MFA, we consider scene structure as it relates to each of the four story elements: character, plot, world, and theme. I like to think of these story elements as mapping directly onto the four natural elements: fire, water, earth, and air. 

Plot, for example, represents water or the ebb and flow of the storytelling. The plot events are often a sequence of actions and reactions, where events happen and characters respond, prompting other events to happen, and so forth.

When you put the elements of a scene together, you end up with something akin to the image below. The bead-like shape is intentional because scenes are like beads on a string, each one building on the one before and helping the necklace take shape.

This four-pronged approach to scene craft is only the tip of the iceberg. In our signature DIY MFA programs (like Plan to Plot), we go much deeper into these story elements and how they intersect with each other. For example, key moments in the plot thread overlap with significant points in the character’s arc through the scene. This is not coincidental.

Do a Deep Dive!

If you’re curious about scene craft and structure, one of the best ways to understand the techniques is to do some close reading and analyze what you see on the page. Choose a scene from a favorite novel, memoir, or story and see if you can tease apart the four different elements.

What sections relate to the character’s arc through the scene? What components are the ebb and flow of plot events? How does the author ground the scene in place and time, and what symbols or thematic elements help bring the story’s theme to life? See if you can identify and analyze the different parts of a scene. After that, you’re well on your way to crafting great scenes yourself. 

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Scene Craft and How to Create Stronger Scenes appeared first on DIY MFA.

But there’s more to writing than just the writing itself. There are many elements that touch our writing but are not necessarily writing-related. Still, these elements can have a huge impact on how we get words on the page.

There are a lot of experts teaching about the craft of writing, but not as many who talk about the “other stuff” like resilience, focus, overcoming blocks, setting boundaries, and other such topics. This is why I created the DIY MFA FLOW Framework.

The DIY MFA FLOW Framework has four parts to it. These four components represent four different aspects of our creative lives. In fact, the word FLOW is itself an acronym. (And if you’ve been in the DIY MFA ecosystem for more than five minutes, you probably know we love our acronyms!)

• F = Find Your Focus
• L = Live Your Learning
• O = Overcome Your Obstacles
• W = Work Your Words

The idea behind the FLOW Framework is that all these ancillary skills which surround our writing are just that: skills. This means that they are teachable and learnable, not esoteric, amorphous concepts that are impossible to figure out. At DIY MFA, we believe that you can practice specific skills related to your creative life. Then you’ll have these skills in your back pocket, so you can implement them at crucial moments.

Find Your Focus

Focus is the foundational aspect of the FLOW framework, because without focus, none of the other FLOW components are feasible. In addition, focus is essential for getting words on the page and is a necessary first step to be able to write. No matter how many creativity hacks we might try, if we can’t focus, we can’t do our creative work.

Find Your Focus skills include how to:

• Set effective goals
• Find the right project that lights you up
• Make empowered choices
• Eliminate distractions
• Discern when to emphasize life vs. writing

Live Your Learning

As writers we are constantly learning. We like to learn new craft-related techniques. We also learn about our own subject matter so we can write compelling and authentic stories. In terms of the FLOW Framework, learning is the day-to-day maintenance piece. These are the skills we will draw on most often as we are living our creative lives.

Live Your Learning skills include how to:

• Determine our best writing process
• Handle failure and avoid guilt
• Use deliberate practice to learn new skills and techniques
• Develop ideas through imitation, improvisation, and incubation
• Structure your ideas and give them a concrete shape

Overcome Your Obstacles

Sooner or later, all writers hit bumps in the road. Whatever we might call it—writer’s block, resistance, “The Wall”—the result is the same. Sometimes we face a creative crisis and we need techniques to help us get through it. These skills are ones we may not draw on every day, but we want to practice them and keep them handy so that we have them when the need arises.

Overcome Your Obstacles skills include how to:

• Side-step obstacles by acting “As If”
• Use your creative identity to anchor you during tough moments
• Identify your creative monster and take away its power
• Craft a creative survival kit in case of emergencies
• Put together a Peace Corner to keep you grounded

Work Your Words

This element is the interpersonal part of the FLOW Framework. While the other elements address more individual aspects of the creative life, we must also accept that creative work exists in an ecosystem, and we must learn to navigate that system. This FLOW component is all about communication and using our words effectively with others.

Work Your Words skills include how to:

• Reframe language that does not serve you
• Use language for problem-solving
• Set boundaries with strategic word choice
• Ask for what you need effectively
• Redirect and deflect verbal attacks

Skill-Based Learning and the Importance of Practice

One thing to keep in mind with the FLOW Framework, is that the emphasis is not on vaguely understanding amorphous concepts. When I teach this framework, the main task at hand is for writers to learn specific, concrete skills, then practice them in a safe space—a journal, a worksheet, a virtual workshop—so that when the need arises, they have that skill ready.

This is not unlike how I teach the craft. Yes, there are certain aspects of writing that are very cerebral and abstract, but the goal is always to translate those amorphous ideas into concrete techniques that writers can implement right away. This is why so many of our programs at DIY MFA include a live classroom component, where writers can participate in real time.

It is difficult to practice skills in isolation, though not impossible. If you find you don’t have the opportunity to join a life workshop or take a class in real time, you can still learn techniques and practice them on your own. The key is learning to look at the work you do in practice with an objective outlook. There is one DIY MFA technique I find particularly useful for practicing both the technical aspects of writing and those ancillary skills represented in the FLOW Framework. It is called the Petri Dish Technique.

The Petri Dish Technique

The idea behind the Petri Dish Technique is that you identify the skill you want to learn, practice it in isolation, then put the technique back into context after you have solidified it. For example, imagine you want to learn how to write better dialogue. First you identify that dialogue is, in fact, the problem you want to solve. Next, you find some dialogue exercises online or in a book of writing prompts and you do those exercises until you feel like you’ve nailed down the dialogue. Then and only then do you go back into your work-in-progress and fix the dialogue throughout.

The reason this technique works so well is because it allows you to practice a technique outside the context of your current project. This lowers the likelihood of you tinkering your story to death and making your voice feel stilted and artificial. This is not unlike how scientists might take a cell sample from an organism, run tests on it in a petri dish, then infuse the cure back into the organism once they’ve solved the problem. The petri dish allows for a safe space to run those tests and not kill the organism in the process. The same is true with your writing.

But what about those ancillary skills from the FLOW Framework? How can we use the Petri Dish Technique with those?

In this case, we have to get a little more creative. Instead of doing writing prompts, we need to find some other safe space where we can practice those skills. I find journaling to be especially effective for this purpose. If I don’t have a circle of trust immediately handy where I can try some of the skills out on real people, I find that writing about the skill in a journal can be an effective alternative.

This is why, when I teach the FLOW Framework I like to have worksheets handy so writers can practice the techniques on the page. This is especially helpful because I find many writers to be introverts, and introverts don’t often want to practice techniques through roleplay or other more extroverted activities. For writers, processing concepts through pen and page is often more compatible with their introspective natures.

Reclaiming Your Creative Flow

If you’re having trouble finding your creative flow, start by using the FLOW framework to identify which area of your creative life needs the most attention. Is the problem that you feel scattered and can’t concentrate on your creative work (Focus)? Is it something relating to your everyday writing process (Learning)? Are you perhaps struggling with a creative crisis like writer’s block (Obstacles)? Is the issue one of setting boundaries or communicating your needs (Words)?

Once you have a sense for the overall cause of this lack of flow, look at some of the skills listed above and see if you can find one that might help address the issue. (Note: the lists of skills are by no means exhaustive, so you might identify something that’s not on a list. That’s okay!) After you’ve selected a skill, grab a journal and spend a little bit of time writing about it.

A great way to journal about this is with the “So What?” Technique. Start by making some sort of statement about the topic at hand, like “I don’t feel inspired to write.” Then write “so what?” Answer with another statement, then ask “so what?” again. Keep doing this for five or six “so whats?” until you hit on the core reason behind the lack of creative flow. After that, write a few paragraphs about what you’ve uncovered. The purpose behind the five or six “so whats?” is that they allow you to go deep and not stop at the most obvious answers.

There you have it: a step-by-step guide to reclaiming your creative flow, using the FLOW Framework alongside practical tools like the Petri Dish Technique and the “So What” Technique.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Lost Your Creative Flow? Use this Framework to Get it Back appeared first on DIY MFA.