Beginners Creative Writing Class (Short Story)

1. Welcome to Beginners Creative Writing!: Hey, everyone in his hand and I just want you to this still share short story writing co teaching with Alex. She's gonna introduce herself in a little bit, but first time I saw him over with classes about my only learning about the course of my videos. So this class is offering you information about short story writing certain topics like tense when you introduce your character, your story and I'm going over things like grammar for dialogue, things I don't help your right flow that writing by the end of the class, and I learned a lot of information that we hope will be used to start your own story. Or you can use these videos at a story that are working on, and I will probably actually time to talk about what a short story is. So a short story is a story with fully developed theme or meeting like a novel, but it's definitely not as long as a novel elaborate. Your short story could be fiction on fiction, historical fiction, literary, popular charm. You can really write it out just anything you want on for the problems of this class outs, and I are encouraging you toe already have written something like 502,000 words before you watch the rest of videos. That way they conserved. It's kind of a provision technique for you. If you're new, creative running, though, and want to watch the videos first, that's more than fine. I just know that you won't be able to interact with class as much if you have already written something after each video outs. And I also be encouraging you to look back over your story and try to implement the strategy. It's that we're teaching you on, and you can post your stories as we're moving along to the process. Just we should rename your file something that friend like first draft, second draft final drive. That way, the other students know which draft that they need to be looking at in order to calm them on else going more to have any comments on how workshop is conducted. First, she's been explained how to push your story, and where is that? Hey, So I just wanted to show you really quickly how you're gonna be uploading your project because it could be a little confusing when you're using a word document as your project rather than using something like a picture or video. So I'm just going to show you how to do that. Now, I'm using one of my examples that I'm gonna be uploading to the class later on when we talk about character introduction. So we're just gonna pretend like this is my final project and this is just a one page paper . But, you know, we're gonna pretend like this is my final project. I'm wanting to upload it on skill share. So you're gonna go up here to file, and then you're gonna click, save as it should be set to the PC, and then you're gonna browse and figure out where you're gonna save it. I'm just saving it in my online class, and I'm gonna name it something like fine. Even if you already have this, save your computer somewhere else. You're still gonna do this when you're ready to upload it? Because right below that, save as type, we're going to click on pdf, and that's what we want to save it as and then click save. So usually what'll end up happening is it will automatically open up that pds in something like Internet Explorer. So if it opens it up in a different program for you, then Theo, only thing you have to do is you go down to your files, find it wherever it save Teoh. So I've already got my file saved right here or pulled up to where it is. This right here is the project we're looking at, and we're gonna right click on it, and then Goto open with and you will select something like Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome or Firefox, whatever Internet use. And that's what you want to open it with. The reason we want to open it with that is because I'm gonna go back to it. We want us to get wanted to give us some sort of link like this. OK, so this link is what you're gonna be sharing. So I'm actually going to go ahead and copy this. Copy it, and then we're gonna go to, uh, our skill share class. So I'm just using the skills share original. Um, learned to teach an amazing skill share class as my example here. But if you scroll down from the videos, you'll go to your project and then we're gonna click on Create Project. So this comes up and we're gonna name it something we would title it. Whatever. Later on, I'm gonna talk about this. But if you deem your story to be unsuitable for a younger audience, then you're gonna go ahead and add a plus 18 into your title just so that everyone knows. And right below that you're going to see this little other button and you're gonna click on it. And then you're gonna paste your link right in there so you can see that if I open up a new tab and I paste that into it and I click go, it takes me right to the story. So that's what we're looking for. You're gonna share a pdf just like that down here is where you can add extra little tag words if you want to, but you don't have to. You can also upload a background image. If you have an image in mind that goes along with your story and when you're done, you're just gonna hit. Publish. Now, if you want to make it a private project and you don't want anyone else to see it, you just want a place to store your project, then you cook this up here. But just keep in mind that if you do quick that box and no one else is gonna be able to see your project, this is where we want to you guys to go ahead and upload your comments on your classmates projects as toe what you think about them. And we're again. We're gonna get into that in just a minute on the difference between good and bad comments that you're gonna leave for your classmates. So she said that it was Alex and I were talking about a few more facts guy lines as well as a disclaimer that we want to begin you up front, and that has to do with the fact that you handed nor I are professionals in any way. We're both English majors in a 10 university, but all we can convey to you is the vice advice that we have been given Robert schooling experiences. So none of this information has been to be taken this absolute or definite, which means that you're encouraged to take her advice. But you don't have to. You don't want to also like to know that this is a free and open class for people all ages to take, which means that there might be some younger classmates who are treating participate in the class. That said, we don't on a hitter in activity, but we are asking that if you choose to write a story that may be a little bit more adult, that you put a plus 18 in your title. That way we could just let any of remember audience know that it may not be suitable for them or that they should only read with now moving on to the capturing guidelines. We have a few guidelines that we want to get out of the way so that you know how we want to get this class and the 1st 1 being no topic. Slander. So what that means is that before we don't want to hinder anyone's creativity, which means that you're not right about any topic Religion in race, gender, sexuality, experience, person a little except around that you wish to write about. But we also recognize that there is some students in this class that may not agree with the opinions or stories of other people so that being said you were not about waiting your cocks makes based on your opinion of their topic, you are evaluating them based on their craft. Their grammar techniques or writing style is the only thing you should be. So that is if we see any comments that we deem to be rude or hate speech in any way. Those moments will immediately reported were also asking that if you see any such comments going on that you either reporting yourself or you go ahead and tell us and we will work work immediately now that being said the type of comments that we are looking for, we're calling these good or bad comments. But really what they are, they're crazy or constructive criticism. So we say praise. What we mean is something that is letting your cocks makes you know that they have done something well. You're writing so that they can continue to use those techniques such as you have a lot of detail on page three, and it made it really easy for me to imagine where the characters were now. Constructive criticism is not you saying your story was bad or did really bad at this technique. It, instead of trying to help your cross, makes to learn how to make those stories better. So this would be something like I'm page to Your second paragraph was a little wordy and hard to follow. Maybe if you slowed it down a little bit and gave some more details would flow a little bit better on then. Nothing said as well. Our last guideline is just to communicate with others so before I can't really grow as a writer if I don't receive raised and constructive criticism. But I also can't grow if I don't get any comments. All that being said, we are requiring that if you choose to post your story to the scene comments, you must comment on at least two of your fascinating stories. Haven and I try to comment on as many stories as we can. But as we mentioned most, Goto College, which means we have a busy schedule us it is and not be able to get everyone. So we're asking that you comment, as I said on at least two stories, and if we see that you haven't commented on to cross made story will be trying to reach out to you in order to get you to make those comments because it's not fair for one person that have 15 comments and another person story that said, We hope that you enjoy the rest of the class and we will see you. 2. Lesson 1: Point of View: Hey, everyone, and welcome to our first official video in this lesson, we're gonna be focusing on point of view. Now, We didn't ask that. Everybody go ahead and have something written before they started watching these videos. So when I say that point of view is something that I really advise you to decide on before you start writing, that doesn't mean that you have to go back and start all over again. It just means that you're really gonna want to do some editing when it comes to point of view. If you realize that you kind of been inconsistent with the type of point of view that you're writing from. But this all makes sense in just a second. We're going to start with the basics here, which are what are the three kind of sort of four points of views that you can write from. So the three points of views pretty simple. Our 1st 2nd and third person now third person is the one that is a little weird. It has actually two options of how you can write it. There's third person Amish in and Third Person Limited, but we're gonna get to those two. That's actually gonna be the very last point that we talk about. Let's just start with some of the easiest ones, which are the first and second points of view. Okay, so first person has to do with me myself, the words I my things like that. So I have my little yellow smiley face here, and this is just essentially here to represent first person. It is one person talking, So I watched my teddy bear fly out the window of my mother's blue minivan freer than I would ever be. So if at any point in your story you say the word I or my or mine or anything like that, then you are talking in first person. It doesn't matter if you use any other words like he she they even have my mother right here. If you say I my mine, anything like that, then you are writing in first person the second point of view here, second person. So now you notice that my little yellow smiley faces talking to someone else. So second person means that I am talking to you about you. You watched your teddy bear fly out the window of your mother's blue minivan freer than you would ever feel. So see, we're talking about you throughout. So you is another one of those words that it doesn't matter if I say he she they or anything else on top of you or your If you see these words, it means you are writing in second person. Remember, second person to people. And now we get to some of the more confusing ones. This is this is your third person. So ignore the limited part of this. First, let's just focus on third person itself. So, third person, Now we have my yellow smiley face. I'm talking to the second person, but I'm talking to you about someone else. I'm talking to you about him or her or them or whoever this is. So this is gonna sound like he watched his teddy bear fly out the window of his mother's blue minivan. Now, if I were to have the word my in here somewhere, like he watched his teddy bear fly out the window of my mother's blue minivan that my automatically makes it first person if I said he watched his teddy bear fly out the window of your mother's blue minivan. We're now in second person, my and you. Both of those words kind of eliminate third person they are. The rule when it comes to that third person is when neither of those other two are present . So it's just he she they things like that. Now the difference between limited and ah mission is how much you know. So you'll notice sitting this example. All we know about is what happened. He watched his teddy bear if I out the window of his mother's blue minivan. But if we go to our next example, which is third person Amish in we get, she watched her teddy bear fly out the window of her mother's many blue minivan, Freer than she would ever feel. So we're getting her feelings in this one. So what third person Amish, it means, is that I I'm talking to you about 1/3 person, and I know what their thoughts and feelings are. So in this last one, I have no idea what this third person is thinking, how they feel, what they want, anything like that. But in this example, I know what they're thinking about in this case, they're thinking about being free or the fact there teddy bear is freer than they would ever be, so it may be a little bit confusing, but if you need some extra help, please don't be afraid to reach out to us and ask a few questions. So now let's just do a quick review. So remember, First person means that I am talking about myself. Second person means that I am talking to you about you, and third person means I'm talking about other people he, she or they for examples. And also remember, the third person can know which would be, ah, mission or they cannot know which is limited. All of the thoughts and feelings of the other characters. So think of it like limited. It means that they are limited on what they know. They Onley know the actions that are taking place. But Amish int is the ability to know what those characters are thinking because in first person I can tell you what I'm thinking and second person, I'm kind of telling you what you're thinking. It sounds kind of odd, but that's kind of how it works. Third person, however, I can either know what he she and they're thinking, or I cannot know. So those are your two options. So I hope this video helped you. And I also hope that you'll stay tuned for our next video on which can A is gonna talk about tenses for you, which is another subject that you really need to take seriously. Before you start writing a story and again, please do not feel like you have to start over on any of your stories. You can use both of these techniques that we're gonna be talking about to edit your story as you go along. 3. Lesson 2: Tenses: Let's talk about tense, present, tense and past tense, that is, I'm sure you already know what the difference is between present tense and past tense. Just be clear. Let's look at a few examples. So in this first example, the doctor says it's best of Palm stays out of school and mother agrees. Keep indoors, the doctor says. If you get excited, think of something. Blue Mother lets him come downstairs for meals and chores Onley. Otherwise, he sustained his closet. We have to be careful Tomcat! She whispers and sets her palm on his forehead. In this first example, door obviously rights in the present tense, which has conveyed through the highlighted words like says, stays and agrees. Not only his doors exposition in present tense, but also the dialogue, which he uses italics to format his dialogue onto the next one. He had arrived at the florist. Inside, he went straight over to the roses. In the refrigerated case. It was a cold day, cold and very windy. He'd come and chilled the short walk across. The heated space warmed him, and he could feel the fridge air hit him in the face when he yanked open the glass door. He leaned in and peered of flowers. In this example, Interim uses past tense to describe the actions of his character, Jim, as a scene in the highlighted words like Arrived, Went and Waas. However, when a story isn't past tense, the dialogue is going to be in the present tense because it is the present for the characters. It's gonna be seen in the next example. Please don't talk to me like I'm one of your postdocs, she said. And he took a long breath. He said Kate were involved with each other. Cate, Jim's your friend and so were you, my friend. Your wife is my friend, too. So here we can see that the dialogue is in the present tense while the dialogue tags like she said and, he said, are in the past tense. Now, obviously, if the characters air talking to each other about something that happened in the past, when the dialogue would also be in the past tense. Now you don't have to just use present or past tense in your story. For instance, if you're writing your story in the present tense, but you want your characters to remember something from the past, or you may want to include an entire flash vaccine. Then you would switch over into the past tense. The last thing I want to mention here is very important. No matter which tends you decide to use in your story. Please, please, please, being mindful of that tense throughout your story. I've read a few drafts of stores before, and the writer will suddenly switch from past tense to present tents for no reason at all. So make sure when you're writing your own story that you are being consistent. And now that we've gone over the differences between past and present tense and when to use each one, look back over your own story and make sure being consistent with whichever one you're using. Maybe you have a flashback scene in your story. Make sure it's in the past tense. Well, that's it for me. When you hear from me again, we'll be talking about how to format dialogue 4. Lesson 3: Introducing Characters/Stories: everyone in this video, I'm gonna be talking about how to introduce your characters and your story, which basically means how to start your short story. And remember that for this class you're only required to write about 500 to 1000 words. So we're gonna be focusing on, like, the first few pages of your story and how those should look and we're going to start with some do's and don't. Obviously, we're gonna start with the donuts. We're going to start with some don't say that you should avoid and the first don't is don't start with dialogue. I've uploaded two examples along with this video. One of them is a unrevised version of Sally's character introduction, and one is a revised version. And so you'll see in this unrevised version that we start out with. Callie. Callie, wake up. My mother called to me immediately. This right here kind of implies that you're a beginner writer only because it's kind of played out. It's kind of become a cliche to start your stories with some sort of dialogue, and you don't want it to seem cheesy, so it's really simple. All you have to do would be to move this down a little bit. You just don't want to start immediately with some sort of dialogue. And the next thing is that you don't want to start with a summary of your character's life . You'll see in the example that I gave you that we get a lot of facts about Callie's life right here in the beginning about why her mother is so controlling her father left and choose five. Her grandmother died from cancer at her mom's best friend, moved away to the other side of the country, and we get all of these facts at the same time, which could be a little overwhelming for the reader. So if you want to highlight anything specifically like, let's say that the fact that Callie's dad left when she was five is a particularly important fact. I would bring that up whenever it's relevant, rather than throwing it in at the beginning with a bunch of other fax, because I want this factor really be remembered by my audience. So putting it up front and with a bunch of other facts like this is not the best way to highlight that important fact. Moving on from there. You don't want to start with a physical description of your character. This is sometimes referred to as the mirror scene or the reflection scene. And this is where the character will walk up to Amira and will literally start describing what they look like. So we see here that we have Callie going up to Amira, and she says, I ran my fingers through my stringy blonde hair, admired my dark brown freckles upon my nose. I had a scar on my forehead that always bothered me from when I was seven and fell off my bike. My body was sleek and athletic from all the sports that I played. So we get all of this physical description, and it's kind of similar to what we just talked about with the background information of the summary of her life. It's very bombarding. You've got a lot of information all at once that you're throwing at me as a reader and expecting me to. Just remember, odds are 45 pages from now. I am gonna forget that Cali has blonde hair, and it's not gonna matter to the story. So you have to ask yourself, Does this description. Does the character description really matter to my overall story? If it does, by all means included. If not, you may want to rethink whether or not it needs to be included. The last don't is that you don't want to take too long to present your character story. So if you look at the example that I gave you by the end of that that page, we know that she has a best friend named Diana, who also plays sports with her and that Diana is the exact opposite from her. We know that her mom's controlling, and we know that she's blonde. It has a scar on her forehead, but we don't really know what her stories about. And so if I were to have someone read that first page and then ask them, Well, what is the story about? They probably say, I'm assuming it's about a little girl named Callie, but I don't know what the conflict is. I don't know what the story's actual progression is going to be. I couldn't even give you an educated guess, and we're gonna talk about this later on as toe what it should actually look like when we get to our dues, which were actually going to go ahead and start our dues right now. But the first do is not pertaining to conflict. It's actually to establish your perspective. In the last two videos, Hannah and I both talked about tenses and point of view, and those are both two really important things to establishing your perspective. So let's look atyour beginning to sentences here. And let's talk about the point of view. So the first place trophies gleamed in the summer sunlight cradled by the hands of the other team. So we get the first mention of someone, so this could be third person. Diana still could be third person stood next to me. And then we realized that it's a first person story because we've got me right there so pretty quickly into this paragraph, I can already tell that this is gonna be from first person point of view. And then, if we consider tense, let's read through this. The first place trophies gleamed. That's past tense in the summer, sunlight cradled by the hands of the other team, Diana stood next to me, covered in dirt and sweat from that afternoon's defeat so we could already tell were in past tense just straight off from the 1st 2 sentences. That's all we needed to know that we're in first person and that were also in past tense. And that's how that needs toe look. Because if I were to actually get rid of next to me and read this, the first place trophies gleamed in the summer, sunlight cradled by the hands of the other team, Diana stood covered in dirt and sweat. From that afternoon's defeat, the soccer field almost looked as warnings she did with cleat marks and dirt piles, scattering its lawn. That sounds very much like third person if you take out the next to me. So if I were to take that out and write this whole paragraph and not mention me or I or anything to indicate this was first person, but then let's say I had another paragraph down here that did mention me or I, my audience more than likely he's going to get really confused when they get down here because they've already committed to this being 1/3 person story. So you want to make sure that it's very obvious what perspective you're talking in from the beginning. Same thing goes with the past tense and present tense, you need to establish that early on. The next thing is, do make the starting seen important. And as we mentioned in the previous version of Callie's character introduction, there wasn't really anything that important about scene. When she woke up, she walked to the mirror. But it wasn't really significant to what I'm going to assume is the overall story. However, if we look at this version here, we've got another team who's holding trophies and then this kind of solemn exchange between Diana and Callie, where Diana's kind of upset and she's wiping a tear from her eye. She's very upset. This seems like an important event. Something just happened. Their team has just lost. We didn't even get to see the soccer game just went straight to the defeat, which tells me that soccer and these girls are probably important to the overall premise of this story, and that actually brings me to the next point which is do establish or conflict early on. So if we look at this scene right here, too, right underneath the part that I was just talking about. Yeah, I know, she said. It's just Callie. I don't want to barely make it into the tournament and then suck when we play against all of the better teams right away. I can probably guess that this story is going to be about these girls trying to get to a soccer tournament, and that's that's the important part is that the scene that I have placed it in, as we were just talking about, is important to the overall conflict. The conflict is this tournament. The scene is them losing again because as the way that they're acting is like this is not the first game that they've lost. So you really want to make sure that your one establishing that conflict early and to that you're making sure the scene that you start out with is important to that conflict? The last do I'm going to talk about is do try to present your character's personality early on in the story. So if we keep going, we learned that Callie is kind of ah, uplifting person, you know? Come on, guys, I yelled, We cannot give up and she goes on and she says, Please don't give up. I looked back and shouted, I'll see you all at practice tomorrow and I better see some smiles. So that immediately tells me that she is someone that has a very big personality, a very take charge personality. And that's probably going to determine some of the outcomes of how this story ends. If we had a more, you know, held back protagonist, maybe someone that was a little bit more shy than you might not have confidence that she could win this game, you might, you know, be a little scared and think, Well, I really hope she, you know, finds herself throughout the story. But you read this and you are not worried about Callie. Maybe you're a little bit worried that she'll lose some of this fight if it presents to be too hard of a challenge for her. But, you know, I can see I barely even know Callie and I can already go ahead and start coming up with ideas of how she's gonna approach this conflict, and that's what you want. You want your characters to immediately make an impact on your audience, and that's the last tip that I have for you today. When it comes to introducing your characters, I really urge you to go back and apply some of these techniques to your own writing on. I also encourage you to stay tuned for the next video, which is gonna be focusing on details. But I really hope you enjoyed this video. And please let us know if you have any questions. Thank you. 5. Lesson 4: Writing Details: So in this video we're gonna talk about writing details. And when I see writing details, what I mean are the details that are given to us within a story that describe the surroundings of your character, where the circumstances that there and or what they're currently doing These are the things that make it feel as if you, as the reader, are actually there with the characters and when I ST. Details, when I mean is those small descriptions that may not seem that significant at first, but really add a lot to a story and help it to become what we would call a well rounded story. And so a great place to start when it comes to writing details is your five senses. So obviously we all know our five senses. But the best way to use them to your advantage in the story is toe Ask what and how For each of these senses so like site What do you see and how does it look then we have sound. What do you here and how does it sound? And then we have smell. What do you smell? How does it smell? Taste. What do taste How does it taste and feel? What do you feel? And how does it feel on when we say feel here? Of course we're talking about touch not feeling as in like, your emotions, because again, these are all senses or sensory details. Now I'm gonna show you a few examples, and I'm also going toe upload, just as I've done in the past with some of my other power points. And these examples are gonna work from a very broad to very specific. The majority of them are gonna be somewhere around 3 to 4 sentences long and then the very last one. I actually do it to sentence description just so you can see how you quickly you can go from broad to specific and just a matter of a few sentences. And so the first since we're gonna talk about a site, this is probably the most obvious sense that everyone wants to use when they first start writing. We always want to describe what the room looks like. Or as we talked about before. What are characters look like? So, in this example here, I'm going from very broad to very specific. So we're gonna break this down in sentences. Okay, so in the first since we've got the room was bright with fluorescent bulbs that shines slightly blue. So we're starting with the description of a room, and so that's pretty broad at this point, we know the whole room was pretty bright, and then we're going to zoom in on one of the windows. One of the windows was slightly cracked, but collecting dust as if it had been that way for a long time. So we're getting more specific and we're now looking at the window in the room and then we're going to get even more specific than that. There was a gray and white hainstock hanging over the edge of the window seat, obviously having been left to dry. So this is getting even more specific. So we've got a room, we've zoomed in on the window, and now we've zoomed in even farther on the sock that is hanging on the window. So this is just a great example of how you can go from very broad to very specific in just a matter of a few sentences, and we're gonna try to do that same thing with our second point, which is sound so with sound here, we're going to talk. This is continuing on with that same scene and we're gonna go from broad birds saying from outside the cracked window. So that's our broad sentence. Now we're gonna get more specific where zoning in on one bird, one in particular seem to cough out an inconsistent tweet every few seconds and then just kind of continuing on with that. Or perhaps it was an actual cough brought on by one too many perch ings upon the dirty window seal. And that's just kind of connecting it and continuing that little detail there. So again, we're going from broad. A bunch of birds are chirping, but this one in particular and we're relating it back to the other details that we gave just a few seconds ago. The next detail has to do with smell, and we're just again we're gonna build off of that last scene that we just discussed, and we're gonna go yet again from broad to specific. The scent of musk and mildew were prominent as I entered further into the apartment. So now we know we kind of have described the overall General smell of the apartment, and then again, we're going to zoom in on one part of it. It was clear that somewhere in the refrigerator a milk jug must have been spoiled. Must have been left to spoil. So that's even more specific. Resuming in on the milk that has been left in the fridge. Judging by the dry heaves that it brought on, it was sour milk. Or at least it was now. So now you know, just a little extra detail in there of exactly what kind of spoiled milk it smells like. So now we're telling our audience it smells like sour milk, so that broad to specific as we go along here, you should definitely feel this pattern of how these details need to be described. Now we're gonna move on to taste. And so just to spare you from the nasty milk taste descriptors are examples that I could give you. I'm going to actually move onto a different example in this ones involving biscuits. So we've got the biscuits on the table. Tasted Justus buttery as they looked. That's a very broad description of these biscuits. We know. Biscuits taste buttery. Now let's get more specific. It was as if melted pads of butter had been gently placed upon my tongue. Okay, that's definitely getting more specific. Like now we know that the biscuits taste like really soft butter. It's melting on her tongue. Let's get even more into it. The salt and oil and flaky dough all danced about my mouth in blissful harmony, so that definitely paints a full picture of what these biscuits tastes like. Just reading it. You can probably feel your mouth watering a little bit. That's what you want. You want to be able to create that reaction from your audience, where they almost feel like they can hear and taste and feel everything that you're describing. And so that brings me to my last sensory detail that you could use, which is feel. And then this one. I only did two sentences, and we're going back to that biscuit example. I placed another warm biscuit in my palms, allowing the steam to penetrate their skin. So if you'll notice we're doing this in the beginning, we've got I placed another warm biscuit in my palms. That's very generic. You're telling me what you're doing. We've got a little bit of a descriptor here with the word warm. But then we're continuing that sentence and getting more specific, allowing the steam to penetrate their skin. So the skin of her palms is now being engulfed with this steam from the biscuits. And then we're gonna get really specific right here and say, ripping into I felt the butter drip between my fingers and wet the backs of my knuckles. Okay, so now we're getting really specific, and you can feel the butter kind of dripping between the hands of the narrator. So this may seem really complicated when you try it the first few times, but you just want to think broad, Okay? My characters in a room, what does the room look like in just like one sentence? And then ask yourself, What area of the room do I want to zoom in on now? By all means, you don't have to do this. If you wanted to cut all of this out and just go straight to the I placed another warm biscuit in my palms and the butter between my fingers. And what the back of my knuckles? You can definitely do that. But for beginner writers. This is a really good exercise to get you in the habit of writing better details and getting out of the habit of Onley using these broad details. So that's all that I have read for this video. I hope that that helps some of you when it comes to picking out the important deem pill details for your stories. Please stay tuned for the next video in which we're gonna discuss dialects and dialogues within your stories. 6. Lesson 5: Writing Dialects/Dialogues: Hey, guys. So in this video, we're gonna be talking about how to write dialects and dialogue, and that's basically any time in your story on what you have a character talking. If you're choosing to write in first person, this may pertain to your entire story if you're choosing to write in a particular accent or dialect, so let's just jump straight into it and talk about some of the steps that you can take to sound more realistic when it comes to your dialogues and dialects. Specifically, if you're trying to figure out how to sound realistic in a certain accent, so the first step is gonna be to consider that your own variations in your voice and try to make a list of the different ways in which you talk. My little icons here are supposed to be the difference between how you talk with your family versus your friends, and you might even be able to add to it how you talk at your job, because I can assume that we're all gonna talk a little bit more professional at our jobs than we would at home. Maybe you talk a little bit more respectful to your parents than you do your friends. There are slight variations in how you talk throughout your entire day. It's just that we don't really pay attention that much to it because it's such an automatic reaction, an automatic thing that we do. But if you start paying closer attention to it, you'll pick up on certain variations that you didn't notice before. And I would definitely keep a list of those variations because it would help a lot. Whenever you're going through your own writing and trying to incorporate those differences and dialects, the next thing you're going to do if you're gonna try to write in the voice of someone that you know, and I just have a little icon here of what I would assume is like a grand parent of some sort. Maybe you have a grand parent that talks in a slightly different way than you do. They come from an older generation, so they probably have different freezes than you. They'll have different words that were popular when they were young versus now, um, and so try to pick up on their personal sayings and phrases. So little things like that that you could incorporate into your own characters, speech or dialect that will help differentiate between the other characters or other dialects within your story. And then the last thing you're going to do is explore accents and dialects that you do not know that well, so these are gonna be things like, Oh, maybe since I'm from the South I want to write a New York character and I have no idea what goes into the New York accent. So that's where I'm going to start exploring these accents. And the best way to explore these accents is to do some research, and so you can research in so many different ways. But specifically when you're researching accents, one of the best ways to do that is to go to YouTube and just search the accent. Just go into the search bar and type in how to talk in a New York accent. Or what does a New York accent sound like? Or something like that, and then watch these videos and start keeping notes on how certain words are pronounced. That's gonna be the best thing is to figure out. Once you figure out how one word is pronounced, you're gonna find other words that are similar, and you can probably guess how they're gonna be pronounced in that accent. Your next option is to obviously just find someone that has that accent and then ask them how they would pronounce certain words or phrases, or even how they would say those certain phrases again, being in the South, there are certain ways in which you would say something like, um, hey, would you mind picking me up something from the store and in the South we might say something like, Yeah, I might could do that But might could do something is not a typical phrase that they would use in other parts of the world. So those are little things that you would ask him like Hey, how would you say, Yeah, I can probably do that. And then a Southerner would tell you the next thing you could do is try talking in that accent. This is something that could be considered method writing, just like method acting, where you're putting yourself in the shoes of your character. So if you have a character with a New York accent, even if your New York accent sucks, you can still go ahead and try to talk in that accent because you're gonna learn you're gonna learn better by actually doing what it is that you're trying to achieve. So if I'm trying to achieve a New York accent, I'm gonna do better by actually doing the accent and then moving on from there if you're not particularly interested in writing in a certain accent or dialect, but rather just in making normal everyday dialogue sound more realistic than this is the exercise that I would recommend for you. I'm calling it the listen in exercise, but this is actually something that was assigned to me by a fiction professor a few years ago, and it really does help you to understand where it is that your dialogue is missing, that realistic touch to it. And so here's the steps on how to perform this exercise. So the first step is to find a public area, and I put on here be respectful people's privacy because if you decide to go to a coffee shop and you see two people in a corner kind of huddled together, talking quietly, they obviously do not want to be overheard. So please do not go sit next to them and try to perform this exercise on these poor people who are trying to have a private conversation. So listen in on someone's conversation for a few minutes and then write down everything that is said So the perfect types of conversations for these are gonna be someone having a nice exchange with the barista at the coffee shop to friends in line, chatting about the football game that was on over the weekend, things like that that are just casual conversations that are being done out in the open. I want you to listen to those conversations for only a few minutes and then write down everything that IHS said. I do not recommend taking a recording device, as I don't necessarily think it's ethical to record others conversations. However, I do think that if you're gonna record them via writing by hand, it's gonna take you a while. So take something like a phone or a laptop that you can type on so that you can write out their conversation a little bit quicker and actually catch everything that they're saying. So when you're 1 to 2 minutes are up, move onto the next conversation. You want to get a few of these written down just so that you have a good group of people to compare to your own writing. And then that's what your last step is going to be. You're gonna compare the conversation that the conversations that you just recorded to the ones that you've written in your stories everybody's gonna be different as to why their own dialogue does not sound as realistic as the ones that they write for this exercise. But that's what your job is. In this case. It's to determine what it is about your own dialogue that doesn't sound is realistic and then make those slight adjustments. And that's all I really have for you on dialogue and dialect. It really is just kind of a subject matter that you have to play around with. But if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me, and I will do my best to answer any of the questions that you have. I love talking about dialogue and dialect, so I could definitely go on and on about it if I had the chance. But please also stay tuned for this next video that hand is going to do where she's gonna talk about how to format your dialogue in your writings. 7. Lesson 6: Formatting Dialogue: Now that you've watched Alex's video on honeys, dialogue and dialect in your story, we can talk about how to format your dialogue. Let's get started. Obs and laws were coming for dinner, and he was busy in the kitchen concocting his signature Bob's Cobb Salad Deluxe. He pulled out the chef's knife his mom bought for them for a wedding present seven years ago. He winked at his reflection in the blade. You're not going to use that dull thing, his wife said from the doorway. So with this first example, the dialogue time comes after Jane's dialogue. Formatted correctly, it would have a common within the quote in the word after it is lower case census in on a period. Notice also that the dialogue is indented to the right and not aligned on the left hand side of the page. Dole, he said, This bad boy is sharp. Is achiness cloth with this next example? We haven't interruption tag because, he said, is dropped into the middle of Bob's dialogue. Because both of these ends of dialogue are complete sentences. You put a period after the interrupting dialogue, not a comma. Also, it's important to note that after question marks or exclamation points. The Tigers always lower cased unless, of course, it's a proper now being shook her head inside Trita Claw. Really, Bob, This next example is an action tag. Here. Side is not a time because it's something that speakers doing before they speak. So then you put a period rather than a comma toe lead into the dialogue. This sucker he plucked at his receding brown hair could split atoms. Benny. He dropped a pinch full of hairs on the blade's edge. They sprinkled over the blade and onto the lettuce cracked up. Next, we haven't action. Interrupting the dialogue sentence in this case bracket, the interruption in Commons and lower case the words after both of the commas. I should not hear that I have also seen bashes used when in action interrupts the dialogue sentence. Everyone's got a good angel in a bad angel, she explained, And if it's a bad angel that picks you out, she pointed to a craft hoping low. There's no escaping it. You're done for. So here the words that come after the dashes are both lower case. However, the first dash goes outside of the quotation marks instead of inside of it. I would suggest that if you're using action, the interrupt your dialogue sentence, then use dashes instead of commas. If you want to draw more attention without action being squeezed her shoulders, it's okay, honey. Don't get all worked up. Her warm words they called his ear hairs delightfully with this next example. We haven't address Comma, which is a comma that should come after the name of the address seen dialogue, whether it's their real name or nickname. Let's don't want it to be like last time, he said, grouping his head. They need to know, baby how great I am. And I'm not just a failed vacuum salesman that I and this next example, we have an interruption dash, which is a dash used to show interruption. If we read on, we can see that Jane is indeed interrupting Bob. You know, I bet these knives are sharp, she said. Jane picked up the chefs. My song A tomato, It's red guts splattered all over Bob shirt. Bob cried. Oh, God, I'm pathetic! He darted from the room, hands flailing over his head with this last example, we have a dialogue tag before the actual dialogue. And as you can see, the tag leads into the dialogue with a comma, followed by capitalization of the first word of dialogue. I just want to mention a few more things before I wrap this video up. In the previous example that demonstrated how to use an interruption dash, the dosh was used to convey that one character is interrupting another character. However, you can also use a dash to show a character interrupting themselves. I just it just got out of the hospital, he blurted. In this quote, Antrim uses a dashed indicate that Jim is hesitating before he goes on to blurt out his confession. Another way to show pause and speech or draw dialogue out is through an ellipsis, which you can put at the beginning in or middle of your sentence. Well, enjoy your evening, the young man said. In this example, Johnson uses an ellipsis to lengthen the word well toe format an ellipsis correctly. There should be spaces in between each period. Now that we've gone over how to format dialogue, look back over the dialogue in your story and make sure you format it formatted it correctly. When you hear from me again, we'll be talking about grammar 8. Lesson 7: Writing Endings: Hey, everyone. So we're gonna be talking about writing endings today, and this is probably one of the hardest concepts that I've had to grasp as a writer. So hopefully this video will be particularly helpful to those of you who are like me and really never know how to end a story. I also want to see that there are so many possibilities for how you can in your story that if I were to list them all out in this video, this would be a 2 to 3 hour long video. So we're just gonna focus on three endings that I think are probably the best for beginners to practice with on. We're also gonna be talking about how to not go too far with these endings because it's very, very easy to get a little over excited with ending your story. And then it comes out a little off and we'll talk about that as we go along. So the three possible innings we're gonna talk about our tying up loose ends ending abruptly and the unhappy endings, and we're going to start out with tying up loose ends because this is probably one of the most common ways to end a story, especially for beginners. Everyone just kind of wants to tie their story up in a neat little bow and have it end just a You would expect it to essentially. And if you do it just right, then basically, what you should be doing is looking at characters, actions and events that were mentioned at an earlier point in your story that maybe were never fully explained. And you're going to use the ending to kind of tie those loose ends up and explain what happened there. So in the example, I'm going to show you. Maybe you mentioned earlier on in the story that a character burned all their hair off at some point, and then it was never really mentioned again. It wasn't something that pertained story, but then you might end your story with. He never came back after that summer, but I heard from someone that his hair did eventually grow back. That's kind of a little funny, cute see way to end it there, but you kind of get the picture where I'm going. So basically I'm just taking that fact that was mentioned earlier, and I'm using it to tie up the loose ends of my story. Now, if you go too far with this essentially what you're doing, it's summarizing, and that's not what you want to dio. So if you end of the story with something like looking back on that summer, I knew that I would never forget our wild adventures or the first time I fell in love. This does not seem like a good ending. This seems like a good tagline. This would be something that if your story was turned into a book, they would put it on the front cover to lure in readers, because essentially, what this does is it summarizes your entire story. But if your story is strong enough, you shouldn't need to summarize what happens if I've read your entire story when I get to the end. I should know that this character is never gonna pick up this summer because the writing of that summer was so intense. It was so captivating that I know that I would never forget it. So you kind of have to trust your writing with this ending. Just trust that your readers understand what happened and don't need to to summarize it for them. Moving on from there, we have ending abruptly. This is probably one of my favorite ways to end the story just because a lot of time to get to the end. And I just want to stop writing because I don't know how to end it completely. But there are some drawbacks with this as well. So if you do it just right, then you should be keeping in mind that your ending does not always have to have a clear stopping point. So an example of this might be something like The wind was hot that morning, and I could barely see my feet through the grass. They stood in. My neighbors had obviously not mowing their lawn in a while. This is an example of ending abruptly because I could take this same two sentences and put them at the start of a story, and it would sound Justus good. This sounds like the beginning of a story because it ends so abruptly here we could keep going, but it's not so abrupt that it's confusing, and that's what you're looking at is being you're too far point if there's too much ambiguity, which I'll note ambiguity is a good tool for more advanced writers to use. But if you use too much of it is gonna confuse your audience. So an example might be. She looked into my eyes as if she wanted to say something, and then she did. As an audience member, I'm wondering why you didn't just tell me what she said. What was so secretive that you couldn't put it in at the end there? Maybe if you ended with the dialogue of what she said, that would be a little bit more satisfactory. But at this point, it's just kind of confusing as to why you didn't tell me what she said. You're ending too abruptly, and then the last example we're gonna look at is unhappy endings. So an unhappy ending is something that a lot of beginning writers, a lot of beginner writers have a hard time grasping because, as I said, a lot of times our natural instinct is just to tie everything up in a nice, neat, happy bow. But if you're gonna do this correctly, you need to keep in mind that endings that end unhappily are a little more realistic because life isn't always happy when it ends, but if you choose to end with something that the sadder unhappy, it still needs to be satisfying. So in the example I'm about to show you, let's imagine that we just read a story about some guy who's trying to save a tree in his local park from being cut down on the story ends with defeated, he walked away from the tree Justus. The blades of the saw began to rev. He couldn't bear to look, but he could feel the wood shavings on the back of his heels. So this is unhappy. He didn't save the tree. The tree is being cut down, but it's satisfying because we know the tree is being cut down. There's no ambiguity. There's no confusion as to what's happening with the tree here in the situation on the side of going too far, it could be unsatisfying if we had an ending, such as defeated. He walked away from the tree and knew that there was nothing that he could do. This is unsatisfying because you could put this in the middle of your story and then keep going. The next line to this could be, and then he turned around. So in this one, we know the trees being cut down. It's too late. There's nothing he can do here. He's just saying there's nothing he could do as a reader, I might be yelling at the book. Yes, there is. There's so much more you can do. Turn around. Don't let them here. It's too late. So you see, the difference here is that this is a little bit unsatisfying. This is a little bit more satisfying. So the things to keep in mind that when you're writing your endings, it's just don't rush into it. You should be able to tell when your story is really finished. And also keep in mind that you don't have to know what your inning is before you start writing. If you know what your ending is, before you start writing, that's great. You have something to work towards, but there are a lot of writers that start a story and have no idea where it's going. They just naturally let it happen, and that is OK. Also, you can choose to write multiple endings for your story until you find one that you think fits Well, I had a story, for example, that I wrote in which I was pretty sure that it was gonna end with this mother and daughter reuniting. And then I got to the end and realized that that didn't seem to fit. I thought wouldn't even toe happen was that they didnt reunite. And it made for a much better ending for my peace. Which also leads me to the point of make sure you're ending fits the story. Just make sure that if you're writing a story that is very happy, maybe it's more Children's story and then you get to the end. This may not be the time to use the unhappy ending route because it's not gonna fit with how the rest of your story flows. Keeping all that in mind, I hope you guys enjoyed this video and found it helpful in some way. Also, please don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have any further questions on things like this and also stay tuned for our next video, which Hannah is gonna talk to you guys about commas and semi Coghlan's. This is probably gonna be one of the most helpful videos that you have when it comes to your grammar and editing. Commas are still super tough for me, so please stick around for that video. 9. Lesson 8: Commas & Semicolons: Hey, everyone, welcome to the first grammar video. I hope I haven't scared you already. Grammar can sound like a pretty daunting concept, but we're just gonna be covering the basics here. So let's get into it. Akamas. A punctuation mark that indicates a separation of ideas. And it's used in five main ways to set off the items in a list of three or more things to self, a phrase or clause that introduces a complete sentence. The show that explanatory material has been inserted the separate, complete sentences, joined by coordinating, coordinating conjunction like an or but not etcetera or to introduce set off or to find a direct quotation. I'm not gonna go into the slashed one, because I already did that in the dialogue for mining video. So first up is listing. It was harmless, frankly interesting, nervous and cute. Here we have a list of four adjectives, and there's a comma separating each one, with the last common coming before the word and up. Next is introductory material. When the comments used after an introductory phrase or clause, it will usually begin with a word like if although even though while win before during After something like that here we have in his head Bill saw for movie. In this example, the use of in at the beginning shows that what follows is an introductory phrase, so you need a comma at end of it up next is extra material. Yellow roses, signifying friendship more than heroes seemed right, given the complex potential of the evening. Commas are placed on both sides of the explanatory material to show that the information is not essential or to set the information off more last up. We have coordinating conjunctions in order for a common to be placed before a coordinating conjunction. Who comes before and after that. Conjunction needs to be a complete sentence the grand widely and shrugged his shoulders and tipped his head. And she mirrored him, drugging her own shoulders and making a funny face. What comes before and after the comma are both complete sentences, so you need that comma there to have that extra separation now on to semi colons. Semi colons can be used in two main ways. Help separate items in a list when some of those items already contain commas and to join two sentences, and this idea can be a little confusing sometimes, so it just wanted to start off with something simple, like with an example of fruit. That sentence was separate these items with pompous I bought apples, grapes and peaches. Now suppose that the three items I want to list are described in phrases that already contained some Commons. If I use commas to separate these items, my sentence looks like this, which gets pretty confusing with all the commas. So to make the sentence easier to read and to make it clear which actives go with which fruit, I'll bump up some of the comments to semi colons. And now here's an example from a published story. Not only yellow roses but red and pink solid tears, along with sprigs of heather, freesia and ahlstrom, area green and white calla lilies, blue irises, moms and some other things the girl had plucked from buckets and waved in the air for him to see and approve. In this example. Interim uses commas at the beginning of the sentence, so he used a semi colons throughout the rest of the sentence and last up. We have joining two sentences. Guilt can instruct you. You can learn from guilt. An independent clause was a group of words that can stand on its own. It's a complete sentence, so here we have guilt can instruct you. You can learn from guilt, but semi colons can be used between the two independent clauses the semi colon keeps. The clause is somewhat separate, like a period would do. But it also suggests that there may be a close relationship between the two clauses something closer than you would expect if there were a period between them. But now that we've gone over some of the basic rules of how to use commas and semi colons, look back at your own story and check to make sure that you're using them both correctly. You could also consider taking the look at where you use periods and see if the two sentences need to be connected more with a semi colon. Once you get the hang of how to use semi colons, they can be quite fun, and the next grammar video will be talking about Coghlan's and dashes. So stick around 10. Lesson 9: Colons & Dashes/Closing Remarks: in this video, the last video of our class will be going over when to use Coghlan's and dashes, both of which consume intimidating at first But like semi colons once you get the hang of them, that could be kind of fun because they offer your sentences more variety. Colons follow independent clauses or clauses that could stand alone a sentences and can be used to announce, introduce or direct attention to a list. A noun or noun phrase, a quotation or an example or explanation, or to join sentences. So first up we have announcing introducing and directing attention. This first example says everything Tom thinks follows a path worn by those who have gone before eager. It's clouds, tadpoles, everything. Everything, everything. You're the list. Following the colon is an explanation of those who have gone before. This next example says her voice is a whisper. Why here she is. There he goes. OK, now, baby just lived to hear in his story. There were uses italics instead of quotes for dialogue. So the dialogue after the colon identifies what this character is whispering and our last example is all the listless figures. He sees Children humped around the hospital entrance, their eyes, bacon with hunger farmers pouring into the park's family sleeping without cover. People for whom nothing left on earth could be surprising. So the list after the colon here identifies the listless figures the character sees up. Next we have joining sentences. You can use a semi colon to connect two sentences from the second sentence, summarizes, sharpens or explains. First, both sentences should be complete, and their content should be very closely related. Don't get too carried away with this method, though, because it can break up the flow of your writing if used too often. So this first example says. But there was a problem. What were these flowers going to cost? In this quote, what comes before and after the Kolinahr? Complete sentences and the question that comes after the colon helps to identify what the characters problem is. On. This next example Que had been reading the clinical literature, though, and felt auto didactic. Lee certain that the pain Whitney professionals were minimizing something in plain sight. His death trip history considered alongside the conspicuous spending on coats, ties, shirts and shoes represented. At the least, she thought a mixed state depression again. What comes before and after the colon are complete sentences. And what comes after the colon explains what Kate thinks the pain Whitney professionals are minimizing. There are a few colon mistakes that people often make when writing that. I just want to briefly mention these examples air not from a published work, By the way. So first up, using a colon between a verb and its object or complement, for example, the very best peaches are those that are grown in the great state of Georgia. The next mistake is using a colon between a proposition and its object. So my favorite cake is made of chocolate flour, butter, eggs and cream cheese icing on the last mistake using a colon after, such as including especially and similar phrases. So there are many different kinds of Eminem's, including plain chocolate, peanut arc, chocolate, pretzel and caramel. So to correct each of these sentences, you would just remove the Coghlan's. So just make sure when you're using or colon, you're not making these kinds of mistakes now on to dashes before talking about dashes. It's important to note that, like Coghlan's over, using dashes can break up the flow of your writing. Making it chopping were difficult to follow, so don't overuse them when you sparingly, they can offer sentence variety within your story. Dashes are used to set off material for emphasis, to indicate sentence introductions or conclusions to mark bonus phrases or to break up dialogue. I won't go into the fourth method here because I already went over that when we talked about four mining dialogue. So first up we have setting off material. Think of dashes as the opposite of parentheses, where parentheses indicate that the reader should put less emphasis on the enclosed material. Bashes indicate that the reader should pay more attention to the material between the dashes. So this first example says, Sometimes we forget and think they're only women, unless hills and plains of unresisting women. The information after the dash here is meant to expand on the women that Davis is referring to in her story. This next example says, before he could move to take them from her, however, it was the medication. Warping his mind and delaying his reaction, She heaved the arrangement onto the counter and explained she'd had to search high and low for an extra heavy vase. The information in the dashes are meant to draw more attention to this character, Jim and his state of mind at the time. Next up, we have sentence introductions and conclusions. You can sometimes use a dash to help readers see that certain words are meant as an introduction or conclusion to your sentence. Here we have Ruby Hornaday materializes before him, shoulders erect, hair newly short, pushing a chrome on canvas baby buggy. The information at the end of the dash is not necessary, but it concludes the sentence by describing Ruby, unless we have bonus phrases. Raises that add information or clarified but are not necessary to the meaning of a sentence are ordinarily set off of Commons. But when the phrase itself already contains one or more commas, dashes help readers understand sentence. So first up we have every six months a minor is laid off. It's drafted or dies and is replaced by another so that very early in his life, I'm comes to see how the world continually drains itself of young men leaving behind only objects, empty tobacco pouches, laid Lisjak knives, salt cake trousers mute, incapable of memory. So in this example, the phrase within the dosh is already has commas, so door sets it off from the rest of the sentence with bashes make the sentence understandable. He also uses this phrase within the bashes toe offer more information about what kind of objects were left behind and in this last example, we have back when he was in the hospital. In the past six months, there have been three emergency room visits and to lock board admissions. He has spent day after day lying on a mattress, crying, in this example, information within the dashes as a bonus phrase and not necessary to the meaning of the sentence itself. But it does offer clarification and more background information on this character, Jim. So now that we've covered the basic rules on when and how to use Coghlan's and dashes, look back at your story and see if there are places where you should be using a colon or a dash instead of some other form of punctuation, baby, right now, in a particular sentence, you have a semi colon when a Colin would be better. Or maybe you need to add some dashes around specific information in a sentence to draw more attention to it. Just remember to use thes punctuation mark sparingly because they can break up the flow of your writing if used too often. Since this is the final video in this writing course, I just want to thank you all for watching and participating. Alex and I had a lot of fun getting this class ready for you all, and we hope you enjoyed it as well. Just a reminder to poster stories if you want to. And if you do the new Shin comment on at least two other stories. If you're unsure of how to post a comment and just refer back to the introductory video again, thanks for watching and happy writing.