Things Your English Teacher Won't Tell You

The things every writer needs in their kit.

We all know one, the guy or gal who loves buying tools and gadgets for whatever their personal obsession might be. The person who wants, nay, needs that copper-plated electro steam fryer for their kitchen, the woodworker that craves just one more saw, the golfer who if they could just get their hands on that deuterium cored driver would probably make the Masters tournament this year.

Yeah, right.

We all find ways to justify buying that latest handy-dandy never-fail geegaw that will surely make our lives complete. (My personal obsession is with musical instruments. Just ask my wife. She’s ready to cancel my Ebay account) But, what about writers? What tools does a writer absolutely have to keep in their arsenal?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the two things every writer needs are a love of stories and an imagination. Don’t worry, both of these come as standard equipment. We might all like different stories, but I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t like being entertained in one way or another. And as to imaginations, well, spend some time with little kids and you can’t help but be astonished at how vivid their imaginations truly are. Childhood magic is so powerful that to a child their make believe worlds are as real to them as hard-edged reality is to an adult. Sadly, the older a child gets, the less real their imaginary worlds become, the magic slowly fading.

Except for writers.

Well, probably true for any artist. The creative process that a composer uses isn’t all that different from a painter or sculptor or word dabbler. We all envision things that don’t exist anywhere outside our own minds and then set about making them real. We have, for one reason or another, held onto just enough childhood magic to create realities from the unreal fabric of our imaginations.

But, what about the rest? What specific tools does a fiction writer need?

First and foremost, we need something to write on. From cave walls to clay tablets to papyrus scrolls, we have found ways to put our fleeting thoughts down onto a more permanent medium for thousands of years. Today, that medium is digital. Very few publishers require a hard copy (printed) submission, and almost every aspect of the publishing world, from rough drafts to editing is done on a computer.

As a side note, if you are someone who likes to write their rough drafts on paper, you can. Plenty of writers still like the feel of pen or pencil in hand as they put their thoughts down. But, in the end, you will have to convert your work into a digital format before you submit it.

Another tool every writer needs is a good ear. What does that mean? It means you need to start listening to the way people speak to each other, the words they use and how they react in different situations. Someone delivering a formal report is obviously going to speak differently than if they were talking casually with friends or arguing with a stranger. Just as important, you need to listen to how other writers string words together. Audiobooks are wonderful for this because you can get an immediate sense of the rhythm and cadence of their work. Hint: when you are editing your own work, read it aloud. If it sounds clunky to your ears, it will probably read clunky to your audience.

Then, just as you need to develop a good ear, you need a good eye. Become an observer. Step into every room with the keen instinct of a detective looking for clues at the scene of the scene of a crime. What are people wearing? What kind of traffic is going past you on the street? What does that old house on the corner really look like? And it’s not just the sights, but the textures, the smells and all the rest of the thousands of tiny sensory inputs our brains are flooded with every second of every day. In other words, you need to be intimately acquainted with the real world in order to create the unreal worlds in your stories.

And, just as you need to become a keen observer of the physical world, you need to become an observer of the human world as well. How, and why, do people do the things we do? How do they react? How do they stand, what expressions do they wear, what little movements and tics betray what they actually think. People don’t always say what is really on their minds and neither will the characters you create. And the more you watch people, the more you will come to understand this particular herd we are all part of. Be warned, though, once the door is open and you start truly observing and understanding the people around you, you will never look at them again in quite the same way. Writers are, by nature, just a tad cynical. It’s an occupational hazard.

So there you have the basic writer’s toolkit. There’s more, much more, because everything you do or learn or read will wind up in your stories. But, for now, it’s enough to get started. Get out there and and get to work!