Thu 11 Mar 2010

Movies That Teach Structure

Posted by Gay Degani under advice, craft, structure
[3] Comments

gayforwowDoes anyone get rejections that say, “Some strong writing here, but this isn’t a story; there’s no arc” or “I like your character but where’s the conflict?”  Have you thought, “This editor is nuts!  A guy’s chasing her.  She has a gun.  She shoots him.  Isn’t that enough conflict?”

No actually it isn’t.  What that is is action which is different from conflict.  Action is movement.  Conflict is choice followed by movement.  What???  What I’m talking about here is structure, what Randall Brown pointed out in a recent post at Flash Fiction Chronicles,  “Who Cares?”: The Nuts & Bolts of Making Narrative Matter:

Something happens (precipitating incident) to create a desire, and that desire creates a need for action that is thwarted by this and that and this and that until, finally, there’s resolution.

Movies are a great way to learn structure and what exactly a story arc is.  One of my favorite movies to illustrate structure in that old reliable action flick ( I know, I didn’t say “structure flick”), Die Hard, made back in 1988 when Bruce Willis was moving from Moonlighting on TV to the Big Screen.

Get the Die Hard DVD and watch it with a pen and paper and the timer on your DVD player.  Number the lines on your paper from 1 to maybe 120 or so.  Maybe skip lines to make sure you can write big if you get excited.  Record what happens every minute or so all the way through. This may seem like a tedious exercise,  but it’s amazing to just how carefully the story is constructed. For the hot-shot movie critics out there who love those ponderous three-hour think pieces, Die Hard is too “on the nose,” but for learning about structure and character development, it is one of the best.

What you’ll be looking for is based on Aristotle’s Poetics–the basic 3-act play structure.  There are many good books out there (Robert McKee’s Story which is based on The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives by Lajos Egri and for a quick understanding there’s always Syd Field’s Sreenplay) help a writer learn all the ins and outs–as well as the disagreements about rules, formulae, and art–but I’ll lay out the minimum here. 

Act 1 starts with a character in his regular life, something happens to turn his life on its head, and by the beginning of Act 2 (approximately 30 minutes in), the character’s life is 180 degrees different from what it once was and the character sets out to either change his or her life back or to figure out how to make the best of things.  He’s not trying all that hard because frankly, he can’t really believe things could go this wrong.  Then something else goes wrong. 

About a quarter way through Act 2 (around 45 pages in) the character has some kind of epiphany that he’s going to have to work a helluva lot hard than he thought.   The simple solution isn’t working.  He needs a better plan.

About half way through (60 minutes) he realizes who the enemy is (himself, his best friend, the woman with the man hands) and at the same time, there is a coming together between the character and his/her main relationship usually washing wounds or sex). 

In the second half of Act 2 some new effort is launched, but it doesn’t work and leads to a dark moment around 75 minutes in.  The character gives up the game as hopeless. 

But by 90 minutes, the beginning of Act 3, the character has come up with new energy, a new plan, a new assault on his problem and works through his conflict until he either wins or loses. 

Notice as you are jotting down what is happening on your lined paper, about when these things happen in Die Hard.  The timing won’t be perfect, but you’ll be shocked to see how close it is.

Look for: Set-ups and pay-offs: On the plane McClane talks with the other passenger about being afraid of flying. The passenger offers a suggestion. Watch for this to pay-off when he is in the bathroom of the Nakatomi building, and then later when he’s in the elevator and later when he’s being chased.  This suggestion from the passenger pays off about 6 times in this move. THAT’s good structure.

Look for how exposition is handled: On the plane, in the taxi, between McClane’s wife and her boss, when McClane gets to the Nakatomi building and looks his wife up on the list of employees. Then think about set-up and pay-offs again.  How is information given to the viewer?

Look for character development: The characters in this piece are so well-defined and consistent in their traits. We get them quickly and their motivation and subsequent behavior holds the structure together when the twists are thrown in. There is suspense without confusion.

Setting: Think about the airplane, the limo, and the high rise Century City building. Then think about how this movement evolves and what happens in the building and how each of these places have their own twists and turns. 

Pacing??? Remarkably fast, but with the right amount of time spent on reflection so the movie has meaning. And it does. It’s about loyalty, determination, married love, brotherhood, evil….

Okay enough. Now if you decide to do the jot down what’s happening thing, here’s what to look for. By the first three or so minutes you know who McClane is, what his problem is, and how he thinks he’s going to solve it. Notice he HAS a problem. A personal goal to find out what the hell is going on between him and his wife. That isn’t the PLOT of the movie, it’s a subplot, but it’s what gives the movie some universal meaning.

About thirty minutes in you might notice that everything has changed 180 degrees from the beginning of the movie (this is about where ACT 1 ends). The building is taken over and the story problem isn’t just about McClane and his wife, but it’s about surviving the “terrorist” attack.

Act 2 come next from around 30 or so minutes to about 90 minutes in. In that time it is McClane fighting the bad guys.

The first part of act 2 is all about getting the police’s attention and he assumes of course that the police will solve the problem. He has to just survive and create enough chaos to keep the bad guys busy until the cops save the day.

But in the middle of the movie around 60 minutes in we see that McClane isn’t going to get any help. As a matter of fact he’s now perceived as one of the bad guys. The stakes are ramped up. There is no help coming. He’s got to do it himself.  However, if I’m remembering correctly this is about the time John McClane’s wife begins to feel more kindly toward her estranged husband.

And then at about 90 minutes when Act three begins, John McClane makes his final assault to save his wife and everyone else who has survived. And he manages to do that in true action hero form.

The end? The enemy is defeated and he regains his wife.

Okay. Formula. Over the top. Right? Yeah but it’s a learning tool too. Knowing why this movie works has helped me to have answers to story problems whenever I get stuck. What does the formula say at this point??? Do I want to do that? If yes, may it a unique with details. If I dn’t, make sure that what does happen has the same kind of emotional effect.

I didn’t make this up. If this idea of studying movies to help understand structure appeals to you you might consider reading one of the books I mentioned earlier.

I can’t remember all the movies I did this with, but it is amazing to see how close movies THAT WORK stick to this. 

Movies I logged

Overboard
Witness
Terminator
Suspicion (wrong ending really but I still love it)
Outrageous Fortune
Trading Places
Charade

 That’s all I can remember off the top of my head!  Happy movie watching!

 

Gay Degani writes surrounded by the frantic chortles of parrots.  She has published in journals and anthologies including The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and TWO (2009).  Her stories online can be read at The Battered Suitcase, Night Train, 10 Flash, 3 A.M. Magazine, as well as other publications.  Pomegranate Stories is a collection of eight stories by Gay. She is the editor of EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles.  

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Wed 10 Mar 2010

What About the Reader’s Point of View?

Posted by Rumjhum Biswas under Exposition, Process
[5] Comments

rumjhumSometime ago I attended a poetry read meet after a very long time and was once again struck by how eager the poets were to explain their poetry!  

A typical reading is almost always followed by: “in my poem I am trying to say blah blah blah…Followed by, ” this (motif or image) means this in my poem,” and /or “I mean this in my poem” and so on and so forth. Why?

Isn’t it  the reader’s/listener’s prerogative to understand or takeaway whatever it is the poem is trying to convey? Shouldn’t the reader/listener be given an open mike as far as forming an opinion is concerned? 

Different people react to the same thing differently. I think it enriches the poetic/creative experience when one gets different perspectives. But this is not how writers and poets view it, usually.  They always have a long, often longer than the poem itself, list of reasons seasoned with all kinds of whys and wherefores for their creative outpouring!

 I can understand telling a story which may have led to the poem or writing being created in the first place. The owner is entitled to share the source of the inspiration, because this usually provides an interesting prologue (or epilogue if you will) to the verse. Besides, who doesn’t want to have a glimpse of another creative mind’s muse? However I think that’s where the explaining should end.

It’s time poets (writers too, but especially poets) allowed their verses to be viewed and weighed from points of view other than their own. If anything, it will enrich the poetic experience of everyone present. A poem comes alive when molded and shaped by another’s understanding; a poem takes on new cadences when uttered from another’s lips. Their lives get extended when lit up in the spotlight of unknown prisms. Ditto for stories. Likewise with plays.

Haven’t Shakespeare’s plays and poems been cast and recast a thousand times in different hues and tones down the centuries? I think that is the very reason why Shakespeare is still so alive!

Reprint from Writers & Writerisms

 

Rumjhum Biswas is still living in Chennai, India, but in another part where there were no mosquitoes until the rains came and all the incy wincy spiders were washed away. No she isn’t implying that spiders eat mosquitoes, but if they did she’d become a millionaire by breeding spiders and selling them all over the world, instead of being another poor writer who gets to answer the door and the phone because she is at home and that means she has a cushy life! She has a blog to prove that it’s not: http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com. You can also find her at times at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

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Mon 8 Mar 2010

Flash Process

Posted by Tanya L. Schofield under Process, characters, craft, flash
[3] Comments

TanyaschI’ve gotten out of the habit of writing new pieces from the word-crumbs for writer-pigeons, and a few days ago I decided to give it another go – get back in the habit, as it were. As I reached the end of the exercise, I thought the process might make a decent entry here. So I’m going to give you a walkthrough.

First came the prompts. I copy and paste them, and then add the quote – and I stare at them until I get a thought. (if one doesn’t come, I play Bejeweled until one does.) I add thoughts or definitions or phrases about the words beside them – it looks like this when I’m done:

- TIN ROOF (rusted, cat on a hot)
- AVON LADY (avon calling)
- REFINEMENT (improvement)
- MOP CLOSET (narrow)
- LEAK (drip, pass through)
- AFFECTED (influenced)
- PULCHRITUDE (beauty)
- MACARONI (elbow pasta)
- LAME BRAINED (foolish)
- CURVY (rounded)

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. –Henry Louis Mencken

 quote thoughts: Immorality. Sin. the roaring 20s. regular hausfrau dreaming of better times, better romance, etc.
her life – leak, mop closet, ornaments out of macaroni, avon lady, tin roof …
dream life – refinement, affected, pulchritude, curvy
Margaret – sensible name, sensible husband – Michael, sensible house. dreams of more, reads romance novels – the historic kind, where men have accents and write notes extolling their lady-love’s pulchritude. She’d had to look that one up, but wasn’t it a nice way to say a girl was pretty?
she is much older, kids are grown, it’s just her and Michael now. He still works, wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he didn’t, still won’t let her – she took in mending, once, when times were tough and the babies were little, but as soon as things were better she had to stop – hurt his pride, he’d say, having a wife he couldn’t support.

From there I generally have a picture of the story, or at least a start. I begin writing, working in the phrases with the prompt words. I add. I delete. I learn more about the character and change things. This is the “finished” product:

Margaret wiped the sweat from her forehead with the same rag she had been using to wipe down the leaky pipe under the sink so she could see where to fix it. Lady Wintercourt wouldn’t have had to fix a pipe, she thought to herself, beginning the complicated process of hauling herself to her feet. Winter’s Heat lay on the side table in the living room, next to her cigarettes and Pepsi, and if she was lucky she’d get to the end of this chapter before Michael was home expecting dinner.

She put the mop in the empty bucket and put the bucket back in the mop closet, then leaned on the counter until she caught her breath. Age was nipping at her heels, and the face in the mirror was no longer the fresh beauty that had graduated at the top of her refinement classes. Margaret imagined Lady Wintercourt in all of her curvy glory, gasping for breath, and how Lord Darien would be entranced by her heaving bosoms …

“Cor,” she scolded herself. “Such nonsense.” She smiled at her own foolishness, and went back to her reclining chair. Oh, for a time when her own bosoms would heave fetchingly, and some Lord would send her a handwritten note about how he was so affected by her pulchritude that he could scarcely sleep. She’d had to look pulchritude up in her son’s dictionary, but wasn’t it a fancy way to say a woman was pretty? Michael hadn’t called her naught but lovely since she was a new bride, and he called her pot roast lovely.

Oh, Michael loved her, she knew. He provided for her, refusing to let her work when he could support her. She had done a brief tour as an Avon Lady, back when times were tight and the babies were small, but he had asked her to stop just as soon as they were back on their feet. It hurt his pride, he said, people thinking he couldn’t take care of his own. Margaret had liked getting out and talking to the ladies, but she quit because he asked her to.

So now she stayed home, keeping things tidy and reading her romance novels and showing Michael that returned his love by making sure there was a hot meal on the table when he got home from work. Sometimes she rang her sister just to chat, but she didn’t want to be a bother – Martha’s girls were still at home, and such a handful. Her own boys called every Sunday. They were working over in the States now, and she couldn’t be prouder.

Margaret lifted up her readers from the beaded chain around her neck, and tucked into Winter’s Heat again. Her own adventures, sensible as they were, were over – but there were at least three more Wintercourt novels at the public library waiting for her.

Now, the important thing about this exercise is not the fact that I hate the piece (which I do). It’s crap, and we all know it. Say it with me, kids. LESSON NUMBER ONE: The First Draft of Anything Is Crap.

No – the important thing about the exercise is what I can take away from it, and even more importantly, what I SHOULD take away from it.

I could clean this up. I could contrive a “real” plot, or at least a believable one, and squish the words like PlayDoh until they fit the mold I had made.

Or, I could identify what would make it possible for the story to be reworked, and just save that piece.

Margaret is what works for me. I like her, I can see her so clearly, I know her whole life. (and while she reminds me a bit of Shirley Valentine, she is still her own person.) I get her husband, too, what motivates him and how much he loves his wife and how little he knows how to show it. These people, this relationship – this is what clicks.

As I have said before, people are what work for me. Characters. I collect them in my memory, I have mental boxes full of habits and traits and situations and experiences and sometimes complete people. Every now and then, one of them will move to the forefront, and that’s when the archaeology dig begins – I catch the tip of something larger out of the corner of my eye, and slowly brush away the bits that aren’t relevant until all that remains is the story. But 90% of the time, it starts with the character.

And characters are born of exercises like this – even exercises that are wildly, irredeemably terrible. So I have tucked Margaret and Michael (and even Lady Wintercourt and her heaving bosoms) away, and when they’re ready to tell their story, I’ll be ready to write it down.

In the mean time, I’ll work on today’s prompts – you never know what might come of it.

Previously published at Blogging in the Dark

 

TL.Schofield lives in central GA with a white dog and a black cat – one of which she is allergic to. Her second published piece is currently posted at AlienSkin Magazine.  She is getting back into the swing of things after a holiday hiatus, and blogs about the writing process  at Blogging in the Dark.

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Fri 5 Mar 2010

I’m Only Going to Tell You Once

Posted by Walter Giersbach under advice
[6] Comments

walter1In the 30-plus years I was a corporate mouthpiece and wordsmith, senior managers occasionally sidled up to ask if I had any tips for writing. Their memos and plans had all the verve of congealed mac and cheese. They knew it, but couldn’t articulate why.
This was the crib sheet that I pulled from my desk drawer for them. The suggestions apply also to flash fiction.

1. Use short words and, when you edit your writing, cut, cut, cut! See what makes this piece stand out:
“Our world’s well served by his last book, The Old Man and the Sea. He said words should be like small, bright stones, seen in the sand through a clear stream. You know it’s tough to find the ones that are lean, have strength, stand up, shout out and sing loud. At last, each best, true, sole verb or noun takes its place. On a good day, we might write just a page, two or three, then call them done.”
Notice that each word in this example has just one syllable? It’s not that word choices are overwhelming, but that we move too fast to complete the assignment. Doing the job too quickly makes it suffer in the process. Who takes the time to go back and change the text, to find the perfect word that will change the reader’s point of view?
2. Decide what result you want to achieve, what message the reader should take away. Each word, each thought must support this end result. Kill the rhetoric that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with your message.
3. Substitute Anglo-Saxon words when you can. Use “strength” instead of “fortitude,” “start” instead of “commence.” Greek and Latin derivatives are soft and mushy. Why say “apprise” or “inform” when “tell” says the same thing in half the syllables?
4. Avoid clichés, as in this real-life example:
“Opening night at the Cirque de Soleil was a strictly A-list affair, with a veritable Who’s Who gathered under the big top for a mind-boggling performance.”
There are four – maybe more – clichés here. Neo-clichés also lurk in memos and meetings: think outside the box, paradigm shift, core competencies, strategic initiative, impact (usually as a verb). Tired words and phrases also grow like nits into lice because it’s easier to use them than come up with an original image.
5. Don’t worry overmuch about the fine points of grammar. Sir Winston Churchill said about dangling participles, “They are an outrage up with which I shall not put.” The same is true about split infinitives. Capt. Kirk always wanted “to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Who’s going to argue with the Captain? Grammatical rigor mortis can make you sound stuffy.
6. As the Microsoft grammar checker on your toolbar demands, choose the active voice over the passive. How easy it is to say, “The policy was reviewed before implementation,” instead of “The manager reviewed the policy before….” It’s amazing to think how much work gets done by itself!
7. Avoid adjectives. They’re a lazy technique for bringing an idea to life. Instead of writing about a “lonely office after everyone has gone home,” go for the image with something like, “The loudest noise was the cleaning woman’s vacuum cleaner at the far end of the hallway.”
8. Escape prosaic, unimaginative writing that dulls the mind. Rewrite sentences, such as “The performance was so exciting that the audience was stunned when it was over,” with imagery. Substitute “There was a minute of stunned silence before the applause broke out.” Undistinguished writing is the stuff of TV news reporters.
9. Lazy verbiage that searches for the dramatic will always hijack your story. Here’s an example that came from one of Mitt Romney’s highly paid Bain & Co. consultants:
“When you join the Corporation, you also become a member of a very special and very unique team. It’s a worldwide team of over 50,000 men and women whose diverse mix of experience, energy and expertise makes us a true force to be reckoned with in the global marketplace. It’s a team that welcomes the challenges associated with gaining and sustaining competitive advantage in an environment where the rules, technology and players change daily. It’s a motivated and directed team whose hard work and breakthrough thinking will move us into the next century.”
Wow! How mind-numbingly vapid!
10. Computer spell checking won’t do your work for you. In The New York Times [1997], Jerry Gray wrote in a page one article, “Holding the dictionary between them and pouring over its pages, [Senators Dole and Daschle] agreed that the words (shall and will) were synonymous. They agreed on shall.” Unfortunately, Reporter Gray didn’t have his own dictionary over which to pore. Spelling must be absolutely correct. If a person can’t spell the difference between burro and burrow, it’s fair to say he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.

 

Walt Giersbach’s fiction has appeared Bewildering Stories, Big Pulp, Every Day Fiction, Everyday Weirdness, Lunch Hour Stories, Mouth Full of Bullets, Mystery Authors, OG Short Fiction, Northwoods Journal, Paradigm Journal, Short Fiction World, Southern Fried Weirdness, The Short Humour Site and Written Word.  Two volumes of short stories, Cruising the Green of Second Avenue, have been published by Wild Child (www.wildchildpublishing.com).  He also served for three decades as director of communications for Fortune 500 companies.

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Wed 3 Mar 2010

Portraiture & Writing

Posted by Peta Jinnath Andersen under advice, characters, craft, fiction, strategy
[4] Comments

petaandbabyWhen we think of portraits, we usually think of paintings, family trips to Sears, maybe even Henry James. But portraiture isn’t quite as simple as that.

Late last year, I was interviewed by Rebecca Givens Rolland, a grad student writing a portrait of Grub Street, a local writing center in Boston, MA. According to Rebecca, portraiture is a method developed by sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot 
to create a complex, vivid picture of a person or organization.”

The experience made me realize that portraiture can be useful in crafting a story, too. Portraiture, in this sense, is less about minute physical detail–the dust on a windowsill, the drooping dendrobium orchid losing blooms in a corner–and more about creating the essence of a person or place. Writers such as Hemingway (“A Clean  Well-Lighted Place”) and Steinbeck (“Cannery Row”) create this sort of portrait, this atmosphere, seamlessly. While we plebs might not quite be up to Hemingway’s snuff, sketching portraits of characters and places might help start us on our way.

How does creating a portrait work? During our interview, Rebecca asked me about my experience with Grub Street, starting with the big stuff.

  • What was your first impression of Grub Street?
  • Did you feel welcome?
  • Was it your first time at a writing center?
  • What did you expect?
  • Would you go back?

Once we’d settled in, she moved to more detailed questions. While it may seem detailed questions would include drooping dendrobium style minutiae, it was more focused on the day-to-day workings of my classes there and things I took away from the experience.

  • What were the classes like?
  • Did you get on with the people? The instructor?
  • How were the classes set up?
  • Was anything particularly useful?
  • Are you still in touch with anyone from your class?
  • How do you think Grub Street affected you? Your writing?

Start out small
While getting your Steinbeck on may seem like an excellent idea, start with just one portrait. The more time you spend working out the details, the better your story will be. Don’t feel compelled to do a portrait of every character or place in your story–it might result in cluttering things up with too much detail. Weigh the work of creating the portrait against the importance of the person/place in the story, too. Don’t waste time creating a portrait of the guy who serves your main character cake at her best friend’s wedding if he’s only on-page for a few seconds.

  1. Take a mental snapshot. Picture your subject (a kitchen, your main character’s ferret) and write down your first impressions. Is the kitchen homey? Are you scared of the ferret’s big bitey teeth? If it helps, collect actual pictures and tack them up near your workspace.
  2. Move beyond the Polaroid. Many writers rely on visuals to convey information. Although this can work well, it often ends in what I call the Polaroid effect–the reader is drenched in useless detail (the magazine was bound with PVA, a glue commonly used in print bindings). Instead of describing the snapshot itself, describe the memories it conjures. Use scents, textures, and sounds to put your reader inside the Polaroid.

Delve deeper
Now you’ve got the easy part sorted, it’s time to dig a little deeper. Part of what makes portraiture so fascinating is its use of people–instead of recording only their impressions, a skilled portraitist uses the impressions of others to paint a more complex picture. In real life, this is a matter of interviewing and research. In fiction, it’s pretty much the same thing, except that you have to make up your interviewees.

Consider all the people who interact with your subject. Does Virginia get coffee at Bean Scene everyday? Does the coffee shop have a barista she talks to? Write down a list of everyone involved.

  1. Write out a list of questions (try starting with the lists above).
  2. Answer the questions. Writing in character isn’t necessary (though go right ahead if it helps)–the point is to find how your characters feel about a certain place/person and why. Does Virginia go to Bean Scene because it gets her out of the house and away from a screaming baby, because she likes the coffee, or because everybody knows her name? Why is it important everybody knows her name?
  3. When all’s said and done, put everything aside for a while. Come back to it in a few days, when you’re fresh, and your mind is clear of any preconceptions.
  4. Go over your notes. Look for patterns in the text, jot down common ideas and phrases. Use these to paint the broader strokes of your portrait, and go from there.

While it may not work for every story, portraiture is a useful technique for creating atmosphere and giving characters depth. Would you try a portrait? Have you interviewed your characters? How do you create atmosphere in your work? Post examples in the comments!

 

Peta Jinnath Andersen is a freelance writer and editor in Cambridge, MA. Her flash fiction story, The Jar, will be appearing in an upcoming issue of  Kaleidotrope . She’s currently working on her first novel.

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Mon 1 Mar 2010

Advice for the Words-Lorn

Posted by Gay Degani under Process, advice
[3] Comments

DJbarbernewpic

Post Written by DJ Barber

I write every day.  Sometimes all I can squeeze out is a mere sentence. Then there are days I might complete a chapter. But I remember there are good days, days where words just drip from the keyboard, words just flow. 

Then there are days, much as the current economy, where sure, there’s words a-plenty, but they’re just a jumbled mess with no order and no possible resolution in sight. I could have 10,000 words and couldn’t get 100 of them in any ordered fashion, let alone put together a story.
 
So it’s two deep breaths–and think about something else completely; a rainy sky, the troll with the bloody mace, the old dwarves singing, drinking, and cursing on a Sat’day night, The steely-eyed detective standing at the edge of an alley, the busty barmaid bringing another round, the silver space ship hurling ‘round the rings of Saturn, the beast lurking at forest’s edge as he watches the small girl‘s approach, the Martian lander setting softly on the White House lawn, the former pug glaring with hostility at the new kid just hired by Big Al, the three-masted schooner smashing against the reef upon a stormy sea, the old lady drawing her last breath surrounded by those she loves.
 
And after splaying my thoughts around some more that jumble of 10,000 words sometimes coalesces into something I can write down and then read back and it makes some little bit of sense.
 
Ah, yes! Now those faeries are ready to take up arms and head off to war with the hated pixies!
 
The woods fall away beneath their flight, air alive with the sounding buzz of the swarm, they sing as they fly; the others woodland creatures, the deer, a startled boar, a chipmunk, all glance skyward, blink at the sight and amble slowly toward meadow and stream, oblivious to the coming tempest.
  
Aha! Seems I might have today’s one sentence.

 

DJ Barber writes stories, flash, poems, and novels. He was born in the northeast and lives in the northwest. When not writing he has a wife and two dogs that keep him busy.  He has been published online at Every Day Fiction, Moon Drenched Fables, Tales From the Moonlit Path, Big Pulp, Every Day Poets, and Everyday Weirdness.

 
 

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Sun 28 Feb 2010

Top 3 stories/poems/articles for Feb 2010

Posted by Gay Degani under advice
[3] Comments

From Every Day Publishing:
Every Day Fiction

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Fri 26 Feb 2010

That Last Draft Probably Isn’t

Posted by Gay Degani under Process, advice
[18] Comments

gayforwowStories sometimes fall out of our heads and onto the computer screen, surprising us, filling us with an elation that comes mighty close to other kinds of elations.  The temptation is to get it out there into some editors hands immediately.  Usually we zip it straight to the editor we want most to love our work, an editor who’ll email us with praise, no edits, and a Pushcart nomination.  We are hot and bothered, and to use a phrase from my junior high years –STOKED–because we realize we’re beginning to get it. Writing is getting easier…

Beware the flush of love…I mean, the flush of drafts that are effortless.  Sometimes they really are good.  Sometimes they just FEEL good.  The most important thing to remember is WAIT.  Sleep on it.  Don’t lose your heart on a one night stand.  At least not yet. 

After you’ve cooled down, taken a hot shower, and rested, you may discover that what you’ve written is almost ready to go, but it needs proof-reading, a little polish, it needs to be more than it is.  On the occasion when the Muse has guided you, maybe a proof-read is enough.  But most of the time–I’d say 99% of the time–if it’s that good, it can still be better. 

Taking a piece of writing one more level up can mean the difference to finding a home for a story and not finding a home.

It could be as simple as doublechecking to see if your opening is sharp, seductive, and just as important, prescient.  Does it set up your ending.  If the first sentence, the first paragraph is a scene where siblings fight, then what you have communicated to the reader is that the relationship between this brother and this sister is important enough to start off your story.  I’m basically talking about short stories here, especially flash because the word count is such that nothing can be put into the story because because the author likes it or because that how it started in the head of the writer.  Not good enough. 

That opening paragraph must signal in some way, and yes it can be subtle, what it is this story is about. It should suggest both the main characters “journey and epiphany” without giving away the ending.  It can be done in clear straight forward way or it can be subtle, even metaphorical, but it does need to give the reader a hint to the main conflict, what this story is about on a “plot level” and on a “thematic level.” And yes, good genre writing has a theme just like “lit.”

 Creating the link between the beginning of the story and the end will bring complexity to a story.

Word count is a tool.  It sets up boundaries and when there are boundaries we are pushed to know about them, accomodate them, and break away from them.  Word count forces us to look at our stories under a microscope and to needle away anything that doesn’t do service to the story.There are almost always words and phrases that can be cut or sentences reworded by finding more exact and vivid language.

We all put words and phrases in stories when we are writing drafts and some of them eventually become invisible to us. But many of them become obsolete or unnecessary as we work with the material zeroing in on just what the story is about. 

I am trying to teach myself patience.  Trying to set aside work I think is strong in that first rush to the page, just for a day or two, before deciding if this is the best I can do.  And it never is because when I reread the attachment to the submission I’ve sent off in the afterglow of a good write (and I can never resist), there’s always a flaw in the first paragraph, a misused word, an awkwardness, and I want to haul it back from the ether and have it at least one more time.

 

Gay Degani has published in journals and anthologies including The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and The Best of Every Day Fiction  TWO (2009).  Her stories online can be read at Smokelong Quarterly, The Battered Suitcase, Night Train, Every Day Fiction as well as other publications.  Pomegranate Stories is a collection of eight stories by Gay. She is the editor of EDF’s Flash Fiction Chronicles and blogs at Words in Place.

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Wed 24 Feb 2010

Flash Fiction Isn’t Written in a Flash

Posted by Erica Naone under Process, craft
[4] Comments

EricaNaoneI’ve read a lot of online discussion lately that suggests flash fiction stories are quick, easy pieces that you can dash off in a morning. That’s not my experience at all. The only reason I can afford to write flash is that I have a day job.

As an example, I thought I’d describe the process I used to write “Home to Perfect,” a flash piece published in the Best of Every Day Fiction Two anthology. This story took me a solid 15 hours to write. I’ll try to break down how those hours were spent. (The description below assumes you’ve read the story).

I got the idea for the story when I was poking around the Internet one day and found a clip on YouTube of a kid playing “Through the Fire and Flames” perfectly in expert mode on the video game Guitar Hero. At the end of the clip, the kid is visibly trembling, cursing in disbelief, and totally overwhelmed. I found myself thinking over the next several days about the kid’s awe and how he shared it with an audience on YouTube. I wondered if his parents had any idea what that moment meant to him.

I spent about 3 hours over the next several days developing the idea. I asked myself who Vic (my main character) was, why he cared about playing through the song perfectly, and what else was going on in his life. I wrote extensive notes on him, his mom, his dad, and his brother Kurt. This was the point at which I realized that I was writing about domestic violence. I could tell you a lot of details about all of these characters that never made it into the story. I believe a story should be an iceberg–what’s visible should be only a small amount of the material that’s in the author’s possession.

In a flash piece, I look for the iceberg effect even more. In very few words, I have to make the reader aware of significant emotions and history that bear on the scene I chose to show.

At that point, I wrote my first draft, spending about 2 hours on it. (My first draft rate for longer pieces is much faster, but my speed of writing seems to be inversely related to the length of the piece).

I put my first draft down for about a week. When I picked it up again, something was wrong with it, and I couldn’t figure out what. After much rereading and consideration (which I’m not counting towards the total time spent on the work), I figured out that “Through the Fire and Flames” was the problem. I had no emotional connection to the song, and I hadn’t spent much time playing Guitar Hero. I had, on the other hand, pulled many all-nighters playing Rock Band. There’s a song on Rock Band called “Green Grass and High Tides” that I love deeply and find wickedly difficult. I changed the story so that Vic is playing Rock Band, and spent about 5 hours writing a new draft. While I wrote this draft, I listened repeatedly to “Green Grass and High Tides” and periodically took breaks to watch videos on YouTube of people playing this song on Rock Band.

At that point, I thought I’d finished the story, so I let my husband read it. As always happens, he made me realize that I had a lot of work left to do, pointing out several problems with how it was structured. I spent about 3 hours restructuring and fixing those problems. Then, I spent 2 hours doing a final polish and preparing the story for submission. For me, this consists of reading the whole thing out loud several times, fixing anything that trips me up, and fiddling with things until I’m sure I really want to send the story out into the world. I run spellcheck. I obsessively study the guidelines for the market to which I’m sending the story.

And that’s a wrap. I’ve wished that I could write faster, but I’m proud of the piece and am glad I took my time.

 

The original version of this post appeared as Best of Every Day Fiction on Words, Words, Words.

Erica Naone writes by day about topics related to the Internet and computer software. Her fiction has appeared in On The Premises, Storyglossia, Every Day Fiction and Flashquake. She recently received an honourable mention in the 32nd annual International 3-Day Novel Contest. She lives with her husband in Allston, MA. You can read her blog or follow her on Twitter.

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Mon 22 Feb 2010

One Writer’s Process

Posted by Tanya L. Schofield under Process, craft, life experience
[3] Comments

TanyaschOn January 26th, I sat down and wrote 1,000 words for the first time in something like two months. (There has been a staggering lack of writing at my house lately.) It was a first person narrative that began with:

“I’m no hero, all right? Let’s get that straight up front.”

As of today, 15 days later, I have an entirely outlined and characterized novel plan. This is how I did it.

_____________

The initial narrative took several days to get out of my system, so I went with it, following the narrator right into the middle of his current situation. I would revise the beginning to reflect things I was learning as I wrote the continuation. I shoved “show don’t tell” under my chair and let him tell me about each of his companions, until I felt like I knew them all. (I did all of the preliminary writing in a simple text-edit program so I could easily bounce back and forth between Bianca (my main computer) and Cheese (my baby hackbook).) I took the file with me everywhere for a few days, and worked on it in all of my spare time.

For several days after that, I characterized. (Maker bless the StoryMill for giving me one place to keep track of everything) I made an entry for each character, then jotted ideas and asked questions and bounced from one character to the others as I learned how they all interacted with each other, and why. The characters told me their stories, and I took notes.

Then came the outline, which was a relatively simple matter of piecing together all the quilt-square-stories my characters had told me into one ‘big picture’ of a story. The only challenge this time was puzzling out the right order in which to tell four separate stories until they could unite into one.

With the piecing came more learning, and some of the stories shifted or grew or became less important. I made notes along the way in each of the character’s records … going so far as to use strikethrough text for older ideas instead of deleting them outright, so I could see what I had scrapped in case I needed it again. I determined how many key events occurred during the scope of the tale.

At this point came the numbers – I need the numbers, they act as a boundaries to keep me from going on and on and on like some reincarnation of a famously verbose author (who shall remain nameless even though the fact that he is still being published after his demise is something of an annoyance to me, being that one printing run of his book could theoretically wipe out an entire rainforest in Bolivia.)

Anyway. I picked 65,000 as a starting point for my first draft (not too short, but with room to grow later when things require more explanation and detail.) I determined that the story could best be told in 10 chapters. Behold, each chapter now has a temporary goal of 6,500 words.

I created the 10 chapters, and named them to give myself a reminder of what happens in each one. From the chapter overviews, I determined the scenes – what events occur in what order to convey the story of the bigger picture? Sometimes there were two scenes, sometimes there were four. I entered them into the program as well, giving them names that helped me remember what happens within them, and assigning them to the appropriate chapter. I applied the numbers again, to give myself a framework for how many words each scene in each chapter should have.

At this point, I took an afternoon and made scene notes … one scene at a time, I made the notation: “In which …” and described the action that would be taking place in that scene when I wrote it. This is my map, the road marker I look back on when I am tempted to tangent in a wonderfully written side-story which is completely irrelevant and that I would only have to cut later.

Yesterday I was back to characterizing, since a few of them had come forward while I was making scene notes and requested some changes, or suggested some motivational aids. That was when I got to the nitty-gritty – the physical appearance, the life goal/motivation, the internal agendas, etc.

I also started the list of the things I need — as I encounter something in my descriptions that is incomplete, I make a note of it and keep going, so as not to slow myself down on the details that don’t really matter and can be dealt with later. Currently this list is begging for a world map, names for towns and countries and Inns, and a real name for a guy I am referring to as “Nameless Guy” in every section of notes – before “Nameless Guy” sticks and I have to name him that – keep an eye out for a guy named Inconnu or some form thereof. It’s french for “nameless”. (Thank you Babel Fish!)

I should be starting the actual writing today or tomorrow.

And that’s how it happened.

The problem I am having, however, is the guilt. I have this terrible feeling that working on a long piece, a novel-length work, is nothing but selfish indulgence. Only short pieces are going to make it out into the world and keep my name in the pond … so how can I justify taking the time to write something no one will ever read because the publishing world is a dank, scary place and I don’t have a map or a sherpa? *sigh*

(previously published at Blogging in the Dark)

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