Tuesday, March 30, 2010

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

Monday, March 29, 2010

A Good Paragraph is like...

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Thursday, March 25, 2010

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...

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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).