Sunday, April 25, 2010

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 :)

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

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.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

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.

Monday, April 5, 2010

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...

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...

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

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).