Writing Brighter: Helping Young Writers Become Great Writers: All Things Brighter

By F. E. Greene

Are you ready to become a great writer?

The cool challenge about being a writer isn't just coming up with the most astounding, engaging, mind-blowing ideas ever. It's also about organizing those ideas for readers to enjoy.

Writing Brighter is full of tips, tricks, and secrets used by the best storycrafters to make their books and movies shine. Inside, you'll find hands-on activities and questions to guide you. You'll learn how to arrange your amazing ideas, craft vibrant characters, edit like the pros, and make your plots zoom. That's what Writing Brighter is really about – shaping your creative visions into stories your readers will love. Use it to polish and perfect your projects. If you have a passion and talent for writing, this book will give your gifts a platform for success.

Whatever your age, it's never too early (or late) to become the writer you're meant to be!

Bestselling novelist F. E. Greene pours decades of writing and teaching expertise into this funny, honest, and heartfelt primer geared toward adolescent readers. Greene is the award-winning author of multiple fiction series including By Eyes Unseen, Richer in Love, and Love Across Londons.

Other books in this series:
Rhyming Brighter
Rhyming Even Brighter

About the Author:
F. E. Greene loves coffee, castles, crumpets, and the cat next door almost as much as she loves writing. A novelist, songwriter, poet, and photographer, she has taught young journalists and coached creative writers in both scholastic and volunteer settings. Greene's novels blend feel-good romance, mild suspense, a touch of whimsy, and her steadfast affection for all things British.

2nd Place Winner, Poetry Category, 2021 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards (In Days Divine)
Semi-Finalist, 2020 Chatelaine International Writing Competition (Some Place Like Home)
2018 B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree (The Never List)
Semi-Finalist, 2018 Chatelaine International Writing Competition (The Next Forever)
Finalist, 2017 Chatelaine International Writing Competition (The Best-Left Questions)
Semi-Finalist, 2017 Kindle Book Awards (The Never List)
Semi-Finalist, 2016 Chatelaine International Writing Competition (The Never List)

• Language: English
• Publisher: F. E. Greene
• Release date: Nov 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781946216021

F. E. Greene

F. E. Greene has been telling stories with words for more than twenty years.  A novelist, songwriter, poet, and photographer, she has taught young journalists and coached creative writers in scholastic and volunteer settings. Greene’s novels blend feel-good romance, mild suspense, a touch of whimsy, and her steadfast affection for all things British.  To learn more about the author and her books, visit www.fegreene.com.  Find questions for book clubs, author updates, giveaway information, sweepstakes details, and much more.  Sign up for F. E.’s newsletter and download a FREE e-book!

Book preview

Copyright 2018 by F. E. Greene

ISBN: 978-1-946216-02-1

This is a book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Graphic images purchased with permission for use from 123RF; all copyrights reserved by artists.

Interior graphics by James Weston and Veerachai Viteeman.

All Rights Reserved

Published 2017 by F. E. Greene

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By downloading or purchasing a print copy of this book, the reader is granted non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) now known or hereinafter invented without the express and prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

The scanning, reverse engineering, uploading and/or distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. For permission requests, write to the copyright holder (see author website for official email address) with subject line: Attention: Copyright Permissions. Your support of the author’s rights, and the rights of all authors protected by copyright law, is appreciated.

Soli Deo Gloria

Table of Contents

A Prologue You Should Actually Read (Because, Let’s Face It, Most of Us Skip The Prologue)

Chapter 1: Every Hero Needs A Guide

Chapter 2: The Brutal Truth

Chapter 3: Let’s Talk About Pizza

Chapter 4: Time To Get Saucy

Chapter 5: Pantser Or Plotter?

Chapter 6: Anchors Away

Chapter 7: Ping And Pong, Donkey And Kong

Chapter 8: Stick The Landing

Chapter 9: Day Knew Who?

Chapter 10: It’s Rude To Point...Unless You’re A Writer

Chapter 11: Grab Your Binoculars

Chapter 12: Time For Toppings! Who Wants Pineapple?

Chapter 13: From Pineapples To Apples

Chapter 14: C Is For Cookie. And Characters.

Chapter 15: More Frosting, Please

Chapter 16: Don’t Touch My Tots

Chapter 17: Who’s Your Baddy?

Chapter 18: The Cheese On Your Writing Pizza

Chapter 19: Forget BFFs. We Need BBRs!

Chapter 20: Stuff That Didn’t Fit Into Any Other Chapters

Epilogue: Fire Up The Cauldron!

A Prologue You Should Actually Read (Because, Let’s Face It, Most of Us Skip The Prologue)

Why Did I Write This Book?

This book is not for seasoned writers, although they’re welcome to read it.

This book is not for teachers, although they’re welcome to use it.

This book is for young writers who want to tell stories. Who like to sit and imagine. Who know, deep down, they were born to write.

By the time I was in junior high, I loved to write more than anything else. Sure, I played video games and rode my bike and went to the mall. I talked on the phone and did my homework. I read and read and read.

I also wrote.

After dinner, in my room at my grown-up desk, with all the lights off except for one dim lamp, I wrote. In that space, I experimented and explored. I pecked at a keyboard. On scratch paper, I sketched – maps, characters, blocks of dialogue. My favorite songs repeated themselves, over and over, in the cassette player on the floor as my interior worlds took shape.

Already, in my youth, I knew that space was sacred. It wasn’t a means to an end. It was me.

This book is for anyone who knows that sacred space. Who has felt, already, the tug of stories needing to be told. Whatever your age, it’s never too early or late to become the Writer you’re meant to be.

Why Should You Read This Book?

Because every Great Writer begins her or his journey as a Young Writer.

The cool challenge about being a Writer isn’t just coming up with the most amazing, outlandish, unheard-of ideas ever. It’s also about organizing those ideas into something readers can understand.

When I work with Young Writers, I notice two things over and over:

1. Young Writers have amazing ideas for stories.

2. Young Writers know words and how to use them.

When do many Young Writers struggle? When it’s time to figure out how to assemble those words and ideas into a coherent story.

As Writers, we need some structure. Our imaginations are colossal. Our visions are epic. So we use things like three acts and points of view and archetypes to support our characters, settings, and plots.

Even the greatest novelists, playwrights, poets, and screenwriters know they need a sandbox, not a beach. A backyard, not a forest. Like a potter molds clay, writers shape their ideas into stories we can all understand.

For creative people, that suggestion might seem weird at first. Isn’t creativity about letting your imagination run wild?

In the beginning, yes. But it’s also about crafting a story that can be enjoyed by other people.

And ultimately all our effort as Writers is meaningless if our readers can’t understand us.

That’s what this book is really about.

Putting your story together.

Chapter 1: Every Hero Needs A Guide

Right now, in this moment, as your eyes slide across the page or screen, you are Luke Skywalker. You are Anne Shirley. You are Percy Jackson and Katniss Everdeen and every other fictional hero who made you fall in love with storytelling.

Want to be Harry Potter? No problemo. Frodo Baggins? True dat.

Bottom line: You’re a Young Writer. YOU are the hero of this story.

And I’d like to be your guide. In most stories, every hero has at least one mentor or guide. A Gandalf or Chiron or Haymitch or Yoda. A Fairy Godmother or an August Boatwright. Heroes need mentors like hot dogs need buns.

A long time ago, I was Luke and Anne and Katniss and Frodo. I was the teenager who wrote when s/he had nothing else to do – or even when s/he did. I loved staying inside on a Saturday to write stories no one would ever read (except maybe my parents and a teacher or two).

Finishing my homework each afternoon was a gateway to the real fun – the magical hours between dinner and bedtime when I scratched out ideas in spiral-bound notebooks. When I was a Young Writer, computers didn’t exist, but I had a typewriter that hummed a meditative lull whenever I turned it on. Its keys clicked each time I depressed one. Sometimes I played it like a piano just to hear its music.

That music meant the magic was happening.

If you’re reading this book, you may have already felt that magic. You know what it means to surrender to the story, to have words and images flow through you, trickling and swirling onto a page like magic mist spilling from a caldron. You want to be a Writer with a capital W.

You can’t see me, but I’m smiling.

I’m smiling because I believe all Writers start there, at the edge of the mist-brimming cauldron. Maybe you’re going to write fiction or something else. Maybe you’re going to be a professional writer or spend your life stealing time to write. Maybe you’re going to travel the world or live in the same place forever.

None of that really matters when you’re a Writer. What matters is telling your stories.

So how do you know you’re a Writer? Here’s a list of statements to help you decide. Answer each question with a YES or NO.

1. Do you want to be famous?

2. Do you want to be rich?

3. Do you want to be told for the rest of your life how awesome you are?

If you answered YES to any one of those questions, prepare yourself for disappointment.

If you answered YES to every one of those questions, I’ve got some very bad news.

What? All those things aren’t going to happen?

Probably not. I’ll never say never because it happened to J. K. Rowling and Rick Riordan and Suzanne Collins and John Green. It could happen to you. I hope it does.

Unfortunately, the chances are slim and getting slimmer every year.

Nowadays anyone with a computer and decent Wi-Fi can publish a book. To call yourself a published author