Writing for Episodic TV

By Kimberly Johnson

Ba-ba-badaa. With those three beats, everyone in America knows that Law & Order is on the tube. Cue the fluttery flutes and wait for the get-down-with-it guitar riffs, and suddenly the men and women of law enforcement are policing the NYC streets for the next 60 minutes.

I’ll admit it—I watch Law & Order for the actors (Ice-T, Jerry Orbach, Chris Noth). I really stay tuned because of the thought-provoking storylines. Enter Rene Balcer, the Emmy-winning producer of the NBC crime drama. Balcer, a Montreal native, held several writing jobs on the set: a show runner, an executive producer and a head writer.

After watching a show featuring Robin Williams, I thought: How does journalist/freelancer/part-time wordsmith secure a gig in Hollywood?

I pulled up The Writers Guild of America’s website and clicked on the Writing for Episodic TV section. The WGA provided tips for my pursuit for fame and fortune:

Tip #1: I need a spec script. This is Hollywood talk for a work sample that has not been paid for nor commissioned. Opinions vary on whether I should write a spec for a TV show, a pilot or a screenplay or submit an original body of work. Glen Mazzara, a former executive producer of The Shield, sums up: “When I was trying to figure out how to break into the industry as a TV writer, someone explained to me that a spec TV script is your version of an episode of a show currently on TV. You pick a show that you like, that you feel you can write, and write your version to show as a writing sample. It has no connection with the actual series.”

Tip #2: I need an industry insider to read my spec script. For a fresh-off-the-bus type like me, a freelance writer must network. I found this WGA’s advice very helpful: “Resourcefulness and determination are common themes. Remember, all you have to do is impress one “right person,” a person who can hire you to write a script or who can put you in a room with a person who can hire you, and you’re on your way.”

Tip #3: I need an agent, I think. Writing a good spec script is the best way to pique the interest of an agent, according to the WGA. It provides a list of Guild approved agents and agencies for members and non-members.

Later on tonight, I’m watching another episode of Law & Order. But this time, I’m taking notes on dialogue, plot, conflict--you name it, so I can start work on my spec script. I’ll let you know if I need an agent.

Source: http://www.wga.org/

 

What Value Do You Give Your Writing?

By Bonnie Stanard

Way back in 2008, the Columbia II workshop took a moment during its meeting to write down advice we would give a person beginning to write. At that time, the Richland County Public Library had declined our request to reserve their large conference room, and we had begun a search for another place to hold our meetings (which is another story).

In giving advice, many of us took the opportunity to remind ourselves of things we already know but too often forget. My notes from that meeting include platitudes we’ve heard before but may be worth repeating.

1. Believe in the importance of your writing.
If you’re like me, you have often felt like you’re the only person in the world who cares about your writing. Discouragement is often subtle. Your well-meaning spouse tells you how to better spend your time. You get into an argument over space in your house for a desk. You can buy a new DVD player, but the budget can’t afford a writers conference.

To your friends and family, “writing” is never a good excuse. Your mother-in-law is offended if you write instead of visit. Your friends think you’re dodging them. Your neighbor suggests you’re a hermit. It’s a hard battle, and what makes it harder is that the fight is against people you love. And in the end, when you insist on your time to write, you’re made to feel selfish, as if you’re the problem.

2. Get feedback from folks who will give honest thoughts.
It’s hard to underestimate the benefit of a well-run workshop. People who write will approach your work dispassionately and are likely to give honest appraisals, since they have nothing to gain or lose. We get false readings from spouses and friends, who give us well-meaning comments that won’t offend us.

3. Spend more time with people who write and value writing.
I’ve found that as a subject of conversation, writing can’t compete with USC’s football team, golf, the latest way to cook a casserole, or where to go for a good hamburger. Not that I’m interested exclusively in writing, but the average person seems to have zero interest. Fortunately, I now have several good writer friends and I value their company.

4. Read current works in the genre in which you like to write.
If you’re a good painter, you know other painters and what they’re doing; a good banker knows other banks and what they’re charging; a good doctor knows other doctors and their treatments. A good writer knows what other writers are doing.

5. Write, write and then rewrite – every day, if possible.
We’re all busy. We hardly have time to eat or gas-up the car, so how can we find time to write? Write while waiting in line at the post office. Scribble while eating a sandwich. Spend your vacation alone with your computer. Give up cooking, gardening, and/or shopping. Let your spouse go to Waffle House for supper. Put the kids to bed with peanut butter sandwiches. Read number one again. Your writing is important.

6. Balance new writing projects with sending out submissions—both are vital.
I resent spending time with submissions, especially since 99% of them will be rejected. But as we’ve said in workshop, it’s really hard to get published if you don’t make submissions. On a positive note, making submissions is getting easier. Many journals are in the process of switching to online submissions managers.

Of all these suggestions, the most important one to me is the first one. When I lived in Chicago I had the good fortune to workshop with Eloise Fink, who gave me confidence. Even at that, for years I left my writing to suffer the slings and arrows of criticism without much support from me. It’s taken a long time, but I now feel that regardless of what anybody else thinks or says, my writing has promise. And it’s worth my effort.

SCWW Conference - Special Labor Day Weekend Offer

By Ginny Padgett

2012 SCWW Conference – October 19-21 – Myrtle Beach

It’s that time of year again. School is back in session, football returns to fan-filled stadia and South Carolina Writers’ Workshop holds its annual conference.

Here’s the latest conference news. The early-bird registration rate ended yesterday (September 1), but if you register by September 15 and email me at ginnypadgett@sc.rr.com and tell me you saw this blog, I will extend the $50.00 discount. Additionally, I’ll extend the deadline for purchasing a manuscript critique to September 15.

Registration remains open until October 17; however, you’ll pay full price and only pitch and query-letter critique appointments remain for sale.

I hope you’ll join us for the conference. It’s an excellent opportunity to network with other writers and industry professionals, hone your craft, expand your knowledge of publishing trends…and who knows, come away with a book deal! It’s going to be a great weekend for writers in South Carolina.

Take a look at the weekend activities that will mark the 22nd SCWW Conference. (See http://columbiawritersworkshop.blogspot.com/search/label/Ginny%20Padgett) You can go to www.myscww.org/conference/ for all the information, including links to registering for the conference and making your Hilton reservations.

Eggs, Milk and a Keyboard: Ingredients Needed To Write for a Food Review

By Kimberly Johnson

I’ll admit it…I’m a foodie. I watch the culinary shows (even, The Chew). I download the instructional videos. I will spend my next-to-last-dollar on a cookbook.

Last Sunday, I perused the aisles of a local mega bookstore and ooh’d and ah’d over Lidia and Ming. And just before I got hungry, I forked over the cash for Jamie’s Kitchen (Jamie Oliver) and Paula Deen’s Southern Cooking Bible.

At home, my kitchen turned into a full production set that would rival the one on Food Network. I tried out Paula’s Tomato Pie recipe. The ingredients were simple: four tomatoes, basil leaves, mozzarella, cheddar cheese, and mayonnaise, to name a few. The tools of the trade were modest: a deep dish pan, a grater and the oven. In Paula’s original recipe, she combined grated mozzarella, cheddar cheese and mayonnaise. I substituted plain yogurt for the mayonnaise. The result was a tasty treat that I may fix for brunch. Suddenly, I realized that I am good at cooking, eating and writing. But, I wasn’t sure about selling my two cents to an audience. So I hopped on the Internet to discover ways to write a cookbook review.

The experts offered this advice for the beginner reviewer:

#1: Select two or three recipes from your favorite cookbook and sample them. This way, you can get a feel on the author’s cooking style to write a comprehensive assessment. I cheated. I tried just one: Not Yo’ Mama’s Banana Pudding from Paula’s Just Desserts book.

#2: Explain why the book is unique. That’s what Garrett McCord (blogger with Food Blog Alliance) does with his entries. “For example, how does the author explain the use of ingredients in baking better than other authors? By setting the author and subject apart from the overcrowded world of food literature you detail their importance.”

#2: Discuss the author’s flair, presentation and photo arrangement. Let the reader discover the best (or worse) part of the book and don’t give away too much information.

#3: Identify the format. Be sure to include the title, author, and the general theme of the cookbook. Comment on the quality of the photos.

#4: Summarize your impression of the recipes and cooking style of the author. Set a rating system.

Writing a cookbook review seems like hard work. I’m going put my keyboard and taste buds to the grindstone. And hopefully, I can get someone else to spend his or her next-to-last-dollar on Paula Deen.

Sources: www.ehow.com, www.foodbloggersofcanada.com, www.foodblogalliance.com

How to Write People: One Socially Inept Writer's Hopeless and Sisyphean Struggle to Capture the Complexities of Human Social Behavior in Prose
PART I

By ShaunMcCoy

We’ve all met them, the people who are people people. They have an intuitiveunderstanding of their fellow human beings which allows them to give touching gifts, make funny jokes, and avoid awkward silences even with people they don’t know. Were these people to write, they would write realistic characters who’d pop off of the page like a celebrity foldout book.

But what if we’re not people people? Well for us, there’s cognitive psychology.

Now, mind you, I’d never recommend that you seek psychological help in the traditional sense; after all, I like you just the way you are—particularly that silly little way you have of trying to pass off your personal brand of insanity as being “eclectic.” No really! It gives you character. And you’re a writer, too, so I expect you to be comprehensively kooky. But cognitive psychologists have discovered some gems that have raised my character development to the next level, and I bet they can do the same for you. So let’s look at the Principle of Reciprocity and how combining this with indirect speech is a better way to make your characters appear to be real than the more traditional method of asking your readers to experiment with hallucinogens.

Now you’ve certainly noticed that there are differing levels of expectation for different relationships. We experience reciprocity in communal(family), exchange(friends), and dominance(your superiors or subordinates) on a day today basis.

For instance, if I invite you to my house and communally offer you some sweet tea, I’d be miffed if you tried to pay for it. Whenever there is a break in reciprocity expectation there is often serious tension.

So let’s see this in fiction!

In Conan the Barbarian, Conan, having become a jewel thief, gets drunk with his accomplice, the warrior/babe Valeria. She tries to steal a ruby from him, breaking their reciprocal relationship. Rather than react negatively, Conan unexpectedly gives her the jewel as a gift. He not only forgives her transgression, he offers a communal brand of reciprocity while doing so. This interaction makes their affection suddenly believable.

If I need my feminist protagonist to have a working relationship, I might have her alternate paying for dinner with her date. This mimics a communal reciprocity. If I want her relationship to be on the rocks, I can automatically lower the reader’s expectation of their intimacy by having her split the check at every meal—which doesn’t even mimic reciprocity at all. While these transactions are only a hint towards their relationship’s health, such hints can develop a resonance with the rest of the clues the author drops.

Playing with levels of reciprocity between your characters gives your fictional relationships a level of legitimacy that separates them from the ho-hum interactions in your competition's stories. Imagine a girl flirting with her waiter. Imagine a boy with a crush on a girl in an elementary school playground. Imagine a person assigned to torture a prisoner of war. How can these people show that they want to change their levels of reciprocity?

But does this technique alone give your fictional relationships the much needed veneer of legitimacy which will separate your prose from pack? No. Using Indirect Speech in conjunction with a touch of body language and the Principle of Reciprocity, however, will make your characters come alive.

Well, what’s Indirect Speech, you might ask? What body language is the most effective in accentuating the interpersonal dynamic of our protagonists? What do Joe Bastianich, Steve Buscemi, and Steven Pinker have to do with all of this?

Find answers to these questions and more in: How to Write People: One Socially Inept Writer’s Hopeless and Sisyphean Struggle to Capturethe Complexities of Human Social Behavior in Prose, Part II! (coming soon).

Personal Experience Trumps Research

By Fred Fields

I have a complaint with Rush Limbaugh. He sounds so logical and knowledgeable and smart. But every time he talks about a subject I know something about, he seems to be just a little bit off the mark.

That happens too, on occasion, when I read an article or a book. The author's research may be correct according to the time of writing, but is not correct within the time frame of the action in the published piece. Or his research may have turned up false information.

Our world changes more in a decade today than it used to change over a hundred years. And I'm not just talking about medicine, computers, and flush toilets. People today live longer, and we're also bigger, stronger, and faster than our ancestors. We can do things they never dreamed of. Consequently, we think differently.

We can get in our car and go to the same store several times a day if we forget something. But during horse-and-buggy days, they had to think more efficiently.

Research is important, and done correctly, will put us on the right path. But nothing takes the place of personal knowledge and experience.

If one is writing a piece about a lawyer trying a case, it is more authentic if the author has experience in court and is familiar with differences in the laws over time. If your story is about the military, it helps to have served and to know about changes in tactics and materiel.

My point is that we are ahead of the game when we write about something we know.

Bio-Fiction

By Alex Raley

From time to time, most of us have been drawn to write a something based on our own experiences. I have often been so tempted. The results are usually disastrous. What you get, one might title “bio-fiction,” which is a beast to handle. I am not talking about a memoir or historical fiction. Those are totally different with their own problems.

Early in my writing I tried a story that I hoped would become a novel. I was actually writing my own history. As I wrote, facts were pouring onto the page. Conflict was nonexistent and there was no story line to guide the reader, just a series of events. “Boring” does not begin to describe the results. Fortunately, the effort never saw the light of day. In moving everything from an old to a new computer the bio-fiction piece flew into space to await an alien to decipher it. Even with her three eyes, she will not find anything there.

Sometimes a real event does click, but you do need a thought line that gives substance to your writing. My wife and I sat in the garden reading the morning paper. My wife said, “Look at that little creature.” There was something smaller than a midge moving across the paper. I took that situation and wrote a poem in which I posed a series of thoughts that interested me. The poem won an award. Who would think that a small creature could become a poem?

Bio-fiction should not be confused with non-fiction which usually is a well-organized telling of an interesting event or an essay in which personal thoughts are presented and developed. I like to read essays by good writers, because you can learn so much about writing, Essays need the same intensity of focus found in good fiction. Good essays are highly organized and have the climax of good fiction.

When my son and his wife had their first child (an adorable girl), I chose to write a non-fiction piece to remind him of many things I wanted him to hear once more. All the events in the piece are true, but they are organized to lead to the final paragraph (not unlike fiction). I began by opening a box in the garage which had been there since he was nineteen. All the items in the box led to an expansion of the story. That piece was published in a literary journal.

At the beginning of this blog I related how poorly my early writing dealt with personal stuff. I even coined a word to describe those efforts, “bio-fiction.” I still have massive failures writing stories from personal experiences, but sometimes I seem to be successful. How does that happen? I read. So much can be learned from reading.

Read. Help stamp out bio-fiction.

Playing Tennis with the Net Down

By Bonnie Stanard

Robert Frost was quoted as saying, “Writing in free verse is like playing tennis with the nets down.” I would ask, If you’re playing tennis with the nets down, are you playing tennis?

Free verse is usually defined as verse without meter or rhyme. Most poetry I read today is free verse, whether we classify it by form as narrative, lyric, sonnet, etc.

Take a look at the excerpt below from “Nightclub”, written by former poet laureate Billy Collins and printed without its versification. Is this poetry or prose? 

You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be in love with me, even though this notion has surely crossed the minds of women and men alike.

Prose poems have enthusiastic defenders. This is a poem that “appears as prose, but reads like poetry,” according to www.poets.org. I’d like to know what reads like poetry means. Prose poems throw out meter and rhyme as well as versification. What meaningful difference is there between prose poems and flash fiction? For poets to stake a claim on prose can only mean the genre is desperate for an audience.

Some poets are staking out territory in music. Poetry on Record, a CD collection, includes several poets reciting to music. I have to wonder when some writer will come out with a CD collection of, not lyric poems, but “song poems” with a trio knocking off a beat in the background.

Poetry slams, defined as performance poetry, have emerged as competitive events. In this case, the success or failure of a poem depends not so much on the merits of the writing as the performer’s ability to entertain. Written representations of these poems convey less in terms of drama or substance. 

Fiction writers rehash characters and plots that have been around since the first written words. They’re able to make prose interesting for the contemporary reader without abandoning the devices that serve the style, things like dialogue, foreshadowing, symbolism, narration, point of view, etc.

Poetry, rather than redefine rhyme and meter, is becoming prose, music, or drama. In the 20th Century, rhyme morphed into assonance/dissonance, and meter went from structured beat/lines such as iambic pentameter to syllabic and blank verse. Why have we abandoned rhyme and meter rather than pioneer revolutionary varieties? Surely there are more avenues to explore. Aren’t there?

Put More Drama Into Your Writing—Creating Conflict in Your Dialogue

By Chris Mathews


Dialogue in writing can set mood and establish character, but without one essential quality dialogue can also derail any story.  Good dialogue must contain conflict.  Conflict drives drama and conflict drives all good storytelling.  Where conflict is lacking, usually, so is drama.   In the play GARGOYLES, a one-act I published, I mentioned the importance of the two gargoyles using ornate Latin-derived words to establish a medieval quality to their dialogue.  But the characters would have been little more than intrusive onlookers if I had not been able to define a clear relationship between them.  Notice where the first conflict between the two helps to define their relationships, provide humor, and bring the gargoyles into the modern story they are observing:

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Stone silence…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Mocks mankind’s folly.

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Demons dwell in eaves…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Caught in granite guffaws…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   We outlast your short time…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Withstand your orangutan rantings…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Your humanegomania…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Your acid haze…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Corrodes our veins…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   So permit us…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   From our lofty perches…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   To comment…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   To criticize…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   To cajole…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   To view from afar…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   To scrutinize with a looking-glass…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   To provide comic relief…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Though these humans provide their own quite well.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    We will be their funhouse mirror…

            SECOND GARGOYLE.   Grotesques.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    It takes a grotesque to know a grotesque.

SECOND GARGOYLE.   In bas-relief.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    We entreat you to observe…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    The intolerance…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The hypocrisy…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    The passion…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The insidiousness…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    The vainglory…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The truth-tellers…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   And the liars…

FIRST GARGOYLE.     The dreamers…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    And the quashers of dreams…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The religious zealots…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    And, of course…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Of course, what?

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Of course, what what?

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Don’t mimic me!

SECOND GARGOYLE.    You mimicked me!

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Mimicked me, you?

SECOND GARGOYLE.     You me mimicked!

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Enough!

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Of course, what we are about…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Which is?

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Demons.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Real?

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Or imagined.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Either way.

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Shhh!  They’re scheming.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Dreaming dreams no mortal ever

dared to dream before…

How is the conflict created between the two gargoyles?  I believe it occurs when the Second Gargoyle rants pretentiously, “Of course, what...” [bold italics]. With this hint, she (the Gargoyles in the original production were played by two female actors) may know more than the First Gargoyle sets the two in a tizzy, characterizing the relationship throughout the play and creatings a lot of fun for the audience as they watch their elaborate attempts at one-upmanship.  They pave the way for future conflicts at this moment when they clash, but they also assure the audience that they will entertain. Conflict drives dialogue.  It is immediate. The characters listen intently to each other so they get what they want from each other--an advantage.

               

First Amendment Blues

By Laura P. Valtorta

Recently I’ve been pondering our American right to free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment, and how our American outlook makes this difficult to achieve sometimes.

The first time I thought about this, I was showing one or two chapters of my memoir to a writer at the University of South Carolina whose work has been accepted by the literati as worthy of publication. That doesn’t mean he’s a bestseller. His writing is considered worthy.

This fellow read my chapters and told me I had better watch out about writing against certain current beliefs. I should think twice about stating “there is no such thing as race,” for example. That might not be accepted by publishers.

Biologically speaking, my statement is true, and scientists realize this. People have varying shades of skin and different eyes. If humans were actually divided into “races,” we would not be able to have sex and reproduce together. The categorizing of people has resulted in untold evil, but I guess I’d better not anger publishers by stating any unpopular observations.

Also, Americans are not allowed to talk about communism. The subject of communism and who is communist is discussable at any coffee bar in Italy. Communists were American allies during World War II. Italian communists are quick to distinguish themselves from Stalin, but otherwise they’re pretty comfortable talking about their beliefs. They believe in following the law. Most of the Sam’s Club-type stores in Italy are communist cooperatives. You buy a membership and get discounts.

So when did communism become a taboo subject in the United States? Back in the 1950s with Senator McCarthy? It’s just a political party.

I would prefer to live in a county where I can write and say what I believe, as long as it’s non-threatening. If I happen to agree with Governor Haley once in a blue moon, I’d like to be able to say it without getting jumped in a dark alley or threatened by email. Freedom means honesty and elasticity of thought, even when the subject matter is unpopular.

It Starts With a Good Sentence

By Kimberly Johnson

To borrow a phrase…it starts with a good sentence. That’s what I’m searching for this week. With a keyboard under my fingers, I am pecking out the right words to flush out my professional biography. With the 2012 Conference around the corner, I want a polished biography in hand before I travel to Myrtle Beach in October.

I know there are professional writers out there (I ran into several websites), but I want to put in the sweat equity.

Right now, I am stuck and the can of lemon-flavored Pledge is empty. Yeah, I got a top-notch resume, but I want something to grab the attention of agents such as Regina Brooks, Bernadette Baker-Baughman and Stephen Barr.

The goal of a personal bio is to get noticed in a good way, but my dilemma is how to write one without …um, you know, bragging.

I got some questions. I need some answers. I jumped on the Internet to find them.

Question 1: Who is my target audience? That’s easy: Regina, Bernadette and Stephen.

Question 2: How long is a personal bio? For online posting, it can be longer that one paragraph. For print work, one to two paragraphs is fine. I should write in third person, first person is too informal.

Question 3: What are the particulars to include in the bio? I need to let Regina and other agents know about my hometown, work experiences, awards/achievements and highlight my social media platform (blogs, websites, Twitter handle, Facebook page, Pinterest etc.).

Question 4: How can I grab an agent’s attention? Bernadette reads zillions of bios in a month—how can my bio catch her eye? This is the part where I should grab her with unique tidbits: I love cartoons, just saw Madagascar 3. I collect teapots. And, I don’t eat grits. I can make an impression on her with my paralegal experiences and newspaper reporter background.

Question 5: Where can I get some tips? I found seven tips to build a better bio from the University of Massachusetts career services blog. The blog suggests including a mission statement or a vision statement in my bio. It seems like a good approach to introduce the reader to my raison d’etre of writing. (http://umassalumni.com/career-blog).

Well, I have a lot more questions and not enough space to list them. So, I’m going to grab my resume, my unique tidbits and begin my draft.

 

Find Your Magic

 By Leigh Stevenson

We choose to write in a way that speaks to us. Fantasy, history, memoir, essay, fiction, non-fiction, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the form, what matters to most writers is that our work also speaks to others.

What is that magic thing that makes someone pick up one book and reject another? Follow one Blog and not another? Topic? Genre? Cover Art? Author? You could go crazy trying to figure it out. One thing I have learned after years of research is that opinions on the subject are just that. Everyone has one and everyone has advice. If you choose, you can read every blog, book and article on the topic and still be utterly confused.

What I have learned for sure is there are no rules. Aside from a good grammar check and edit you can pretty much throw out every other have-to. For every supposed “rule” there is someone who has broken that rule and been published.

You could just stop. It would be a lot easier. Or you could decide to get on with it and make your own rules as you go. Sure it’s hard. You can immobilize yourself with the immensity of the challenge and trying to figure out the “tricks of the trade”. Being a writer is hard enough without trying to second guess what will sell in the marketplace.

Along with the joy of writing, I have found that a large part of the creative process is a lot like running into a wall again and again. Then there’s the slogging through the quicksand of rewrites and editing and more rewrites. Not that much fun. We persevere, even so.

The best I know is to check your grammar, find a good, honest, knowledgeable writing partner and/or writing group and try to enjoy the process.

And then, once in a great while, there is a moment when everything comes together. The words are right and the sentences flow and you say to yourself, “I can’t believe I actually wrote that”. You find your own magic, not someone else’s version of it.

A Tome, Extensive Research and a Good Story

By Alex Raley

Big books were the norm in college and graduate school.  I also read such books for pleasure, but as I moved forward in time I found tomes rarely held my attention.

Recently a friend passed on to me a novel of 847 single-spaced pages. How could I tell him that I don’t read tomes? I kept it for six months without opening the cover. Then in January, 2012, I realized that I was 80 years old. To read the book might take the rest of my life. I knew I’d better get on with it.

I found myself buried in a page-turner: Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Why was this book gripping my mind? On the surface, the novel did not appear to be worth 847 pages, but an analysis of how King kept my attention began to turn up some answers:

·        The novel has a theme that is always present, though, its pinnacle is close to the end of the novel.

·        There are several subplots that are interesting in their own way. King weaves them into the overall story and theme.

·        The characters in all the plots are skillfully drawn.

·        Details flow as easily as the dialogue. In fact, most of the story and details are moved forward by dialogue.

·        The novel takes an almost overworked time-space-travel idea and makes it a great tool to address King’s philosophical stance.

·        Yes, King is philosophical here. He poses the question of whether we should tamper with destiny, even if this were possible. He takes his main character back in time-travel several times before he takes a firm philosophical position, which piles on more intrigue for the reader.

·        The work is based on an amazing amount of research. So much research that one has to forgive an occasional mishap. King can afford a research assistant, but he also visited many of the sites himself.

·        11/22/63 has plenty of gory actions to please all King lovers. For those who don’t like gore, the final trip back in time erases most of the blood and guts. You are left with only a memory of the gore.

We have all been surfeited with how-to workshops, but I found that a reading and analysis of King’s novel gave me examples to hang my hat on. This was not someone telling me what to do but my own examination of a successful author’s work. I tried the same examination on the work of a little known author. I easily could see why he is little known.

The next time you are tempted to pay for a how-to seminar, try reading and analyzing the work of a good author. It’s cheaper, and you might even be entertained while you are being informed. 

I've No Idea if There Are Devils in Your Details, But Dollars to Donuts, There Be Money in Your Minutiae!

By Shaun McCoy

If there's one thing I'm not, it's detail oriented. When dealing with my car keys and anniversaries I'm as clueless as a cage fighter in Bed Bath and Beyond. You could even say I hate the small stuff. As a writer, however, I love them details. A good detail makes a scene or character as real as New Jersey. A bad one slows down the story, confuses the reader, and degrades your work. But how can we tell the difference between the good minutiae and the bad?

A Mundane Detail is a Good Detail

I never would have guessed this one on my own. I had to be shown this by superior writers. I once read a scene where a character tossed her car keys onto the counter. The reality of that moment frightened me.  Why did none of my scenes pop into life like that? I told myself that it was because I wrote Science Fiction and Fantasy. Those kind of details just aren't found in my genre, I thought.

I can be dense at times.

The things people do and see every day are the best details. You only really need one, maybe two, to make a scene count. You want me to know something about a surfer? You could tell me about his blond hair, bronzed skin, and glistening muscular torso all day, and it wouldn't mean diddly. But if you tell me what kind of wax he uses on his board, all of a sudden I know the guy. 

This is true no matter what the genre. In fact, the more outlandish the thing you are describing, the more amazingly powerful the minutiae become.

What is a description of the magnificent wings of the dragon when compared with the vibrations of its heartbeats that you can feel through the cave floor? How real is the piercing gaze of the Medusa? Not very. But if you tell me about her mood when her hair molts you'll find you've got my attention. You want a swordsman to come to life? Tell me about what kind of leather grip he puts on his sword. 

How could I best know a golfer? What brand of clubs does he use? Does he have an idiosyncratic preference for a 9 iron in an odd situation? By all means, tell me about the long hair on the guitarist. You almost have to. But tell me also about the color of his favorite pick, or the callous on his thumb as you shake his hand. 

One or two of these mundane hits should be all you need. Our imagination will do the rest.

A Sensory Detail is a Good Detail

Human beings have five senses, don't forget 'em. Very few things come to life like the description of getting smacked across the side of the face with a freshly baked blueberry muffin. If you're reading a scene, and you find that it's too abstract, pick a sense that you missed and throw it in there. You may be amazed by what comes out.

A Detail that Meets Expectations is a Good Detail

When wandering about the universe in which we inhabit, we have become accustomed to being able to gather certain information. If this information is lacking, the realism of the scene suffers. I for one, couldn't give two durns about whether the main character's dog is a Border Collie or a Pit Bull, Labrador mix. I'm not a dog person. But a ton of people are, so you bet your buttons that if I have to mention a dog in a story I call up a friend of mine to ask what breed of dog they own.

I've run into this problem in my current project with guns. In addition to guns, cars, bicycles and musical instruments also need extra exposition. If the thing has a cult following, you better make sure you give it its due.

Conclusion

Minutiae are wonderful for your story, but they can also weigh your narrative down into the dark bog of the non-published. They're kind of like salt. A little makes a bland meal lovely. A lot gives you high blood pressure. Flavor as appropriate!

Now where did I leave my car keys…???

Quotations on Writing

By Bonnie Stanard

I was skimming though Kim Byer’s website (http://www.paperapron.com) and read about her fascination with quotes. I love quotes too. Two often quoted writers I admire are Winston Churchill and Will Rogers. Who do you think is the most quoted writer of English? (Hint, Ralph Fiennes just made a movie based on one of his plays.) What is the most quoted book? (Hint, it was originally written in Hebrew and Greek.)

My favorite quote about writing is “Easy reading is damned hard writing.” (Nathaniel Hawthorne) It has taken a while, but I now understand what professional writers have been telling me for years. Getting a story written is the first step, a beginning. And if you’re like me, the first draft is less than a fourth of the effort you’ll make to get to what you think is a finished product.

I love this quote from Mark Twain, “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” In other words, as a first step, get to know your story’s background backward and forward. This goes to authenticity, or securing the reader’s trust. If we get the foundation right, we can convince the reader to believe in us as tellers of the truth. Then we can lie and they will suspend disbelief.

“In this art form, in any art form, generalities are useless.” (Zubin Mehta). This brings to mind a comment you’ve probably heard, and maybe it’s in some book of quotes: a million deaths is a statistic but the death of one person is a tragedy. This may be one reason it’s often said that historians don’t make good writers of historical fiction. Most of them know and are interested in the big picture, the grand designs of history that impact the past and the present. But the heart responds to the individual, regardless of the movements sweeping them along in history.

I get a kick out of this quote by W Somerset Maugham: “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” Agents, editors, and publishers enhance their livelihoods telling writers and prospective writers the rules of the business. In the end, books are published every day that defy all the rules. I’m reading Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy’s novel, Blood Meridian, and I can report that it conforms to almost none of the rules of writing…weak character development, scattershot plot, unconventional punctuation.

This often quoted advice by E.L. Doctorow to writers is worth repeating: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Some writers prepare an outline of the entire story before beginning, but that’s something I can’t or won’t do. There’s another quote that says that we write to find out what we think. In fiction, I write to find out what my characters think. I write to find out what they will do next.

Finally, from an anonymous writer—“If you wait for inspiration, you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.” This may be true, but some of us have periods when we’re “waiters.” I like to think I’m gathering energy for the next writing storm.

A Plea to Storytellers: Never Forget!

By Shaun McCoy

If you're reading this, ironically, you're probably a writer. I've got to tell you, my brothers and sisters, we used to have it pretty good. Our historic predecessors were responsible for the creation of seminal cultural documents whose tales were regarded as indispensible for development of a person's character. We put out stone cold epics like The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Illiad, the Aeneid, the elder and younger Eddas. Guys, people used to take our stuff pretty darn seriously. On certain ignoble occasions, we even got away with pretending our stories were written by gods (although to be fair, those were probably penned by the predecessors of editors, who even to this day labor under their delusions of divinity).

In those days a successful writer was one who was so influential to his culture that his work would be inflicted on high school students for all time, equipped with a neat little lesson plan that says: "You see this story? This is what it means to be an Ancient Sumerian/Greek/Roman/Norse dude with a pretty kewl spiked helmet."

Things have changed. These days a successful writer might be expected to pen such esteemed tomes as Twilight or Harry Potter.

Yeah, things have gone downhill for us in the last few thousand years. A modern day Herodotus would be torn apart by archaeologists. Scientists and skeptics would giggle at our attempts to explain why spiders spin webs and narcissus flowers think that they're hot stuff. But that doesn't mean it's over, and it sure as heck doesn't mean that we should forget what stories are for.

Nomadic cultures would use their legends as a type of map. A story whose narrative involved a stream would be told about this valley. A tale involving game, or fruits and nuts, might be told about this hill. In this way, even if no member of that tribe had been to a certain place for generations, by listening to the wisdom of their long lost elders a nomad could know where to go in case of drought or famine.

In modern times food and water aren't really all that precious. Wal-Marts are fairly ubiquitous and thanks to the niceties of indoor plumbing, we all literally have our own personal rivers that flow directly into our own homes. But that's not to say that people aren't still hungry and thirsty… not at all. We're just hungry and thirsty for different things.  

We literally live in a world chock full of Homeopathy and hatred. Where lies about living spread through the internet like a Texan wildfire. Where the tools for being connected with the entire world are the same tools that are used to create loneliness and isolation. 

Language was perhaps mankind's first and greatest invention. It lets us learn from the mistakes of others. I love those stories that try and teach wisdom. I love To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Diary of Ann Frank, and The Myth of Sisyphus. I love movies like Milk, Hotel Rwanda, and yes, even Rambo IV. 

So here's my plea: folks. Let's never forget what stories are for, and maybe as you pen your next little ditty you can share with the world your own small secret way of how to find water.

Defeating the Blank Page with Misty Berries, Webs, and Fading Outlines

By Amanda Simays

Some people can start typing the beginning of a story and write all the way through until the end. I am not one of those people. Blinking cursors on blank Word documents intimidate me. How do you turn an idea for a scene into a fully-written one? Everyone has to find their own system, but here are a few strategies that work for me:

1.      Warm up by playing with words

Here’s a carefully crafted poem revealing fundamental truths about the dichotomy between nature and civilization in modern society with lots of metaphors about mankind’s philosophical state of being:

Long went the afternoon banquets

Tasting nothing

Hanging the misty berries

Along our still-ensphered home

Cold, pretty eyelids

Underneath rivers of flame ribbons

Never there

Very real

I lied. There are no metaphors in that poem, and it doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s just an exercise I do sometimes to get into the mode of writing. I flip open a random page of a random book on my shelf and write down the last word of every single line on the page. Then I play around with words, stringing as many of them together into a nonsense poem. There’s something fun and low-stress about putting words together in a way at first glance might deceive a fifteen-year-old editor of a high school literary journal into thinking that I’m saying something deep about the emotional turmoil inside my soul. But more importantly, it’s a warm-up—now the part of my brain that twists words and creates phrases is turned on.

2.      Brainstorm webs

I’m not a linear thinker, especially when it comes to creative exercises. Even an outline is too constraining of a medium for me to start out with. So instead, I open up a blank page in my notebook and make a web, jotting down phrases as they come to mind, connecting them with lines, letting my thoughts sprawl all over the page. It’s a lot easier for me to generate thoughts in this manner…there’s no pressure to start at the beginning and go through until the end. Only after I’m done this exercise do I turn my notes into a sequential outline. I try to fill up an entire page when I do this because 1) it pushes me to generate more raw material than I might otherwise do, and 2) filling up an entire page with notes like this aesthetically looks really cool. 

3.      Let the outline fade into a story

To me, this is the easiest way to solve the blank-page-anxiety problem—simply start with a page that isn’t blank. I take whatever outline or notes I have and copy and paste them into a new document. Then I flesh out my outline, adding in every detail that comes to mind, plugging every scrap of dialogue or piece of imagery into the appropriate spot. I keep doing this, adding and adding, until suddenly I’m not just writing phrases but sentence fragments…then whole sentences…and then eventually the outline starts to morph into properly-written scene. For me, this is the coolest part about writing. It’s like watching those “behind the scenes” DVD extras for an animated movie where they show a cartoon animal drawn in pencil morph into a full-color, smooth-lined animated sequence.

Put More Drama in Your Writing—Using Dialogue to Define Character and Set the Mood

By Chris Mathews

One important way to put more drama in your writing is to understand the language of drama, dialogue.  Fiction and non-fiction can be written without dialogue; drama cannot. We know the story of a play through what the characters say and do on stage.
    

In prose, the writer has the advantage of being able to describe the characters’ motivations, but this can also be a pitfall. Description can deaden writing when it usurps action or tells the reader too much. Dialogue has the advantage of actively engaging the auditor. There are no intermediaries with dialogue. In fact, the reader is the audience in any quality writing, actively supplying the missing pieces of the story. Stories in which the reader is told what happens but not allowed to experience the story first-hand can easily become literary dry-gulches. 

I based my one-act Gargoyles (published by Baker’s Plays in 2005) on an actual event, a high-school Halloween play banned by a school board in a small mountain town. A preacher in the town provided the major push to ban the play Bats in the Belfry, decrying Halloween as “a pagan ritual.” The actual play was a comedy, in my opinion about as innocuous as Bewitched, but deemed “satanic” because it contained a warlock. 

To tell this story, I decided to create characters that could comment on the play-within-the- play (which I renamed Raising Spirits) and lighten up this controversy. I chose gargoyles as my dual narrators because of their traditional role as guardians-of-the-Church. As I wrote I realized the gargoyles were becoming a kind of medieval Siskel and Ebert, speaking in Latin-sounding phrases. Through their banter, I was able to both create a gothic atmosphere and comic repartee. In the opening scene, the gargoyles define themselves, setting themselves up as observers of humankind.

Here is the opening dialogue of the play:

As the lights come up, two gargoyles are perched on a platform flanking a large, gothic door.  Ornate medieval music is playing.

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Stone silence…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    …Mocks mankind’s folly.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Demons dwell in eaves…

SECOND GARGOYLE.     …Caught in granite guffaws

FIRST GARGOYLE.     We outlast your short time

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Withstand your orangutan rantings…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    …Your humanegomania.

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Your acid haze

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Corrodes our veins

SECOND GARGOYLE.    So permit us

FIRST GARGOYLE.    From our lofty perches

SECOND GARGOYLE.    To comment

FIRST GARGOYLE.      To criticize

SECOND GARGOYLE.    To cajole

FIRST GARGOYLE.    To view from afar

SECOND GARGOYLE.    To scrutinize with a looking-glass

FIRST GARGOYLE.    To provide comic relief

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Though these humans provide their own quite well.

FIRST GARGOYLE.   We will be their funhouse mirror.      

SECOND GARGOYLE.   –Grotesques.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    It takes a grotesque to know a grotesque.

 If your characters know what they want  and listen to each other(unless you want them to ignore each other), dialogue often writes itself.   In the next writing, I will look at how conflict works in dialogue.