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.

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"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

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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.