AboutSusan Rand Expertise Questions about writing in general, creativity (how to make your writing totally YOU - unique as you are); how to make it stand out from the competition; how to spark your creative juices; how to make it flow; how to make your characters seem like real people; how to control emotion in the reader and much more! Please no homework questions.
Experience I have been writing and teaching writing for several decades. I have written 5 books and several short stories. Over the years I have read and studied many books on "how to write." I can correct spelling and usage mistakes, and I know punctuation.
Education/Credentials BA in the Humanities, with an emphasis on Written Communication, 1982
Expert: Susan Rand Date: 8/12/2006 Subject: events in a story
Question i am bryony, i am 13 and i am writing a book at the moment.
i have not started the actual writing yet but i have nearly finished planning it.
most of it has gone quite smoothly but i am having trouble with the main events of the story.
there are several characters and an event happens to each of them and at the end the events join up to form the end conclusion.
my problem is that i dont know how to organise the events. i want to make it so i keep the reader interested but the events aren't all sqaushed together in a big muddle! i also want to leave the reader in suspense
please help!
Answer Hello Bryony (is that right?):
You have asked a couple of interesting questions - are you sure you are only 13? : )
The first involves organization. Much depends on whether this is a character-driven or event-driven story. Which is more important, the events or the characters' response to the events? Only you can answer this question. At your age you have probably not learned enough about human nature to write a character-driven story, so let's assume your story is event-driven: in other words, a plot, rather than a storyline. When you have decided, come back and we will continue from there.
To completely answer the second question would take a book of its own, but I will tell you this: the way to keep a reader's attention is to raise an important question in the reader's mind in the beginning, then keep doing that through the book. If the first question raised is "Will he (the main character) survive?" you are on your way to real suspense. Some of these questions will be answered right away, others in the middle, and some will not be answered until the end. Come back as you need to and we will move this project right along!
I hope this helps. If it does, a nice rating would be greatly appreciated. I am proud of my high score over 780 questions.
