CELEBRATE the WRITERS BEHIND ACADEMY AWARD MOVIES

By Nick Rolon

                                                                                                         

 Let’s roll out the red carpet for writers. Tonight, the 91^st Academy Awards will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California (8pm EST), broadcast live on ABC. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will honor the best films of 2018 with Oscars awarded in 24 categories. For the first time in over three decades, the ceremony will have no host. Yes, we will see many actors and actresses, directors, and producers walk the stage to receive their Oscar but behind each Academy Award movie is outstanding writing. There would be no Academy Award winning movies without great writers.

Screenwriters bring the script to life using original works or adaptations from books. The writers capture the movement, actions, expressions, and dialogue of the characters on screen. Of the eight Best Picture nominations, seven have been nominated for Best Writing in adapted or original screen play.

Since the inaugural Academy Awards in 1928, more than sixty Best Picture winners derive from literature whether it be a novel, biography, play, or short story. Thirty-seven Best Picture winners originated from books including Kramer vs. Kramer, The Sound Of Music, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Godfather. Twelve Years a Slave, an autobiography published in 1853 and written by Solomon Northrup, who was kidnapped and put to work on plantations in Louisiana for 12 years, won the Best Picture Oscar in 2014.

The first Oscar awards for writing were given in 1940 (Original Story) to Lewis R. Foster for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and (Screenplay) to Sidney Howard  for Gone With The Wind. Frances Marion was the first female writer to win an Academy Award in 1931. Ben Affleck is the youngest writer, at the age of 25 for Good Will Hunting, he co-wrote the screenplay with Matt Damon. In 2009, Geoffrey Fletcher was the first African American to win a Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) award for the movie Precious and in 2017, Jordan Peele was the first African American to win for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for Get Out.

The written words behind these great movies have inspired us during our most challenging historical and personal times including the Great Depression (The Grapes of Wrath), the Civil Rights Movement (Selma), Space Exploration (First Man). They gave us triumph in sports (Rocky), and hope (It’s a Wonderful Life). The movies have provided us with a moment to escape and be entertained. The written words brought to life by the actors/actresses inspire us with understanding, comfort, determination, and good will.

Tonight, make a bowl of popcorn, relax watching the 91^st annual Academy Awards, and give thanks to the writers who made it all possible.

 Below is a list of the 2018 Best Picture Nominees and the respective Screenwriters:  

Best Picture Nominee	Screenwriter(s)	Notes
Black Panther	Ryan Coogler/Joe Robert Cole	Adapted from the comic books by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Nominated for Best Writing- Adapted Screenplay
Bohemian Rhapsody	Anthony McCarten	Movie name from the song made popular by the British rock band Queen in 1975
The Favourite	Deborah Davis/Tony McNamara	The written script began over 20 years ago and finally becoming an Oscar nominated film in 2018. Nominated for Best Writing- Original Screenplay
Green Book	Peter Farrelly, Nick Vallelonga, and Brian Currie	Inspired by a true story with the written script based on interviews and letters by family members Nominated for Best Writing- Original Screenplay
Roma	Alfonso Cuaron	Alfonso chose to withhold the script from many of the actors so that none of the cast members would know where the film was headed. Nominated for Best Writing-Original Screenplay
A Star is Born	Bradley Cooper, Eric Roth, Will Fetters	A remake from the original movie and script in 1937 Nominated for Best Writing -Adapted Screenplay
Blackkklansman	Spike Lee, Kevin Wilmott, David Rabinowitz, Charlie  Wachtel	Spike Lee also directed the movie based on the 2014 memoir of Ron Stallworth. Nominated for Best Writing- Adapted Screenplay
Vice	Adam McKay	Adam McKay also directed the movie which follows the path of former Vice President, Dick Cheney. Nominated for Best Writing- Original Screenplay

   

                           

INSPIRATION

Here is a rerun of a post from 2013 by one of our much-loved and now departed members. We miss you, Alex. Your presence is always felt.

By Alex Raley

We look for inspiration when we write.  We look for inspiration when we write. Often it comes out of the blue or from the pleasant and interesting things going on around us. A couple months ago, I found myself with my head against the wall waiting for the 911 folks to arrive and wondered why I had put myself in that situation. In the hospital and on my way to recovery, I began to think of all the experiences a hospital brings: some debilitating, some embarrassing, and some just downright nasty. With the right attitude they can be funny. I began to think poetry as soon as I settled down in hospital routine (meals to the minute, vital signs as soon as you fall asleep, the day’s date with nurse and nurse tech names, shift changes with new names, morning doctor visits. I imaged everything poetically, including the 911 activity. When not interrupted by hospital routine, I was constructing poems, poems much too bawdy for a blog but poems that will eventually see the light of day. Does that seem odd?

 Do not let experiences pass by you. Even the most unusual or gruesome can be an inspiration to write. I had never thought of gruesome as an inspiration, but I cannot tell you how my mind raced once I wandered into the groove. Now that I am at home I need to hit the computer and put those bawdy poems to paper.

HERE AGAIN for the FIRST TIME

By Kasie Whitener

Poetry readings need to take place in a coffee house. There’s a consistency in coffee houses that enables the work, that breaks open the caged hipster in us all, that unbinds our artistic sensibilities and makes us willing to listen. Willing to be changed.

Everything about the place is familiar though I’ve only been here once. There’s something almost cliché about a coffee house in an old Colonial on a college campus. Dark corners and nooks where students huddle together over textbooks and lidded cups. There’s an age and creak to the stairs. An unfulfilled ambition in the artwork on the walls.

I’m here by invitation to a weekly meet-up in Columbia but it could be any campus in the world, any coffee house, anywhere, any time. Nostalgia overwhelms me; I want a cigarette and a spiral notebook and a pencil. There are unwritten things inside me pressing to the surface.

As the singer/songwriter strums his tunes, I feel the simplicity of them invade me. And I am once again, opening like a moonflower, to the possibility of change. He sings about coming home. About losing something that seemed small at the time but since then has been indicative of a much bigger loss. About an airline pilot’s constant flight.

The word distance takes on new meaning.

Across the room, I catch my poet friend’s eye and he smiles, cheeks rosy from the cold, satisfaction beaming from him.

Mindgravy is a weekly poetry reading and open microphone event at Cool Beans brought to the Columbia arts community by Al Black, an Indiana native with a Southern writer’s heart. He’s compelling in verse and presence and the room at Cool Beans in its familiarity is a welcoming place to find yourself quietly waiting to be changed.

Partitioning the room are heavy sliding doors that stick and groan and resist the push and pull of people slipping in and out in various attempts of subtlety and respect. I leaned to the man next to me, a regular, and said, “Are the doors always a distraction?”

“Every week,” he said, with an amused smile, “Part of the charm.”

Al read a new poem, one he first asked the man on my left permission to share. It was about a series of visits with the man and how Al had watched his friend work through the process of his father slowly dying.

“Daddy is comfortable,” the man would tell Al and Al put it in the poem as the refrain of grief and acceptance.

Then the same man stood to finish the night with a flute to his lips and played the most tender dirge I’ve ever heard. Quiet and shimmering with so many tears already shed and dried and gone but not forgotten. I felt grateful. I thanked him.

What a gift to feel the camaraderie and friendship, the empathy and passion, the love in the room at Mindgravy. Thanks, Al, for inviting me. I look forward to returning.

The Latest Addition

Meet a New SCWA Columbia II Blogger

EL OCHIIS

El is a recent transplant to Columbia, SC, having relocated from New York/New Jersey to attend classes towards a second, advanced degree at USC.   

She earned a BA Degree in English, studied art in Paris and Athens, traveled abroad, married, divorced, then took a hiatus from creative writing and graduate school, to rear two offspring. Putting her writing on hold, she focused on earning a paycheck to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on. As a result she spent a considerable amount of time as a freelance and contract writer for New York advertising, marketing and public relations firms, however she vowed to get back to writing stories. 

After returning to storytelling, El has won various accolades for her writing, including First Prize in Adventure for a Screenplay in a New a York Screenwriting Contest; Quarter Finalist in an Annual Screenwriting and Fiction Contest for a short story; and a poem about a famous street in NYC, in song format, won Honorable Mention at the Grand Ole Opry in Songwriting (no, she does not know how a song about NYC won in a country music competition).

El's first blog post on this page follows.

WRITING IS DANGEROUS

By El Ochiis

Whenever, as a young person who was always protesting some egregious injustice against citizens, I was detained and asked if I’d ever been arrested, I would use satire in the form of Dante’s levels through hell, from his Inferno or I would respond: “Which time?” Moments after an officer would get a glint in his eyes, thinking he’d caught a harden criminal, I’d add: “Fighting for the right to vote in Alabama; Protesting against redlining in Bedford Stuyvesant – civil disobedience is a very serious offense?”  When viewed as a dissident, for simply exercising natural rights, disarming government sponsored opposition by using “metaphors or allegories “ from great writing, was the only defense I had – a way to telling them that my only crime seemed to have been the ability to think, a skill I hadn’t found in a majority’s job description.

I had utilized Dante’s witticism when I was politely removed from a scene at the Fontana di Trevi in Rome.  A man had grabbed my rear end and I had promptly cold-cocked him with a bottle of cheap, French wine. 

“You a hit him with a bottle a wine, not even a Italian wine,” scolded Polizia di Stato, Gregorio La Trosciscana, smiling, after he had escorted me to the passenger side of his little European patrol car and began navigating his way through the narrow streets.

I wasn’t at all offended at being interned in a patrol vehicle, I had run out of money and needed a ride to a chapel, about an hour away, to meet Umberto, an artist friend who was working on the restoration of artwork.

“You a ever been in a trouble in a Europe before?” 

“Yes, I received a Level Eight, Bolgia #2, but I thought it should have been Level Nine, Bolgia #13,” I answered, locking eyes with Gregorio, then, looking away, covering my mouth to hide a sly grin.

“Lasciate ogni speranza, o voi che entrate qui,” chimed Gregorio after he had hopped out of the car and held the driver’s side door open for me as if he’d just chauffeured me to a fine restaurant. Fear gripped me, had I gone too far?  Was he actually going to throw me in jail? “You don’t a know it in Italiano, no?”  Gregorio had strutted up the steps of an old building with Italian writing, holding open, yet another door. 

 “Know, know what?” I asked, biting my nails and climbing the steps with guarded trepidation. “Abandon all hope, you who enter here?”  “Wow, a cop who, not only can read, but quote from Dante’s Inferno, impressive.”  Gregorio smiled, loosening the bland, government issued tie around his neck, as he retrieved a chair, then motioned for me to sit. “Where are we, by the way?” I asked, staring up at an ornate ceiling. 

“This is where my grandfather was detained by Polizia, my grandfather was, how do you say, protester, see that room, he had a old printer press – he was jailed for writing a dangerous words, under Mussolini.”

“Wow, what a great man, you must have been proud of him?” 

 “When you no have food to eat, you no so proud.” Gregorio leaned in close to my face: “I want to go to a university so bad, but my family no money, I take care family, I a read everything, I learn a English – but I no write – Dante, he say the root of fraud – linguistic sin – linguistic sin is greater than murder, I think I agree, no?”

“But writing can dismantle power; writing can change lives, especially lives of those without a voice.” “Why do you think they jailed your grandfather?”  

“I know so, so I read; I think, but I don’t write thoughts.”

“But, think about it, if the woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin didn’t, slaves might never have been freed in America – it was rumored that her writing caused the spark that ignited the American Civil War; Charles Dickens not only gave the world a window into the underclass and the poverty stricken in London but, attacked the judicial system for its discrimination against the poor; you know how Americans got federal food safety laws?”  

Gregorio shook his head front side to side, then took a pencil and paper and began jotting down everything I said.  “Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”– it described the deplorable working conditions, the diseased, rotten and contaminated meat, shocking the American public.” Chinua Achebe told us what the impact of colonization was on African culture in Things Fall Apart.” I was nearly out of breath. “Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience stated that the best government is the one that governs the least; Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man argued that political revolution is a justifiable action when the government fails to perform its duty of protecting the natural rights of its citizen.”  

Gregorio bought me dinner before dropping me off at the Chapel, giving me thumbs up as he meandered his way, once again, through the ever-crowded city of Rome.

Often times when I sit down to write or teach writing, I think about that impassioned conversation I had had with Gregorio and watching Umberto hang atop a ladder in chapels surrounded by the works of artistic giants. Words are like an arrow leaving a bow; once shot, you can’t take it back.  So, as writers, we should, not only write well, but we should write with purpose. Our goal should be to try and do what Baldwin said writing ought to do: “Write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world. In some way, your aspirations and concern for a single man in fact do begin to change the world.” Writing is hard; life is hell, but, good writing, now that’s dangerously divine.

HOW FILMS DIFFER FROM WRITTEN STORIES

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

www.thearthousemovie.webs.com

laurapv.wordpress.com

www.diseasedetective.com

                                               

The leap from prose writing to screenwriting can be weird and difficult because the two media begin in a similar place but end up looking very different. Both films and short stories, for example, begin with words written on paper maybe in the form of a plot summary. But a film ends up as a string of visual images, while a story remains in the form of words on paper.

A filmmaker must think about the juxtaposition of scenes. While a short story could exist entirely in the head of a librarian sitting at her desk, observing her weird patrons, a ninety minute film likely would not take place entirely indoors or entirely from the perspective of the librarian.

Films need to jump between images, from outdoors to indoors, from present to past, loud to quiet, in a way that keeps the audience interested. The director must set the stage and the setting through images, often called “establishing shots.” Films need to tell the audience where they are in an instant and then keep moving.

Of course there are exceptions. My Dinner with Andre notoriously broke all the rules by filming two guys talking in a restaurant for the entire movie. Their conversation was so interesting and funny that it carried the story.

As a beginner, I can’t take that chance. While writing the screenplay version of Bermuda, it would be tempting to keep Mildred seated around a swimming pool, talking to her daughters the entire time. That would be fun. I might try it. But the dialogue would have to be firecracker-snappy. Never monotonous.

The better choice would be to use some flashbacks, Mildred bothering Little Willie, Mildred and her daughters at work, getting fired, selling guns on the street, and then Mildred landing in Bermuda, where she meets and has dinner with Hamilton, the little guy. Since it’s a comedy, we’ll end with a wedding. Hopefully the action and the change in setting will keep the audience interested.

Writing this tale down as a short story, I might do it differently beginning with Mildred living in Bermuda successfully, or traveling to India for a grand tour with friends. The story might work backwards. The suspense would be more cerebral and ask – how did Mildred get here? Rather than the more nail-biting – what’s going to happen to her? How will she survive?

This is why it helps to plan a narrative film out with moveable index cards, white for outdoors and blue for indoors. Making the scenes interchangeable somehow makes the film easier to visualize. When the time comes for editing, that’s how the film will actually fit together – as a series of scenes pasted together, deleted, and rearranged on the computer.

HISTORICAL FICTION’S CROSS-CURRENTS

By Bonnie Stanard

BruceHolsinger wrote, “If you choose to write historical fiction, you will constantly be treading that fine line between the true and the plausible.”  We discover what’s true (or at least verifiable) with research, and from that we imagine what is plausible. We create scenes and give words and thoughts to characters based on our research. Unlike other genres, ours deals with the “burden of truth.” As long as we respect the truth, historical fiction has the advantage of combining education with escapism. When done well, our novels help us “see ourselves as historical creatures... shaped by large forces and currents.” 

A contemporary market, driven more by a demand for fast-moving entertainment than by a desire to learn, is having an impact on us. As Colson Whitehead said at USC in Columbia when questioned about fabrications in The Underground Railroad, “It’s fiction!” Obviously fiction comes first, but what is our relationship to the truth or at least the historic record?

No reader is going to mistake us for historians (though historians are suspected of fictions, but that’s another blog). We claim poetic license for inaccuracies that range from trivial to profound. You don’t come away from reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel or Shogun by James Clavel thinking either writer’s historical exceptions jaded our view of a given person or time period.

Thomas Mallon claims to act within “the situational ethics of my chosen genre” when he changed history to make Maj. Henry Rathbone complicit in the assassination of President Lincoln (Henry and Clara). And when he made Pat Nixon a fictional adulteress (Watergate).  What do we think of this reader’s reaction to Mallon’s novel Finale: “I had a tough time separating fact from fiction on numerous occasions”? (Amazon comments).

According to writer Helen Dunmore, novelists are “straying into ‘dangerous territory’ when they fictionalise the lives of real historical figures. However, numerous 2018 novels feature well-known historical persons, e.g., Sarah Grimke (Handful by Sue M. Kidd); Anne Morrow (The Aviator’s Wife by Melanis Benjamin); Jefferson Davis’ wife Varina (Varina by Charles Frazier) and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont (A Well-Behaved Woman by Therese Fowler).

Should we worry about reader reactions such as this: “[Einstein] is portrayed as quite an ass!” and “[the novel] will change your opinion of Albert Einstein forever”—Amazon comments on The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict. Is it asking too much to expect readers to know which parts are pure invention, which speculation, and which based on history?

Perhaps our equivocal perspectives are bringing about more genre subcategories, such as alternate history; historical fantasy; Regency romance; and speculative fiction. And there are more. 

This leads us to a question posed by Georg Lukacs: “How does a historical consciousness become embodied in a work of art?” With respect to novels, is it by imitating recorded history? By challenging it? By exploring it? Or as some of our writers are doing, by repudiating it?

WHAT'S in YOUR VISION?

By Raegan Teller

This week when I went to spin class at the gym, it was packed. The “regulars” were far outnumbered by the “resolutioners”—people who resolve each January to exercise and get fit. While I applaud these new folks for making the effort, I know many of them will fade away after a month or two and abandon their resolutions. It happens every year.

Sadly, the same thing happens to writers. Starting off the new year, we commit to writing every day or to other goals “they” tell us we must do to be a successful writer. And then, we drift away from those goals because we’re too busy, or other priorities present themselves. Success stories of writers who make lofty goals and achieve great results inspire and excite us. At least, in the short run. We ask, “Why do they succeed, but we can’t?”

I am not at all suggesting that you give up on writing, or losing weight, or exercising, or whatever your intentions may be. But, if you haven’t achieved what you wanted to by now, instead of setting the same goals, year after year, step back and ask yourself some key questions. For example:

·         Why do I write?

·         What does success look like for me?

·         How can I incorporate writing into my life in a way that will bring me joy?

·         How much of my life do I realistically want to devote to writing and related activities?

·         Am I focused on the right things for me?

·         If I haven’t achieved what I wanted to by now, what’s holding me back?

For years, I struggled to make myself sit down and write regularly. I told myself I was too busy, didn’t have the “right” idea for a book, and so forth. While some of those excuses were partially true, I knew they weren’t really holding me back. Then one day, I decided to visualize what success would look like for me as a writer.

At first, letting go of my preconceived notions of writing success was hard. Bong! Then it hit me. I realized I was holding onto someone else’s definition of a successful writer, and it was hindering me. That lofty goal of becoming a NYT best-selling author that I had held onto for years was turning me off. That wasn’t the life I wanted. Every time I thought of traveling around the country, living in a suitcase, I cringed. While the odds of my becoming a national best-selling author were remote, just the thought (or threat) of it held me back. When I replaced that vision with me being a successful Southern writer, talking to local book clubs, do signings at regional events and festivals—doing all the things l love—I was then able to write the first book, then the second, and now a third. Never underestimate the power of visualization. It can work for or against you.

What’s in your vision?

SAME TIME NEXT YEAR

kasie

By Kasie Whitener

Writing during the holidays is hard. It may be that we have less time at home because there are more parties and special events to attend, or road trips to take. It may be because we have less time to ourselves when children and spouses are on vacation and relatives are in town.

Maybe it’s difficult to write during the holidays because we feel that end-of-year drawing near and start looking back at what we’ve been able to accomplish. There may be a sense of urgency toward finishing something that’s been lingering. Maybe the weight of unmet goals. Sometimes the end of the year brings with it a kind of momentum, a rush and hurry that can rob us of the quiet reflection we need for creation.

The holidays also carry the weight of memory. Like a scent we’ve forgotten until it wafts into our nostrils, the holidays can force us to recall traditions, images, sounds, and lights. The carols and the performances are heady experiences, thick with prior years’ joy. It can be difficult to feel original when everything seems soaked in ritual.

For me, writing over the holidays is challenging for all of these reasons. The days are filled with task lists I don’t usually have, errands I don’t normally run, people I don’t often see. The plans we make dominate the season, and I’m on an adjusted schedule consisting of kid-home-from-school, visiting relatives, and special-occasion meals.

I often reflect at the end of the year on what I’ve been able to accomplish and start making plans for the next year’s efforts. This process puts creation of new stories in a kind of limbo where they don’t count toward last year’s tally but they aren’t quite next year’s work.

My writing is most often a victim of nostalgia. Since achieving certain milestones in life, I have become more nostalgic in general. But the holidays put a magnifying glass over that habit. In the weeks surrounding Christmas, I have perfect specimens for comparison. What kind of tree did we have last year? When did we put it up? What did we watch on TV while we did it?

I keep a Christmas Journal, have since Charlie and I were married in 2001, and in its pages are the specifications of every Christmas for the last 17 years. Where we went, who we visited, what we gave, what we received. It’s both a wonderful scrapbook of family memories and a terrible albatross. In it I can read the varying shades of joy, excitement, and gratitude. But threaded in there, too, are the traces of hurry and obligation and disappointment. This year the entry is particularly soaked in loss and grief.

I’m glad for the start of the new year. A chance to refocus my writing life on goals and achievements in 2019. A chance to go back to the beginning instead of being trapped in the end, that familiar dance of ritual and memory, that weighs December down.

THE LOGIC OF FICTION

By Sharon May

Almost 40 years ago, workers in a small town in Kentucky uncovered human bones. The next day, a retired sheriff confessed to the county attorney that he had buried a teen-aged friend near that site during World War II. Carbon dating revealed the bones were of Indian descent, and thus, could not be those of his friend. The former sheriff then recanted, stating that he was drunk when he confessed and probably was retelling bits and pieces of cases he worked.

I heard the recording of his confession, and to this day remember his excitement as he described the car in which he rode to the bootleg joint. His voice cracked with fear as he recounted the walk up the riverbank at gun point as he was forced to bury his friend. I heard the truth of his words, and felt compelled to tell his story.

All would have been fine if I were a journalist. Then I could have just reported the facts, and my job would have been done. But I wanted to write a novel about the sheriff and tried numerous times to find the narrative voice and the plot to tell the events of 1943 along with those of 1987.

A few years ago, I wrote a novella-length draft of the “truth.” But the sheriff I discovered in that draft wouldn’t have recanted once he took the risk to tell. The fear that quietened him at 16 was as real 35 years later. If Lafe had faced that fear and confessed, there would have been no going back. He was a man of his word. The conflict for him was whether to confess at all. To make the best story, my novel could not rely totally on the events as I experienced them.

How can something taken from reality not work in fiction? I mean, it’s real right? William Dean Howells, in the late 1800s, argued that realistic fiction is not only possible but that it required of writers. He believed reality could be captured by relying on the five senses and focusing on the ethical and moral dilemmas of the characters. But the Realistic movement gave way to Modernism and Post-modernism, both of which recognize the artifice of fiction.

Just because fiction is artificial doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work logically. Even Magical Realism and science fiction have physical and metaphysical rules that operate in the story.  

Readers expect a world that makes sense no matter how bizarre that world is. The story needs logic so that readers can envision and believe the plot. Characters’ actions and motivations have to be plausible. Conflicts need to be tangible and create angst and fear of the unknown for the reader as well as the characters. All of that creates a world with meaning, one a reader wants to visit.

After years of rumination and revision, I realized fiction doesn’t have adhere to reality, but it does have to ring true.

 

  

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Columbia II Blogger

NICK ROLON

I dedicate my first blog post to my mother, Teresa, who has been battling brain cancer for nearly  three years. She has been an inspiration as she has hand-written over 3,000 cards during her life with notes of hope, thanks, and goodness to others.

I earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from John Jay College, New York City, and was a staff member of its newspaper The Lex Review. I have spent over 30 years in the retail industry. Sharon, my supportive wife, and I have two adorable dogs, Tucker and Madison. In addition, I have been active in many charities during the last 35 years including the March of Dimes, St. Jude's Children's research hospital, Adam Walsh Center, DARE programs, Kiwanis club, and many local good-news community initiatives. My favorite book/movie is The Natural starring Robert Redford.

Nick's first blog post on this page follows.

THE GIFT OF WRITING

By Nick Rolon         

Writer Somerset Maugham, once said “If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion…It doesn’t matter dammit how you write.”

At 50 years old, I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to re-new a passion I left behind in college over 31 years ago. I had spent a majority of my life dedicated to my career, leaving little time for the important things in life. I hope this blog post will inspire others to “Just Write” – cards, letters, short stories, blogs, social media posts, novels, even a simple post-it note. 

I had been a member of our college newspaper staff and enjoyed contributing articles of social issues, school events, and our sports news. I had always enjoyed writing since elementary school but after college I stopped. That passion was replaced with the fast moving train of life we all experience.

Recently, a group of friends gave me a list of organizations and associations in South Carolina including music, photography, athletics, cooking and then I spotted the South Carolina Writers Association (myscwa.org).   I went to the website, signed up, paid my annual dues, and began attending the Columbia II workshops in November 2018. 

As a novice, I was nervous about attending my first few workshops as I listened to the readings of outstanding writers.  I was amazed with the talent and creativity of the members.  But I heard a common message from everyone around the table, “Just Write.”

The group echoed “We all started writing at some point and it will become easier over time.” Their words of encouragement motivated me and on my second workshop meeting I was able to write six pages of a story about my dogs Tucker and Madison. I received constructive feedback from Ginny Padgett and the Columbia II writers that attended the November 19^th workshop. This motivated me to continue writing and writing without fear.

I was fortunate to have had Flora Rheta Schreiber as my college English professor. She was a writer and author of several books including the non-fiction book, Sybil, which covered the treatment of Sybil Dorsett (a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason) for a dissociative identity disorder (up to 16 different personalities). After spending seven years writing the book, she was published in 1973 and soon the book became a best seller and a TV movie.

I remember Mrs. Schreiber emphasizing the importance of keeping the writing simple to help readers understand the story.  She would walk the classroom aisles, look you in the eye, and say, “Writing is a gift everyone can give; empower yourself with the ability to positively impact the lives of others through your words.”

This holiday season make time to write a note of thanks to someone you love; write a story you always wanted to share; partner with your spouse or child and write what brings happiness to the home; or just doodle on some scrap paper. As J.K Rowlings will tell you, maybe someday that scrap paper will wind up in the Smithsonian Institute.

Several great examples of writing this holiday season include the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” which was published anonymously in 1823 and the letter written by 8 year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, to the editor of the New York Sun on September 21, 1897 titled “Is there a Santa Claus?”

I wanted to provide the letter to the Sun editor and the response to show the compassion and positive influence the gift of writing has on society:

“Dear Editor

I am eight years old – some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.  Papa says If you see it in the Sun it’s so.  Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

115 W. 95^th Street”

Please open the link to see the original response from the Editor of the NY Sun in 1897.

PROPPING UP the MIDDLE

By Kasie Whitener

On last week’s episode of Write On SC, we discussed the challenge of writing the middle of the story.

Often, as writers, we are inspired to write the beginning when some specific inciting incident catches our interest. My vampire novel begins with Lord Byron being rescued by a vampire. My GenX novel begins with Brian learning his best friend is dead. I’ve started short stories with a character recognizing a high school classmate in a magazine, making eye contact with an old lover across a lobby, and pulling into the driveway of a ski cabin on a summer night.

The beginning sometimes feels easy. Or sometimes we draft the beginning and decide during revision to start the story earlier or later. The beginning answers specific questions like, “What makes this day significant?” and “Why are we seeing this character now?”

Sometimes it’s the ending that comes easy.

The inevitable outcome of the vampire novel is that the protagonist will murder the woman he loves. Brian must return to San Francisco after burying his friend. And in the short stories: a football game ends in defeat, a couple agrees to stay committed even while the woman takes an overseas assignment, and power is restored to a community after a Derecho allows an old woman to relish the freedom of being alone.

The ending is where we’re headed and usually writers know where we’re going before the story even begins. The ending can feel inevitable, can feel like closure, and can feel satisfying.

But what happens in between?

What happens between rescuing Lord Byron and killing his sister? Between learning the best friend is dead and letting him go?

The middle of the story is where a lot of writers get stuck. We struggle to line up a good progression of action and settle for a series of conversations. We fail to escalate the action and settle for a series of events that all have the same ebb and flow. We fail to select the most relevant scenes and cut the superfluous chatter from the story.

The middle is also where we lose momentum. We know the beginning is compelling and we know where want to go, but the middle may sag or stall.

What I loved about that Write On SC episode was all the different suggestions for how to prop up the middle of the story. I found this resource and this one, too. Both offer advice for adding the necessary action, tension, and escalation you need to drag the reader through all those long pages before the climactic end.

I immediately went home and looked at each of my stories with a more critical lens. Specifically, I applied these actions to the short stories:

1) listed each scene by what action occurred in it;

2) evaluated whether the actions got progressively dramatic;

3) re-organized the series of actions to ensure they were progressing, and

4) raised the stakes in each scene.

Stories are not compelling without action, tension, and escalation. The middle of the story is where these progressions occur. Taking care to craft the middle of the story can help you ensure your reader’s journey is as compelling at the protagonist’s.

For more craft talk and South Carolina writers, listen live on Saturdays at 9 a.m. at makethepointradio.com or visit our podcast channel on simplecast.