Action/Adventure: April 22, 2015 Issue [#6947] |
Action/Adventure
This week: Take a Challenge Edited by: Dawn Embers More Newsletters By This Editor
1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions
An Elf (written) Action/Adventure Newsletter
Sometimes as writers, we need to take up a challenge or to in order to add adventure to our writing lives. There are also challenges we can add to a story to bring up the action and adventure elements. |
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Not long ago, I decided to take part in a writing challenge. It's not action/adventure but romance/erotica and required that I write a story a week for 3 months, each one needing to be entered in a contest on WDC. On top of that, April is always the A to Z blog challenge, which means blogging once a week except for Sunday while each day followed a letter of the alphabet with day 1 being A and the last day is Z. It's fun because you have to find topics that fit the letter of the alphabet and your blog/chosen theme. On top of that, you need to go to other blogs and comment on their posts. It's quite the challenge but does take some time. These two challenges overlapped so I'm doing both this month. It's crazy.
While I don't often recommend taking on too many challenges at once, I do recommend that on occasion writers take a challenge.
Word Count Length
Some challenges will focus on how many words can be written. The most notorious is National Novel Writing Month, where in November many writers take on the challenge of writing 50,000 words or more on a novel. There are also summer camp versions that allow you to pick the word count goal. There is one this month (I may be trying to write 20,000 words on a novel...) and there will be another later in the summer. You can also challenge yourself to different word count lengths though. There is a novelette contest on here that may have a round soon and if you haven't ever tried to write an action or adventure story in less than 18,000 words, then that might be a challenge to consider.
Genre/Contest
Someone might take a challenge in order to write an action story or novel. Or they might try out an adventure after having issues getting characters doing more. The challenge can be a big one lead by others, but it doesn't have to be for it to still qualify. A self-inflicted challenge is just as good when it comes to writing and there are many options. Like someone who writes in this newsletter's genres might try something different, like western or romance. There are some genre specific contests on WDC, so look around and offer up a challenge to you and/or a buddy.
In the Writing Itself
We can also challenge our characters to do things in order to move the plot/story along. Often times, the starting point of a story is either at a comfortable spot for the main character before things happen/change, or on occasion right after. Something needs to make the characters do things as we tend to not read a whole lot of stories about nothing happening, so that means we need to challenge the characters to do things. The motivation might not always be happy reasons, there are painful events and many different reasons for the character to accept a challenge. It can also a prompt, challenge your character to "insert something here" in order to inspire a story.
There are many ways to use challenges in writing and a number of them can be found here on this site. Look around, consider what you would find a challenge, then get writing.
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| | Breakthrough! (ASR) A progressive, multi-step writing challenge for all members of Writing.Com. #2033162 by Jeff |
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What challenge will you take up or give your characters?
Last time I wrote for this newsletter, I discussed different deadlines we and our characters face. Here is a nice comment sent in on the topic/newsletter:
Comment by monty31802
I agree with your outlook on deadlines for the most part although at times I seem to dry up on what I am writing and months later something kicks it of again.
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