Mastering the Start of Your Story: Tips for Writers

June 30, 2025June 30, 2025 ~ Libby Sommer ~ Leave a comment

Where to begin a piece of creative writing?

Begin with the inciting incident. The Inciting Incident is the event or decision that begins a story’s problem.

Here is an excellent quote from Evan Marshall about creating a strong beginning for a story:

Some writers don’t write, or rewrite, the beginning of their stories until they get to the end. Once they’ve written to the end, they know more clearly what it is they want to say.

The main thing though with creating on the page, is to put words down. To get going. To make a start. It doesn’t matter where. After all, writing is rewriting.

I hope you find this advice useful. Let me know.

Show, Don’t Tell: The Power of Sensory Writing

June 18, 2025 ~ Libby Sommer ~ Leave a comment

cartoon illustrating angry boy with red face

This is an old one, but a good one. Tell Don’t Show.

What does it mean exactly? It means don’t tell us about loneliness (or any of those complex words like dishonesty, secrecy, jealousy, obsession, regret, death, injustice, etc) show us what loneliness is. We will read what you’ve written and feel the bite of loneliness.

Don’t tell us what to feel. Show us the situation, and that feeling will be triggered in us.

When you take your child to school on their first day you may find yourself teary and relieved at the same time. Put into words what you see: the child’s face, the wave at the gate, the other mothers saying their goodbyes, another child coming up to take your son by the hand. We will get what you’re trying to say without you telling us directly.

The how-to-write books tell us to use our senses when we write stories: sight, sound, smell, touch. Writing from the senses is a good way to penetrate your story and make friends with it. Don’t tell us about something, drop deep, enter the story and take us with you.

What about you? Do you consciously bring the senses into your creative writing?

My Poem, ‘Bewildered’

June 4, 2025 ~ Libby Sommer ~ Leave a comment

Have a read of my poem ‘Bewildered’, first published in Quadrant Magazine and one of the poems in my collection, ‘Flat White, One Sugar‘ (Ginninderra Press). The book is illustrated by my granddaughter, Natasha Sommer, a graduate of the National Art School.

I hope you enjoy it.

Bewildered:

When I was four

I asked my big brother

Is mum the wicked

queen from Snow White?

He fell about with laugher,

then wrestled me to the ground

using his knees to pin

my shoulders to the floor.

My brother, the bully.

But I loved him.