Some of the best
writing tips are the simplest. This one may be too simple with the potential to
have a considerable impact on your writing. It would be nice to say that I crafted
this tip, but that would be a lie. I came across another YouTube vlogger, Ben
Hatfield, who posted about, “How to write a better first draft faster with one simple
writing hack.” Most likely he did not come up with this writing tip either, but
I am glad he shared it. YouTube algorithms must be getting better. There are aggregating
better recommendations that I am interested in. I will share his video below,
so you want to watch his full explanation and to put it into practice in your own
work.
The essence of
the video is to help you with the tougher sections of your writing projects.
For example, you are writing a scene, and the descriptions are bogging down
your progress of writing. He suggests writing TK where the areas need work that
are slowing you down, then move on to what you want to write next. So, if you
are having trouble describing the location of the scene, you should type descriptiontk.
When you are ready to go back and fill
in the spots that you need to tackle. You simply search for TK and all the
areas that you need to work on are easily found. I would like to make a small
change to his tip. I would add a dash before the TK. This will make the section
you need to work on easily seen.
What makes this powerful
is that you can use it in so many ways. Let’s say that you have subplots, and
you want to track them within your novel. You could use subplot1-tk wherever
you sprinkle your subplot clues. As you write, it may be best to be proactive
to create a list of all your TK place markers to remember them all. Like
protagonist-tk, chapter2warscene-tk, betterdialog-tk and so on.
Now how simple is
that. I would highly recommend watching Ben’s video. It is less than seven
minutes long. Let me know if you think this will be helpful. As always, happy
writing.
