Making scenes come alive, #Nanowrimo + other wins
You can be forgiven for thinking I’ve finally lost my mind…if you were a fly on my wall watching me block out a scene in my book that I’ve been revising (hopefully for the last time!).
In fact, writing a book is much like acting or making a movie. For example, I have a Spotify playlist (actually two for this book—one for each of my leads). I’ve casted who would play each of the four main roles, and turned them into a Pinterest vision board I can flip to to help me get in the mood. I speak the dialogues out loud to see how they feel, and act out actions to figure out if they make sense as I have them down on the page.
I’m like a one-woman show, only it’s not Broadway. It’s just me in my writing room.
This is what it takes to make your scenes come alive, so if you haven’t tried any of these yet, I highly recommend testing out some or all of these methodologies, especially to help with showing versus telling, even if some will question your sanity.
I think books are worth losing our minds a little over, don’t you?
Cat xo
PS: I gotta share, as my writers and friends had some pretty great wins last week:
We had another book (baby)! At our coaching call last week, my client Matt surprised me with his book reveal—he finally got his first printed copy and we were both ecstatic to see him holding it in his hand! I can’t wait to share more about this must-read for parents and their kids—it’s truly a wonderful leadership book that will help lift, inspire and empower so many families.
Caryn has almost reached the end of her really really really rough first draft. Over the past 6 months, she has been chipping away at what started off as a seemingly impossible mountain to climb and now she’s almost ready to go back to the beginning and revise it with with feedback and suggestions from me gathered through our biweekly calls. I am so excited for her memoir and can’t wait to share it when it comes out!
Not a client but still a huge win for me, my friend Yvonne whom I met during a creative writing course I took years ago reached out to say she took my advice and started pitching her book to small presses. Now she’s in talks negotiating with one!!!!
It is such a pleasure and an honour to help these writers and authors write, finish and publish their books. Thank you for making me a part of your journey!
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