National Novel Writing Month

November is NaNoWriMo. Is anyone participating? This will be my, hmm, 2nd or 3rd attempt. My username is diello.

What Made You Weird?

Going through some old writing and found this little gem, born from an article in Coilhouse Magazine.

What made you weird?

Fantastic question, I think. What better inspiration for writing to draw from than your own personal history?

(and if you don't think you're weird, then what the hell are you?)

"For many of us there is an event, a circumstance or a series of both that altered us in a specific way, making us strange, odd, whatever you want to call it enough to seek lives less ordinary. It’s different for everyone - Nadya, for instance, was inspired in part by Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation video’s military look and overall stompiness. For me, there were several components and so I present you a partial list of What Made Me Weird."

And here is my list.

So?

What made YOU weird?

Flash Fiction

Flash fiction has all the elements of a short story, only it's boom-boom-boom and you're done.

Character

Problem 1 (small)
Problem 2 (large)
Coping!

Resolution/resonate

Genre elements

It's easy if you list some starting points, like:

• Place
• Event
• NPC (non playing character)
• A Rule of your world
• A random object

A practice run in class yielded some great results:

• Place: On a rooftop at the Bank of Mars (BoM) in the city of Chipotle.
• Event: Earth is about to die/be blown up.
• NPC: Homeless guy flipping a coin
• Rule: A bug that stays in your nose that enables you to breathe (like a babelfish)
• Object: a bed, a crack in the roof

The story shouldn't take more than five or ten minutes. That's what makes it a flash.

Post your results in the comments! I've posted mine!

Online Resources

We were showed a bunch of websites to aid in our search for a good publisher (right now, I'm painfully aware that saying "we" and "our" is sounding pretty... Queenly. I assure you, I'm talking about me and my class, and not me and the people who live inside my head-bones).

Just for now, I'm linking what was shared in class. At the end, I'll post a few links from my own bookmarks, and as always, I encourage you guys to comment and add your own suggestions, too!

Duotrope's Digest. To find a bajillion publications to submit to, just fill in the drop-down menus and hit the not-so-shiny search button to spring up hundreds (or less, depending on how much info you decided to put in) of publication options right there at your fingertips. Shows you what they look for, what they pay, if they pay... all that happy stuff.


Some highly popular magazine and onine publications:

Weird Tales
Fantasy Magazine
Fantasy and Science Fiction
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
Prick of the Spindle
Locus



Some books to buy (you find a story that's just your style? Check the back of the book to see where it was published):

Booklife
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
Year's Best Science Fiction
Year's Best Fantasy




Some authors' blogs and sites to check out (if you like someone's stuff, check out their blog, follow 'em, and even comment. Good comments will get your name out there, and if you have your own blog, link your profile!):

• Jeff Vandermeer
• Clive Barker
• Kelly Link

Right. That's it for class notes. On with some of my own links (I'm at work, so right now it's just off the top of my brain-thing)...

Don't judge me:

• Warren Ellis
• Chuck Palahniuk
• Neil Gaiman
• Laurie Notaro
• Lemony Snicket
• Cory Doctorow
• Serena Valentino
• Laurie Halse Anderson
• Poppy Z. Brite
• Timothy McSweeney
• Allie Brosh

(sorry I don't have a lot of author sites I follow. I mostly follow art blogs. I also don't have a list of publications that I regularly collect that are pen-centric that haven't already been mentioned above)

Now I demand that you all comment and add more! MORE!

Toolbox: P.O.V.

• What three things does your character see, feel, taste, smell, hear? They have senses. Use them.
• First, second, or third tense (if one doesn't work, switch gears)
• Language in context with the point of view character
• Don't head-hop. Keep the "camera" in the point of view of one character per scene.

(sorry, I didn't have that much in my notebook this time. That's why I need your comments!)

Toolbox: What NOT to do

• Cliches
• Cool factor
• archaic narrative / dialog
• similar sentence length
• Absurd and unreasoned names you can't even pronounce
• Writing what you don't know about
• Describing simply
• Distracting tags and adverbs
• "very"
• head-hopping (keep it to one POV per scene)
• White Room Syndrome
• Switching tenses
• Passive voice (was, is, to be - followed by -ing verbs)
• Breaking the rules you set for your story
• Waking up scenes
• Unimportant transportation
• Unimportant dialog

Be sure to...

• make sure people interact with the rules
• keep characters IN character (don't let them live your fantasy or be/do what they never would)
• give your characters flaws
• make sure painful things hurt (continuity)
• RESPOND!

Comment! Keep 'em coming!

Toolbox: Preparation / Inspiration

• Bring your lightning rod in case lightning strikes! (always have at least a pen on hand at all times!)
• If you don't have paper, maybe you have a napkin, a place-mat, a receipt... anything you can get your thoughts onto (and take with you when you leave).
• Unwire! disconnect from your appliances (iPod, internet, cell phone) so you can connect with the world.
• Play music
• Zone out
• Meditate
• Walk around
• People watch!
• Look at pictures / watch tv
• READ READ READ READ READ READ!
• Change. If one place you're writing isn't doing it, switch seats, or go somewhere else all together. Switch from inside to outside, switch from writing one story, to taking a break to write something else, or to read... Keep your mind fresh.

• Above all else, DON'T WAIT FOR INSPIRATION TO HIT, JUST WRITE!

Comment to add more!

Toolbox: Tension

• Two things that you wouldn't put together (although, it worked for Reece)
• Dialog broken by surroundings
• Juxtaposition
• Mystery
• Misinterpretation
• Miscommunication
• Passive-aggressive behaviour
• Behaviour that contradicts belief
• Give them something stupid to argue over
• Mismatched colours
• Volume (whispers, screams...)
• Unmet expectations (by character or reader)
• Proximity, boundaries (personal bubble, too close to bomb, spider, person of desire...)
• Being in two places (by phone, internet, tv...)

Comment to add more!

Toolbox: Setting

• Develop characters and worlds
• Create rules for worlds
• Avoid White Room Syndrome!
• Interact with settings, don't just describe
• What's wrong with your setting? What's weird or out of place?
• Change the weather (pathetic fallacy?)
• Describe things - one of which is not from our (the author's / reader's) world
• Use all five senses (smell and sound are big ones)
• How clean, dirty, tidy, or cluttered is the room?
• Would you walk barefoot in these streets?
• Can you see the sunset on the horizon from where you are (or do you have to get out of the forest, or go up on the rooftop of a skyscraper)?

Comment to add your own!

Toolbox: Plot

• Character coping
• Cartesian Circle (character, plot, character, plot, character, plot...)
• Moment of Change!!!!!
• Encompasses all characteristics of a story
• Make your character suffer (give 'em what they want, then take it away, or just DON'T give them what they want)
• What can go wrong?
• Take your character out of his natural setting
• Juxtapose (fairies, unicorns, nuclear bombs)
• Throw in unexpected characters
• Don't overthink it- go with the flow
• Give them a new desire
• Give them booze, fire, diarrhea
• Focus on an important object. Why is it important?
• Add a perspective that questions the status quo
• Heroe's quest; call to adventure!
• Try the tarot card trick
• MICE Quotient
• Think of the tropes
• Influence from other stories (steal something)
• Influence from life
• Kill someone (or remove them some other way). Continue without them, or be haunted by them.
• How do you get from A to B to C?
• If it's not working, go in the opposite direction

Comment to add your own!

Toolbox: Dialog

• Tag to let us know who is speaking (if needed)
• Broken phrasing (you talk in complete sentences all the time? Doubt it)
• Interact with the surroundings while a conversation is happening (people don't usually just sit/stand there while they talk. They cough, adjust their glasses, sip coffee, lean against something... if they really are just standing there while they talk, maybe one of your characters has to pee. How do they get that point across without being rude?)
• Are there words/phrases your character won't say?
• Connect in disconnected ways ("Check out this screen-cap!" "Fuck, you crashed the internet!" *totally related in my house, but the untrained eye wouldn't get it*)
• Internal monologue vs. external
• Find questions to ask about objects
• Manipulation of desires
• describe!
• Don't forget setting
• Have external world break up dialog

Comment to add your own!

Toolbox: Character

• Where is your character from?
• Where is he now?
• Where does he want to be?
• Friends, family, loner?
• Traits, quirks
• How do they speak?
• How do they dress?
• Hobbies
• Likes / Dislikes
• Flaws
• What do they want / need (and how will you NOT give it to them)?
• What makes them happy / unhappy?
• Happiest and worst memories?
• Fears
• Medical problems?
• What kind of cereal do they like best?
• How do others see him and how does he see himself?
• How does your character react to his surroundings and to others?

• Pathetic fallacy - give your character an external reality. Personality in terms of objects.
• Authorial summation - put in a paragraph about your character if you need to
• Give your character an interview
• Don't forget archetypes of fantasy and science fiction.

Comment to add to this list :)

Toolbox Introduction

The Toolbox is a digital (or you can put it on note cards and index them into a file if you want) reference guide to help you out when you're stuck.

The toolbox will come in separate posts, free for you to comment on with additional ideas in these categories:

• Character
• Dialog
• Plot
• Setting
• Tension
• Preparations / Inspirations
• What NOT to do
• POV

Personally, whenever I think of the toolbox, I think of these cards called Oblique Strategies created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmitt back in the late '70s, meant to spark dilemmas or move things along. I first read about this deck 14 years ago on the website of a friend-of-friend-of-friend. He posted all of them. And thanks to the power of the Wayback Machine, I will share them all with you (I have no guilt in posting this, since I didn't originally post it, and £30 is rather a lot for a deck of cards, no matter how cool they are). You can find over a hundred Oblique Strategies here.

Individual toolbox posts to follow... after I make cupcakes.

The MICE Quotient

A la Orson Scott Card:

Milieu

Idea

Character

Event

Milieu - 3 places. Character starts in place A, then goes to place B (where he learns something important to carry with the rest of the story), then either returns to place A or goes on to place C. Think Wizard of OZ, Coraline or Alice in Wonderland.

Idea - Ends with the revelation of what it's really all about. Think Shutter Island or Fight Club.

Character - The character's world changes. Think Office Space or Amelie

Event - The pivotal point that disrupts the balance or brings order or continues in chaos... This all builds up to the big ending. Think Independence Day or Heavenly Creatures.

Fantasy

Fantasy breakdown

Characters

• Sad lead
• Lovers
• Deity
• Anthropomorphic personifications
• Seeker (quest-taker)
• Heroes
• Mentor (the wise one)
• The Chosen One
• Dragons / Fairies / Elves ............
• Desire personified
• Fear personified
• Bard/writer/artist
• Sage/scholar
• Soothsayer
• Evil mother/witch/monster...

Good vs. Evil

• Evil - Right idea, wrong process
• Good - no ideas, just there to stop evil
• 2 ideal worlds contrast and battle.

Plot

• Truth
• good vs evil
• human vs nature
• espionage
• quest
• true love
• other worlds (dreams, multiple...)
• art/words
• family/school
• exchange
• morals/ethics/psychology... what are we?
• transformations
• (several of these can be one in the same)

Science Fiction

Breaking down science fiction's tropes

Characters

• Mad scientist
• The guy who had it right all along
• The guy who died before the story began (this can also be the right guy above)
• The Others (robots, aliens...)
• Creator / Pioneer / Scientist who makes the breakthrough
• Detective
• Interspecies (cyborg, human-like animals, animal-like humans...)
• Corporations / Gov't Agents
• Hyper-intellectual
• Bifurcate identities (splits, downloads)

Forces

• Metagovernment
• aliens
• time
• physics
• art/artifice
• marriages/marital problems
• religion
• nature

Plots

• contact
• espionage
• apocalypse
• invasion
• government conspiracy
• cold war
• coming of age
• starting anew / reset
• mutation

Other considerations (with lists that go on forever)

• Setting
• Rules...

Revision

A quick note on revision

Global - going over the whole thing to see if it flows well

Local - going segment by segment:

Character - is their desire there?

Scene - good first and last lines (the last line of each scene should give a clear ending to the scene and be clearly open to what happens next)? Tension? arch / change?

Setting - make sure to interact with it. No white rooms!

Style - play with sentence structure

Tension - elements that don't fit together? Fights? Misunderstandings?

Plot - how your character gets from A to B (or A to Z) and back again

A Good Paragraph is like...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Scene notes and Tarot readings

What should go into each scene.

Exposition - sense of stage. What's going to happen / not happen. Scene-to-scene integration.

Action - DOING something. Metaphor, even. Describing something in motion.

Description - describing something static.

Dialog & Internal - Your character's response to the universe.

Reversal - something's turning around. Something you expect to happen one way, happens another, or doesn't at all, or doesn't yet...

Change - The ever-important moment of change. This MUST be in the first scene. Otherwise, your story will probably lose the interest of your reader.

Rule of 3 - A general rule where something peculiar, or totally ordinary, repeats itself throughout the story. As an example, in my story "Collin", apples come into play when (but not every time) Collin gets scared or nervous- he squeezes his apple juice box when his mother barges through the door. He picks apple skin out of his teeth when he talks to May about her. He is afraid when he hears May's apple-red "squeeze box" accordion playing next door...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

My professor showed the class a good technique if we get stuck on motive, or a problem for the character. I don't have imagery here, sorry. But I can still try to direct (I didn't put down many notes on this, so I'm just going by how I remember it).

One important thing to remember when you're playing with Tarot cards to get a story out of your character is that you do not have to know how to 'properly' interpret the cards to do this. All you have to do is look at it and make up your own meaning. Read the name of it, or look at the picture. It's just to give you ideas. It's most likely not going to write the story for you.

That said...

Start in the center. Draw a card there. That's your Key Card. This will show you the problem. Maybe you drew the Death card. Are they dealing with the loss of someone close? Or perhaps they just killed someone?

Place the next card below the key card. This is your Internal card. What does your character want and not want right now?

Draw another card and set it over the key card. That's your Direction of Internal Things card. What's your character feeling about this situation? Is he going to go mad? Or is he now open to a new world he never imagined? Is he guilty?

Another card, placed to the left of the Key card. That's your External card. What your character does. Does he hide the body? Does he drink himself into oblivion?

Your last card goes to the right of the Key card. That's your Direction of External Things card. What the ramifications of your characters actions are. Does the drink remind him he needs to do something, or go somewhere (after ten beers, would he get into the car to go somewhere, or drunk dial a friend- how would that go down)?

Feel free to throw down more cards in these spots and interpret them as you will. Maybe you'll prove me wrong and actually write a story with cards alone.

If you don't have cards, this basic idea also works with a book. Any book. Grab a book and turn to a random page. Read any sentence or paragraph, and then draw ideas from what you've just read.

My example comes from the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, because I didn't grab my tarot cards when I ran away from home, and a new deck can get a little pricey, and I've since lost interest in them for their purpose anyway.

I already know my Key card. Collin is coping with his monsters.

Internal - just a word. "Better." He wants his home situation to be better.

External - "My light is blinking." Maybe give him a candle, or flashlight, or a blinking toy.

Direction of Internal - "It's gone too far." (no extra notes in the notebook)

Direction of External - "You just backed over that two-foot concrete abutment and you didn't even slow down!" (no extra notes in the notebook, but man, I love this).

Bits and Pieces

More bits and pieces of what makes a story, with notes of the story I am writing ("Collin") as examples.

Description - Collin is a bright-eyed, pale boy. Scrawny for his age. The drab, plain clothing he is always dressed in hangs sloppily off his frail body.

Language - Standard child ramblings and stutters. Excitable. Sweetest, androgynous voice, like ten thousand angels.

Work - Collin is in forth grade. He tells his stuffed animals all about his day when he gets home from school. His favourite subject is music.

Behaviour - Collin always wipes his snotty nose on his sleeve. He always forgets never to beg when his mom ignores him. No matter how much his parents abuse him, he knows they love him.

Self perception - Collin is a bad boy because his parents always tell him so. Why else would they hurt him the way they do?

Others' perception - His folks see him as a burden, and nothing more. Always annoying them, so damn needy. Why couldn't they have inherited a fucking cat? His neighbours see him as the sweet little boy he really is.

Beliefs - He believes his parents love and care for him. He believes the monsters under his bed will eat his feet if he gets out of bed in the middle of the night.

Community - Just moved to a very small town with more houses than people, and more streets than houses. No other kids around. He has to take a special bus to the next town to go to school. His only friends are his stuffed animals. At least he has neighbours. What are the odds?

Writing What You Know (and other notes)

What scares/disturbs you?

(zombie apocalypse- how am I going to fend off my zombie boyfriend? cascade down the balcony to make my way to the George Eastman house? I CLAIM THAT PLACE AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME LEAVE! Will I remember to grab the keys from my boyfriend after I've bashed his brains in? And what will I use? I have no weapons!)

What not to do: Worry about the cool factor.

Concentrate on what's 'cool' and you become too confident and lose the tension from the uncertainty factor.

Write what you know

internal experiences, study, experience... tiny things your character does for no forseeable reason, quirks, interacting with your surroundings. What you know is who you are, who your friends are, and thus, you solidify your character.

POV- 3rd person

Who is the 'camera' following? One character's pov per scene, please.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Ghosts"?

• Dead (socially, mentally, almost...)
• History (haunting/connections)
• Visible?
• Haunting (something someone said, did, didn't do... something that follows you)

Zombies - control factor

Warewolves - transformation

Mummies - revenge

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Plot - have questions (answer them in your character's voice / POV). Follow your characters. What do THEY want (don't give it to them)? Read characters like desires (characters are desires and plot- without which, there is no story). What can go wrong? How will they go about getting what they want? Will they get it? How will they get around their dilemmas?

Remember - Change. Coping.

Draft - Throw away EVERYTHING.

Story Components

Here's a quick rundown of the bits and pieces and techniques of what makes your story a story and not just a mess of notes. (again, these are transcribed from my notes).

Story - a character in a situation coping. Beginning, middle, end:

Moment of Change - a moment of shifting, of big or tiny realizations, of events that turn the story into a story. This must happen in the first scene!

Show vs. Tell - locating a couple small, sensual details you can see to describe the setting. Physical descriptions rather than plain adjectives.

"Abysmal, jaundice tinted walls, dusty clock, tired faces in tiny desks..."

Crafting significant dialog - doesn't always have to make sense. Realistically, people aren't always crystal clear or perfectly understood all the time. Characters talk, but don't necessarily hear or listen or understand. Throw in some misinterpretations, miscommunications, broken sentences, and bad grammar. Write grammar the way people talk.

Sense of Place - No 'white room syndrome'! Keep characters interacting with the scenery- bumping into chairs, picking up a coffee cup long-since drained of its life juice, checking the wall on the clock, staring at the holiday lights encircling the ceiling...

This goes hand-in-hand with Action. Make sure your characters do stuff. Mindless stuff. Every day things. Chew gum, chew the tip of a pencil. Clip your nails. Adjust your glasses...

Tension! - try to make characters dislike each other or misunderstand something. Clash- put a colourful vase in the abysmal room, or have a friend in the Bahamas call someone in Rochester in the middle of Winter. Make the sex really bad. Make things go wrong. Juxtaposition.

Image symbol / metaphor - why does the character always do/wear/eat/whatever something? Does that ring represent marriage, love, an experience, a place, a person? Is there a story behind it? What would happen if your character lost it, or dropped it into heavy traffic?

Opening/Closing lines - the hook and the drop

Tense? - 1st, 2nd, 3rd POV? Present/Past/Future tense?

Pacing - action and words in equal amounts

Scene vs. Summary - balancing important details with ones that wouldn't be missed. When should you squeeze four quick or agonizingly slow years into one paragraph?

Authorial Summation - have the author jump in if he must.

RESPONSE! - How does your character respond to things and others? How do others respond to your character? Use internal monologue and external action / dialog to tell us their response - they don't have to match. Maybe your character wants to claw the eyes out of their mother, but they give her a hug, or say "I love you, too."

Cultural / Artistic

Notes from class. This is me trying to get used to keeping up with the Prof.

Cultural

• Average American thinks of sex every 7 minutes. Average Aborigine... once every 2 years (hmm...) .
• Christianity and other religions control minds (Thought Police!)
• Money changes everything
• Real is only what your five senses know. Intuition becomes so far removed as we move from an enlightening culture to a capitalist one.
• Reality becomes the least interesting piece of property or chore or idea (laundry, bills, love, dvds, internet)
• Internet- reality becomes virtual reality. (letters and social scenes become emails and social networks)
• Buy everything- love, happiness, more money, religion...

Artistic

• Tabula Rasa - clean slate (John Locke)
• Strinberg and Ibsen (Norwegian playwrights who hated each other but both decided theatre should look real)
• Henry James (my love) helped pave the way for realistic fiction
• Charles Dodgeson wrote Alice in Wonderland to escape the boring mathematics of his every day life (to feel freedom)

Pathetic Falacy- when the outside world (or object) represents the feeling of the story/character (sunny day = happy mood/atmosphere). Can be reversed (sunny day = misery)

My God, It's Full of Stars

That's what's written on the front of my writing notebook. On the back? Nothing personal.

My life is full of clichés like that. And that. Truth is, I like the phrase, and 2001: A Space Odyssey follows me everywhere anyway. Oh Hal, that rascal.

Anyway, I intend to transcribe some important notes from this notebook, which I wrote in class. The notebook is all scribbles, bursting with sentence fragments, incomplete words, and otherworldly jibba-jabba. My mad, rad Professor talks 70 miles a minute. An excellent pace, if you ask me- I learn more about writing technique in the first five minutes of each class than I have in most other writing classes all semester... if that makes sense. It's okay if it doesn't. Carry that feeling.

I also intend to eventually invite others here to add thoughts, tips, and extras in the comments. So please, do comment.

This looks like a good place to end without warning and go grab some tea.