Adding Fun to Our Writing

I read an article about how a woman, after a frustrating commute in Boston, began a campaign to have the public transit system install googly eyes on its trains. 

Googly eyes. On trains. 

And it worked! Boston now decals on some trains that look like eyes. Just for fun. To brighten riders’ days. 

Cute, I thought, and that was the end of that. 

A few days later, my daughter opens the fridge and sees a new carton of milk, with half of it covered in a minion’s face. 

She stops and stares. “Oh my god, that just made my day,” she smiled.

I had to stop and think. I was the one who had bought the milk. I noted the minion, but that was it. I placed the carton in the fridge, yet thought nothing more of it. Now, though, after my daughter’s comment, I can’t help but smile every time I open the fridge. 

The two happy-face stories got me thinking about what we put into our own stories. Even if we’re writing the most angsty, horrific, trauma-laden story, we can often find a spark of levity, a hint of light. We need to, even if it’s a flash, even if it’s only temporary, because light and hope—and a smile—are still a part of our human experience. 

So look at your stories with a critical eye—for fun. Where can you add a hint of whimsy? A dash of silly? 

How, in other words, can you make your reader smile? 

Problem Exploration

I came across this concept of “problem exploration”. It’s the exact opposite of problem-solving, the default mindset we’re most often taught. It’s about taking the time to examine a problem from all different angles—not with the focus of finding the “right” way to “solve” it, but opening up the possibilities of how your problem may not be a problem. 

I love this shift in perspective. If I’m trying to brainstorm an outline—and you know that plot is always my weakness—I often feel like I’m struggling to find the right “fit”. What action or event should I add to make sure my character and story evolve? This whole time I have the end goal in mind. I want my character here. How do I get them here? That’s one way, absolutely, but what if I take the time to explore why my character needs to get “here”? What if I look at how my secondary characters might get “here” and how I could apply that to my protagonist? When started to look at my problems as something to explore, rather than solve, I started to shed some of my writing anxiety. 

There is no magic bullet for an easy writing life. This strategy may or may not work for you, but maybe it’s worth a shot. Because, as I was reminded of advice my father would often give me, “They’re not problems—they’re opportunities.”

What opportunity can you extract from your problem exploration?

Writing Isn’t JUST Writing

Do you ever run out of things to imagine? Yeah, me neither. My mind is always active, thinking up new worlds or new stories or new characters. I have journal after journal after journal of jot notes and story ideas. 

And most of them will nowhere. It took me a long time to realize that was okay. Not every idea can turn into a completed novel and not every idea should! But I got stuck on this notion that I wasn’t a writer if I wasn’t working on turning those ideas into a book. If I wasn’t “putting in the effort” to write scenes and then revise them, then I must not be doing this whole writing thing right. 

But crafting a story for other readers is only one part of the writing process. Playing around with ideas, discarding ones that don’t work, expanding on ones that do is all part of our creativity. So if you’re in that stage, not yet ready to put words onto the page, that’s okay! You’re still doing important, valuable work as a writer. 

More importantly, you’re enjoying it. Writing is HARD! Maybe for you it’s the brainstorming, or maybe it’s the drafting, but if you find a part of the process you enjoy, then enjoy it! Turn your ideas into a book if you want to. Don’t turn them into a book if you don’t! Writing is your thing. You get to choose how you do it. 

Find the Magic YOUR Way

Back in elementary school, my Grade 5 class put on a play, The King’s Creampuff, in which the Witch of All Witches steals the King’s royal recipe book, causing uproar in the royal kitchen when the chef can no longer make the King’s favourite creampuffs. The daring princess (ahem, me, in my theatrical acting debut) saves the day but not before the king tears apart a baked creampuff in a futile attempt to find how it’s made. To his dismay, he finds only crumbs.

Sometimes reading a book as a writer feels the same way. We find a book we love and we dissect it to learn how the author wove their magic. We know the ingredients—character, plot, setting, theme, etc.—but still, we’re never quite sure of the alchemy that creates the magical final story. 

How, then, do we learn the authors we admire? 

Trial and error. We know a creampuff is going to need flour, butter, eggs and, well, cream, just like we know a story will need a character, a plot, a setting and well, a point. You love the smooth taste of your favourite creampuff, so you experiment with how much cream to add, just like you love the colourful descriptions in your favourite book, so you experiment with your own colourful descriptions. 

Your creampuff/book will never be the same as your favourite creampuff/book you consume—as it should be—but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the process of taking what you admire and reverse engineering it. 

The creating, after all, is all the fun. 

Write the Unexpected

I had a minor “huh” moment recently. I’d washed a flower vase and had left it to dry on the kitchen counter. I’d then taken two eggs, to prepare an omelette. I set them on the drying mat beside the upturned vase so they wouldn’t roll away while I got a bowl. 

The visual of the vase and the eggs momentarily made me pause. It was the juxtaposition, I suppose. One doesn’t always see eggs and vases together, at least I don’t. Regardless, the image caught my attention. 

That’s the exact effect we’re looking for when we sculpt our prose. What words or phrases can we combine to create that attention in our readers? How can we use language to get our readers to pause at the unexpected or unusual, just as I did for the eggs and vase? It won’t happen for every word, sentence or paragraph (imagine how stilted the experience would be for readers!) but it’s our aim on at least some of the pages. 

And this takes time. We often want to rush through our story because it’s a long process to begin with. But we need to slow down, examine what we’ve written and look for the right spots. Unlike the vase/egg image, which was purely happenstance, we purposely craft those phrases. Our job is to engineer those “huh” moments. It’s a lot of work, but the payoff is, uh, eggcellent. (I couldn’t resist! 🙂 )

A Marathon of Ideas

Writing advice often uses the marathon/sprint analogy, as in it takes a lot of time, practice, patience and endurance to complete a novel. I’m absolutely on board with that! But there’s another element of the analogy that I think is misleading: the “just-do-it” mentality. This is the concept that, once you have an idea, you simply write and write and write until it’s done. 

Only, creativity doesn’t work like that. The idea isn’t the first part of the writing process, it’s the all-of-it part. In fact, the first idea you get is often the lowest-hanging fruit. It’s the first thing that comes to mind because it’s likely the most common. You just read a romance between two high school teachers? You’ll write a romance about two elementary school teachers! That’s not to say there isn’t value in that, but it’s predicated on what’s already out there. Good writing comes from idea evolution. Start with your two elementary school teachers; then expand, morph, change, grow that idea at each stage. In the marathon equivalent, that would be like starting over every few miles or changing routes—it seems counterproductive to just running a marathon. But it’s necessary for creativity to flourish. 

Which means it’s okay if you don’t feel you’re always moving forward. It’s okay if you stop and evaluate. It’s okay if you start over! Ideas don’t come fully formed, so don’t be afraid to let them grow. 

Elevator Pitch

My daughter’s friend is in business school. She explained a marketing assignment she’ll soon have: an elevator pitch. 

It’s a short, concise, engaging, convincing line that can be used to sell your product in a short period of time. Like, the amount of time you’re in an elevator from one floor to the next. In writing, it’s the pithy, brilliant answer when someone asks “What’s your book about?”

It’s hard! Yes, yes, yes, we’re writers, but novel/memoir writing and marketing writing are two vastly different skill sets, so it’s often much more challenging to come up with an enticing elevator pitch. Often, we succumb to patchy plot points or stilted summaries. 

But my daughter’s friend gave me a new strategy—one that is so glaringly obvious, I have to wonder at myself sometimes. 🙂

She’ll have to present her business idea to her professor in an actual elevator. Students must literally ride up a set number of floors with their profs and they have only that small, limited time to sell their product. 

What if we tried that as writers? Find a tall building. Ride the elevator. Practice your pitch. I’m not suggesting you snag every elevator rider as your audience, but why not bring a friend? Try a few different lines as you ride up and down? See what fits in the amount of time you literally have in the elevator? Doesn’t it seem like a fun way to tackle a challenging task? 

Going up, anyone? 

Our Worth As Writers

I might have told you this before… (I tell it a lot!)

I met Princess Diana. In person. The most famous woman on the planet at the time, and she talked to me! 

I was eight years old when she and her then-husband (now King) Charles visited Ottawa. I was part of a Brownie troupe that had been invited to greet the royals. She stopped in front of me and asked my name. I was giddy with excitement! (Until she asked my best friend what her name was. “Diane”, my friend answered. And, given the similarity of their names, that was the end of me in that conversation…)

I’ve “dined out” on that story of my brush with fame, often “winning” the game of who’s met the most famous person. 

Recently I met someone who also had met Princess Diana. Absolutely, I was impressed, and even felt a little proud that, at least I could hold my own by saying I’d met her, too, as if it were some kind of status game—until I realized I there was no reason to be impressed. This new acquaintance happens to live a life in which he comes in contact with famous people. Princesses aside, my life does not. It makes neither one of us better than the other. 

It was a refreshing reminder. Famous or not, we all have our own value. 

That goes for our writing, too. Famous or not.

Our Impact as Writers

I was watching a mindless police procedural TV show, of the variety where the bad guys are caught in 42 minutes. The climax was a warehouse fire and in one shot, a firefighter filled the frame. He was an extra; neither the character nor the actor had a name. He was there purely for the establishing shot before we focused on the victorious protagonists. 

And yet he caught my eye. I thought back to all the other innumerable hours of TV I’ve watched in my life, and all the other extras I haven’t noticed. I wasn’t expected to, obviously; no story can give life to every character. But still, they were necessary. 

We’re all the stars of our own shows, bit players in others, and merely extras in even more people’s stories, but like that firefighter, still necessary. 

Which means each of us, as writers, is necessary—whether we’ve yet to publish or not. If you share your story with only one other person, you’ve made an impact—whether it’s earthshattering or barely inconsequential. Yes, we’d all love for our stories to rock the world, but ripples and waves and tremors come in all shapes and sizes and intensities. 

Because as often as I’ve ignored the extras on TV, I did end up paying attention to this one individual. I don’t know the actor’s story, but I do know, for that one scene, he made a difference. 

So, too, as writers, no matter or experience level or output, do we. 

Writing Is About US

After years in the writing world, here’s what I keep circling back to. Writing talent/skill/effort is NOT the same as discoverability. 

The best books may not sell.

The best writers may not get published. 

The best efforts may not get rewarded. 

It’s endemic in all the arts fields (or, cynically, in any workplace or industry). We know this cognitively, logically, yet still we yearn for the conventional, traditional definition of success (often meaning we’re on the—or a—bestseller list). It’s not wrong to want this, obviously, and those who do make this cut should enjoy the fruits of their well-earned labour. 

But it simply can’t be a reflection of our own quality because too many factors of how to get discovered are out of our control (namely luck). 

It’s not an easy lesson to absorb, so it’s a message worth repeating. Publishing/making a name for yourself/earning a living as a writer is NOT the only criteria to determine writerly talent. 

Taking the time to learn your craft determines writerly talent. Putting in the effort to hone your craft determines writerly talent. Striving to improve determines writerly talent. 

And those things are, thankfully, all under our control.

Happy Writing.