Prose from the Pros

EYES THE COLOR OF SLUSH

2012-01-31T07:00:00.001-07:00

What a short month, and it’s not February! Here is today’s post:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 6: Bringing Characters to Life Through Description (Part 1)

“When Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim was asked about his creative process, he replied, ‘If you told me to write a love song tonight, I’d have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that’s a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.’”

If you try to write about an abstraction like grief or love, you must first pay attention to the details. Characters are the same way. Description anchors the character.

The first step is to christen your character. Names can give the reader a clue to the person’s personality, Sybil Rumple versus Sam Slade. Baby books, phone books, and obituaries can be good sources for names.

A nickname can also tell a lot about a character. By explaining its origin, you can add background info about the character without using a flashback.

T.S. Elliot named a character J. Alfred Prufrock. It fits the poem.

* * *

A physical description can become an “all-point bulletin” of attributes: brown hair, green eyes. Using specific details such as military buzz-cut or long ponytail can strengthen the description.

Too many details, however, can cancel each other out and overwhelm the reader. Instead, concentrate on one or two details. Rather than frontloading a story with physical descriptions, scatter the elements through the work.

Photographs can supply not only description but a clue to the character’s past.

Other senses besides visual can be used to introduce a character. Does he smell like cedar or breath mints? Is her laugh shrill?

Hmm. I need to work on that. More on character description on Thursday.

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

She’s fifty or so, with gray hair that falls in an unbroken sheet to her shoulders. I’m somewhat fascinated by her hair, since it’s so uniform, so without a flaw, a wisp, even a split end. Her eyes are gray, but not like those of people from the Seam. They’re very pale, as if almost all the color has been sucked out of them. The color of slush that you wish would melt away.

I get the impression that this woman is inflexible and lacks warmth. The description tells us much more than gray hair and eyes would.

* * *

Her dark brown eyes are puffy with fatigue and she smells of metal and sweat. A bandage about her throat needed changing about three days ago. The strap of the automatic weapon slung across her back digs into her neck and she shifts her shoulder to reposition it.

Military woman who’s been on the front lines for too long?

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Let’s stop there and continue on Thursday.

SNAKES! WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES?

2012-01-26T07:00:00.001-07:00

Hello, fellow writers! Let’s continue our discussion of metaphor. Here are some definitions:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 5: Figuratively Speaking: A “Perception of Resemblances” (Part 2)

Simile: A comparison of two things that uses a connective. “Your hair is like a dark river.”

Metaphor: A comparison without a connective. “Your hair is a dark river.”

Implied Metaphor: A comparison that alludes to the object it’s using for comparison and does not use the verb “to be.” “Your hair twists and meanders across the landscape of your shoulders.”

Hyperbole: An exaggerated metaphor or simile. “My boss is pond scum.”

Personification A figure of speech that speaks about an inanimate object, a force of nature or an abstract term as if it were a person. “The trees were serene.”

Animism: Similar to personification but does not imply human life. “The love that ended yesterday crawled out of the sea.”

Paradox: A seemingly contradictory statement. “She loved John too much to stay with him.”

Metonymy: A reference to something, not by its own name but by something closely related to it. “From birth to death” becomes “from cradle to grave.”

Synecdoche: A metonymy that allows part of something to stand for the whole of it. “Lend a hand.”

Analogy: A comparison between two relationships using A is to B as C is to D. “A book is an axe for the frozen sea within.”

Allegory: A story or description in which each element—each person, place, thing, and idea—is metaphorical. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a classic example.

Conceit: A long, complex comparison between two things that are extremely unlike, such as comparing separated lovers to the legs of a compass.

Symbol: A concrete object that points to an abstraction. In Poe’s “The Raven,” the bird points to death. In Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, blood points to courage.

Ack! And I thought all I had to worry about were similes and metaphors.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

We star-crossed lovers from District 12, who suffered so much and enjoyed so little the rewards of our victory, do not seek the fans’ favor, grace them with our smiles, or catch their kisses. We are unforgiving.

And I love it. Getting to be myself at last.

By this point in the story, I agree with the character’s assessment.

* * *

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

The memories swirl as I try to sort out what is true and what is false. What series of events led me to be standing in the ruins of my city? This is hard because the effects of the concussion she gave me haven’t completely subsided and my thoughts still have a tendency to jumble together. Also, the drugs they use to control my pain and mood sometimes make me see things. I guess. I’m still not entirely convinced that I was hallucinating the night the floor of my hospital room transformed into a carpet of writhing snakes.

I half remember a old cure for insanity. Throw the person into a snake pit. No thanks.

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I’m done for this week. I’ll be back on Tuesday.

METAPHOR IS NOT AN EMBROIDERY STITCH

2012-01-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Good morning! I hope this post will help you in your writing journey:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 5: Figuratively Speaking: A “Perception of Resemblances” (Part 1)

“Metaphor, like all components of successful description, begins in the eye and ear of the beholder. It isn’t a fancy embroidery stitch, something with which to embellish the surface of a written piece.”

Is the ability to write metaphorically an inborn trait or a learned skill? Some people seem more naturally tuned to see the world through metaphor. Both sides play a role in a writer’s use of figurative language. But we can all learn to recognize resemblances in the world and to shape the expression of those resemblances.

After reading this chapter, I wonder if I try to force my metaphors instead of letting them flow naturally out of my writing. I need to do more writing to recognize what’s natural and what’s forced.

* * *

Literal language means what it says, using words as defined by the dictionary. Figurative language strays toward the connotation of words and usually implies or overtly states a comparison between two things.

A metaphor requires a “tenor,” the main subject, and a “vehicle,” a concrete image. In the sentence “He carried his guilt like a heavy suitcase,” guilt is the tenor and suitcase is the vehicle.

I wish I’d learned this basic analysis of figurative language rather than diagramming sentences ad nauseum.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

Having been through prep with Flavius, Venia, and Octavia numerous times, it should just be an old routine to survive. But I haven’t anticipated the emotional ordeal that awaits me. At some point during the prep, each of them bursts into tears at least twice, and Octavia pretty much keeps up a running whimper throughout the morning. It turns out they really have become attached to me, and the idea of my returning to the arena has undone them. Combine that with the fact that by losing me they’ll be losing their ticket to all kinds of big social events, particularly my wedding, and the whole thing becomes unbearable. The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I’m the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying.

In this teenage girl’s mind, her prep team is as upset about the possible loss of social events as they are about the girl possibly dying in mortal combat.

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I already ran out of space for today. I’ll continue the discussion of metaphor on Thursday.

THE SCREAM OF CRIMSON

2012-01-19T07:00:00.001-07:00

Happy Thursday! I hope you enjoy this post:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 4: The Nose and Mouth and Hand and Ear of the Beholder (Part 2)

Touch is an intimate sense. A well-written description using touch can bundle the reader in a quilt or slap him across the face. As in all descriptions, name the object accurately and then the action.

Touch is the sense I use least, unless you want to include visceral responses like a lump in the throat. This is a good reminder.

* * *

Sound also requires exact wording. Racket is better than noise. Onomatopoeia can be effective. Words that sound like what they represent (crunch, rustle) can help the reader imagine the sound.

Metaphor can also help the reader.

Metaphor is good to use when the reader may not be familiar with the sound.

* * *

In describing the senses, you can also employ synesthesia. You can use smell to describe a color or color to describe a sound. “It tastes like a mouthful of bees.”

I’m reminded of “color organs” that were once popular. The color on the display changed with the music.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don’t notice much because they’re so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window. They’re a light golden color and so long I don’t see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks.

Why are long, beautiful lashes wasted on the guys?

* * *

Downstairs, the living room has been cleared and lit for the photo shoot. Effie’s having a fine time ordering everybody around, keeping us all on schedule. It’s probably a good thing, because there are six gowns and each one requires its own headpiece, shoes, jewelry, hair, makeup, setting, and lighting. Creamy lace and pink roses and ringlets. Ivory satin and gold tattoos and greenery. A sheath of diamonds and jeweled veil and moonlight. Heavy white silk and sleeves that fall from my wrist to the floor, and pearls. The moment one shot has been approved, we move right into preparing for the next. I feel like dough, being kneaded and reshaped again and again.

I would never make it in the fashion world, although I dumped the “frumpy Frances” look years ago.

SIPPING BLOOD FROM A TEACUP

2012-01-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

Hope you had a good weekend. Here is today’s writing-related post:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 4: The Nose and Mouth and Hand and Ear of the Beholder (Part 1)

We usually think of description in terms of seeing. “Ignoring the other senses in your writing is like sitting in a gourmet restaurant wearing ear plugs, work gloves, and a surgical mask over your nose and mouth.”

The sense of smell is the one with the best memory. The scent of a certain cologne can remind you of a high-school sweetheart.

The scent of a particular disinfectant slammed me back eight years to my mother’s nursing home.

* * *

Description of an odor often employs its effect on the character: nauseating, intoxicating. Another technique is to describe a smell in terms of other smells, which is especially effective if a reader might have no firsthand experience.

In my WIP, I describe the odor of an autoclave (a sterilizing device) as a “burning, moist smell.”

* * *

Other techniques for evoking a smell are to confine it to a particular place or to combine several smells. You can also put your character in a situation in which he can’t rely on his sight alone, such as in a darkened room.

I like the idea of putting yourself in a character’s shoes and smelling through his nose.

* * *

Taste is difficult to separate from smell. Sometimes just mentioning a specific food such as fried chicken or buttermilk biscuits will evoke the taste as well as the reader’s association with the food. Saying something is sweet, salty, sour, or bitter can only carry the description so far, since both a lemon drop and sour cream can be described as sour.

Scientists today no longer map the tongue into areas of sweet, salty, sour, or bitter. Taste buds for each are scattered all over the tongue.

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

Just the sound of his voice twists my stomach into a knot of unpleasant emotions like guilt, sadness, and fear. And longing. I might as well admit there’s some of that, too. Only it has too much competition to ever win out.

The girl is a bit conflicted. Emotions are seldom pure.

* * *

In my mind, President Snow should be viewed in front of marble pillars hung with oversized flags. It’s jarring to see him surrounded by the ordinary objects in the room. Like taking the lid off a pot and finding a fanged viper instead of stew.

The protagonist doesn’t like Snow if she’s comparing him to a viper.

* * *

The smell of blood . . . it was on his breath.

What does he do? I think. Drink it? I imagine him sipping it from a teacup. Dipping a cookie into the stuff and pulling it out dripping red.

Ewww.

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That’s all for today. I’ll have another post on Thursday. See you then!

TANGERINE THEMES

2012-01-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

I intended to post this morning. Waking with a headache in the middle of the night scotched that idea. Here’s today’s entry:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 3: From Eye to Word: The Description

Description is more than a grocery list of attributes. The details need to be organized. In describing a tangerine, for instance, the description might begin at the rind and end at the seeds.

Use specific nouns, such as scalpel instead of knife. The writer must learn the vocabulary of whatever world he is using, whether a beauty salon or a surgery room. The precise word goes beyond accuracy to the word that evokes the attitude and emotion the story requires. Even the sound of the word can reinforce the image. Sometimes description can use the back-door technique by saying what an object is not: Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” states that the woman’s eyes “are nothing like the sun.”

Descriptions need active rather than passive prose: not “The ship was rocked by rough sea winds” but “Rough winds rocked the ship.” Filtering devices such as “he noticed” or “she felt” should be eliminated.

Like nouns, verbs also need to be active and specific. “Verbs are the foot soldiers of action-based description. They march in the front lines, toting the heavy artillery.” Verbs to avoid include linking verbs (appear, seem, was, and all “to be” verbs), and helping verbs (would, can, might).

Adverbs in writing should be examined. Writers can avoid them by using stronger verbs (whisper instead of talk softly).

Sensory, concrete detail can give weight and substance to an idea, emotion, or abstraction. A character sewing a missing button onto his dead father’s jacket can become a metaphor for grief.

This makes me want to interrogate every word of my prose with a “what are you doing?”

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

I clasp the flask between my hands even though the warmth from the tea has long since leached into the frozen air. My muscles are clenched tight against the cold. If a pack of wild dogs were to appear at this moment, the odds of scaling a tree before they attacked are not in my favor. I should get up, move around, and work the stiffness from my limbs. But instead I sit, as motionless as the rock beneath me, while the dawn begins to lighten the woods. I can’t fight the sun. I can only watch helplessly as it drags me into a day that I’ve been dreading for months.

Leach and drag are the specific verbs used here.

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That’s it for the day. Have a good weekend, and I’ll be back on Tuesday.

THE OMINOUS WOODS

2012-01-10T07:00:00.001-07:00

Greetings, fellow writers! As I explained on Friday, I’ll be posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a while. Here is today’s post:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 2: The Eye of the Beholder (Part 3)

The Gliding Eye is a way to pay attention to surroundings while on the move. Walking, swimming, or biking can free your mind. You can also take a long train ride, car trip, or cruise, watching the world rush past.

The Child’s Eye looks at the world through the perspective of a child, playing with description for the sheer enjoyment of it.

The Dream Eye pays attention to your dreams. The goal here is to describe the scenes without trying to make sense of them. Images can provide insight into your characters or suggest plot elements. It’s helpful to keep pen and paper on your bedside table to record what you remember.

I like the premise of this chapter. We can enhance our description of objects by viewing them through new eyes.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

Once I’m on my feet, I realize escape may not be so simple. I’m dizzy. Not the slightly wobbly kind, but the kind that sends the trees swooping around you and causes the earth to move in waves under your feet. I take a few steps and somehow wind up on my hands and knees. I wait a few minutes to let it pass, but it doesn’t.

The author never names what’s wrong, but I gather the character suffered a concussion from being too close to an explosion.

* * *

The woods always look different at night. Even with the glasses, everything has an unfamiliar slant to it. As if the daytime trees and flowers and stones had gone to bed and sent slightly more ominous versions of themselves to take their places.

This describes both the scene and the character’s uneasiness.

* * *

I always assumed the shopkeepers live a soft life. And it’s true, Peeta has always had enough to eat. But there’s something kind of depressing about living your life on stale bread, the hard, dry loaves that no one else wanted. One thing about us, since I bring our food home on a daily basis, most of it is so fresh you have to make sure it isn’t going to make a run for it.

The character compares the fare of bakery owners to the food she gathers and hunts.

* * *

That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Thursday.

AN ENVIABLE BELLY

2012-01-06T08:45:00.000-07:00

Greetings again, fellow writers! After this week, I’ll be posting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Life’s gotten a little crazy for me. Here’s today’s installment:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 2: The Eye of the Beholder (Part 2)

In writing description, we can call upon the eye of memory. One way to reshape the memory is to take an event from your life such as the death of your father and give the experience to one of your characters. See what he does with it. Another idea is to take two events from your past that are years apart and put them together in an interaction between characters. Or describe two or more versions of the same event. If the experience was emotionally moving for you, that emotion will likely transfer to your character.

Another tool is the growing eye, as McClanahan defines it. This means looking at an object and seeing it with emotional and spiritual insight. The Pacific becomes not just an ocean but is personified.

One challenge is to describe something most people consider beautiful. Rather than put a label or judgment on an object, start with considering the subject. An example is Richard Selzer’s description of a vase of tulips: “The long stems had been impaled on a bed of spikes and wired such that the distance hydrocephalic blossoms would respond to the least current of air.” The same technique can be used for something commonly thought of as ugly.

Ugh. This description of tulips is creepy. I assume this isn’t part of a romance novel unless it’s a love story between zombies.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

Caesar Flickerman, the man who has hosted the interviews for more than forty years, bounces onto the stage. It’s a little scary because his appearance has been virtually unchanged during all that time. Same face under a coating of pure white makeup. Same hairstyle that he dyes a different color for each Hunger Games. Same ceremonial suit, midnight blue dotted with a thousand tiny electric bulbs that twinkle like stars. They do surgery in the Capitol, to make people appear younger and thinner. In District 12, looking old is something of an achievement since so many people die early. You see an elderly person, you want to congratulate them on their longevity, ask the secret of survival. A plump person is envied because they aren’t scraping by like the majority of us. But here it is different. Wrinkles aren’t desirable. A round belly isn’t a sign of success.

Maybe I should move to District 12. Uh, never mind.

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I’ll be back on Tuesday. See you then!

THE AIR COOL AND PUNGENT WITH DYING THINGS

2012-01-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this first post of the new year! Let’s get started:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 2: The Eye of the Beholder (Part 1)

“Description begins in the beholder’s eye, and it requires attention. If we look closely enough and stay in the moment long enough, we may be granted new eyes. Or ears.”

Above all, observation is essential to writing description.

* * *

Description can be of the physical world or the world of the inner eye. Either way, read the best literature rich in detail so you’ll recognize effective description when it appears in your own work.

Part of the value to me of this blog is I prepare by noting good description and turns of phrases from the novels I read. It forces me to pay attention.

* * *

Here’s an exercise in observation: Choose an ordinary object in your home, place it on a bare table, and set a timer for ten minutes. Stare at the object. Pick it up. Smell it.

When the ten minutes are up, write a description in concrete terms. If the object conjures up memories associated with it, write those down as well.

I’m learning to write more descriptively. Usually my first draft lacks description and emotional content, but I’m getting better at it.

* * *

You can also write from the eye of the imagination, using a picture in your mind to describe objects, people, and events. These may be memories as well.

I can picture something (like an alien that looks like a molting flamingo) but it’s hard for me to describe it.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

The cameras haven’t lied about its grandeur. If anything, they have not quite captured the magnificence of the glistening buildings in a rainbow of hues that tower into the air, the shiny cars that roll down the wide paved streets, the oddly dressed people with bizarre hair and painted faces who have never missed a meal. All the colors seem artificial, the pinks too deep, the greens too bright, the yellows painful to the eyes, like the flat round disks of hard candy we can never afford to buy at the tiny sweet shop in District 12.

To someone from a coal-dusted, gritty town, the Capital is Oz.

* * *

It was a Sunday in October, the air cool and pungent with dying things. I’d spend the morning competing with the squirrels for nuts and the slightly warmer afternoon wading in shallow ponds harvesting katniss. The only meat I’d shot was a squirrel that had practically run over my toes in its quest for acorns.

The use of “dying things” instead of describing the fall foliage evokes an emotional response as well as an imaginative smell.

* * *

“You’ve got about as much charm as a dead slug.”

What a compliment.

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Please join me on Friday for more from these sources. Thanks for stopping by.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2012-01-02T10:07:00.002-07:00

Hope you had a good weekend. I'm taking the day off, so I'll be back on Wednesday. Enjoy your day!

ICY FINGERS OF RAIN

2011-12-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings! This last week of the old year has sped by for me. My hubby was off work so we did a lot of stuff together. I’ll need the new year for rest!

Here’s my last blog post for 2011:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

Chapter 1: What is Description? (part 2)

Aristotle, in Book III of The Rhetoric of Aristotle, identifies the qualities of descriptive writing. First, description is carefully worded. We need to know not only the correct terms for objects and people we describe, but also the right words that evoke the particular image or emotion appropriate to the story.

Good description employs specific, concrete detail so the reader can see or experience what is described through various senses.

Third, “it is not enough simply to engage the senses. We must also represent the fictional dream through word pictures—and, wherever possible, these should be moving pictures.”

Good description often uses figurative language. Aristotle argues that metaphor and simile are at least as important in prose as in poetry, since prose doesn’t use other tools such as thyme, meter, and established poetic forms.

Even with these elements, description can be ineffective. It must serve the larger story.

The rewards of description:

· Creates illusion of reality, supporting the fictional dream

· Engages the reader on emotional and intellectual levels

· Establishes characters and settings quickly

· Frames points of view

· Advances the story

· Changes the pace and tension of the story

· Links scenes, times, and places

· Unifies theme

· Sets mood

· Acts as a musical score beneath the story line

If even Aristotle could discuss description as an important element in writing, we need to employ it in our own work of today. We have two thousand years’ worth of advice.

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

Our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour. Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails, the lines of their sunken faces.

This bit of description sets the tone of depression and despair of the story.

* * *

When I passed the baker’s, the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming I felt dizzy. The ovens were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen door. I stood mesmerized by the heat and the luscious scent until the rain interfered, running its icy fingers down my back, forcing me back to life. I lifted the lid to the baker’s trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare.

Here the author’s painted a stark difference between the bakery’s warmth and the rain’s chill, between a full belly and starvation.

* * *

Prim will undoubtedly sleep with my mother tonight. The thought of that scruffy old Buttercup posting himself on the bed to watch over Prim comforts me. If she cries, he will nose his way into her arms and curl up there until she calms down and falls asleep. I’m so glad I didn’t drown him.

Always the pragmatist.

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That’s all for today. Happy New Year!

BUTTERCUP

2011-12-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

I hope you had a great Christmas. We did!

Let me introduce two new sources for quotes on writing craft and from fiction:

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Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999

“When the editors of Writer’s Digest Books approached me about writing a book on description, I responded the way I respond to all new challenges: Yes. No. Well, I’ll think about it. Yes is the child in me, taking my seat on the roller coaster that will whiplash me into the tunnel, up the rickety mountain, around the next exhilarating loop. No is the adult, walking away from the ticket booth: What if the car derails? Who’s driving this train, anyway? Does my insurance cover roller coasters? Most writers, I suspect, hear both these voices, often simultaneously each time they put pen to paper. And I suspect that every book is a duet of opposing voices attempting some semblance of harmony.”

Right in the first paragraph of the introduction, McClanahan uses a wonderful metaphor. In my writing, I’m looking for the Dramamine.

* * *

Description is not:

· All that flowery stuff. It’s not tacked on.

· Optional. Writing depends in part on its image-making power.

· Just visual detail, but rooted in all the senses.

· Begun on the page but in the observation of the writer.

· A way to hide from the truth.

· Always graceful.

· Something that requires a bigger vocabulary.

· A steroid or an additive to our writing.

· A stand-alone element but is intertwined in the story.

I’ll share what description is next time.

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Our new fiction quotes are from a trilogy of young-adult novels:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

I don’t want to know what this “reaping” is. It sounds scary. But I’ve got to read on and find out.

* * *

Sitting at Prim’s knees, guarding her, is the world’s ugliest cat. Mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash. Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I think he still remembers how I tried to drown him in a bucket when Prim brought him home. Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed. But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he’s a born mouser. Even catches the occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.

Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.

This bit of internal thought, besides the good cat description, reveals the character’s pragmatism as well as her love of her sister.

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That’s all I have for today. Please join me for more on Friday.

OFF TILL WEDNESDAY

2011-12-26T09:40:00.000-07:00

Oops! I haven't picked out a writing-craft book to use in my posts. I'll be back on Wednesday with more good stuff on writing. Hope you had a great Christmas!

GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE

2011-12-25T07:00:00.001-07:00

Merry Christmas! I hope you’re enjoying the Christmas season. Here are the final quotes from a classic tale:
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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year!” I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”

I couldn’t find an appropriate meaning for Tank, although one definition was “a prison cell or enclosure.” Bishop is “mulled port wine flavored with roasted oranges and cloves.”

* * *
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

Dickens uses repetition over and over, but it gives cadence to the sentence and helps make his point.

* * *
Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

Scrooge’s attitude toward people laughing at him is remarkable and shows again that he’s a different person than the “Bah! Humbug!”one we first encountered.

* * *
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

The story comes around again to the Spirits and to Tiny Tim in the wrap-up of the story. According to the “Terms and Phrases” at the end of this addition, the Total Abstinence Principle was “teetotalism,” the creed of those in the temperance movement who advocated complete abstinence from alcoholic “spirits.” Another source said it is abstinence from being bitter, mean-spirited, angry, dour, greedy, grasping, self-centered, and unforgiving. Especially dour.
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Merry Christmas! God bless us, every one!

DECK THE HALLS?

2011-12-24T07:00:00.001-07:00

Merry Christmas Eve! Enjoy these quotes from a beloved story.
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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his counting-house the day before, and said, “Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe?” It sent a pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.

“My dear sir,” said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the old gentleman by both his hands.” How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!”

“Mr. Scrooge?”

“Yes,” said Scrooge. “That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness”—here Scrooge whispered in his ear.

“Lord bless me!” cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. “My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?”

“If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favour?”

Scrooge giving his hoarded money to the poor? What a miracle!

* * *
[Scrooge] was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon.

And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.

This actually begins the day after Christmas. Bob Cratchit is about to get a big surprise.
* * *
[Bob’s] hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine-o’clock.

“Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?”

“I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “I am behind my time.”

“You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.”

“It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. “It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.”

“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again; “And therefore I am about to raise your salary!”

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.

Who can blame Bob for being so disturbed by Scrooge’s behavior that he was ready to deck him instead of the halls? Bob expected to be fired and instead was promised a raise.
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We’ll conclude A Christmas Carol tomorrow. Please join me then!

I WILL HONOR CHRISTMAS IN MY HEART

2011-12-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

Greetings! Here’s is your post for today. Two days before Christmas! Yikes!
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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said the same speaker; “For upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?”

“I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,” observed the gentleman with the escrescence on his nose. “But I must be fed, if I make one.”

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge several businessmen discussing someone’s death and funeral. He later discovers it’s his own.

* * *
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones.

Not a very nice pawn shop, is it?

* * *
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:

“I have known him walk with—I have know him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed . . . But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, intent upon her work, “and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble: no trouble.”

Mrs. Cratchit reminisces about Tiny Tim. The grief is close, for the child’s body is laid out upstairs.

* * *
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!”

This is the turning point in Scrooge’s attitude, although you see it coming throughout his encounters with the Ghosts. I hope I haven’t spoiled the ending for you.

* * *
His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoӧn of himself with his stockings.

Scrooge has transformed after his encounters with Jacob Marley and the Christmas Ghosts. He’s so excited that he doesn’t even know what to do when he’s dressing. Laocoӧn was a Trojan priest killed with his sons by two sea serpents after warning the Trojans against the Trojan horse. I have no idea how this word fits into this description.

* * *
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long-long line of brilliant laughs!

Scrooge laughing? He’s absolutely bonkers, but in a good way.

* * *
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried.

It’s been an exhausting day for old Scrooge. He’s as used to laughing as he is to kindness, Dickens uses repetition to drive home his point.
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I’ll be posting on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Please join me then.
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THE RAREST OF ALL BIRDS

2011-12-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of winter. I can understand why the ancients celebrated this as a holiday: The sun was coming back! A friend and I were counting down to this.

Anyway, here’s your post:
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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

They stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was made delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.

Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present visit a part of town that seems idyllic in this scene, but it’s contrasted by the next paragraph.

* * *
The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that . . . made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms.

The squalor of the area contrasts sharply with the cheerful attitude of its inhabitants.

* * *
There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe.

This is but one of many descriptions of the wares available at the fruiterer. It’s great personification and shows the depth of Dickens’s powers of observation.
* * *
Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for six-pence.

This one sentence shows the poverty and the cheerfulness of the Cratchit family.

* * *
[Peter Cratchit] blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the sauce-pan-lid to be let out and peeled.

More personification, this time of a dinner staple.
* * *
“Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

Bob Cratchit comments on Tiny Tim’s faith and attitude.

* * *
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house.

Again, Dickens shows us poverty rather than telling it.
* * *
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

The Ghost of Christmas Present introduces these children as Ignorance and Want to an appalled Scrooge. This is the heart of the Dickens tale, which originally was supposed to be an essay called an “Appeal To The People Of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.” I’m so glad he decided to express his concern in fiction form.
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There’s more to come, so stay tuned. I’ll be back on Friday

CHERRY-CHEEKED APPLES

2011-12-21T07:00:00.002-07:00

Good morning! Continuing with our look at a classic tale, Mitch Glazer wrote in his introduction:
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Admit it. Most of us have never actually read A Christmas Carol. We’ve seen the Alastair Sim film or the Mr. Magoo cartoon or The Muppet Christmas Carol or Bill Murray’s classic Scrooged. (Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I co-wrote the latter.) Somehow we just know the story: the meanest man on earth, the dead partner, the three ghosts, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim, “God bless Us, Every One!” It is part of our holiday DNA. One of the two core Christmas tales. A Christmas Carol transcends the page with the power and inevitability of myth.

* * *
A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling.

Scrooge anticipates meeting Ghost Two.

* * *
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.

A feast for a miser who had earlier dined on gruel.

* * *
It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free: free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is as jolly as Scrooge is taciturn. I have no idea what significance the rusty scabbard holds.
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I’ll return tomorrow with the travels of Scrooge and this ghost. Please join me!

TUNED LIKE FIFTY STOMACH ACHES

2011-12-20T07:00:00.001-07:00

Hello! I’m glad you’re joining me for more of A Christmas Carol. Today at sunset is the beginning of Hanukah, the Festival of Lights. Christmas celebrates the Light of the World entering human domain.
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In his introduction, Mitch Glazer (co-writer of Scrooged) says:

In the fall of 1843, thirty-one-year-old Charles Dickens was already an established transatlantic literary star, having written The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and The Old Curiosity Shop, but his latest serial, Martin Chuzzlewit, was tanking and with a wife, four children, grabby siblings, and deadbeat parents to support, Dickens needed a hit.

* * *
A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Marley’s face.

Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.

You have to wonder what Charles Dickens had been eating the night he penned this.

* * *
“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

“I don’t,” said Scrooge.

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

“I don’t know,” said Scrooge.

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

Confronted with the ghost of his dead partner, Scrooge tries to rationalize it away.

* * *
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

Dickens uses repetition here to teach his lesson, one that Scrooge is about to learn.

* * *
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.

I’m assuming from this description that Dickens was not a fan of the violin. We know just from the description of her smile that Mrs. Fezziwig is a big woman.

* * *
Again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

Dickens uses a tree metaphor here, but maybe I should, er, leaf it at that.
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Come back on Wednesday and I’ll continue the story

A STAKE OF HOLLY THROUGH HIS HEART

2011-12-19T07:00:00.001-07:00

Good morning! This post will include more from A Christmas Carol. In his introduction of the tale, Mitch Glazer writes:

In 1842 [Dickens] vowed to write “a very cheap pamphlet” called an “Appeal To The People Of England on behalf of the Poor Man’s Child.” For greater impact Dickens decided to wait until Christmas to release his essay. This pamphlet became A Christmas Carol.
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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?”

“I do,” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.”

“Come, then,” returned the nephew gaily. “What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.”

I love this bit of dialogue. Scrooge’s nephew is the only human in the story who stands up to him.

* * *
“If I could work my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”

Same conversation. A bit harsh, don’t you think?

* * *
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.

The church bell is wonderfully personified here.

* * *
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol.

You needn’t ask how Scrooge responded to the caroler. Saint Dunstan is the 10th-century patron saint of goldsmiths. He once pulled the Devil’s nose with red-hot tongs from his blacksmith forge.

* * *
He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.

This is another great example of personification.
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I’ll be back with more on Tuesday and continue daily through Christmas Day. Stay tuned!

MARLEY WAS DEAD, TO BEGIN WITH

2011-12-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

We’re going to suspend the usual writing-craft info and quotes. Instead, we’ll concentrate on A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens.

The preface to the book reads:

In have endeavoured in this ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C.D.
December, 1843

* * *
The following quotes are from comments in the 2003 edition published by Fall River Press.

Mitch Glazer, co-writer of the movie Scrooged, wrote:

It is the promise of redemption that truly lifts A Christmas Carol. Scrooge is a real hard case: he works too much, loves too little, laughs not at all. He steps over the poor on his way to the counting house. He is a modern man. The ghosts grab him by the back of the neck and shove his face in his emptiness, at his dead heart. And when Scrooge wakes up after his three wrenching visitations in his own bed, alive, the realization hits—it is not too late! Dickens believes that if we remember, if we witness and feel, we can still be saved. There is hope.

So here are a couple of quotes to start:
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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

The first paragraph of the novel starts with a sentence that makes the reader want to read on. Who is Marley, and how did he die?

* * *
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Notice that while Dickens is describing Scrooge’s character, he’s also sneaking in a physical description.
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I’ll return on Monday with more from A Christmas Carol plus some interesting notes about the tale.

SNOWBALLS AND PICKLES

2011-12-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Eleven days till Christmas? Scary. Here’s your post:

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Love Finds You in Snowball Arkansas by Sandra D. Bricker, Summerside Press, 2008

Betty Sue wrapped an arm around Lucy’s neck and pulled her into an embrace. “I think God mistook us for donuts,” she observed, “with all that powdered sugar He’s sprinklin’.”

Snow seems as finely powdered as confectioner’s sugar when it's really cold here in Denver.

* * *

“Dave says the roads are already a mess.”

“They are?” Lucy blurted. “How are we supposed to get home in the morning?”

“We’ll cross that blizzard when we get stuck in it.”

I like turns of phrases like this. Never want to be stuck in one, though.

* * *

It seemed about as personal to her situation as junk mail addressed to Occupant.

I just love junk mail, don’t you?

* * *

Will he marry her, Lord? Will I one day be the Best (wo) Man at this wedding, forced to smile until my cheeks ache while I watch him pledge his undying love as he slips a platinum eternity band on her finger next to the princess-cut, two-carat engagement ring that he gave her at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve?

Because that would really stink.

My comment: This woman has finally figured out whom she really loves. She’s trying to be a good sport about it while crying her eyes out. Been there, done that.

* * *

Lucy felt a bit like a Chihuahua on a slick linoleum floor as she struggled to get her bearings and make it to her feet.

She’s literally on her back in the snow but the feeling describes her emotional state as well. Two meanings for the price of one.

* * *

Since I have some extra space for this post, I give you:

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"The Christmas Pickle" by B. Francis Morlan

It is a quaint tradition that nobody wants to claim. And its story would not be the first tradition of Christmas born of a total fabrication. It is the little-known tradition of the Christmas pickle.

The Christmas pickle is not really a pickle at all. It is a pickle-shaped ornament that is the last one hung on the tree on Christmas Eve. The first child to find the Christmas pickle gets an extra gift from Saint Nicholas. Or so the so-called legend goes.

There are two other versions of the origins of the Christmas pickle. One is a family story of a Bavarian-born ancestor who fought in the American Civil War. A prisoner in poor health and starving, he begged a guard for just one pickle before he died. The guard took pity on him and found a pickle for him. The pickle by the grace of God gave him the mental and physical strength to live on.

[I recently visited the site of Camp Sumter, a Civil War prison in Andersonville, Georgia. The museum there claims it was a Union prisoner who asked for a pickle.]

The other, perpetuated in Berrien Springs, MI, is a medieval tale of two Spanish boys traveling home from boarding school for the holidays. When they stopped at an inn for the night, the innkeeper, a mean and evil man, stuffed the boys into a pickle barrel. That evening, St. Nicholas stopped at the same inn, became aware of the boys' plight, tapped the pickle barrel with his staff, and the boys were magically freed.

Berrien Springs calls itself the Christmas Pickle Capital of the World. They celebrate with an annual Christmas Pickle Festival held during the early part of December. A parade, led by the Grand Dillmeister who passes out fresh pickles along the parade route, is the featured event. You may even purchase the German glass pickle ornaments at the town’s museum.

Rumor and speculation place the origin of this tradition in Germany. However few in modern-day Germany recognize or have even heard of the Christmas pickle. Some in West Germany blame generations of East Germans who may have had nothing more than pickles to decorate their Christmas trees with after World War II. But even families and historians in East Germany shrug at the mention of the Christmas pickle tradition.

Regardless of where it came from, the Christmas tradition survives. Ornament manufacturers continue to make the specialty decoration and enjoy perpetuating the myth of its legendary origins -- false though they may be.

© 1989-2005 by The Merry Network, All Rights Reserved. Printed from My Merry Christmas.com. This article may be reproduced free of charge in its entirety only as long as this notice remains intact with due credit given to the author and My Merry Christmas. Kindly notify us of how and where this article is used so that we can link to your site or publication.
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I'm done with Love Finds You. Please come back on Friday for more prose from the pros!

NO MORE ROLL-OUT COOKIES, PLEASE

2011-12-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

Hope you’re having a great Christmas season. For me, I’m taking a break from making roll-out cookies. My spice-cookie angels need to go on a diet.

Anyway, here’s your post:

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Love Finds You in Snowball Arkansas by Sandra D. Bricker, Summerside Press, 2008

Lucy plucked several tissues out of the box on the table and began to blow. It sounded like bad television reception that suddenly went wild.

My blowing sounds more like the Canadian geese that honk their way south.

* * *

Lucy stood in front of the foggy bathroom mirror and stared at herself. The redness was nearly gone from her forehead, and the bug bites were now imperceptible. But that huge slap of embarrassment stained across her cheeks and chest was unmistakable.

A bat (the flying kind) missed a turn and slammed into her forehead in front of everybody. Ouch!

* * *

Lucy gazed at Justin, and the soft, warm smile he gave her seemed to stroke her cheeks with velvet fingers.

Methinks Lucy likes Justin.

* * *

Lucy didn’t believe him, proof of which was the morning’s eggs and bacon bouncing on a trampoline inside her stomach as a falling sensation set her head to spinning.

That’s okay, Lucy. At least you braved a ride in a hot-air balloon. I’ll stay on the ground, thank you very much.

* * *

Justin’s enthusiasm bubbled over as he jogged toward a shop with camping gear in the window display. He was like a heat-seeking missile with its course firmly set.

My hubby and I enjoyed tent camping for a while. The last time, we’d just set up when the forest ranger told us to leave. The Hayman fire was coming our way.

* * *

Lucy stepped into the shower, and the embarrassment peaked again as she recalled her excitement about sharing her newfound culinary expertise and the subsequent crashing noise her enthusiasm made as it hit the floor with the lasagna.

I consider myself a good baker. After three mediocre cookie results, I’m switching to something more reliable like Toll House cookies. Maybe I can sprinkle them with red and green sugar and make them more Christmassy.

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That’s it today. I’ll be back with more on Wednesday with hopefully better baking experiences.

WORM MURDER

2011-12-09T07:00:00.001-07:00

Yes! It’s Friday. Oh. I haven’t mailed my sister’s birthday gift yet. I haven’t finished it yet. Every time I pick up my knitting, our cats want to play and chew on the yarn. Excuses, excuses.

Ready for today’s post? Here you go:

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Love Finds You in Snowball Arkansas by Sandra D. Bricker, Summerside Press, 2008

Lucy looked around her to find Justin leaning over the pack of fishing equipment and helping Tony pull it out of an enormous canvas sack. The way the sun caught his hair made it seem like a halo. And when he laughed, Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. He seemed so at home on the river, and she found herself wishing she’d embraced outdoor activities when she was younger and still had the chance. As it was, she felt a bit like one of those fish she was going to catch, removed from the river and trapped on dry land.

A popular type of story is the fish-out-of-water scenario. Believe me, this character is gulping for air.

* * *

Lucy wasn’t sure she would ever eat meat and fish in the same way again, and she felt oddly irritated with Justin Gerard for being at the heart of these horrible feelings. It was for him, after all, that she’d murdered two worms and a baby bass in just a few hours’ time.

I’m fine with being an omnivore and let someone else do the hunting and fishing.

* * *

Wendy was such a sweet person. A little pang of guilt tugged at Lucy’s spirit for pitting herself against such an unwitting and kindhearted opponent. But the moment she stepped into the lodge, those thoughts melted away into featherweight petals, blown far away by the breeze of Justin’s presence.

All’s fair in love and war.

* * *

Fortunately, most of the bright crimson blotches were peppered over Lucy’s arms, legs, and torso. Only two of the little buggars had made it to her face, and Wendy assured her that they could cover those with makeup.

One of them, the bolder of the two, sat right in the center of Lucy’s nose. The other protruded from the slope of her jaw line, tipping its hat to her and staking its claim to her face.

I’ve never seen bug bites personified before. I chuckled at this.

* * *

Matt recalled the day he’d had the misfortune of being seated in front of her on the log ride at Magic Springs Amusement Park. The instant they had completed the climb to the top, Lucy had made the very bad decision to peer over the side and look down. To this day, Matt could tell anyone who asked exactly what Lucy had consumed for lunch earlier that fateful afternoon.

EEww.

* * *

Lucy took a sip from the plastic cup of cider and let the tart cinnamon warmth coat her throat.

I want some! BTW, the recipe for this is in the novel. Hmmm. Maybe I shouldn’t have put this right after the previous passage.

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That’s it for today! Enjoy your weekend.

PUSHING MOUNTAINS INTO BEING

2011-12-07T07:00:00.002-07:00

Pearl Harbor Day. “The day that will live in infamy.” A good day to remember our troops.

Back to the post. I’ll be concentrating on fiction through Christmas. First up:
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Love Finds You in Snowball Arkansas by Sandra D. Bricker, Summerside Press, 2008

My thirtieth birthday is looming on next month’s horizon like a giant meteor barreling toward Earth, and I’m starting to wonder if this will just be another decade in the pursuit of great hair and Friday nights at the movies with Matt.

I had the same angst at thirty-one, then along came John. I like the use of specifics like great hair.

* * *
Lucy’s desk was partitioned off from the rest of the office, and behind the slate blue cubicle sat an impressive mahogany desk, several filing cabinets, and a credenza in a matching wood grain. Two wine-colored wingback chairs flanked the desk on either side, upholstered in soft micro-suede. The crystal bowl of potpourri and three pillar candles on the credenza gave the office a sweet vanilla kiss.

Again, the use of specifics makes this description vivid.

* * *
“And you’ll be hiking on this trip, will you?” Matt asked her, his skepticism blinking like an electrical sign with a short.

Bzzt, Bzzt, Bzzt.

* * *
A needle scratched its way entirely across the record of their conversation, and Lucy’s brain thudded to a stop.

Anybody remember LPs? Heard that noise more than once.

* * *

Lucy looked around the bedroom at the charming patchwork quilts covering each bed and the understated country ambiance. A border painted the same pale yellow as the rest of the room created the look of a floral pattern engraved right into the walls. The subtle and distinct touches, such as a single Gerbera daisy tucked into a small lavender vase and a handcrafted ribbon bookmark peeking from the pages of the Bible on the mission-style dresser, made the room come alive with personality.

Lucy has an artistic eye.

* * *

Orange, red, and gold trees rustled in the brisk breeze, humming a tune with their turning leaves, and Lucy closed her eyes and sighed. She imagined the fun such a creative God must have had in putting it all together. She liked to picture Him there, in the midst of a galaxy of nothingness, suddenly inspired into a frenzied burst of inventive originality . . . thinking up shapes and images, experimenting with colors, forming meadows with the palms of His hands, and using His enormous godly fingers to push mountains into being.

God having fun with creation? I like this picture.

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That’s it for today. I’ll be back with more on Friday. Thanks for stopping by.

RED HERRINGS AND RHINESTONES

2011-12-05T07:00:00.001-07:00

It’s the fifth of December already? Who’s been messing with my calendar?

Here’s your post on this snowy Denver day:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 18: The Text
(Much of this chapter and the rest of the book focuses on techniques specifically for screenwriting, so I’m concentrating on the methods applicable to novels.)

Dialogue is not conversation. It requires compression and economy. It must turn the scene in one direction or another. It should have purpose. But it must also sound like talk, with informal and natural vocabulary. Read your dialogue out loud or into a tape recorder to find tongue twisters or accidental rhymes.

On the screen, dialogue should be a rapid exchange of short speeches and not a long speech which can bore the audience. Break long speeches by having the listener react then the speaker modify his words in response. A character can even react to his own thoughts and emotions.

Keep audience interest by writing suspense sentences that keep the meaning delayed . . . till the last word.

In novel writing as in screenwriting, use specific nouns and verbs: spike instead of nail, hammer instead of use. Eliminate “there is” and “he is” which are the weakest ways to begin a sentence.

Symbolism used consistently throughout a story can be created through either external or internal imagery. External imagery takes a symbol and gives it the same meaning in the story as it has in life: the American flag as a symbol of patriotism. Internal imagery takes a symbol and gives it a new meaning appropriate to the story.

A title should prepare the audience for the story. In terms of film, Jaws names a character and fits the action/adventure genre. Kramer vs. Kramer hints at divorce. Star Wars implies a conflict of galactic warriors.

I have an external imagery in my WIP but it wasn’t my idea. One character wore a red tie but wouldn’t tell me why although I knew it was important. I googled “red tie” and discovered it’s a symbol of sin and of forgiveness, which fit perfectly with the theme of the novel.
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Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart, Fawcett Crest, 1965

Above me, shadowy, soared the walls and spires and turrets of the castle, pricked here and there with windows full of yellow light. Beyond the bridge, shadow after shadow, soared the pinewoods, sharp with their evening scent.

A rather lonely place.

* * *
“All I could tell him was that I thought we might be on to the edge of the drug ring. Incidentally, I asked just for the record if there’d been a jewel robbery of any size, and there hasn’t, in Munich or anywhere else. So there’s that red herring disposed of . . .”

This made me laugh. The reader finally learns that the jewels were the red herring in this mystery novel, and that they were just big rhinestones after all.
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That’s all for today and for both Story and Airs Above the Ground. Please return on Wednesday for something new!

LIKE AN OCTOPUS

2011-12-02T07:00:00.001-07:00

I’m back again with the latest installment. Here’s my post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 17: Character

Medieval scholarship discussed psychology in terms of a mind worm. Imagine a creature that could burrow into someone’s brain and know a person completely—dreams, fears, strengths, weaknesses. Now imagine this mind worm could create events tailored to that individual. The person would experience a unique adventure designed to force him to live up to his full potential. The writer is a mind worm, burrowing into a character’s mind and creating events geared to his unique nature.

Characters are not human beings. “A character is no more a human being than the Venus de Milo is a real woman.” They are designed to be metaphors for human nature. Their aspects are clear and knowable; our fellow humans are difficult to understand. Character design consists of characterization, the person’s physical appearance, mannerisms, occupation and other factors; and true character, what that person is behind this mask.

“True character can only be expressed through choice in dilemma. How the person chooses to act under pressure is who he is—the greater the pressure, the truer and deeper the choice to character.”

What does your character want? Why? Don’t reduce your character’s motivation to a mono-explanation. Behavior is due to complex forces.

Other characters may say something that’s a hint of the protagonist’s nature, but it may or may not be true. The protagonist doesn’t know himself, so what he says may not be true. The only way the audience knows for sure is through his choices made under pressure.

Characters need to have several dimensions, contradiction within the character or between characterization and true character. A charming thief or someone with guilt-ridden ambition are examples, but they must be consistent within the story.

The protagonist creates the rest of the cast, who are a part of the story because of their relationship to the protagonist and their ability to reveal dimensions of his character. Imagine a solar system, with the protagonist as the sun, supporting roles as planets, and minor characters as moons.

McKee offers three tips on writing characters. For the screen, leave room for the actor (or perhaps reader interpretation?) Second, love all your characters, even the villains, or else you’ll trivialize the character. Third, remember that character is self-knowledge. The more you understand yourself, the better you can understand your characters.

This is a fascinating analysis of who characters are and how they reveal themselves through crises.
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Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart, Fawcett Crest, 1965

She was middle-aged, with a squat, dumpy figure and greying hair drawn tightly back. She had pendulous cheeks, and a little beak-mouth pursed between them like an octopus between two stones.

Not a flattering description, is it? The octopus image gives it away.
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That’s it for today. Have a good weekend, and come back on Monday!

PINNACLES AND TURRETS AND CURTAIN WALLS, OH MY!

2011-11-30T07:00:00.007-07:00

We’re expecting snow here in Denver tomorrow and temperatures in the 20s. It’s been in the 50s and 60s. Brrr! Here’s your post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 16: Problems and Solutions (Part 4)

Many scriptwriters will avoid writing big, emotional scenes for fear of being melodramatic. “Melodrama is not the result of overexpression but of under motivation; not writing too big, but writing with too little desire . . . We feel a scene is melodramatic if we cannot believe that motivation matches action.” Give characters motivation that matches or exceeds the intensity of their actions.

Holes in logic can also be a problem in scriptwriting. One action is to close the hole in the illogical events. If this requires a new scene, the solution may be awkward. In film, the hole may pass unnoticed by the audience as they view it onscreen. Another way to handle it is to admit the hole exists. In Casablanca, the character Ferrari confesses, “I don’t know why I’m doing this.” In The Terminator, Sarah Connor verbalizes the dilemma of someone sending Reese back in time who becomes his father. “You could go crazy thinking about this.”

I read one mystery that had a character say, “So this was the red herring.” It was funny and tied up that particular loose end.
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Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart, Fawcett Crest, 1965

Perched on the outermost edge of the crag, like something straight out of the fairy books of one’s childhood, was the Schloss Zechstein, a miniature castle, but a real romantic castle for all that, a place of pinnacles and turrets and curtain walls, of narrow windows and battlements and coloured shields painted on the stone. There was even a bridge; not a drawbridge, but a narrow stone bridge arching out of the forest to the castle gate, where some small torrent broke the rock ridge and sent a thin rope of white water smoking down below the walls. The castle was approached by a narrow metalled road which, branching at right angles off the main road in the valley below, led between heraldic pillars steeply up to disappear in the thick mountain woods. For all its rugged approach and its carefully preserved mediaeval fortifications the place was not in the least forbidding. It was charming—not a castle for the guidebooks, but a castle to be lived in.

The only castle I’ve seen is the one at Glen Eyrie in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s worth a trip to tour the place and admire the grounds.

* * *
He had stopped in front of what looked like a massive pine door with the huge iron studs and hinges which I was beginning to expect everywhere in Austria. Hidden in the stone to one side of it, in another tangle of wrought iron, was an electric push button. The lift arrived without a sound, and proved to be one of the most modern possible variety, the self-service kind of which I am always stupidly terrified, and which has a panel of controls and buttons and switches that look every bit as complicated as the business end of a computer.

Seriously? This novel is a time machine, taking the reader back to the days of elevator attendants and room-sized computers.
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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Friday. Please join me then.

NOVEL, PLAY, FILM

2011-11-28T09:22:00.002-07:00

Greetings! Hard to get back in the swing of things after a four-day weekend, but here’s goes:

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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 16: Problems and Solutions (Part 3)

Adapting one type of story into another form has its difficulties. The three media available are prose (novel, novella, short story), theatre (legit, musical, opera, mime, ballet), and screen (film and television). Each medium tells a complex story but each has a distinctive power at one level of character conflict.

Novels dramatize inner conflict as their prime strength. The author slips into the character’s mind and expresses his turmoil and passions. In this medium, extra-personal conflict shows through description and personal conflict through dialogue.

Theatre dramatizes personal conflict the best. A play is often eighty percent dialogue with the remaining percentage nonverbal communication like gestures and looks. And a play’s dialogue can be poetic, Shakespearian, or another form unlike the way humans normally talk. Subtext dramatizes inner conflict, through soliloquy. The theatre can express extra-personal conflicts in a limited way through the environment of sets and props.

Cinema best dramatizes extra-personal conflict through huge and vivid images of characters surrounded by their society. Chase sequences exemplify a human being pursued by society. The screenwriter expresses personal conflict through realistic dialogue as well as close-up, lighting, camera angle, gestures and facial expressions. A film reveals inner conflict through the face of the actor.

This is an interesting analysis of the strengths of each form of storytelling as well as the difficulties of adaptation. You can’t automatically change a novel into a movie or vice versa.
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Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart, Fawcett Crest, 1965

Soon we were out of the narrow defile into a wide placid basin girdled by hills. Here the road ran straighter, bounded to either side only by green meadows knee-deep in white and yellow flowers. Behind the meadows rose the hills; at first softly, furred with grass, their green curves framed by the pines which flowed downhill to fill every fold and crevice of the slopes, as if the high forest were crowding so thickly on the crests that it overflowed down every vein and runnel of the land below, like whipped cream running down the side of a pudding. At the upper limits of this dense crowded forest soared the cliffs again, shining escarpments of silver rock threaded in their turn by the white veins of falling water.

Wow. A vivid description brought alive by “furred grass” and “white veins of falling water” among other phrases.
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He had dark hair slicked back above a broad forehead with thin black brows “winged” above eyes so dark they were almost black. The nose was flattish and the cheekbones wide, and when he smiled, the lower lids of his eyes lifted, tilting the eyes and giving the face a Mongolian look. The nostrils were prominent and sharply carved, the lips full and well shaped. A disturbing face, perhaps a cruel one.

This last sentence sets up the possibility this man is the murderer in this suspense novel.
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I’m out of time and room, so I’ll end now. More from both books on Wednesday.

THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION, 1953

2011-11-25T07:00:00.001-07:00

Here’s one more proclamation for you. You can find the entire list at http://www.pilgrimhall.org.

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THANKSGIVING DAY, 1953
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - A PROCLAMATION
As a nation much blessed, we feel impelled at harvest time to follow the tradition handed down by our Pilgrim Fathers of pausing from our labors for one day to render thanks to Almighty God for His bounties. Now that the year is drawing to a close, once again it is fitting that we incline our thoughts to His mercies and offer to Him our special prayers of gratitude.
For the courage and vision of our forebears who settled a wilderness and founded a Nation; for the "blessings of liberty" which the framers of our Constitution sought to secure for themselves and for their posterity, and which are so abundantly realized in our land today; for the unity of spirit which has made our country strong; and for the continuing faith under His guidance that has kept us a religious people with freedom of worship for all, we should kneel in humble thanksgiving.
Especially are we grateful this year for the truce in battle-weary Korea, which gives to anxious men and women throughout the world the hope that there may be an enduring peace:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby call upon our people to observe Thursday, the twenty-sixth day of November, 1953, as a day of national thanksgiving. On that day let all of us, in accordance with our hallowed custom, forgather in our respective places of worship and bow before God in contrition for our sins, in suppliance for wisdom in our striving for a better world, and in gratitude for the manifold blessings He has bestowed upon us and upon our fellow men.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
DONE at the City of Washington this Seventh day of November in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventy-eighth.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

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That’s it for this series. We’ll return to Robert McKee’s Story and Mary Stewart’s Airs Above the Ground on Monday. Please join me then!

THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION, 2011

2011-11-24T07:00:00.002-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving! Here is the proclamation for this year by President Obama. For a complete list, go to http://www.pilgrimhall.org/.
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THANKSGIVING DAY, 2011
November 24, 2011
A PROCLAMATION BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

One of our Nation's oldest and most cherished traditions, Thanksgiving Day brings us closer to our loved ones and invites us to reflect on the blessings that enrich our lives. The observance recalls the celebration of an autumn harvest centuries ago, when the Wampanoag tribe joined the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony to share in the fruits of a bountiful season. The feast honored the Wampanoag for generously extending their knowledge of local game and agriculture to the Pilgrims, and today we renew our gratitude to all American Indians and Alaska Natives. We take this time to remember the ways that the First Americans have enriched our Nation's heritage, from their generosity centuries ago to the everyday contributions they make to all facets of American life. As we come together with friends, family, and neighbors to celebrate, let us set aside our daily concerns and give thanks for the providence bestowed upon us.

Though our traditions have evolved, the spirit of grace and humility at the heart of Thanksgiving has persisted through every chapter of our story. When President George Washington proclaimed our country's first Thanksgiving, he praised a generous and knowing God for shepherding our young Republic through its uncertain beginnings. Decades later, President Abraham Lincoln looked to the divine to protect those who had known the worst of civil war, and to restore the Nation "to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."

In times of adversity and times of plenty, we have lifted our hearts by giving humble thanks for the blessings we have received and for those who bring meaning to our lives. Today, let us offer gratitude to our men and women in uniform for their many sacrifices, and keep in our thoughts the families who save an empty seat at the table for a loved one stationed in harm's way. And as members of our American family make do with less, let us rededicate ourselves to our friends and fellow citizens in need of a helping hand.

As we gather in our communities and in our homes, around the table or near the hearth, we give thanks to each other and to God for the many kindnesses and comforts that grace our lives. Let us pause to recount the simple gifts that sustain us, and resolve to pay them forward in the year to come.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Thursday, November 24, 2011, as a National Day of Thanksgiving. I encourage the people of the United States to come together whether in our homes, places of worship, community centers, or any place of fellowship for friends and neighbors to give thanks for all we have received in the past year, to express appreciation to those whose lives enrich our own, and to share our bounty with others.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

BARACK OBAMA

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I’ll have one more proclamation for you tomorrow. Stay tuned!

THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION, 1906

2011-11-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

Greetings again! Here is another presidential proclamation. For more, go to http://www.pilgrimhall.org.
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THANKSGIVING DAY - 1906
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - A PROCLAMATION
The time of year has come when, in accordance with the wise custom of our forefathers, it becomes my duty to set aside a special day of thanksgiving and praise to the Almighty because of the blessings we have received, and of prayer that these blessings may be continued. Yet another year of widespread well-being has passed. Never before in our history or in the history of any other nation has a people enjoyed more abounding material prosperity than is ours; a prosperity so general that it should rouse in us no spirit of reckless pride, and least of all a spirit of heedless disregard of our responsibilities; but rather a sober sense of our many blessings, and a resolute purpose under Providence, not to forfeit them by any action of our own.
Material well-being, indispensable though it is, can never be anything but the foundation of true national greatness and happiness. If we build nothing upon this foundation, then our national life will be meaningless and empty as a house where only the foundation has been laid. Upon our material well-being must be built a superstructure of individual and national life in accordance with the laws of the highest morality, or else our prosperity itself will in the long run turn out a curse instead of a blessing. We should be both reverently thankful for what we have received, and earnestly bent upon turning it into a means of grace and not of destruction.
Accordingly, I hereby set apart Thursday, the 29^th day of November next, as a day of thanksgiving and supplication, on which the people shall meet in their homes or their churches, devoutly to acknowledge all that has been given them, and to pray that they may in addition receive the power to use these gifts aright.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this the 22nd day of October in the year of our Lord 1906, and of the independence of the United States 131^st.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
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Hope you return to my blog tomorrow for this year’s proclamation.

FIRST AUTUMN PROCLAMATION, 1863

2011-11-22T07:00:00.002-07:00

Hello again! Here’s another proclamation for you. For the entire list, go to http://pilgrimhall.org.
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THE FIRST IN AN UNBROKEN SERIES OF AUTUMN PROCLAMATIONS:
THANKSGIVING DAY 1863 by ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – A PROCLAMATION

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore if, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
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I’ll be back tomorrow with the 1906 proclamation. Don’t miss it!

FIRST NATIONAL THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION, 1777

2011-11-21T07:00:00.001-07:00

Greetings! This week, I’ll be posting a Thanksgiving Proclamation every day. If you’re curious, stop by at http://www.pilgrimhall.org, a website that lists all of the proclamations.

Here’s the proclamation of the day:
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Thanksgiving Proclamation 1777
by the Continental Congress:
the first national Thanksgiving proclamation

IN CONGRESS
November 1, 1777
FORASMUCH as it is the indispensable Duty of all Men to adore the superintending Providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with Gratitude their Obligation to him for Benefits received, and to implore such farther Blessings as they stand in Need of: And it having pleased him in his abundant Mercy, not only to continue to us the innumerable Bounties of his common Providence; but also to smile upon us in the Prosecution of a just and necessary War, for the Defense and Establishment of our unalienable Rights and Liberties; particularly in that he hath been pleased, in so great a Measure, to prosper the Means used for the Support of our Troops, and to crown our Arms with most signal success:
It is therefore recommended to the legislative or executive Powers of these UNITED STATES to set apart THURSDAY, the eighteenth Day of December next, for SOLEMN THANKSGIVING and PRAISE: That at one Time and with one Voice, the good People may express the grateful Feelings of their Hearts, and consecrate themselves to the Service of their Divine Benefactor; and that, together with their sincere Acknowledgments and Offerings, they may join the penitent Confession of their manifold Sins, whereby they had forfeited every Favor; and their humble and earnest Supplication that it may please GOD through the Merits of JESUS CHRIST, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of Remembrance; That it may please him graciously to afford his Blessing on the Governments of these States respectively, and prosper the public Council of the whole: To inspire our Commanders, both by Land and Sea, and all under them, with that Wisdom and Fortitude which may render them fit Instruments, under the Providence of Almighty GOD, to secure for these United States, the greatest of all human Blessings, INDEPENDENCE and PEACE: That it may please him, to prosper the Trade and Manufactures of the People, and the Labor of the Husbandman, that our Land may yield its Increase: To take Schools and Seminaries of Education, so necessary for cultivating the Principles of true Liberty, Virtue and Piety, under his nurturing Hand; and to prosper the Means of Religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that Kingdom, which consisteth "in Righteousness, Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost."
And it is further recommended, That servile Labor, and such Recreation, as, though at other Times innocent, may be unbecoming the Purpose of this Appointment, be omitted on so solemn an Occasion.

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I hope you return tomorrow for more in this series.

CRAGS CROWNED WITH CASTLES

2011-11-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Last Saturday I won third place in a flash fiction contest. Cool.

Now back to our regularly scheduled post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 16: Problems and Solutions (Part 2)

THE PROBLEM OF COMEDY

The dramatist creates works that say, under the worst of circumstances, the human spirit is magnificent. Comedy says that under the best of circumstances, humans will find a way to mess it up.

A comic is a frustrated idealist who wants a perfect world but can’t find it. No one will listen to a lecture. But if the writer exposes the foibles of society and gets the audience to laugh, maybe things will change.

Comedy allows more halts to narrative drive to tell a funny scene with no story purpose. It also tolerates more coincidence. A deus ex machina ending will work if the audience feels the protagonist has suffered enough and that he never loses hope.

THE PROBLEM OF POINT OF VIEW

A story is set in time and place, but for each scene, we need to set the camera in space to view the action. It can be anywhere as long as it points to the scene. Different POVs will evoke different emotions within the reader.

Telling the story from one character’s POV enhances the story. “The more time spent with a character, the more opportunity to witness his choices. The result is more empathy and emotional involvement between audience and character.”

A book on my shelf, Comedy Writing Secrets, teaches how subjective comedy is. For POV, I’d never thought about the importance of the camera angle in film. Interesting.
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Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart, Fawcett Crest, 1965

“But not to tell me! So underhand! That he should have secrets from me, his mother . . .” He voice throbbed. “I feel it, Vanessa, I feel it here.” She groped for where her heart presumably lay, somewhere behind the ample curve of her left breast, failed to locate it, and, abandoning the gesture, poured herself another cup of tea.

Are we being melodramatic, my dear?

* * *
We took off exactly on time. The Caravelle paused, gathered herself, then surged forward and rushed up into the air in that exciting lift that never fails to give me the genuine old-fashioned thrill up the marrow of the spine.

Hmmm. Didn’t know the spine had marrow, but I can still feel the character’s thrill at takeoff.

* * *
As we ran southwest from Vienna along the Autobahn the countryside, at first dull and scabbed with urban industry, began to lift itself by degrees from the flat monotony of the plain. Beyond Wiener Neustadt we found ourselves in a rolling landscape of forested slopes, green pastures, and romantic crags girdled by silver streams and crowned with castles.

The use of “scabbed” contrasts sharply with “crowned.” I also like the illiteration.
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That’s all I have today. Enjoy your weekend!

T-REX TO THE RESCUE

2011-11-16T08:36:00.000-07:00

Good morning! I hope you enjoy this post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 16: Problems and Solutions

THE PROBLEM OF INTEREST

The writer must grab the reader’s attention and hold it through the climax. He can do this through attracting both intellect and emotion.

Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions. What will happen next? Concern is the emotional need for such positive values as justice, love, courage.

For concern, the audience will search for the Center of Good which must be present in the protagonist but may be evident in other characters as well, even if the character is not a nice person. In The Godfather, the Corleones are loyal to each other. In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter is intelligent and charming.

The writer can create curiosity and concern in three different ways:

Mystery: The audience knows less than the characters. The classic use of red herrings is a device for this. Where did the term come from? “As peasant poachers of deer and grouse made off with their booty through medieval forests, they would drag a fish, a red herring, across the trail to confuse the lord of the manor’s bloodhounds.” The outcome in mystery genre is either “Who done it” or “How will he catch him?”, which appeal through curiosity alone.

Suspense: The audience and characters know the same information. This method appeals to both curiosity and concern. We don’t know whether the story will end up, down, or with irony.

Dramatic Irony: The audience knows more than the characters. This was Hitchcock’s favorite device. The audience knows which door the murderer stands behind, but the protagonist doesn’t.

THE PROBLEM OF SURPRISE

True surprise is a sudden revelation, followed by the audience’s insight of a truth. Cheap surprise jolts people, a convention in the horror, fantasy, and thriller genres.

THE PROBLEM OF COINCIDENCE

When using coincidence, bring it in early so its meaning builds. In Jaws, the shark attacks a swimmer at random, but the story builds until the audience feels the shark is menacing innocents on purpose and enjoying it.

Don’t use coincidence to turn an ending. Like deux ex machina, it erases all meaning and emotion, and it insults the audience. A hurricane saves the lovers. A T-Rex devours the velociraptors.

Now wait a minute! I liked the ending of Jurassic Park, although I can see his point. As for Alfred Hitchcock movies, I remember one scene in The Birds when a woman is sitting on a park bench with birds ominously gathering behind her.
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Here’s our new source for fiction quotes:

Airs Above the Ground by Mary Stewart, Fawcett Crest, 1965

Plumpness suits Carmel Lacy, who is one of those blonde, pretty women whose looks depend on the fair, soft colouring which seems to go on indestructibly into middle age, and to find a whole new range of charm when the fair hair turns white.

I’ve got the plump part down pat.

* * *
Carmel, to all appearances the kind of soft maternal creature whom you would have sworn would make the ideal wife and mother, combined with this a possessiveness so clinging that it had threatened to drown her family like warm treacle.

I can think of worse things to be drowned in.
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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Friday.

FEATHERDUSTING YOUR PROSE

2011-11-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

Greetings, fellow writers! I hope you enjoyed your weekend. Now back to work:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 15: Exposition

“Exposition means facts—the information about setting, biography, and characterization that the audience needs to know to follow and comprehend the events of the story.”

For exposition, the “show, don’t tell” rule applies. Don’t force words into a character’s mouth but inform the reader through natural conversation and action.

In normal speech, two people won’t tell each other things they already know, but writers are tempted to do this in order to impart information to the reader.

The information should be revealed bit by bit throughout the story, but only what the reader absolutely needs to know and wants to know.

When a story has a lot of conflict, dramatizing exposition and facts flow naturally. The lack of conflict results in “table dusting.” Many nineteenth-century playwrights opened their plays with two domestics in a living room. As they dusted the furniture, the older maid told the new hire everything about the family.

Writers can turn scenes (from positive to negative or vice versa) by either action or revelation. The writer can reveal backstory at a critical point to create turning points. A flashback can serve the same purpose but should be treated like a minidrama with its own inciting incident, progressions, and turning point. The writer should first create a need and desire to know before bringing in a flashback. The same applies to a dream sequence.

Some films use voice-over narration to divulge exposition. Usually, if the film can stand on its own without the voice-over, cut it. Respect the intelligence and sensitivity of the audience and bring them through the story rather than explaining everything.

This principle especially applies to all that research we do. Ninety percent of it isn’t needed in the story and will only bog it down. We should sprinkle the remaining ten percent through conversation and action, using only what the reader needs to know.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Quentin felt a new attitude of detachment descend on him. His molten anger and grief were cooling into a glossy protective coating, a hard transparent lacquer of uncaring.

Quentin cocoons himself from his emotions with an attitude of indifference.

* * *
June ripened into July, then burst and withered and dried and became August.

This describes a seasonal change and passage of time with just a few verbs.

* * *
It had been a long time since he’d drunk alcohol. It had a dangerous thawing effect on his frozen brain. The ice that kept his feelings of guilt and sorrow under control creaked and groaned.

This imagery is used earlier (see my last post) and echoes it.
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That’s all for today. We’re done with The Magicians. Come back on Wednesday for a new source of quotes!

ANGRY, TOOTHY FISH OF MEMORIES

2011-11-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

Happy Veteran’s Day! I hope you veterans especially have a good day. Here’s your post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter14: The Principle of Antagonism

“THE PRINCIPLE OF ANTAGONISM: A protagonist and his story can only be as intellectually fascinating and emotionally compelling as the forces of antagonism make them.”

Humans will always take the easy way out. The way to create a multidimensional and empathetic character is to create powerful and complex forces of antagonism to oppose him. “Forces of antagonism include everything that stands against the character and his desire: a villain, the character’s personal conflicts, social institutions, and other elements. These forces bring the story to the end of the line, a satisfying climax."

To create these negative forces, start by identifying the primary value at stake, for instance, justice. Its contradictory value, the direct opposite, is injustice. A contrary value, somewhat opposite but not fully so, is unfairness. The final value that takes the story to the end of the line is the negation of the negation, the limit of the dark powers of human nature. In terms of justice, the state is tyranny or might makes right.

“A story that progresses to the limit of human experience in depth and breadth of conflict must move through a pattern that includes the Contrary, the Contradictory, and the Negation of the Negation.”

McKee gives other examples and illustrates them with movies. Love progresses from contradictory hate to contrary indifference and finally self-hate, negation of the negation, as in Crime and Punishment. Truth, lies, white lies/half-truths climax with self-deception as in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Generally, the positive value progresses to the contrary in act one to the contradictory in later acts and finally to the negation of the negation. The story can either end tragically or return to the positive with a profound change. Different sequences are possible but must reach the end of the line.

I must admit I find it hard to understand this principle. What I do understand, however, is you must have strong opposing forces in order to create a strong protagonist.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

From time to time a horsy clippety-clopping could be heard from the hall outside. This mystery solved itself when a woman with the body of a horse stepped partway into the room. The effect was surprisingly unsurprising. She was a sturdy, sun-kissed woman with short brown hair who just happened to be attached to the chassis of a sleek black mare.

This is good description. The protagonist’s reaction to what he sees is nonchalance, perhaps because he knows he’s in a fantasy world where anything is possible.

* * *
His mind was an icy pond constantly in danger of thawing. He trod on it only lightly—its surface was perilously slick and who knew how thin. To break through would mean immersion in what was below: cold, dark anaerobic water and angry, toothy fish. The fish were memories. He wanted to put them away somewhere and forget where he’d put them, but he couldn’t.

Grief threatens to overwhelm him as he remembers the death of the woman he loved.
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That’s it for today. I’ll have another post for you on Monday.

A SPLINTER OF BLUE SKY IN THE WINDOW

2011-11-09T07:00:00.001-07:00

Thanks for stopping by. Here is today’s post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter13: Crisis, Climax, Resolution

Crisis is the third of the five-part form. (The first two are inciting incident and progressive complications.) This is the ultimate decision the protagonist has to make that will determine whether he’ll achieve his desire.

Crisis is the obligatory scene, the one that has to be shown onscreen. It must be a true dilemma between two irreconcilable goods, the lesser of two evils, or a combination of both.

Climax is the fourth of the five-part structure. The crisis decision must lead to the story climax. It is a moment that must be full of meaning in order to produce emotion in the audience. The writer may climax subplots within the central plot’s climax. If this isn’t possible, the least important subplot should climax earliest.

Resolution is the fifth element. This is any material left after the climax. It may climax a subplot, show the wider effects of the climactic action, or deliver a “slow curtain” so the audience can catch its breath.

McKee gives a lot of film examples of these elements as he does throughout the book. The important thing here for me is to place the crisis scene in real time, not something offscreen or skimmed over.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

It was a lovely little winter stream, wide and shallow and perfectly clear, twinkling and lapping along as if it were delighted to have just found this twisty channel.

Whew. I’m glad the protagonist didn’t stay in that pit of depression from my last post. It depressed me, which is the purpose of fiction: to evoke emotion in the reader.

* * *
His mind had become a loopy parody of itself, stretched thin as taffy, translucent as cellophane . . . He managed to find a reasonable soft, sandy patch of floor to recline on—it was thoughtful of Martin, really, to have brought them to a room where the sand was so deliciously fine and cool. Although it was a shame that this clean white sand was now almost entirely saturated with blood, his and Penny’s.

Quentin had expected an idyllic world, not this horror. No wonder his brain couldn’t fathom it.

* * *
He blissed out on insignificant details: the sunlight, the smell of clean linens, a splinter of blue sky in the window, the gnarly whorls of the dark chocolate brown timbers that crossed the whitewashed ceiling. He was alive.

This scene follows the bloody-sand one. Yeah, I’d be noticing the homey details, too.
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This is the end of today’s post. Please join me on Friday!

SUNRISE BLEEDING OVER THE HORIZON

2011-11-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

I hope you survived the end of Daylight Savings Time. I’ll enjoy having more light in the morning, but the evenings will be tough. But we only have six and a half weeks before the days grow longer. In the meantime, here’s your post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter12: Composition

Composition refers to how we order and link scenes. The components of composition are:

Unity and Variety: The story must build to a logical climax. The story must also contain variety, adding the tragic to the comic and the trivial to the exalted.

Pacing: The story’s pacing needs to vary like the ups and downs of life. Tension follows a romantic scene. A slow, comic scene follows a unrelenting action. Intensity increases until the climax of the story.

Rhythm and Tempo: This is the length of scenes. In film, a thirty-second scene follows a three-minute scene. As the film approaches the climax of each act, shorter and shorter scenes create an accelerated pace.

Progression: The story should progress, calling upon greater and greater willpower, greater and greater change in the characters’ lives, and greater and greater jeopardy. This can be expressed through social progression, widening the impact of character actions into society, or through personal progression, driving actions deeply into the characters’ relationships and inner lives. If you can’t go wide, go deep.

Symbolic Ascension: The story’s symbolism should build from the specific imagery of the film or novel to a universal theme.

Ironic Ascension: Irony can lead to story patterns such as: He gets what he’s always wanted but it’s too late to have it. In Othello, the Moor discovers his wife is true to him, what he’s always wanted. But it’s too late because he just killed her.

Principle of Transition: Scenes need continuity to build progression. The transition between scenes can be something held in common or something counterpointed between them. A scene about a bratty child could be followed by a scene with a childish adult, or a scene with an awkward protagonist by an elegant antagonist. This principle can be used between actions, objects, a word, a quality of light, a sound, or an idea.

The principles of variety and pacing make sense to me. Short, dramatic scenes in my WIP need to be followed by longer, more mellow scenes.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Sunlight came bleeding up over the horizon, like more acid blood oozing out of his sick ruptured heart, which felt—not that anybody cared—like a rotten drum of biohazardous waste at the very bottom of a landfill, leaching poison into the ground water, enough poison to kill an entire suburb full of innocent and unsuspecting children.

Hmmm. Not exactly the way I’d describe the gorgeous sunrise saw a few days ago, but then this guy is really, really depressed after he caught his girlfriend with someone else.
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I hope you return to this blog on Wednesday. I’ll have more in store.

CROWDED COCKTAILL-TRAY SKYLINE

2011-11-04T09:06:00.000-06:00

Yay! Another weekend. Another snowstorm. Ah, well. Here’s your post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter11: Scene Analysis

A scene in a movie or novel has a text, how the characters talk or behave on the surface. Subtext is what the characters do behind their masks. If a scene fails, it needs to be analyzed by breaking it down into its parts. In a story, nothing is what it seems. If the subtext doesn’t exist, the scene will fall flat.

The first step in analyzing a failed scene is to identify the conflict: What does the character want? What forces of antagonism block this desire?

Step two is to identify the value at stake in the scene and its positive or negative charge. As an example: “Faith. The protagonist is at the positive, he trusts in God to get him out of this situation.”

Step three is to break the scene into beats, an exchange of action/reaction between characters, best identified by active gerund: begging/ignoring the plea. These don’t describe the character’s activity literally but go deeper into emotive connotations.

The fourth step is to compare the note closing value with the opening value. If nothing has changed, the scene is flat. If the opening value has undergone change, the scene has turned.

The final step is to review the action/reaction beats and identify the moment the scene results in changed end values.

In Casablanca for instance, Ilsa and Rick have an exchange at the bazaar. Through a series of beats, Rick is at first hopeful that he will win back Ilsa’s love. She rejects him again and again, primarily through the subtext behind a conversation with an Arab vendor. At the end, Ilsa crushes Rick with the news that Laszlo was her husband throughout their affair. The turning point changes Rick’s hope to despair.

This method of analyzing a scene fascinates me. If I do this with the scenes in my novel that don’t seem to work, I can see what needs to be fixed.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

By five thirty that afternoon they were looking out over the crowded cocktail-tray skyline of lower Manhattan. No one else was up there in winter. The roof was littered with windblown, overturned plastic lawn furniture and char-encrusted barbecue implements. A lonely wind chime burbled to itself from the eaves of a utility shed.

With the use of specific images, I can imagine this scene even though I’ve never seen a New York skyline from the roof of a high-rise.

* * *
His blood fizzed like a science experiment and turned to acid. The acid propagated through his body and made his arms and legs and brain burn. Then it made its way to his heart, like a deadly blood clot that had broken loose and was drifting free, bringing death with it. When it reached his heart, his heart turned white hot.

This is an original way to describe the character’s jealousy after he finds his lover with another man.
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That’s enough to think about for one day. I’ll be back on Monday. Have a good weekend.

A GARBAGE TRUCK FLEXING ITS BICEPS

2011-11-02T07:00:00.001-06:00

Greetings from snowy Denver! Or at least we were expecting snow starting last night. Glad our furnace is fixed. Here’s my post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter10: Scene Design (Part 3)

In a story’s turning points, the audience will know in advance how the character will choose if the choice is between a clear right and a clear wrong as the character perceives them. True choice in a novel is dilemma. What if the character is faced with two good things but can only choose one? What if he’s forced to choose between the lesser of two evils?

This choice may be between two persons, two ideals, two aspects of the innermost self, or between any conflicting desires. But the choice must be a dilemma between positive desires or negative desires of equal weight and value.

Interesting principle. One of my characters attempts suicide and is caught between facing possible vilification by the press or taking a coward’s way out.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

The grass was threadbare, with dirt patches, like a worn-out rug with the canvas backing showing through the woven surface.

Hmmm. Sounds like some bare patches on our lawn. But it’s winter! I have an excuse!

* * *
Quentin and Alice lay on their backs on a wide, candy-striped daybed by the window, limply holding hands, looking and feeling like they’d just washed ashore on a raft that had been gently, limply deposited by the surf on the beach of a silent deserted island. The lights were off, but milky-white afternoon sunlight filtered into the room through half-closed blinds. The remains of a game of chess, a sloppy, murderous draw, lay on a nearby coffee table.

Besides the straight description, the word choices and specific objects create a limp mood.

* * *
A garbage truck moved haltingly down the block, its pneumatic biceps gleaming as it greedily consumed whatever its overalled attendants flung into it, ingesting what the city had expectorated.

A nice personification of a waste disposal vehicle.

* * *
Wild emotions competed for possession of his brain, like rival armies taking and retaking the same hill: excitement, remorse, anticipation, foreboding, grief, anger.

I’d say a little internal conflict is going on here.
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That’s it for this Wednesday. I’ll be back on Friday.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

2011-10-31T08:19:00.000-06:00

Here’s another blog post for you! Scary.
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter10: Scene Design (Part 2)

For an audience to gain insight into a work, the writer must use setups and payoffs. Setups layer in knowledge. Payoffs deliver that knowledge to the audience. For example, in The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader reveals that he is Luke’s father. In examining past scenes, the audience discovers that Luke’s mentors were not concerned for his safety but rather that his father might turn him to the dark side of the Force.

We don’t emotionally move an audience because our character cries. The audience must first empathize with the character, know what the character wants and want the character to have it, and understand what’s at stake.

A story should alternate between positive and negative emotion. “The more often we experience something, the less effect it has. Emotional experience, in other words, cannot be repeated back-to-back with effect. The first ice cream cone tastes great; the second isn’t bad; the third makes you sick.”

One exception to this rule is to make a great contrast between two events. A scene in which lovers argue and break up is a negative event. If one kills the other in the next scene, the first one seems almost positive in comparison.

In film, setting a mood is a way to foreshadow, a way to shape the audience’s anticipations. This is done through light, color, tempo of action, casting, dialogue, production design, and musical score. The same story could be set in a summer’s day or set in the dead of night and elicit different emotional reactions in the audience.

For setups and payoffs, I think of the movie Sixth Sense. The clues were planted throughout the film but only at the end of the movie did I realize it. Although we can’t use a musical score in novel writing, we can speed or slow a scene through dialogue, narration, and action.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

It was weirdly liberating to be in the middle of somebody else’s domestic agony—he could see the bad emotional energy radiating out in all directions, sterilizing every available surface with its poisoning particles, but it passed through him harmlessly, like neutrinos.

I’m sensitive, so hearing an argument wouldn’t leave me unaffected.

* * *
Almost as bad as the hangover was the pain from the tattoo. Quentin’s back felt like it was crawling with hungry biting insects that had stumbled on something especially delicious.

This is one reason why I’m not keen on getting a tattoo. Pain wimp.
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Thanks for stopping by. I’ll be back on Wednesday. Happy Halloween!

SMELTED, TARRY ESPRESSO

2011-10-28T09:58:00.000-06:00

It’s almost Halloween and the first of November! After snowfall two days ago in Denver, I still don’t feel ready for winter. Here’s today’s post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter10: Scene Design

A scene encompasses an action through conflict resulting in a turning point in a character’s life. In film, it may be a single shot or ten minutes of action across a dozen sites on a battlefield. “No matter locations or length, a scene is unified around desire, action, conflict, and change.”

With each scene, a character acts on his scene-objective, an aspect of the spine of the story. A reaction he didn’t anticipate occurs, turning his life from positive to negative or vice versa.

Turning points should effect surprise, increased curiosity, and insight on the part of the audience and a new direction on the part of the story. Why is the character doing this? What will happen next? I should have seen this coming. The story then moves in a new direction to create new turning points.

The Empire Strikes Back is a prime example. When Darth Vader tells Luke Skywalker, “I am your father,” it surprises the audience. They search for clues in past scenes. They wonder what will happen next. And Skywalker turns in a new direction: Return of the Jedi.

Language is a tool for the writer, but “our most powerful means of self-expression is the unique way we turn the story.” Words come later as we write the story with vividness and skill.

I like this way of thinking in terms of reversals for each scene, also described as scene, motivation, and conflict. Too often we writers concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the craft rather than the over-arching theme.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

In the mornings Chambers served tarry black espresso which he smelted in a delicate, gilded-glass exotic Turkish device.

This is why I don’t like straight espresso. In this scene, I can imagine the stuff glopping into a cup. No thanks.
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There was one pleasant surprise, hidden behind the church: a lovely half-vanished seventeenth-century graveyard, a little square glebe of ultra-green grass scattered with wet saffron-colored elm leaves, with a bent wrought-iron fence around it. Inside, it was cool and hushed.

The gravestones were all winged skulls and bad devotional quatrains about whole families carried off by fever, weathered in places into illegibility. Quentin crouched down on the wet grass to try to decipher one very old one, a rectangle of blue slate that had split in half and sunk halfway into the green turf, which rose up to meet it like a wave.

I once visited Charleston, South Carolina, and wandered through a cemetery behind an old church. I found it fascinating.
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I’m calling it quits for today. Please join me on Monday!

DIRTY, LUMBERING, SNORTING TOUR BUS

2011-10-26T09:19:00.000-06:00

Denver’s getting its first snowfall of the season. I hope the roads stay drivable for everyone, including yours truly. Here’s your post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 9: Act Design (Part 3)

Story dynamics depend on a rhythm between positive and negative charges. Especially with the last two act climaxes, which are often close together, you can’t repeat the same emotion. If the story ends on an up note, the second-to-last climax must be a down-ending. You want to avoid “Things were wonderful . . . then they got even better!” This diminishes the power of the second climax and the power of the film (or novel) itself.

Subplots can enrich a story by either contradicting the central plot, thus creating irony, or resonating the central plot, resulting in variations on a theme. If the inciting incident of a central plot needs to be delayed, a setup subplot may be needed. For instance, in Rocky the love story becomes a setup subplot for the main story which is the fight between Rocky and a champion. A subplot can also complicate the central plot.

Delaying the inciting incident can be dangerous if the subplot makes the audience think the story belongs to a different genre. However, if the alternative is that the audience will have no empathy for the protagonist, a subplot is the right choice. “Faced with irreconcilable choices, such as pace versus empathy, the wise writer redesigns the story to preserve what’s vital. You’re free to break or bend convention, but for one reason only: to put something more important in its place.

I’d rather play it safe with my plot since I see no reason to delay the inciting incident. On the subject of story dynamics, one critique partner pointed out that my WIP had too many up-ending climaxes. I changed the next-to-last one to negative. I believe it makes the story more realistic and the story climax more powerful.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Quentin felt like a tourist who at the end of the day would be herded back onto some dirty, lumbering, snorting tour bus—with ripped vinyl seats and overhead TVs and a stinking toilet—and shipped home, clutching a tacky souvenir postcard and watching as the towers and hedges and peaks and gables of Brakebills dwindled in the rearview mirror.

Fortunately my one experience with a tour bus was far more positive. The disagreeable image here shows how much the protagonist hates the thought of leaving his magic school.
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This is it for the day. I’ll be back on Friday with more.

DETERIORATING CORPSES OF EXOTIC MOTHS

2011-10-24T09:15:00.000-06:00

Good Monday to you! I just got back from a local science-fiction convention and had a great weekend. Now back to work:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 9: Act Design (Part 2)

The macro-structure of story is a series of acts, each resulting in a positive or negative turning point. Short pieces can use one or two acts, but full-length stories need a minimum of three.

The first act of a feature film, novel, or play will consume about twenty-five percent of the time. The Act One Climax will occur about twenty and thirty minutes into the film. Usually the last acts are brief, twenty minutes or less. This leaves a long second act. “If an otherwise well-told story bogs down, that’s where it’ll happen—as the writer sloshes through the swamps of the long second act. There are two possible solutions: Add subplots or more acts.”

Subplots have an act structure but it’s shorter than the main plot. By weaving in these subplots and having their climaxes at different times, the writer avoids the dreaded sagging middle.

Another way to handle a lagging story is to include more acts. The movie Shine has four acts, Raiders of the Lost Ark seven. There are dangers, however, in a large number of acts. First, it invites clichés as it forces the writer to invent more critical scenes. With more climaxes, the impact of each is diminished. The multiple acts also start to become boring.

Stories vary not only with the number of acts they employ but also with where they place the inciting incident. A delay of the inciting incident may require a setup subplot.

False endings are a common design in action genres. We think it’s the end of the movie when E.T. dies, when Ripley blows up her spaceship in Alien, and when Sarah and Reese blow up the Terminator. But it’s not.

I can see why the three-act structure is the most popular one for teaching story structure. I just hope that my subplots hold up the tent of my story without the sag effect.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

They were in a shabby but comfortable library lined with threadbare rugs and lit by candles and firelight. Quentin realized that the little house must be larger on the inside than it was on the outside; it was also a lot cooler—the atmosphere was that of a nice, chilly fall evening. Books overflowed the bookcases and stood in wobbly stacks in the corners and even on the mantelpiece. The furniture was distinguished but mismatched, and in places it was severely battered. In between the bookcases the walls were hung with the usual inexplicable artifacts that accumulate in private clubs: African masks, dreary landscape paintings, retired ceremonial daggers, glass cases full of maps and medals and the deteriorating corpses of exotic moths that had presumably been captured at great effort and expense.

This sounds like the kind of library in which middle-aged, potbellied men would smoke cigars and drink cognac.
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I’m done for the day. Please join me on Wednesday!

KNOCK BEFORE BURNING

2011-10-21T07:00:00.001-06:00

This is my 400th post! And to think that three years ago, I entered blogdom kicking and screaming. The discipline of posting three times a week has been good for me and I’ve read a lot of good craft and fiction books. So here’s the post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 9: Act Design

You must make life difficult for your characters, creating more and more conflict, leading to points of no return. On his quest for his object of desire, the protagonist will take the easiest path at the beginning, but then he meets opposition. He takes a more difficult action and meets more resistance. This progression must escalate toward the final action.

In writing about films that sag in the middle, McKee says, “If you look closely at the soft bellies that hang out over the belt of so many films, you’ll discover that this is where the writer’s insight and imagination went limp. He couldn’t build progressions, so in effect he put the story in retrograde.” The characters take the same level of lesser actions that didn’t win them anything earlier, and the audience gets bored.

Nothing in a story moves forward without conflict. Story is a metaphor for life, which is in perpetual conflict.

In McKee’s vocabulary, complication is conflict at only one level: inner, personal, or extra-personal. Conflict on an inner level becomes a stream of consciousness story. Conflict only on a personal level results in a soap opera. Extra-personal conflict leads to the action/adventure genre.

Complexity is conflict at all three levels, often simultaneously. Simple but complex stories do not depend on a large cast or multiple locations.

The escalation of conflict is also called upping the stakes. You chase your character up a tree and throw bigger and bigger rocks at him. I like McKee’s explanation here of why the same-o-same-o level of action won’t cut it with the audience.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Quentin could feel the heat from the focused sunlight against his face and smell the savory-sweet smell of wood smoke, along with an acrid tang of seared house paint.

Both touch and smell are used in his passage, two of the more neglected senses in writing but also the most powerful. I should explain that Quentin and his friends have decided to enter through a door by burning it in half.

* * *
One of the older professors, a very erect, white-haired man named Brzezinski, who specialized in potions and whose pants were always covered with appalling stains, had interrupted his evening stroll to watch them . . . He wore sweater-vests and smoked a pipe and looked like an IBM engineer, circa 1950.

I can picture him standing in front of a freezer-sized computer with giant tape reels.
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That’s it for today. I’ll continue on Monday with McKee’s explanation of the macro-structure of story. Have a good weekend!

THE AFTERNOON WOBBLED ON ITS AXIS

2011-10-19T07:00:00.001-06:00

Greetings on this beautiful fall day!

The picture here has nothing to do with this blog post, but I wanted to share it. This street scene is part of a model railroad layout. I hope my use of research in novels will reflect that attention to detail.

Here are some writing-related notes and quotes:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 8: The Inciting Incident (Part 2)

“Two principles control the emotional involvement of an audience. First, empathy: identification with the protagonist that draws us into the story, vicariously rooting for our own desires in life. Second, authenticity: We must believe, or as Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggested, we must willingly suspend our disbelief.”

Authenticity does not mean the story has to be set in reality, but the physical, social, and emotional detail must lead to believable characters.

The event that sets the story into action is the inciting incident. It upsets the balance in the protagonist’s life in a way that he must react. This results in the protagonist choosing an object of desire that will restore the balance, arousing a conscious desire and sometimes an unconscious one as well. The energy of this desire becomes the spine of the story which holds all other elements together. The story becomes the protagonist’s quest for the object of desire.

The inciting incident must happen onscreen and not as backstory. It is the big hook that rouses the audience’s curiosity: How will this end? As a general rule, the inciting incident takes place with the first quarter of the story.

In writing the inciting incident, keep these questions in mind:

How can the worst possible thing that happens to the protagonist turn into the best possible thing?

How can the best possible thing become the worst possible thing?

The story can cycle between these two outcomes but must resolve itself at the climax.

I always wondered where that “suspension of disbelief” phrase came from. In this chapter, I especially like the analogy of a spine for the main quest in the story.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

None of them seemed to know which way to go, or what they were doing there. Gretchen and Surendra barely knew each other anyway. For a few minutes they talked about nothing—gossip, exams, teachers—but Surendra didn’t get any of the Second Year references, and every time he missed one his sulk deepened. The afternoon wobbled on its axis.

Yep. I’ve had awkward conversations like that.

* * *
He figured he should probably eat something, but the first bite of flour-less chocolate cake turned to sticky glue in his mouth, and he had to sprint to make it to the bathroom before he threw up. At which point a massive gravitational field gripped him and pressed him roughly and irrevocably down against the grimy bathroom floor, as if a giant had slapped him down with his mighty hand and then, when he was down far enough, leaned on him with all his weight, smooshing him down into the cool, dirty tiles.

The protagonist had just fought with a classmate and apparently suffered a concussion.
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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Friday for my 400th post! Please join me.

CRITICALLY INJURED COUCH

2011-10-14T09:42:00.000-06:00

Greetings, writers! I hope you enjoy this post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 8: The Inciting Incident

A story is designed in five parts: inciting incident, progressive complications, crisis, climax, and resolution. To understand the inciting incident, you must first understand the setting in which the story occurs. Here are some questions to consider:

How do my characters make a living? What is their typical 24-hour day like?

What are the politics of my world? This is not a left-wing/right-wing issue but who has the power at work, in the household, and in love relationships.

What are the rituals of my world? For instance, what traditions surround the family meal?

What are the values in my world? What do my characters see as right? Wrong? Worth living or dying for?

What is the genre of combination of genres? Each genre places limitations on the writer.

What are the biographies of my characters? How has life shaped them?

What is the backstory? In this context, what are the significant events in the character’s past?

What is my cast design? Each role must polarize relationships.

These elements of setting will determine what the inciting incident might be and how the character will react.

I'll continue this chapter in the next post. This is enough to chew on for today.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

He wandered around campus and killed time with the other First Years in the First Years’ lounge, which was a shabby but cozy room with a fireplace and an assortment of critically injured couches and armchairs and embarrassingly lame “educational” board games, basically magical versions of Trivial Pursuit, all warped and stained and missing crucial pieces and cards and spinners. They even had a contraband video-game console set up in a closet, a three-year-old box hooked up to an even older TV. It fuzzed out and rebooted whenever anybody fired up a spell within two hundred yards of it, which was pretty much constantly.

I can visualize this room. I especially like the unorthodox adjective “critically injured” to describe furniture.

* * *
When it came to languages she was omnivorous and insatiable. While her classmates were still wallowing the shallows of Middle English, she was already plunging into Arabic and Aramaic and Old High Dutch and Old Church Slavonic.

I’m terrible at languages except for English.

* * *
When he saw Julia, he searched himself for the old love he used to feel for her. It wasn’t gone, but it was a dull, distant ache, still there but healed over—just the shrapnel they couldn’t remove.

Sharp analogy.
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That’s it for the day. I hope to be back on Monday, but I’ll be enjoying a wonderful weekend in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. See you soon!

BATTALIONS OF HIDEOUS CANDELABRAS

2011-10-12T09:42:00.000-06:00

Greetings, fellow writers! Thanks for stopping by. Here’s your post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 7: The Substance of Story

The source of a story’s energy comes from the inside out, when the artist views his work through the eyes of his character and experiences the story as if he were that character.

The protagonist must have the willpower to take actions toward his desire. He has a conscious desire and may have a unconscious desire. He must have the ability to pursue his objective and at least a chance to attain it. He has the will and capacity to pursue his objective to the end of the line. The audience must be able to empathize with the protagonist but the character does not need to be likable.

As you sit down to write, you need to view the story through the point of view of the character. He will take what he considers the minimal and conservative action. While the average person would knock on the door to get into a house, a martial arts hero might break it to splinters.

Story happens when this minimal action provokes a different reaction than expected, causing the character to take a second and more risky step. This action/reaction escalates throughout the story to the end.

The question to ask yourself throughout the story is, “If I were this character in these circumstances, what would I do?” Slip into the character’s mind and create his reaction based on what the character would think and feel.

“Fine writing puts less stress on what happens than on to whom it happens and why and how it happens. Indeed, the richest and most satisfying pleasures of all are found in stories that focus on the reactions that events cause and the insight gained.”

This last comment was insightful to me. As I’ve been editing my WIP, I’ve discovered places where the character would really say this or that rather than what I originally wrote. McKee illustrates this principle through an examination of a scene from the movie Chinatown.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Life at Brakebills had a hushed, formal, almost theatrical tone to it, and at mealtimes formality was elevated to the level of a fetish. Dinners were served promptly at six thirty; latecomers were denied the privilege of a chair and ate standing. Faculty and students sat together at one interminable table that was swathed in a tablecloth of mystical whiteness and laid with heavy-handled silverware that didn’t match. Illumination was provided by battalions of hideous candelabras. The food, contrary to private school tradition, was excellent in an old-fashioned, Frenchified way. Menus tended toward mid-century warhorses like boeuf en daube and lobster thermidor.

This description is from the character’s POV rather than an impassive narrator’s. It not only sets the scene but also gives additional insight into the character.
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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Friday.

CHALK DUST IN THE AIR

2011-10-10T09:26:00.000-06:00

Happy Columbus Day! I’m not sure what you do to celebrate this day except for getting the day off. Works for me! Here’s your post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 6: Structure and Meaning (Part 2)

When you discover the story’s meaning, keep it in mind as you write. The story should move back and forth between this Controlling Idea and the Counter-Idea until at the end one of these voices wins. Without this tension which should escalate, the story becomes a thinly disguised sermon.

Stories can be sorted into three categories. Up-ending stories leave the audience with optimism and hope. Down-ending stories express cynicism and a sense of loss. Up/down-ending stories have an ironic ending that shows the complex, dual nature of existence and leaves the audience feeling “Life is just like that.” It is the most difficult to write because you must avoid ambiguity with a clear declaration of what’s gained and what’s lost.

McKee gives loads of examples of movies that illustrate these categories. For irony I believe Old Yeller qualifies. The boy in the story is torn between shooting his beloved dog or letting the animal die from rabies and possibly infect others. In the process, he matures.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Quentin sat in a large square lecture hall, a corner room with high, lofty windows on two sides. It contained four rows of elegant wooden desks set on raked steps like an amphitheater, looking down on a large blackboard and a massive stone demonstration table that had been scorched, scratched, scarred, and scathed within an inch of its life. Particles of chalk dust hung in the air.

The details of this setting make it vivid. The stone table makes you wonder what awesome experiments will be shown in class.

* * *
Learning magic . . . turned out to be about as tedious as it was possible for the study of powerful and mysterious supernatural forces to be. The same way a verb has to agree with its subject, it turned out, even the simplest spell had to be modified and tweaked and inflected to agree with the time of day, the phase of the moon, the intention and purpose and precise circumstances of its casting, and a hundred other factors, all of which were tabulated in volumes of tables and charts and diagrams printed in microscopic jewel type on huge yellowing elephant-folio pages.

Glad I’m not in that class. It sounds as tedious as all the sentence diagramming I was privileged to do in junior high.
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I’ll stop here for today. Please join me on Wednesday.

TOO HEAVY TO FLY

2011-10-07T09:29:00.000-06:00

Yom Kippur begins at sunset today. May you have an easy fast. Here’s my post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 6: Structure and Meaning

Art wraps an idea around an emotional charge. An experience and its meaning coincide, unlike in real life when meaning comes after time for reflection.

A Premise, the idea that inspires the writer, is the “What if . . . ?” question. A Controlling Idea or Theme is the story’s ultimate meaning, which is conveyed through the action and emotion in the climax. It may be expressed in a single sentence.

This Controlling Idea shouldn’t be explained. “A great story authenticates its ideas solely within the dynamics of its events; failure to express a view of life through the pure, honest consequences of human choice and action is a creative defeat no amount of clever language can salvage.”

You might begin your story with a Premise. As you develop the fictional world and its characters, events interlink and you reach the story’s climax. This final action should be the Controlling Idea. It springs from the story itself and not from the writer dictating meaning.

In the inspirational market, we often think we must start with theme, but here McKee suggests that we discover theme as we reach the climax of the story. My WIP developed this way but it may be different for seat-of-the-pansters than plotters. This is an interesting perspective.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Something small but heavy fell off Fogg’s desk with a clunk. He bent to retrieve it: a silver statue of a bird that seemed to be twitching.

“Poor little thing,” he said, petting it with his large hands. “Someone tried to change it into a real bird, but it got stuck in between. It thinks it’s alive, but it’s much too heavy to fly.” The metal bird cheeped feebly, a dry clicking noise like an empty pistol. Fogg sighed and put it away in a drawer. “It’s always launching itself out of windows and landing in the hedges.”

This is so off the wall, no wonder Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. He laughed too hard.

* * *
Sometimes he burst out laughing out of nowhere, for no reason. He was experimenting cautiously with the idea of being happy, dipping an uncertain toe into those intoxicatingly carbonated waters. It wasn’t something he’d had much practice at.

I can relate.

* * *
The hedges that made up the Maze were cut in the shape of heavy, slow-thighed beasts—bears and elephants and other less-easily-identifiable creatures. Unlike ordinary topiary they moved: they lumbered along very slowly, almost imperceptibly, wading half submerged in the dark foliage like hippopotami wallowing in an equatorial African river.

If I had been out this afternoon(Thursday) I probably would have seen ordinary topiaries moving in Denver. It was windy.
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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Monday!

WHERE'S THE SUIT OF ARMOR?

2011-10-05T07:00:00.001-06:00

Happy Hump Day! I got over the hump today by submitting my flash fiction to a contest and by finally getting to a certain point in editing my novel. Here’s today’s post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 5: Structure and Character

Characterization is the external qualities of a human being, such as age, occupation, and education. “True Character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure—the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.”

If a character tells the truth and there are no consequences, this choice does not tell us about the character. If he tells the truth when the consequence is death, then we can be reasonably sure that honesty is a part of his nature.

If a neurosurgeon driving a Porsche witnesses a school bus veering into a barrier and bursting into flame, does he stop? Does he call 911 and wait? Does he run into the burning bus to rescue children? Each choice reveals character.

Playing true character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is crucial to storytelling. James Bond seems to be a lounge lizard, but under pressure he becomes a witty superhero.

In the character arc, the story reveals true character. That inner nature arcs or changes for better or worse throughout the story.

Structure forces the character into progressively more difficult choices and actions that reveal his true self. Character uses characterization to act out choices. The audience must believe that the character’s age, education, and other qualities make his choices credible.

The climax must be the most gratifying and meaningful experience of the story. The characters’ choices must culminate in the final revelation of character. Without this, the story falls flat.

Hate to end on a negative note. McKee’s explanation here of characterization versus character intrigues me. In the movie Red, the audience thinks Bruce Willis is a pensioner with a crush on a Social Security worker. Not so.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

He was obviously one of those people who felt at home in the world—he was naturally buoyant, where Quentin felt like he had to dag-paddle constantly, exhaustingly, humiliatingly, just to get one sip of air.

How sad. How like the way we all feel sometimes.

* * *
He spoke very correctly, as if he wished he had an English accent but wasn’t quite pretentious enough to affect one. He had a mild, open face and thin blond hair.

Have you any Grey Poupon?

* * *
Inside the house it was hushed and cool, and there was a rich, spicy smell in the air of books and Oriental carpets and old wood and tobacco. The Dean walked ahead of him impatiently. It took Quentin a minute for his eyes to adjust. They hurried through a sitting room hung with murky oil paintings, down a narrow wood-paneled hallway, then up several flights of stairs to a heavy-timbered wooden door.

Where’s the suit of armor and family crest?
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That’s all for today, folks. Join me on Friday!

WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE. UPSTATE NEW YORK

2011-10-03T07:00:00.000-06:00

Greetings, fellow writers! Here’s today’s post for the first Monday in October:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 4: Structure and Genre

Screenwriters use the following genre system based on differences of subject, setting, role, event, and values:

1. Love Story
2. Horror Film
3. Modern Epic (the individual versus the state)
4. Western
5. War Genre
6. Maturation Plot (coming-of-age story)
7. Redemption Plot
8. Punitive Plot
9. Testing Plot
10. Education Plot
11. Disillusionment Plot
12. Comedy
13. Crime
14. Social Drama
15. Action/Adventure
16. Historical Drama
17. Biography
18. Docu-Drama
19. Mockumentary
20. Musical
21. Science Fiction
22. Sports Genre
23. Fantasy
24. Animation
25. Art Film

Each of these has sub-genres. “Genres are not static or rigid, but evolving and flexible, yet firm and stable enough to be identified and worked with, much as a composer plays with the malleable movements of musical genres.” The writer must first identify his genre and research its governing practices.

Each genre has its own set of conventions on story design. These limit the possibilities within a story. For instance, in the Disillusionment Plot, the protagonist is optimistic at the beginning of the end but ends up disillusioned. For the Crime Genre, there must be a crime early in the story. In Comedy, one overriding convention is nobody gets hurt. Art Film depends on unconventionality.

To master your genre and its conventions, rent films that are like yours, both successes and failures. Obtain the screenplays if possible. Study the films and break each down into setting, role, event, and value. Then examine these analyses and find out what they have in common. The audience will expect these conventions and will be disappointed if they’re not there.

Although genre conventions may seem like limitations in creativity, the opposite is true. The writer struggles to fulfill them in unique ways.

Genres are often combined, and genres themselves are reinvented as society changes. Westerns become quasi-Social Drama. Psycho-Drama can become a detective story or a psycho-thriller. The convention of a Love Story is boy-meets-girl, but some films have the couple meeting at the end of the story with the romance off-stage.

The screenwriter needs endurance because the story takes months and even years to write. He needs to focus on an idea that ignites his passion. “Be honest in your choice of genre, for of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.”

This system makes sense, especially when you think of genres and sub-genres as having conventions in common. I have to laugh at the recent movie Cowboys and Aliens, which seemed to combine Western, Science Fiction, and Action/Adventure films with a little Horror thrown in.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

“Is this—?” Quentin cleared his throat. “So is this Fillory?” He squinted against the bright sun.

The young man looked at Quentin very seriously. He took another long drag on his cigarette, then he shook his head slowly, blowing out the smoke.

“Nope,” he said. “Upstate New York.”

Poor Quentin. He thought he’d stumbled into the world of his favorite fantasy novels. Upstate New York? The chapter ends on this comic and mysterious note.
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I’m out of room for this post. Please join me on Wednesday.

DESERTED AT THE BOWLING ALLEY

2011-09-30T08:28:00.000-06:00

Ah, Friday! Hope you have a good weekend planned. Here’s today’s post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 3: Structure and Setting

Because today’s audience has read or seen hundreds of stories, the writer fights a continuing battle with cliché: standard scenes and characters seen too many times before. “The cause of this worldwide epidemic is simple and clear; the source of all clichés can be traced to one thing and one thing alone: The writer does not know the world of his story.”

The setting of a story contains four elements. Period is a story’s place in time. Duration is a story’s length through time. Location is a story’s place in space. Level of Conflict is the story’s position on the hierarchy of human struggles.

Setting will determine the possibilities within the world the writer creates. He must limit the story to these possibilities. Homeowners in Beverly Hills, for instance, are more likely to hold a fund-raising dinner than riot in the streets.

The story must take place within a small, knowable world. The movie Dr. Strangelove is set in the office of General Jack D. Ripper, a Flying Fortress, and the War Room of the Pentagon. Knowing these settings intimately results in well-developed characters and the opposite of cliché.

Story needs research on three levels. Memory is the writer’s recollection of personal experiences that he can give his characters. Imagination submerges the writer into the character’s life. Fact is the information gathered from a library.

Throughout a story, the writer makes creative choices. For instance, two lovers could meet at a singles bar, on a busy road fixing a flat tire, or at the office Christmas party. The writer must determine what is truest to the characters and their world.

Avoiding a clichéd story by knowing the story’s world was a revelation to me. McKee also said lack of research of facts results in writer’s block. I agree with that one since I’ve been stuck several times by not knowing, for instance, what a hotel’s kitchen area looks like. And I might have two lovers meet at a bowling alley. Why? When my hubby and I met through a double date, the other couple deserted us at one.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Beyond the wide lawn a large house stood, all honey-colored stone and gray slate, adorned with chimneys and gables and towers and roofs and sub-roofs. In the center, over the main house, was a tall, stately clock tower that struck even Quentin as an odd addition to what otherwise looked like a private residence. The clock was in the Venetian style: a single barbed hand circling a face with twenty-four hours marked on it in Roman numerals. Over one wing rose what looked like the green oxidized-copper dome of an observatory. Between house and lawn was a series of inviting landscaped terraces and spinneys and hedges and fountains.

Quentin has stumbled into a magical dimension. That house doesn’t belong in Brooklyn.
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That’s it for today. Have a great weekend!

A PUMPKIN GROWS IN BROOKLYN

2011-09-28T07:00:00.003-06:00

We’re headed toward a typical fall in Denver: 80s, 70s, 80s, whoops—50s. Hope you enjoy your autumn wherever you are. Here’s today’s post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 2: The Story Spectrum (Part 3)

“In an ideal world art and politics would never touch. In reality they can’t keep their hands off each other. So as in all things, politics lurks inside the story triangle: the politics of taste, the politics of festivals and awards, and, most important, the politics of artistic versus commercial success.”

The primary political issue has been “Hollywood film” versus “art film.” A Hollywood film is often big budget and dominated by special effects. It tends toward Archplot and optimism that life can change, and toward positive endings. An art film is often low budget and tends to be pessimistic about change. It utilizes Nonplot structure as well as Miniplots and Antiplots with negative endings.

“Too often Hollywood films force an up-ending for reasons more commercial than truthful; too often non-Hollywood films cling to the dark side for reasons more fashionable than truthful.”

Art films concentrate on inner conflict, something unseeable on the screen. To compensate, they’ll rely on philosophical dialogue or lush photography. Hollywood’s action filmmakers find it difficult to avoid genre clichés, so they’ll add special effects.

The Writer Must Earn His Living Writing. In the real world, this means writing stories with Archplot. The further the story moves away from this structure, the more the audience shrinks. Most human beings believe the pattern of Archplot is a mirror for their lives. The loyal cinephiles who enjoy stories that twist reality are in the minority. This results in a lower-budget film because potential profits are lower with a small audience.

The Writer Must Master Classical Form. Minimalism and antistructure forms are reactions to the Classical. Therefore, the writer must master the Archplot before he can venture into these other forms.

The Writer Must Believe in What He Writes. Examine your motives for wanting to write your story. Each story says, “I believe life is like this.” If you’re convinced life brings little or no change, write the Miniplot or Antiplot. The vast majority of us, however, believe life can change. Miniplot structure attracts young writers because it’s not Hollywood. They want to be recognized as artists and therefore avoid any taint of commercialism. Write what you believe rather than slavishly following any form.

Mastering Classical form sounds a lot like the advice to learn and use the rules of novel writing first before you break them. I’ve read interesting departures from common wisdom, such as the narrator speaking to the reader or a story written in second person (yep, you go to the market, and . . .), but the authors of these stories had already penned dozens of old-fashioned novels.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

There was a community garden on the block, a triangular snippet of land too narrow and weirdly shaped to be snapped up by developers. With its ownership a black hole of legal ambiguity, it had been taken over years ago by a collective of enterprising neighbors who had trucked out the acid sand native to Brooklyn and replaced it with rich, fertile loam from upstate. For a while they’d raised pumpkins and tomatoes and spring bulbs and raked out little Japanese serenity gardens, but lately they’d neglected it, and hardy urban weeds had taken root instead. They were running riot and strangling their frailer, more exotic competitors.

Little details like pumpkins and tomatoes make this scene vivid. I’ve seen a few urban farms in Denver like this.
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Sorry I don’t have time for more. Please come back on Friday.

SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME

2011-09-26T07:00:00.003-06:00

The start of another work week! Get it off to a good start with this post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 2: The Story Spectrum (Part 2)

Three basic event designs for a novel are Classical Design (Archplot), Minimalism (Miniplot), and Anti-Structure (Antiplot).

“Classical Design means a story built around an active protagonist who struggles against primarily external forces of antagonism to pursue his or her desire, through continuous time, within a consistent and causally connected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute, irreversible change.”

Minimalism begins with the elements of Classical Design but shrinks them for simplicity and economy.

Antiplot contradicts traditional forms. In an effort to showcase his revolutionary ideas, the Antiplot-maker tends toward extravagance and self-conscious overstatement.

The Archplot utilizes a closed ending. All questions are answered and all emotions satisfied. A Miniplot will often leave loose ends or an open ending. Most questions are answered but not all. The story leads up to possible alternatives but doesn’t fulfill everything.

Archplots will emphasize the external conflict of the protagonist but Miniplots will concentrate on inner conflict.

A classic story has a single protagonist at its heart. If the story contains subplots, as in some variations of Miniplot, it diminishes the roller-coaster dynamic of the classic story.

An Archplot’s protagonist takes action in conflict with external forces. The Miniplot has a passive protagonist who reacts and who is in conflict with himself.

A story is told in linear time when the story elements are arranged in chronological order and the audience understands the order, even when flashbacks are used. An antiplot is often told in nonlinear time with skips or blurs in temporal continuity, and the audience cannot sort out the order of events.

Whereas the Archplot will stress cause and effect, the Antiplot will substitute coincidence for causality and emphasize meaninglessness in life.

The Archplot story will remain consistent within its own fictional reality. An Antiplot breaks its own rules with inconsistent realities and creates a sense of absurdity.

In Archplot and Miniplot, life clearly changes. In Antiplot, the character’s condition at the end is identical to that at the beginning.

Hmmm. I don’t think an Antiplot would be my kind of writing. I’m just not weird enough or artistic enough.
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The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

All the blinds were drawn. The quality of the darkness was less like a house with the curtains drawn than it was like actual night, as if the sun had set or been eclipsed the moment he crossed the threshold. Quentin slow-motion-walked into the den. He’d go back outside and call. In another minute. He had to at least look. The darkness was like a prickling electric cloud around him.

Bad idea. Curiosity should never take the place of common sense.

* * *
It was a liquor cabinet. A big one, there was practically a whole bar in there. Quentin reached back past the ranks of softly jingling bottles and felt the dry, scratchy plywood at the back just to make sure. Solid. Nothing magical about it. He closed the door, breathing hard, his face burning in the darkness. It was when he looked around to make absolutely sure that nobody was watching that he saw the dead body on the floor.

Didn’t see that one coming. Neither did the protagonist.

* * *
That’s all for today. I hope you return to this blog on Wednesday for another post.

CORPSES OF OAK LEAVES

2011-09-23T09:52:00.000-06:00

It’s the autumnal equinox! The days are sunny and warm here in Denver, the evenings cool and getting cooler. I hope you enjoy this post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 2: The Story Spectrum

In this chapter, McKee gives us the overall structure for any story, be it screenplay, novel, whatever. Here are the basic elements:

Structure: A selection of events from the character’s life in a strategic sequence designed to arouse emotions in the audience.

Event: A meaningful change in a character experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict.

Value: A universal human experience that vacillates between positive and negative.

Scene: An action through conflict in continuous time and space that changes a character’s value.

Beat: Not to be confused with a short pause within dialogue, this is behavior in action/reaction that shapes the turning of a scene.

Sequence: A series of scenes that build to a greater impact than any previous scene.

Act: A series of sequences that causes a major reversal of values, more so than previous sequences or scenes.

Climax: A series of acts that build to absolute and irreversible change.

You can see how story structure builds on smaller elements to create a complete story. I have never thought of story structure in this way. Other teachers use different word pictures (the Snowflake Method and the Skeleton Plot, for instance). These illustrations explain the same structure presented here.
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Whoops! I didn’t notice I’ve run out of quotes from Home Fires. Here’s our next source:

The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Viking, 2009

Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first. His shoulder-length hair was freezing in clumps. He should have stuck around to dry it after gym, especially with his interview today, but for some reason—maybe he was in a self-sabotaging mood—he hadn’t. The low gray sky threatened snow. It seemed to Quentin like the world was offering up special little tableaux of misery just for him: crows perched on power lines, stepped-in dog shit, windblown trash, the corpses of innumerable wet oak leaves being desecrated in innumerable ways by innumerable vehicles and pedestrians.

What a cheery fellow. The entire earth is out to get him, and he’s going to let it.

* * *
He followed James and Julia past bodegas, laundromats, hipster boutiques, cell-phone stores limned with neon piping, past a bar where old people were already drinking at three forty-five in the afternoon, past a brown-brick Veterans of Foreign Wars hall with plastic patio furniture on the sidewalk in front of it. All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.

This describes the scene through a series of specific objects and sets up his longing, soon to be fulfilled.
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That’s all I have for today. Have a good weekend. I’ll be back on Friday.

PAGES RIPPED FROM A CALENDAR

2011-09-21T07:00:00.001-06:00

Hi there! Here’s today’s post:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Chapter 1: The Story Problem

“Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.”

The problem is that quality storytelling is eroding. Part of it is lack of craft. Scriptwriters will rush into the fray armed with nothing but the list of film they’ve seen. But without story, descriptions and dialogue will fall flat. “Countless writers lavish dressy dialogue and manicured descriptions on anorexic yarns and wonder why their scripts never see production, while others with modest literary talent but great storytelling power have the deep pleasure of watching their dreams living in the light of the screen.”

With the technology available today, many movies settle for special effects and car chases. CGI is effective in a movie like Men in Black because it enriches the story without calling attention to itself.

Two elements are needed in writing. Story talent is primary, the ability to convert life itself to a meaningful experience. Literary talent such as vivid description is secondary. But without craft, talent is like fuel without an engine.

In the past I’ve been hung up on getting the mechanics right. Grammar hasn’t been much of a problem, but I’ve had to learn good dialogue and description. My temptation is to add action and cliffhangers without making them secondary to the story itself which is always about the characters.
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Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

Gabrielle drove twice around the island, then took a walk on the deserted end of Salt Whistle Beach. She felt bleached with frustration and agony.

Bleached like the driftwood she sees on the beach. I like it.

* * *
But Gabrielle was in a blind rage, too far gone to listen. Her fury was a ball of yarn, a tangle made from Maggie and Anne’s secrets, Matt sneaking into her guest book, the theft of the Pearses’ Grand Marnier, and a serious disappointment in herself. Here she was, more concerned with betrayal than the fact that she suspected her sixteen-year-old of stealing liquor.

Been there with the rage thing, and I bet this resonates with you as well.

* * *
Why did it matter so much? Anne asked herself. This one drawing. There were twenty not unlike it in the second top right kitchen drawer in the apartment on Gramercy Park. All with similar depictions of Anne and Matt, the island, the park, the familiars of their life.

That afternoon had felt so ordinary, like all those other pictures in the drawer. Pages ripped from a calendar, sheets of drawing paper torn off a tablet. One would follow the other, day into night.

Into night.

The picture is the last one her three-year-old daughter drew before she died.
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That’s all, folks. Please join me on Friday.

BUMBLEBEES CRUISING THE PLUMS

2011-09-19T07:00:00.001-06:00

Greetings, fellow writers! I hope you enjoy this post. I have a new source of writing craft for you:
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Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, HarperEntertainment, 1997

Note: Although McKee wrote this on screenwriting, it’s become a classic for all writers.

Introduction

Story is about principles, not rules. A rule says, “You must do it this way.” A principle says, “This works.”

Story is about eternal, universal forms, not formulas. “No one needs yet another recipe book on how to reheat Hollywood leftovers. We need a rediscovery of the underlying tenets of our art, the guiding principles that liberate talent.”

Story is about archetypes, not stereotypes. An archetypal story digs down to experiences common to humanity and puts them in a unique setting. A stereotypical story starts with a narrow, culture-specific experiences and places them in ho-hum settings.

Story is about thoroughness, not shortcuts. Writing takes time. Excellence is achieved by ruthless rewriting.

Story is about the realities, not the mysteries of writing. There is no secret truth to writing. Writing is difficult but yields to determination and study.

Story is about mastering the art, not second-guessing the marketplace. No one can predict the next blockbuster. “The honest, big-city answer to all these fears is that you’ll get an agent, sell your work, and see it realized faithfully on screen when you write with surpassing quality . . . and not until.”

Story is about respect, not disdain, for the audience. A good writer wants to touch the audience emotionally.

Story is about originality, not duplication. “I’ve written Story to empower your command of the craft, to free you to express an original vision of life, to lift your talent beyond convention to create films of distinctive substance, structure, and style.”

This overview of the book promises a lot. Many writers say it delivers. Novel writing goes beyond the mechanics I usually think of. As for second-guessing the next big thing, good luck. I’ve attended a lot of writing conferences. The publishers will want a specific genre one year and say “no more” the following year. The reading public is fickle.
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Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

Once, as he downshifted his truck, he ground the gears so badly it sounded like a car being mangled at the junkyard.

Scrownk!

* * *
As if he had sprung a slow leak, he felt the adrenaline start to whistle out of him.

A new way to say he was disappointed. Or he deflated.

* * *
At the vegetable stand during her lunch hour, shopping for tonight’s picnic, Anne bumped into Gabrielle. They’d been standing under the same daffodil-yellow-and-white-striped tent, oblivious to each other. Choosing tomatoes, Anne was lost in the white noise of bumblebees cruising the plums and cars whizzing by on Billow Road.

Much better than saying they met at the farmer’s market. Details are the difference.
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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Wednesday.

A BULLET WHISTLING THROUGH THE NIGHT

2011-09-16T07:00:00.001-06:00

Greetings, fellow writers! I hope this post inspires you.
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Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006

Afterword: Keeping the Goal in Sight

Jenkins concludes his book with an appeal to writers to provide a perspective of hope to the reader in spite of reality’s pain.

“People still suffer. Innocents still die. But we are believers, and if we cannot crack the door to hope, we dare not call ourselves inspirational writers.”

As writers, we need to resist the urge to show off. If the reader is aware of your technique, he may miss the message. A good writer gets out of the way.

I’m really tempted to wow the reader with clever phrases but it’s easy for me to get carried away.
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Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

Tisa gave him a restrained peck on the mouth, as if her lips had shock absorbers. She had lived in New York long enough to know that you don’t kiss in taxicabs, that the wrong pothole could knock out two sets of perfect teeth.

Gee. I never knew that. I wonder how many times New York dentists have to deal with it.

* * *
“I was wondering whose toothbrush that is. The blue one, all wrapped in a washcloth in the back of the medicine cabinet.”

Busted. Thomas’s 19-year-old son just discovered his widowed father has been having an affair.

* * *
Sarah had loved to sing and talk and laugh, often all at the same time. It was a lot like living with a perpetual pep talk: exhaustingly lovable.

Exhausted is probably how I’d feel, although I’ll take a good pep talk any day.

* * *
As they stood together by the door the moment seemed to demand a physical gesture. A kiss? A handshake? A smack on his own head for being so stupid in somehow making her want to go?

“I hope you come back,” he said. He heard his voice hiding so much. It sounded cordial, inviting. Nothing like what he felt inside: the north wind, a bullet whistling through the night, a ship sinking just yards from its home port.

A fresh way to say he’s crushed that the relationship’s been put on hold.

* * *
The house had been in the family for forty years, and it was already furnished in the comfortable New England summer style that was very much in vogue. Her guests didn’t have to know that the house’s character had evolved from the fact that her family had had no money.

The stuff she had once considered dowdy was now being written up in all the house magazines. People actually paid extra for sun-faded chintz love seats, for well-washed white chenille bedspreads, for paper-thin white curtains with ball fringe, for comfy white wicker.

I’m amazed at how fashion comes and goes. Architecture from the 50s is now popular. I like it.
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That’s it for the week. I’ll have a new book on the writing craft for next week.

THE FALSE SIGN OF CROSUSES

2011-09-14T07:00:00.001-06:00

Hope you’re having a good week so far. Here’s today’s post:
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Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006

Chapter 13: Pursuing Publication (Part 2)

Old rules still apply in the digital age. Use the same level of professionalism with email as you did with snail mail. Make sure every note is spelled and punctuated correctly.

Read about the craft. Read books and magazines on writing. Study the market guides for your genre.

Be careful what you wish for. Learn what projects to turn down.

Look for new vistas. Jenkins wrote sports autobiographies before he turned to fiction.

Check out the competition. Read the books at the top of the charts. Learn from them.

About pitching. Here are a few tips for query letters and proposals that apply to magazine articles as well as books:

* Never write to Dear Sir but to the appropriate person.
* Don’t use colored paper as stationery.
* Use a standard type font.
* The manuscript should be double-spaced and not have a justified right margin.

About writers conferences. “People who attend writers conferences and never get around to writing are like the wannabes who find the writing life attractive but never sell anything. They may even wear what they consider writer’s clothes: Hush Puppies and corduroys and sweaters with patches on the elbows . . . There’s only one way to write, and that is with seat in chair.”

I’ve attended twenty writers conferences but decided not to attend two this year because I needed to write. In my own journey, I wrote for devotional magazines for years before turning to novels.
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Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

The old chandlery was burning. It had been abandoned since Anne was a child, when she and her friends used to play inside. They had explored the old machine shop, the dusty sail loft, the vast storage shed. Graffiti covered the brick walls. Virginities had been lost here, and smoking skills acquired.

Just these few details show the townspeople’s grief.

* * *
She’d bought a pony keg, a case of blanc-de-blanc, and a half gallon of rum; she and Maggie had spent one hot summer day making páté brisé and filling it with tasty aphrodisiacs like salmon roe, wild mushrooms, and smoked mussels. Gabrielle had felt giddy with the power of a born matchmaker.

The idea was a bust. Totally. Monique came on too blue-eye-shadow and décolletage, and Thomas couldn’t stop blushing or think of anything more interesting to discuss than the record-breaking heat wave. Which had broken a full two weeks earlier.

I’m glad the matchmakers who put my husband and me together didn’t try this tactic. They just abandoned us at the bowling alley.

* * *
She smelled the damp island earth, the first mark of true spring. The crocuses, the first robin, the departure of the seals were false signs. You knew it was spring when, and only when, the air began to smell like dirt. Wet dirt . . . The aroma of cow manure would drift downwind from Darlings’ Farm, and you’d know summer was right around the corner.

I think I’ll stick with the first robin and daffodils.
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That’s it for today. Please join me on Friday.

BACKLIT BY FLAMES

2011-09-12T09:08:00.000-06:00

I hope you had a good weekend. Now back to work:
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Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006

Chapter 13: Pursuing Publication

Although some writers collect rejection slips, Jenkins avoids them “like radioactive waste.” Do you homework. If your idea doesn’t resonate with a magazine or book publisher, that’s a business transaction, not a rejection.

Don’t write the entire article or book before determining any interest of the editor. If she gives you specific suggestions, follow them. Even if she rejects your submission, you’ve proved you can work with editors.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you write:

Writing is hard work. We hear this but don’t get it. We all suspect we’re something special, that writing comes easy, and that editors will go into a bidding war for our book. Writing means hours of sitting in front of a keyboard and ending up as exhausted as a ditch digger because of the drain of creativity.

Writing takes specialized skills. Many people say they can write a book but don’t acknowledge the skills necessary.

It’s not you against the world. Writing is not a competition. If your book sells better than another writer’s, that doesn’t make you a better writer. Succeed in being the best you can be.

Even “sacred” writing can be edited. “If you regard your writing as sacred in the sense of ‘untouchable’ (God gave me these words, so don’t edit them), they had better be divinely perfect, or God gets a bad rap.” This kind of thinking brands a writer as an amateur.

Editors are sometimes wrong. Don’t automatically agree with the suggestions an editor makes. Usually they have a better idea of what works and a better understanding of their readers, but not always. If you plead your case, do so kindly.

Learn The Elements of Style. This book by Strunk and White packs a lot of writing advice into one thin volume.

Ignore writer’s block. Just write.

I learned editors can be wrong with a magazine article I wrote years (okay, decades) ago. I wasn’t surprised when some of my wording was changed in the published version, since that’s often the case with articles. Most of it was an improvement. Most. I’ll continue with this chapter on Wednesday.
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Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

It took only a split second for Thomas to register a catalog of information about Anne: her fragrance, the straight dark hair brushing her shoulder, an ivory silk shirt framing pearl-white skin.

I like the details here.

* * *
The old chandlery was blazing. One brick wall had collapsed, and the multistoried interior pulsed with flames. Snakes of black wire dangled from the ceilings, old pipes glowed red-hot. Embers blinked along black sticks of charcoal: structural timbers and the forgotten spars of ships.

I can picture the fire.

* * *
Guys backlit by flames attacked the windows with long poleaxes and bludgeons. They smashed panes with the zeal of high-school vandals, and the tinkling glass was as delicate and incongruous as wind chimes.

Sigh. Wish I could write like that.
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We’ll call it quits for today. Please join me on Wednesday!

THE LAST SAND CASTLE

2011-09-09T07:34:00.000-06:00

Happy Friday! I’m hoping for writing time this morning before I leave for the museum. Here’s today’s post:
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Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006

Chapter 12: Thickening the Stew (Part 2)

The most common error in beginner’s manuscripts is too many words. “Skip the telling. The showing will tell.”

Use transitions if necessary but skip them if you can. Often the right choice of words negates the need.

Flashbacks are valid if used correctly but they are falling out of favor. If you use one, make it clear. Use past perfect tense (he had covered the body) to get in and out of a flashback and use something in the present as a trigger.

Reader’s Digest aims for an eight-grade level of reading. Jenkins discovered through a software program that his writing was at a fifth-grade level.

A list of do’s:
Choose a simple word over a compound one.
Write short paragraphs and tight dialogue.
Vary chapter length.
If you wonder whether a sentence works, fix it.
Write so the reader keeps turning the pages.

Find a fresh way to say something rather than use a cliché, but don’t stretch it.

If writing comes too easily, you may need to start chopping.

Here’s a summary of the section “Advice for Thick-skinned Writers”:

• Maintain that thick skin.
• Omit needless words.
• Avoid being an adjectival maniac. Choose strong nouns and verbs instead of adjectives.
• Avoid excessive scene-setting and background.
• Avoid hedging your verbs with slightly, almost, etc.
• You can often delete the word that.
• Avoid subtle redundancies such as “he clapped his hands.” What else would he clap?
• Maintain a single point of view for every scene.
• Avoid clichéd scenes and situations, not just clichéd words and phrases.
• Show, don’t tell.
• Use specifics to add the ring of truth.
• Avoid similar character names.
• Avoid mannerisms of punctuation, type styles, and sizes.

I’m guilty of this last item because I use a lot of ellipses . . . I have it on good authority that those dots should be space, period, space, period, space, period. The shortcut key for this results in a symbol that typesetters have to replace manually. It doesn’t make them happy.
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Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

She must have fallen asleep. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes, but she had a thousand dreams of Karen. Dreams as clear and beautiful as blue sea glass, filled with colors and laughter and the smells of a sleeping baby. Everywhere: deep blue sky. Images of Anne and Karen riding the funicular to a snow-covered alpine village; of rich island potato fields, the early-morning smell of dark earth encompassing Anne and Karen as they raised their faces to the sun. of castle building on their favorite island beach, with heartbreakingly beautiful blue water everywhere, Anne somehow knowing it was the last castle she and Karen would ever build together.

As Jenkins says in the advice above, specifics such as alpine village and potato fields enrich the story.
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That’s it for today. I’ll be back on Monday.

THICKENING THE STEW

2011-09-07T11:08:00.000-06:00

I’m a little late with this one. After attending a write-out, critique group, and writers meeting yesterday in different cities, I slept in. Here’s my belated post:
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Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006

Chapter 12: Thickening the Stew

Avoid clichés. A common one is beginning a novel with a character rudely awakened from a sound sleep by a clanging alarm clock.

Clutter is another problem. Don’t have the character answer the phone and include too many details. Give the reader credit to assume the person hears the phone, walks to the phone, picks it up, and introduces himself.

“Skip the recitals of ordinary life. We all get dressed, walk out to the car, open the door, slide in, turn the key, and back out of the driveway. If you character backs into the garbage truck, that’s another story.”

In dialogue, don’t explain more than once what’s going on. If a character responds to a diatribe by saying “Yep” or Nope,” you don’t have to add, “he said, eschewing small talk.” If a character starts a conversation with “I was just wondering,” the reader knows the person is timid without the writer adding, “she began nervously.”

Both inspirational and mainstream fiction must have a theme that is clear to the reader without preaching it. Tell the story of bad decisions rather than rant about the evils of alcoholism.

In setting the scene, the theater of the mind is more powerful than a long description. Describing someone as an oily geek lets the reader picture someone in his mind.

Coincidences in fiction should be limited and believable. Instead of an estranged couple bumping into each other in a bazaar in Turkey, make them reunite at their high school reunion.

There is no place in inspirational fiction for coarse language. The gatekeepers (bookstore owners) may refuse to market it. Simply saying “he swore” skirts the problem.

Foreshadowing is a valid technique if not overused. Give the reader a hint rather than something overt.

A book I read recently started with a house fire and the character not waking until it was almost too late, a nice change from a cliche. My WIP’s theme resides in the actions of several characters rather than a “Well, dear reader…” By the way, I’m using only half of this chapter since it’s a bit thick. I’ll share more on Friday.
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Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

“Dad,” Ned said. “You’re listening to more of that tear-jerk stuff, and there’s that lunatic smile back again. Are you going crazy or something? Should I be worried?”

“Far from it,” Thomas said. “I’m happy, that’s all.”

“If you say so,” Ned said, sounding profoundly unconvinced.

Thomas nodded, burning the radio up a notch.

“It’s just that I keep expecting you to make some kind of bizarre announcement. Like you’re moving to Florida or converting to some weird religion. Or like you have a girlfriend.”

Good dialogue without spelling out feelings. The son hits it when he guesses his father has a girlfriend, something hard to take when the teenager thinks no one will replace his dead mom.

* * *
Ack! I’d better stop there and leave more for Friday. See you then!

ROOMS FULL OF PASSION AND LIFE

2011-09-05T07:00:00.001-06:00

I hope you’re having a great Labor Day weekend. Enjoy this post:
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Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006

Chapter 11: Your Perspective Party

Think of your novel as a party to which you’ve invited the readers. You want to introduce them to your characters, get them involved with the story, and orchestrate events so everyone has a good time.

As the writer or host, you should fade into the background so the reader barely notices. She will notice, however, if you break the unbreakable rule: one perspective, one point of view per scene. Few readers will recognize the violation but they’ll feel like an underdressed partygoer.

Remember that your reader wants to identify with one or another of your characters, not you as the writer. Introduce them gradually. It’s fine to tell your story from different points of view, but only one per scene. Choose the POV character who has the most at stake in the scene.

Each character needs to be real and human, with human flaws.

If your first character can’t be in all places in your story, tell the scene through the POV of another character. Just be sure to signal the change to the reader with a scene break and use the character’s name early in the new scene. As you switch between POVs, reestablish who is telling the story.

“A gracious writer will invite guests in, make everything clear, then get out of the way and let the fun begin. Resolve to send readers home from your fiction party eager to return.”

I like this analogy. Writing a novel is a lot like hosting a party, and you never want a guest (or your reader) to wonder what’s going on. I explain to new guests at our Mad Scientist parties that the Tesla coil about to be fired makes a deafening noise.
_____

Home Fires by Luanne Rice, Bantam Books, 2005

Frustration, the desire for closeness, had pushed Gabrielle over the edge, and now Anne had retreated even more. Gabrielle needed to be in control of her relationships, and when she wasn’t, it drove her crazy. Her mind would start to sizzle; her body must have produced some sort of chemical, because she could actually taste frustration in the back of her throat.

I like the description of frustration as a taste. I try to fit senses besides sight into my WIP.

* * *
She’d covered the hardwood floors with Oriental rugs, the furniture with bright silk and cashmere throws. Red was everywhere. She had covered one entire wall with picture frames: scrolled, carved, gilded, museum-quality picture frames that she’d picked up at tag sales on the island and elsewhere. Other walls contained her own collages, Matt’s collection of small French paintings, and family photos. They had a three-foot-high bronze replica of the Effel Tower, at once monstrous and beautiful. Just looking at it made Anne smile. They had a Webster’s Second Dictionary on a nineteenth-century lecturn she’d found in Newport, Rhode Island. Karen’s toys and books were everywhere, spilling from briar baskets. The rooms were full of life and passion: they were full of the Davises.

This memory symbolizes the happiness Anne felt before her daughter died and her husband had an affair. Her new apartment has only bare walls.
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I’m out of space. Please join me on Wednesday for more installments from these two books.