One of the greatest known obstacles in writing is starting to write, but there are so many more that writers encounter on their journey through the pages. Getting started no longer implies that you’re half way done. It becomes harder to focus on being creative once you’ve exhausted all ideas in the beginning. These are the top annoyances in writing.
Coming up with Names
Sounds silly, right? Wrong. If you know your audience, then you know they’ll be wondering if you’ve based any characters on them. This rules out using names of anyone you’ve ever met ever. You can’t steal famous names that were already used in your favorite novels, either. So your last resort is making up names, which becomes an obstacle.
This is why so many writers look to historical figures to create allusions of the past. Another option is playing with ancient foreign words. These can be old enough to not be commonly used, but easy enough to find definitions to based on roots. If you actually do want to pay a special tribute to someone important in your life, then you can always make a reference to their name (provided they’re not a murderous villain of sorts).
Providing Intellectual Humor
Even gothic romance novels need comic relief sometimes, but it’s the type of comic relief that makes all the difference. Intellectual humor is welcome everywhere. It makes the readers think they’ve figured out some sort of secret and deserve to laugh. The trouble is subtly adding a reference to some historic event, a public figure, or a previous work. Puns are a lot harder than people think, as are palindromes (not a reference to Sarah Palin), anagrams, or spoonerisms, but once you get those down, you’re golden.
Description
Ah, the good old advice of “show me, don’t tell me.” If it’s something common, though, description might not be needed. Otherwise, you wind up dumbing readers down, which isn’t always appreciated. The trouble comes with trying to figure out what exactly is common and what’s not. The main idea is to paint a picture in a story, not burden readers with as much detail as possible. Too much detail also puts you at a risk of redundancy, which is annoying.
Aside from all the trouble that comes with creative writing, it’s still worth it. On that note, be sure to support all the writers in your life and their endeavors.
Yevheniya Shuportyaka - Genius and a little bit of modesty mixed together with enough self-confidence to make things work.
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