How Not to be Boring: Eight Writing Tips for Writers, Guest Post

Guest Post:

How Not to be Boring: Eight Writing Tips for Writers

by Cara Achterberg

Be honest. Don’t pretend you know something you don’t, feel something you don’t feel, or are something you’re not. Just be heart-exposingly honest and readers will appreciate it. Honesty is never boring.

Write your passion. Write what you love. Write what you are committed to. Write about the topics, stories, people, issues that get your heart aflutter or make your pulse race. When you write your passion it comes straight from your heart. Passion is never boring.

Don’t be too serious. I’m not saying you can’t write about somber topics, but even when you do there’s room for a little light-heartedness. What everyone always remembers about the funeral is the joke that Uncle Richie told about the time…. Use humor to make your point whenever possible. People who don’t take themselves too seriously are never boring.

Write to a friend. Address all your writing to someone you care about. If you care about your reader, the reader can sense that. They will recognize your friendliness. Kindness is never boring.

Write more action, less musings; more dialogue, less description. When you are reading a long, brilliantly written, heavily layered book and it starts to get exciting- do you skip over the dense, long descriptive paragraphs and race to the action? Me, too. When you start reading a new book, do you wait with baited eyes for some dialogue? Me, too. Dialogue and action are (usually) not boring.

Try to mention animals. I wrote a blog about organic life with children for nearly ten years and gathered a few hundred faithful followers in my 500+ posts, and then last year I started writing a blog about my foster dogs and in less than a year had 2300 followers. People like animals. Whenever possible, include an animal. Animals are never boring.

Be open; share your life. When a writer gets personal, it’s always more interesting. You’re asking a reader to take precious minutes, possibly hours, out of her day to read what you’ve written- the least you can do is be willing to share some of your life with her. Tell stories of your life, your family, your kids, your dog (animals!). People like it when you get personal. An article on toilet cleaning would be interesting if it included the story of when your three-year-old flushed the hamster. Personal is rarely boring.

Don’t mention the weather. Elmore Leonard includes this in his ten rules of writing and he’s right. Unless you’re writing about a tornado chaser, no one cares what the weather is doing. Weather is boring. Don’t mention it.

My latest novel is coming out May 3. Girls Weekend is about three moms who go away for a weekend and decide they can’t return. Let’s face it, being a mom can be mind-numbingly, lunchbox-packingly boring, but not this weekend. My heroines reclaim their lives as they wrestle with who they are and who they want to be.

The story is honest because I wrote it at a time in my life when I truly wanted to run away from being the mom and was questioning my own life choices. I passionately believe in living each day in the present tense, and all three of my characters struggle with that very quest in one form or another.

While the subjects addressed are serious ones facing women – personal identity, deferring your dreams to raise a family, questioning your partner choice – the book is light-hearted and certainly not too serious. As I wrote this I was thinking of so many of my friends who also struggle with these issues and even my own mother who lost a young child as one of my characters did.

It was very tempting to spend a lot of time in the character’s heads since these struggles were deeply personal, but I worked hard to keep the book from getting bogged down and included plenty of dialogue and action – maybe a little too much on the part of Charlotte and the Irish playboy she stalks.

Somehow animals did make it into the story even though most of the book takes place at a rented beach house where pets were most certainly not allowed. A random encounter with an odd character who explains the difference between dog-people and cat-people lightens a serious moment.

Seeing the book published is kind of scary to me. This book is probably the most personal story I’ve written. I’m not any of these characters and at the same time I’m all of them. My characters face three of my biggest fears – the death of a child, choosing the wrong life path, and the destruction of a marriage. By writing through these fears, I faced them without actually having to live through them. I’m stronger for it, but feel exposed at the same time.

Oh, and the weather! I did succumb to the temptation and mention it a few times, but I’ll defend that choice by saying the weather plays a large part at the beach. It’s almost its own character. Sound like an excuse? You’ll have to read to find out!

Girls’ Weekend will be published May 3, 2016 by The Story Plant in paperback and e-version. (And I’ll let you in on a little secret – the e-version is half-price if you pre-order it in April!)

 

 

Title: Girls’ Weekend

Author: Cara Sue Achterberg

 

About the Author

Cara Sue Achterberg is a writer and blogger who lives in New Freedom, PA with her family and an embarrassing number of animals. Her first novel, I’m Not Her, was a national bestseller. Cara’s nonfiction book, Live Intentionally, is a guide to the organic life filled with ideas, recipes, and inspiration for living a more intentional life. Cara is a prolific blogger, occasional cowgirl, and busy mom whose essays and articles have been published in numerous anthologies, magazines, and websites. Links to her blogs, news about upcoming publications, and pictures of her foster dogs can be found at CaraWrites.com.

Social Media Links:

Facebook.com/carasueachterberg

Twitter.com/caraachterberg

 

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