Blog Inspiration

As a creative writing blogger these past several weeks, I've found it difficult to give people challenges as well as inform on how certain practices can strengthen writing.

I wish I'd looked at more blogs before I started because I found this one, called "The Write Practice," which gives info not only on how to improve upon your writing, but also does day-to-day writing guides to accompany their challenges.

They also get into things like villain archetypes and how to write about dysfunctional families in traditional ways.

The layout is also very clean, and easy to read, and list-like titles make information digestible and interesting.

Here is a screenshot from their homepage, which demonstrates these qualities.

For color inspiration, I got a lot of color inspiration from this palette called "hero" by colourlovers. 

Because writing can be a stress-inducing task, I think that it's important for the color scheme to combat those feelings of stress, and I really liked this color palette because it was filled with green and neutral tones. 

Because serif fonts are easier to read than non-serif fonts, I drew my inspiration from the newspaper I worked on (I really like the Rocket if anyone couldn't tell). The header of the Rocket is in minion pro, as is the body text, and I am particularly fond of the graduation issue we just produced, which can be found here. 

I think the reason these fonts work so well together (and especially in the case of a writing blog) is because they're readable, but vary enough to keep them interesting. 

The header is more modern and is sans serif, and the title is reminiscent of news type, which I've always been a fan of. I'm not usually a fan of script font, but I think this one works simply because it offsets the serious tone of the other two fonts.  

Editorializing, "I think you should do this"

The most important idea behind journalism is the myth of objectivity, that is, removing yourself entirely from the story and telling only what happened. 

As a journalist, I know that true objectivity doesn't exist because choosing to cover one event over another, and even choosing who to interview can shape your story into one that is entirely different from a story where you'd interviewed different people. 

This week, you should take a news story where you read it and thought, "oh, that's terrible," or "oh, that's really interesting," and talk about your reaction within the story. 

Doing this will help you describe feelings and emotions in your stories and hitting them at the core. Sometimes writers get into traps where they don't explore the interesting and terrible sides of human emotions. 

Here's an interesting story from my school's newspaper about a professor who sued the university on gender discrimination-- he's a man. I'll let you take it from there. 

http://www.theonlinerocket.com/news/2014/09/04/male-professor-claims-discrimination/

News Stories, and What You Wish You Would've Known

When reading a news story, it is common place to wonder about unaddressed motives behind people's actions, and this curiousity manifests in the form of the phrase, "what in the world were they thinking?"

This week, pick one news story from a news source (online or print, I recommend the Rocket personally...) and write a short story "behind the scenes" of what happened before the story was covered.

Most stories work for this, but robbery and murder stories tend to lend itself to this. It's also more effective to make the criminal your main character.

Here is a story that I've always found needed some commentary from a journalist, but feel free to use whatever story will work best.

Good luck, and happy writing!

(Police blotters often work well for this type of story, try to write a story about this as well, if you have the time.)

A picture is worth a thousand...

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

At some point in your life, you've probably heard that saying. It solidifies that a photo can convey a message more accurately than sentences and sentences of description. A good photo can convey one solid message, but a great photo can convey several messages at once.

Take for example, this photo was taken by my friend and coworker, Rebecca Dietrich.

This photo encapsulates both the emotions and stances of the man and the women in this photo.

For this week, write a 1,000 word essay on this photo, using first person point of view of any person in the photo.

Learning Something New and Stepping Out From Your Comfort Zone

Photo Courtesy of Jared Bonaminio

As a journalist, I'm constantly speaking with people to gather more information about the events or subjects I'm covering. At first, it was definitely scary to walk up to someone I didn't know and ask them about their opinions, but I've gotten more information from people I've interviewed than I ever had from documents.

If you're a student on a college campus like I am, there are infinite opportunities to join clubs and try new experiences. On my own student newspaper, my willingness to reach out to intriguing people and organizations helped make not only my own section, but also my newspaper stronger and more dynamic.

This week, I interviewed the Urban Gaming Club, a club that is synonymous with playing the game, "Humans vs. Zombies," on my own campus and others. I learned a lot about the motivation behind why they play the game, and it gave me a lot of ideas for a post-apocalyptic story that I could work on.

An interesting thing to do this week would be to look at this picture, and set these people in a post apocalyptic, zombie-infested environment, and pick out who would be most likely to survive.

You can look at the article here.

Interviewing in Character Development

As a creative writer, I often struggle to make character dialogue read authentically. That's often because the best parts of human speech are rarely pre-planned, and some of the folksier parts of speech aren't calculated, but spontaneous.

As a journalist, I've learned that folksier tidbits of speech make everything more digestible, and add character in an otherwise dry piece. I still remember a quote from a man I interviewed about a new safety lab, and he said that his goal was to make sure his students "wore a lot of different hats," and things like that often stick with you, as you hope words on a page will.

I challenge you to interview someone you don't know, and integrate their speech into a character you've been working on. It doesn't have to be someone you don't know if you are horribly shy, but the point of the exercise is to expand your pool of phrases and sentences as they relate to everyday speech. Good luck, and happy writing!


(Below is a video of an interview I did with 22 Jump Street's Jimmy Tatro, who was one of the most awkward people I interviewed in my whole life.)

 

Leave a comment about what you think Tatro's speech and word choice affects your perception of his character.

The Power of Observation

In journalism, one of the most important skills you can harness is the power of observation. By observing your local area, you can generate ideas for stories. The same goes for creative writing.

Sometime this week (especially because the weather is warm) go out and observe people, events, or even businesses to see something interesting happening in your local neighborhood. If something doesn't originally strike you as interesting, take time to see people who are interacting within a setting.

One of my favorite things to do is to go observe people in my local Starbucks and see who they are with, what they are drinking, and what they are doing to make inferences about who they are.

Here is an interesting video on the power of observation below. Good luck, and happy writing!


(2:19 on is the best bit of this 8 minute long video.)