4 Tips to Building Setting: Guest Blog for Sue Santore

Today, I’m dropping in for a guest post on Sue Santore’s blog.  A sneak peak:

In a movie or a TV show, the camera pans across the scene in an establishing shot and the viewer gets an instant impression of the setting.  The opening sequences in Hawaii Five-0‘ show beautiful beaches, surfers taking on the waves, and girls in bikinis.  But in a novel, it’s up to the writer to use words to evoke the images of the setting.  Read about the four tips on Sue Santore’s blog.

I hope you’ll also have a look at my article on writing called “Strawberry, Chocolate, and Vanilla,” published in Topstone Publishing’s Rejection Lessons, part of the Inside Writer’s Guide series.

 

The Most Tedious Part of Research

I don’t always enjoy research, at least not the way people who dive into research do.  I’m never going to be in danger of putting it all in there because, instead, I have to make sure I do enough.  To me, it’s a tool of writing, like proofreading is.  But there are some things I like better than others, and some things I found downright tedious.  The most tedious thing for me is:

Lectures.

I’m a kinesthetic and visual spatial learner, which is a really weird combination.  My learning skills lean more toward hands-on.  It’s very difficult for me to stay involved when I just have to sit and listen to someone drone on, even if it’s a subject I want to be interested in.  I don’t always get good notes from a lecture, and if the speaker isn’t good to start with, I tend to get very little out of it.  It can help me to get notes and other reading material on the topic beforehand, but a lot of speakers won’t do this or wait until the last minute to prepare.

What’s the most tedious part of research for you?

 

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