Submissions
Grey Thoughts invites writers to share some of their work with our readers so they may find new creative minds to be inspired and entertained by.
Try your best to write without constantly stopping the story to describe actions, character, world or narrative. The goal should be to tell the story in such a way that this information gets conveyed organically without a single pause to the story. Pacing matters, but destroy stops and pauses and trade them for faster or slower pacing.
To write a great story:
1. Make rules for your universe. Write them out for you to know
2. Convey them to the reader. They MUST understand!
3. Never defy them. Once established avoid breaking them at all costs.
4. Never mention them. Under no circumstance should the rules be addressed directly. Make them obvious through events and character development.
Build a break routine to give your creativity and focus time to recover. Avoid getting to a point where you force the writing process and as a result lose interest in it. A scheduled pause between sessions could be just what you need to come back refreshed with great new ideas.
Schedule writing into your daily activities and you’ll find you always have time to write without having to stress about when. If you find you’ll be busy at that time, simply move writing to a different part of the schedule for that day.
Don’t edit a single word on the first draft. Get the entirety of the story, all its characters and all its events onto the manuscript first. In later drafts worry about grammar, continuity and metaphors. Just flush out the raw ideas first and the manuscript will get completed.
Need to know more about the world you're building to write about it? Dissect your sentences and ask full basic who, what, where, when, why and how questions about them. Then answer them with full sentences.
Never directly address emotions. Show us body language and dialogue that conveys them.
Never tell us the conclusion or tell us how a thought or scene plays out. Give us details using the five major senses which lead us to believe we (The reader) thought of it first. Let us know we're picturing your word correctly.
If any text can be removed without affecting the rest of the story, do it; it’s wasting time and space. Keep only the information that moves the story and informs the reader about the characters, world, and circumstances the writer has created.