About fifteen years ago, I was asked to be a best man (he repaid the favour last year). One of the most important duties, after not losing the rings, is to deliver the best man's speech after the wedding breakfast. For weeks, I slaved over my address, before finally finishing what I hoped was a suitably touching, amusing and not-too-impolite tribute to my closest friend and his beautiful wife-to-be.
A little under a week before the wedding, I returned home from work, where I had been using my personal laptop (I was just starting and had yet to be assigned my own work laptop). I went to turn it on … and nothing happened. Dead as a doornail! There was no hope of getting it repaired anytime soon, and I would need a new one anyway, so I forked out for a replacement. I successfully removed the hard drive, placed it in an external USB caddy and plugged it into the new machine to find that to my relief, there was nothing wrong with it. Except for one tiny problem. It was encrypted and I had no way of unlocking the files. It's still in a box somewhere, encrypted and useless; I really need to securely dispose of it.
Mercifully I didn't lose too much work, as I'd backed everything up onto CD-ROMs and DVDs (remember those?) but my best man's speech was gone.


The moral of the story? BACK UP YOUR WORK.
Of course I'm not alone. The late, great, Jilly Cooper famously left her only paper copy of the manuscript for 'Riders' on a bus in 1970. She didn't finish rewriting it until 1984.
These days, there is no excuse, given that most writers use a computer. Back in the 1980s floppy discs were the way to go. These were superseded in the 1990s by CD-Roms and USB memory sticks. If you had the resources, an external hard-drive could be used to keep a second copy of all your files.
These were fine, but not much use if your house burned down and both your computer and your backup were destroyed. As internet connectivity became more popular, some writers hit upon the idea of emailing a copy of their work in progress to themselves at the end of each working day. Assuming your email provider didn't disappear overnight, it would be safely sitting on Microsoft, or Yahoo or LycosMail's servers when you resumed work the following day.


But the problem is that's a faff. And you can still lose a day's work if your computer crashes before you've sent your daily backup.
Now, with the ubiquity of online cloud storage which can be set to record incremental backups every couple of minutes, in theory you shouldn't lose a single word.
Hah! That's fine until you realise that you set it up wrong, or your tech giant of choice suffers a major data breach. 


These days, reliance upon one method for backup is not recommended.
What you should aim for is both a physical backup - e.g. an external hard drive or USB memory stick which can protect you if your computer's hard drive should fail - and a remote, off-site backup in case your house catches fire. You could email it to yourself, but these days, cheap or free cloud storage systems are far more convenient.
I'm no computer expert, but I mix and match a couple of systems. I have an external hard drive that backs up my laptop's hard drive completely and also saves all changes to files as I go along. In theory, not only does this protect my valuable data, it also contains everything necessary to completely restore my laptop and its software and settings, should it die an unexpected death.
My off-site back up is two different cloud storage systems.
Now before we go any further, I have no idea if this is a sensible set-up, and take no responsibility if it doesn't work for you, but I've been happily using it for years.
The way it works, is to place one cloud storage system inside another.
I have a Microsoft OneDrive account that gives me 1,000Gb of space. I also have a Google Drive account which gives me 100Gb of space.
The folder that Google Drive syncs to is inside the folder that OneDrive syncs to. Anything that is really important, such as my writing or paperwork etc, is saved into a folder in the Google Drive.
Less important stuff is saved directly into OneDrive.
Everything in the Google Drive is therefore saved to both Google and Microsoft. I routinely access these files on other devices, such as my phone, tablet and an elderly mini-laptop, and the files are accessible whether I log onto Google Drive or OneDrive.
The only caveat, is to be patient when closing down your computer - give both the Google and Microsoft apps time to complete syncing.
You will also need to have at least one device that has both Google Drive and OneDrive running, and to use that device regularly, that way the files inside Google Drive will be synced to both cloud services.


As for the best man's speech - it was lost forever. Unable to rewrite it from scratch, I was able to remember the key points and jokes, and so wrote myself a bullet-pointed list of prompts, stayed off the booze just-in-case, and delivered it off-the-cuff. I'm told it was far more natural and relaxed than if I had read out a pre-prepared speech word-for-word, and I even ad-libbed.
Another bonus was that the one joke I forgot turned out to be the only joke that would have actually caused offence (entirely innocently; I had no idea it touched upon a slightly sore point with the groom's mother going back to childhood - I told the groom the joke later and his response was 'thank God you didn't say that'.)


Do you have any tales of woe, when it comes to losing work? Do you have any tips about how to back-up data safely?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time, keep you, your family and your data safe.
Paul

Last week's activity (Tip#116) involved taking a piece of writing and trimming it to make it more pacey.
Today's activity is the exact opposite. The object of this exercise is to enrich a piece of writing with increased description. However, there can be danger here. Too much description and you run the risk of being accused of padding the text to increase the word count. It can also frustrate readers and ruin your pacing, not to mention look amateurish.


Again, choose a starter image.
I've recommended the use of a random picture generator before.
https://writingexercises.co.uk/random-image-generator.php is a good one, or you can just use Google Images.


Write a paragraph to describe what you see.
Then take that paragraph and double its length. How will you do this? Use more colourful descriptions? Add additional metaphors? Or will you add in another aspect of the picture that isn't included in the original description?
Once you've done this, then go back with a fresh eye and see if you can trim the piece - this is vital, to avoid your final prose becoming flabby and embarrassingly florid. The aim is not to simply delete what you've just added (that would be a pointless activity), rather to cut the fat and make it more pacey.
How much of the new text will you keep? Will you ditch some of the original paragraph?
Can you tighten sentences by using more efficient language? Are there tautologies (sentences that are written in a redundant fashion - eg he ran faster, covering the distance more rapidly - well obviously, that is literally the definition and purpose of running faster!)? What about punctuation? Commas and semicolons can eliminate the need for joining words. See if you can decrease the length to between 50% and 75% - that's a tall order, so don't worry if you don't quite manage it.


Ideally, you are looking for a balance between tightly written prose and rich description.


Do you have any suggestions on ways to increase the descriptive power of a piece without sacrificing pacing?
As always, feel free to comment her or on social media.
Best wishes,
Paul

Today's writing activity/block busting activity involves increasing the pace of a scene.
One of the easiest ways to make a scene more punchy and pacey is to simply reduce the word count. This takes practise, and if you really want to trim the fat,  it usually takes several passes.
There is a (perhaps apocryphal) story that Ernest Hemingway entered a competition in a newspaper to tell a story in six words or fewer.
His winning entry was thus:
For sale: baby shoes,  never worn.
Whatever the truth regarding the tale's origins, it demonstrates how a story can still punch you in the gut without any unnecessary words.

A nice way to develop this skill is to rewrite the same scene repeatedly, with progressively fewer words.
I've recommended the use of a random picture generator before.
https://writingexercises.co.uk/random-image-generator.php is a good one, or you can just use Google Images.


First select an appropriate image. It could be a place, object or person. See what grabs your attention.
Using the image as a prompt, describe what is happening in the scene; include feelsing and emotions, if there are people. Pay attention to sights, sounds and smells. A couple of paragraphs is enough.

When you are happy with what you have written, take that scene and trim it down to fewer than 100 words. What are you going to cut out? What are you going to keep?

Now take it and cut it to fifty words. By now you have to make some hard choices. Decide what absolutely has to stay. Do you need to rewrite sentences to lose words? Can you get rid of 'invisible' words like 'and' and 'the'? Can you use punctuation, such as commas or semicolons to tighten the prose?

Can you trim it to thirty words and retain the essence of the original?

Of course, the word counts suggested here are only guidelines, and if your initial description is significantly shorter or longer than 100 words, adjust the subsequent targets accordingly. The main thing is that by the time you've gone through it three or four times, your original piece is a half or a third of its original length.
If you want to practise this some more, Google 'Flash Fiction'. These are challenges to write a story with a very strict word count. They are great exercises.

Next week, we will do the opposite of this activity. Stay tuned!
Do you have any tips for increasing the pace of a piece of writing?
Feel free to share here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul

If you fancy a good argument on social media, go to a book group on Facebook and
ask what people think about "the annoying trend for psychological thrillers to be written in the first person".
Actually, please don't.
It's the literary equivalent of walking into a strange bar, climbing on the table and raising a glass to toast Margaret Thatcher/Boris Johnson/ Tony Blair/Winston Churchill/Gordon Brown/Pitt the Younger, "the best Prime Minister this country's ever had."
It doesn't take long for the metaphorical bar stools to start being thrown and the poor moderators have to close the comments section and spend the next two days comforting frightened patrons.
I'll save my views on the various merits of different styles for a proper blog post, but choosing whether to tell your story in 1st, 2nd or 3rd person is an important decision. And more importantly, is rather good fun as a writing activity.

The exercise is simple. Write the same scene three times, each time using a different "voice". The exercise can be used as a warm-up to get your creative juices flowing, or can be used to test ideas out for your own project. Some big name authors have chosen to switch voices for a new book to try telling the story in a different way. Some authors also switch perspectives throughout the same book, perhaps telling flashbacks in 1st person and the main narrative in 3rd.

A reminder of the three basic points of view:
First Person: The narrator is a character in the book. The prose is written in the style of "I did this...", "I felt this...", "I thought this...".
It's probably the second most popular style used (depending on the genre).
Third Person: The narrator is not part of the action. It is more akin to reportage - the narrator is a bystander telling you what's happening. This is sometimes described as "omnipotent" - in other words, the narrator can choose to describe what's happening to more than one character (hence the omnipotence) or can follow one character throughout. They have access to the character(s)' inner monologues and feelings if the author wishes, and the writer can choose how dispassionate the narrator is.
Scenes are described using "he did this...", "Jake felt that...", "Karen though that...".
This is probably the most widely used voice by writers, because of its flexibility.
Second Person: I've left this to last, as this is the most rarely used style, in part because it can be tricky to pull off for extended periods of time.
For this voice, you are instructing the reader what to feel, as if they are part of the story. It's usually told in the present tense, "You are doing this...", "You feel this...", "You think...".

Here is a brief example of the same passage told in all three voices.
1st person:
I stood on the platform, waiting for the train. It's arrival was heralded by the humming and clicking of the rails, getting steadily louder as it approached. The woman beside me clapped her hands over her ears as the driver applied the brakes, the metal on metal an unbearable screech.
3rd person:
Warren stood on the platform, waiting for the train. The humming and clicking of the rails heralded its arrival, getting steadily louder until the driver applied the brakes. The woman next to him clapped her hands over her ears, unable to bear the screech of metal on metal.
2nd person:
You stand on the platform, waiting for your train. In the distance, you hear the humming and clicking of the rails as it approaches, the noise getting louder and louder. The driver applies the brakes and the woman beside you claps her hands over ears to block out the unbearable screech of metal on metal.

The exercise, therefore, is to tell the same short story or narrate the same scene three times, using a different point of view each time.
Remember the rules:

• Set yourself a time limit.
• Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
• Write whatever comes to mind and don't worry if it doesn't make sense.
• It doesn't matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.

Do you have any ideas for busting writer's block? If so, share them below or on social media.
Until next time, happy writing.
Paul

This activity is a staple of creative writing classes, and can be really good fun.
The aim is to rewrite a scene that you know well, or a story that you are familiar with from the point of view of a different character.
If you never intend for anyone else to read this, then choose whatever you want. If you are going to be sharing what you've written with an audience, it works best if you choose a well-known story or scene; that way they can enjoy the subversion of the familiar tale.
The stories that we are most familiar have usually been defined in terms of who the protagonist is and we tend to see it from their perspective. Take the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Usually, we see the story either through Red Riding Hood's eyes, or if it is told by an omnipotent narrator, from the position that she is the hero of the tale.

• But what about telling the story from the perspective of the big (allegedly) bad wolf?
• What is the shark thinking in Jaws as it relentlessly pursues the three men on the boat that insist on attacking it?
• What does ET actually think of Elliot?
• And how does poor old Darth Vader feel when his beloved son rejects his attempts to reconnect after he was stolen from him at birth, and he's forced to cut off Luke's hand to defend himself? 

The point of this exercise is to practise placing ourselves in unfamiliar shoes. By forcing ourself to see something from the other's side, we can bring all of our characters to life, not just the hero. You might never use anything that you write here in your project, but knowing why your villain is doing what they are doing can help you describe their actions more realistically.
Remember the rules:

• Set yourself a time limit.
• Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
• Write whatever comes to mind and don't worry if it doesn't make sense.
• It doesn't matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.

Do you have any ideas for busting writer's block? If so, share them below or on social media.
Until next time, happy writing.
Paul

Today's Tip is a writing exercise. It can be used to Bust the (writing) Block, as a practise exercise, or even as a way of crafting a difficult scene.
This is one of the most enjoyable exercises I have ever taken part in. It was an activity suggested by someone in Royston Writer's Circle, which I was a member of briefly about 10 years ago.
The goal of the activity is to practise describing a scene using all of your senses.
The activity works by rewriting the same scene repeatedly, using a different sense each time.
First, choose a scenario.
If you don't already have one in mind, you can use a random scene generator. There are loads on the internet, but this one is quite nice.
https://randomwordgenerator.com/writing-prompt.php

For most writers, the easiest and most natural sense to work with is sight. So we'll do that first.
Describe the scene visually.
What does it look like? If you are writing from the point of view of a character, what do they see?
I'm going to have a go at this (genuinely, I am doing it from scratch).
 
My character has entered a building where a murder has taken place.
 
Warren pushed open the door. The room beyond was dim, poorly lit, the only illumination a streetlight. He paused on the threshold, allowing his eyes time to adjust. The details of the room came slowly into focus. Before him was a double bed, covered in tangled white sheets. At first, it appeared empty, but as the shadows and shapes coalesced, the lump underneath the duvet resolved into a small, person-shaped form. What he'd thought was a shadow in the centre of the lump became a dark stain.
 
The next easiest sense to describe is hearing. What does the character hear? Rewrite the scene focusing solely on the sound.
 
Warren pushed open the door. The hinges squeaked and the bottom of the door made a sliding noise against the thick carpet. What struck him first was the stillness. The electricity had been disconnected days ago and no appliances hummed; it was as if the house was holding its breath. As he waited for his eyes to adjust, he became aware of the shuck of distant vehicles on the wet tarmac of the nearby road. Somewhere a tap dripped, the only sign of life in the whole building. That and the faint rustle of his breath in his surgical mask.
 
The remaining three senses are trickier to describe, and might not be relevant to the scene you are writing. But you'd be surprised what you can come up with.
 
First, touch.
 
Warren pushed open the door. He felt the slight resistance as the bottom of the door pushed against the carpet. His hands were sweaty inside his latex gloves, and he was uncomfortably aware of his warm breath, trapped within his face mask. The bedroom window had been left ajar, and the cool night breeze ruffled his hair.
 
Taste and smell are very similar senses that often overlap. For obvious reasons, Warren won't be licking anything he comes in contact with, but I can still find something.
 
Warren pushed open the door. He licked his top lip, coated in the salty tang of his sweat. From the moment he'd entered the house, his nose had hinted at what he would find. Now, standing on the threshold of the room, the smells familiar to every homicide detective filled his senses. The heavy metallic odour told him what had caused the dark stain in the centre of the duvet, and the sweet cloying stench informed him that whatever horrors had occurred here had taken place a couple of days previously.
 
The final step in this exercise is to take the best bits of each paragraph and blend them into a single passage. Be ruthless, and don't feel you have to shoehorn something from each of the senses into the final product. If you don't think taste adds anything, leave it out. If the house is silent, just say so, don't scrabble around for extra detail or torturous metaphors. Try and keep it short, you want to transport your reader, not bore them! Once you've done that, edit the hell out of it!
 
Warren pushed open the door. Without electricity, the house remained eerily still, the only sound the rustling of his warm breath beneath his mask. The smells familiar to every homicide detective already told him what to expect, as his eyes adjusted to the unlit room. The bump beneath the sheets coalesced into a small, human-shaped form; what appeared to be a shadow in the centre of the duvet resolved into the source of the heavy, metallic odour.
The sweet, cloying stench that had alerted the neighbours as it drifted through the open window, told him that whatever horrors had occurred here had taken place days previously.
 
Remember the rules:

• Set yourself a time limit.
• Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
• Write whatever comes to mind and don't worry if it doesn't make sense.
• It doesn't matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.

 
Do you have any suggestions for exercises to practise writing about the senses?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Happy writing,
Paul. 

Today's warm-up exercise is another favourite of writing classes; telling the same story from two different perspectives.
As with all of these exercises, you might have an idea for a scene already, but if you are struggling for inspiration, why not use an image as a prompt? Ideally, you want a scene with two different people in it.
This website automatically delivers random images.
https://writingexercises.co.uk/random-image-generator.php
Alternatively, you can just go to Google Images and type "2 people on a park bench".
Look at the two people.

• First of all, ask yourself who they are.
• Do they already know each other - if so, what is their relationship?
• What is the conversation about?
• Perhaps there is no conversation - in which case are they thinking about the other person, or are they both in their own world?

One approach would be to imagine a conversation between them. The dialogue is the same in each version of the scene, but the emotions and feeling may be different. What about their inner monologue?
For example, imagine a man and woman sitting next to each other. Is one attracted to the other? Is the other person flattered by the attention or put off?
The aim of this exercise, in addition to hopefully breaking you out of your writer's block, is to practise  empathising with different characters. To accessing their inner monologue and feelings, and to then try it from a different point of view.
Remember the rules:

• Set yourself a time limit.
• Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
• Write whatever comes to mind and don't worry if it doesn't make sense.
• It doesn't matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.

Do you have any ideas for busting writer's block? If so, share them below or on social media.


Until next time, happy writing.
Paul

Sometimes, overcoming writer's block is about getting started. It's about building a head of steam, so that you are ready to take a run at the day's goals. I've written previously about writing prompts. Beloved of creative writing classes, they are a great way of warming up.
The rules are straightforward.

• Set yourself a time limit.
• Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
• Write whatever comes to mind and don't worry if it doesn't make sense.
• It doesn't matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.

This exercise involves choosing three words, then writing whatever comes to mind - the goal is to write something which incorporates all three words.
Again, the brilliant website Writing Exercises has a tool that can help.
https://writingexercises.co.uk/random-words-exercises.php
This generates eight words. The original tool suggests that you incorporate all eight. I am going to suggest using just the first three, to keep to a short time limit, but it's up to you.
Again, this is a free write exercise, so it's all about the writing, not the content. It doesn't matter if the end result is gibberish, it's about unlocking potential.
Once you've finished your piece, resist the urge to pat yourself on the back and go for a coffee - open your manuscript and start work. Fingers crossed, that creative spark will have set the wheel's in motion.
Do you have any suggestions for overcoming writer's block?
As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or on social media.
Happy writing!
Paul

Today's Tip is another strategy to help move you on if you are suffering from writer's block.
I've suggested before how a simple free-write activity can be enough to jump-start your writing engine for the day. Here is my take on another activity that is a popular starter activity in creative writing classes.
Use, as your prompt, a random image.
Writing Exercises is a great website - here is a tool for generating random images.
https://writingexercises.co.uk/random-image-generator.php
What can you write about that picture?

• Is there a story to be told?
• Is there a conversation being had?
• Is it just a way to stretch your powers of description?

Remember, it doesn't matter if the prompt doesn't relate to what you are writing. This isn't about adding to your manuscript's wordcount. If a few minutes doing one of these exercises is enough to get your creative juices flowing, then it's time well spent.
To keep yourself focused, consider some constraints.
Don't spend too long choosing an image. Depending on the image database, the first picture might not be suitable (eg a logo or icon set), but commit yourself to using one of the first 5 images.
Give yourself a time limit. What can you get down in 10 minutes?
Don't lift your pen. Write any old nonsense, just go with the flow. Don't stop and start to overthink it.
At the end of the activity, open your manuscript and start immediately. Try and get at least something down whilst you are still warmed up. Fingers crossed, once you're up and running you'll keep going.
Good luck!
Have you got any suggestions about overcoming writer's block?
Feel free to comment here or on social media.
Happy writing,
Paul