Skip to content

Category: Writing

Published on Leave a comment on Story Grid Macro: Aliens

based on the Story Grid series of blog posts, books, and podcasts by Shawn Coyne and Tim Grahl.

Anyone else out there a devoted fan/follower/cult member of a particular writing craft guru? If you peruse my bookshelves, you'll find writing craft books by several of my favorites. The usual suspects are in attendance: Kleon, Lamott, Barry, King, Brooks, Snyder, McKee. In an attempt to keep my book purchasing compulsion in check, I try to only buy a book if I find it so captivating and resonant, I can envision myself referring to it frequently.

If I'm honest, only about half of the craft books on my shelf get opened with any regularity. But there is one that I refer to, think about, mull over, and recommend far more than any others: Story Grid by Shawn Coyne.

I'm a proud Story Grid nerd and I don't care who knows it. I've found it tremendously useful, and I'm starting a series of blog posts about it because I hope you will find it useful as well.

Blogging about the Story Grid method certainly isn't original to me. They've got their own website, blog, podcasts, classes, you name it. I encourage you to check them out. It will be well worth your time. Just think of my efforts here as fan non-fiction.

Story Grid consists of a variety of concepts and tools developed by editor Shawn Coyne. Coyne describes his method as a 'pragmatic approach to solving the story creation problem'. He uses a variety of analysis tools, including a robust spreadsheet that serves as a combination story spine and editing tool; an overview of the various genres; and a checklist of recommended story components.

One of the Story Grid family of podcasts is devoted to applying the Story Grid analysis to well-known stories, usually films. I find these analyses extremely enjoyable as well as useful. So I thought I would jump on the bandwagon and add a few of my own.

Recently I attended a Story Grid Live event in Nashville. The presentations were great. But the breakout sessions . . . oh, my. As Shawn likes to say, that's where the rubber hit the road. During the breakouts, groups of a half-dozen or so of Story Grid nerds sat around discussing specific scenes from a masterworks. We worked on identifying the 5Cs and other important components. Sometimes we agreed. Sometimes, we didn't. It was glorious.

I do something very similar when my online critique group gets together via Skype every two weeks. But I'm thinking, you just can't get enough of a good thing. I could do this every day.

TBH, I sorta already do this every day. Every time I read a book or watch a show, I'm breaking it down into its Story Grid components. But when you do it in a group setting, the benefits increase exponentially.

Now, I regret I cannot meet with a bunch of other story nerds in person every day, much as I would like to. But thanks to the internet, we can do the next best thing: we can blog and comment. So without further adieu, here's my contribution to spreading the Story Grid wealth.

I'm starting with a film I love and am studying as a prime example of a well-crafted action story, which is the genre I'm currently working in as well. I've selected Aliens, the second film in the franchise.

In this blog post, I'm going to attempt a macro analysis that identifies the 5Cs of the global story/entire film. In a separate post, I'll do a micro analysis of a specific scene. I hope this demonstrates the versatility of understanding the concept of the 5 Commandments as a craft tool and how it can be useful in just about any phase of your writing project.

Before I dive into the 5C's of Aliens, it would probably be helpful to catch you up just in case you're not familiar. The 5 Commandments, or suggested components, of a successful story include the following.

The Inciting Incident something happens to upset the apple cart

The Turning Point/Progressive Complication we now have a different metaphor: the straw that breaks the camel's back

The Crisis the protagonist is now in a pickle and must make a decision

The Climax the protagonist makes their decision

The Resolution the results of this decision unfold

Easy enough to understand, amirite? The fun begins when we attempt to apply them to actual stories.

One more thing before we get to the analysis: it's kinda hard to give a wrong answer in this stuff. Story Grid nerds relish the opportunity to discuss the various options at length. My opinions below are just that: opinions. My primary goal in posting this stuff is to spark some vigorous discussions. Agree with me on these? Great! Disagree? Even better! Let's discuss!

Okay, enough of the prelude. Let's get down to business. Here's my analysis, in a handy infographic, of the 5 Commandments applied to the entire film, Aliens.

Pretty simple, right? Yeah, sure, it is now, after hours of sweating through the various options and rearranging and rethinking. For example, initially I had the Inciting Incident as when Ripley is rescued in outer space after 57 years in cryosleep. There are also several viable candidates for the Turning Point. And the entire film is full of what we can all probably agree is one crisis after another.

I look forward to your thoughts on which of the scenes in Aliens best fit the global 5C's. In my next post, I'll apply the same analysis to a specific scene, rather than the entire story.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute to subscribe to my blog (the subscribe box is near the top of the right sidebar). Oh, and p.s. this post includes affiliate links.

Published on Leave a comment on Enough Already With The Made Up Words
Nobody does it better

I may have mentioned that I have partaken of the Google Kool-Aid. (BTW part of getting older is the annoyingly ever-present sense of deja vu one feels when bringing up practically any topic. You find yourself prefacing virtually every sentence with 'I may have mentioned' or 'Was it you I was telling' to soften the awkwardness of being told, 'yes, you already told me that'. It's a dementia preemptive strike. The logic goes like this: I can't have dementia if I'm aware that it may seem that I have dementia and forgot I already told you this twenty minutes ago. Flawed Logic Alert: so somehow it is better that you freely admit you can't remember if you already told someone something?)

But I digress.

I am pretty sure I mentioned this Google thing to you earlier, and one of the many reasons I am fond of it/them is the name. 'Google' is, I think, one of the first Internet-related made up words and IMO without doubt the best. It has a carefree air, is easy to spell and remember, and has been joyfully embraced by all. As it caught on, Mad Men everywhere breathed a huge sigh of relief that they could abandon the frustrating search for unique preexisting words and instead turn their ever so creative minds to, well, creating. Never again would we have to put up with half-assed, uninspiring names. Yes, Kia Sportage, I am talking to you.

So how is that working out for you, tech industry? I'll tell you how: not so good. With the explosion of millions of internet-related doohickeys, the fun and cool made-up names evaporated like camel piss on the Sahara. Instead of the Googles and Diggs and Reddits, we are now stuck with a bunch of non-words that not only have no meaning, they do not carry their marketing weight. We couldn't remember them, much less spell them in order to retype their home URL, if our life depended on it.

What brings this to mind is a recent convo I had with my daughter. She was recommending a new fitness app to me. Really liked it, cool GPS features to help you figure out how far your ran or biked that day, etc. What's not to like? I'll tell you what: the name. It's www.strava.com. What exactly is a strava? Is it someone's initials? Some sort of exotic African wildlife? The first, middle and last portions of the names/breeds/colors of the founders' purse pooches? The menu item served when the venture capital deal was clinched? Their favorite bike part/jelly bean flavor/middle school crush? You haters out there are probably thinking, well yeah but what is a 'Google'? I'll tell you what it is: it has grown beyond all doubt and question into its own thing, completely impervious to your haters' hateful hating. Aww, just kidding - spoiler alert - Google haters are right up there with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and a balanced national budget as one of the greatest myths of the modern age.

photo by Amador Loureiro via Unsplash

Mind you, I am not talking about domains that co-opt an existing word that has little or no relation to the domain content other than someone just liked the word (Yahoo), or those that have cleverly combined words and letters in a new way (Pinterest) or dropped silent or otherwise extraneous letters a la text message (Flickr). No, I am ranting about words that, until somebody paid the fee to GoDaddy, had ABSOLUTELY NO MEANING. AT ALL. Do you think a bunch of Stanford engineering grads sat around brainstorming these, or some former Papa John's employees just followed a two-year-old around and tried to reproduce every sound they made? I'll let the evidence do the talking. In order from bad to worst:

mozilla - I have been fooling about with computers for so long, I actually remember Mozilla from the bad ol' days of cassette tapes and floppy disks. This one gets a pass for sentimental reasons.

squidoo - actually kinda cute, puts me in mind of an adorable sea creature and its not-so-adorable bodily functions.

squurl - this one is included as it perfectly represents my bias against those who cannot be troubled to learn how to spell.

jamendo and jango - these are both music sites. One is semi-catchy. One fails. Which is which? I'll let you decide.

qz - science nerds running amok playing Esoteric Hipster, dangerously close to mystifying their intended audience. Yeah, I had to look it up.

imgur - yeah I get it but they are taking the phonetic thing a little too far, dontcha think? See squurl. And yes by using dontcha I am being ironic.

dord - this one is not a domain name yet, but if you want to use it, it has a cool pedigree.

meebo - the name wasn't bad enough to keep Google from buying it.

Oh yeah this baby will really drive the traffic to your site

erowid - this is a semi-real word but a) no regular person knows wtf it means and b) my brain keeps wanting to translate it to 'earwig' - eewwww!!

tweewoo - another music site. Folks shoulda put down the bong before they registered this one. I refuse to patronize any site that makes me sound like Elmer Fudd while pronouncing it.

fffff.at - these people have clearly just given up on finding a unique domain name. Isn't this the sound you make to approximate air being let out of a balloon?

Apparently there are websites out there that contribute to this debacle. Their clever algorithms will generate scores of unique yet meaningless domain names. Not to be outdone by a few lines of code, I'd like to take a crack at it. How about these? I even have some ideas for target markets.

foozl - perfect as a dating site for dyslexic court jesters

zaxunz - European police siren repair

klaq - speech pathology site for domesticated water fowl

baahrf - I totally see this working for one of those sites that tells college students where the good parties are

Good news: my hypothesis was correct. No pricey algorithms necessary to generate the perfectly unique domain name.  Just grab your Scrabble tiles (the real ones, not the app version), find a human 24 months or younger, and spell out the sounds they make (regardless of orifice). Piece of cake.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute to subscribe to my blog (the subscribe box is near the top of the right sidebar).

Published on Leave a comment on A Bad Case Of The What Ifs

Ever have that thing happen where you are minding your own business, maybe in your car or doing some other mindless repetitive task and your mind just wanders, then out of nowhere something triggers your imagination, and before you know it, you have cooked up some grand paranoid fantasy that gives you a huge case of the heebie-jeebies? Happens to me all the time. I call it the What Ifs.

Example: Once upon a time, on a trip out of town to a soccer tournament, one of the other parents drove my son and some friends to the local mall. Later that same afternoon, I was wandering around the hotel after they returned, wondering where my son was. Down to the game room; no Riley. Okay. How about the arcade by the pool? A group of boys from our team was there, but no Riley. I get a little mental frisson, which is the precursor to a probable onslaught of possible horrifying scenarios of my son’s whereabouts. I keep it under control for about 10 minutes (okay, 30 seconds), but then the cranial floodgates open. Isn’t there a pool in this hotel? What If he was horsing around with his friends and fell and hit his head on the pool coping and fell in and his friends thought he was fooling around when he lay on the bottom for so long but then they figured out he wasn’t fooling and they got scared and left him there because they didn’t want to get in trouble and that siren wailing outside is the ambulance coming to haul him out?

Whoa. Deep breath. Don’t be silly. He’s probably fine. But What If he did go down to the pool, but some of the hotel guests were actually predators staking out hotel because they knew a soccer tournament was that weekend and they figured lots of teams would be staying here and they also figured the kids would be unsupervised in the closed environment of a name hotel and so they staked out the pool and waited for a kid to come along who was obviously unsupervised and used the old ‘I’m with the hotel staff would you please come with me, son, your mother asked us to come and get you’ and poof! before you know it he’s whisked away in an unmarked black sedan with darkly tinted windows.

Black SUVs always trigger a robust What If response in my brain. What are they doing in there that the windows need to be tinted so darkly? What happened to the bike's rider? Why is the mannequin missing a head?

Whoa!! Stop it! Don't be ridiculous! But What If he was fooling around with his friends playing hide and seek and was tearing up and down the stairwells and turned an ankle and flipped over the railing and landed a whole story down on that hard concrete and got the breath knocked out of him and can’t call for help and nobody missed him for so long the bump on his head put pressure on his brain and he’s still lying there?

I can go on for days with the grim scenarios, but I think you get the picture. This is an example of the kinds of things that flow through the tortured mind of those of us with overactive imaginations. Being afflicted with the What Ifs is definitely a good news-bad news situation. The bad news is, you can really get yourself worked up over the most insignificant things. That thump you just heard downstairs that no one else seemed to notice, in your mind becomes the serial killer from three states away finding that broken latch on your basement window. The good news: it is a dream come true for a writer.

Scientists believe creativity and imagination are dictated by nature; that some of us are able to conjure up the fantastical more easily than others. My husband is a prime example of the have nots, as it were. He would think nothing of leaving our son home alone with a box of matches and a Bowie knife. His response to my objections is usually something like “He’s twelve years old, for crying out loud,” or “You worry too much”. It used to anger me that he was such an irresponsible caregiver. But now I understand that his brain is wired differently, that he sees what IS more easily than what COULD be. He is an educated and literate man, but he's definitely not cut out for writing fiction.

Put to a more practical application, the talent of conjuring infinite What If scenarios can stimulate fresh plot ideas for your fiction. The key is to let your imagination run wild – anything goes.

Let’s say you have a middle grade novel in the works with a young female protagonist. You have a solid plot outlined but your story seems a little flat. Your critique group determines your story does not pass the ‘who cares’ test (“Who cares what happens to your heroine?”). Here’s where the What If talent comes into play.

Perhaps you need to build a more intriguing background for your heroine. Instead of being the shy loner, What If your character is seen as shy because she doesn’t cultivate close friendships? Common enough, but What If she doesn’t make friends easily because she is not Katie from Schenectady but Katya from Sebastopol who was sent here as a sleeper agent to be groomed throughout childhood until she is ready to be released as an adult superspy on the unsuspecting public? What If she is the other kind of alien, jettisoned from her home planet, receiving weekly communications to guide her home planet in taking over Earth? What If she is a genetically mutated fox trapped in human form until she can find the key to changing herself back and also the thousands of children around the world who are similarly trapped when their fox den was too close to a nuclear plant when a meteor struck in Timbukstan but the incident was covered up by the government to avoid panicking the populace?

Okay, perhaps some of these examples are farfetched and unwieldy. But you never know where that next brilliant inspiration will come from. Often the most outlandish brainstorming will condense into the plot twist or character trait that will take your story from flat to fabulous.

So the next time your What Ifs give you a good case of the heebie-jeebies, embrace your natural talent. Take a deep breath. Put that talent to good use. Choose a scene from your latest project and say to yourself: “What if . . . ?”

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute to subscribe to my blog (the subscribe box is near the top of the right sidebar).

Published on Leave a comment on More Research Required
Borg me up, baby!

Hello, my name is Lissa, and I am a knowledge-a-holic.

I have been thinking lately that I have an issue with spending way too much time online. I plan to troubleshoot this problem by applying what is left of my brainpower.

What exactly is the big draw? Initially, I blamed my love of technology in most of its forms. I love my smart phone. So handy for so many little tasks! I love my microwave, without which my family would starve. I love GPS. I loved maps before, but the time savings (and no need for folding skills) with GPS is ridiculous! I love my satellite dish. Think about how that works - up in space, whirling round and round our planet, invisibly delivering massive amounts of viewing choices to millions of people 24/7. Speaking of which, I love my TV's remote control. It's not that I object to walking over to the TV to change the channel. But with hundreds of channels all programmed to show commercials at exactly the same time, standing there with your finger on the TV's channel button until you find something worth watching is just not an option.

I love all of these things and more, but it's the Internet that is killing me. I love all of my smart devices, but if it were not for the Internet, I would definitely not have a dead booty and a permanent kink behind my right shoulder blade from sitting in front of a screen all the dang day.

Think about it: without the Internet, how much time would you spend on your laptop/phone/tablet? It's the Internet, with all of this more or less infinite knowledge within literal reach, that keeps me chained to the desk. I am a knowledge junkie. I cannot get enough. So I sit here and ruin my health ('sitting is the new smoking') when I should be out taking the air and otherwise interacting with Mother Nature or other human beings.

Do you know the scene from The Fifth Element where Mila Jovovich's character, Leeloo, is catching up on 5000 years of human history by absorbing knowledge as images on the computer screen zip by? My idea of heaven! But I fear another fictional scenario may be more likely. It's only a matter of time until I turn up like that dude in a Stephen King short story, who spent so much time on his computer that gradually its wires burrowed into his body, and they became permanently entwined.

There's no way I am ready to give up my addiction. I haven't hit bottom yet. If only you could see what I see every day. Recent bounty included these tidbits:


I love info like Smaug loves his gold

Random? Sure. And each factoid has oodles of factoid-lets oh so ripe for the plucking. Dig a little deeper and you will find more info, and more, and more, an endless supply, more than any human brain could ever process. And it's just about as close to 'free' as you can get. I can wallow in this stuff all day long without spending a penny. I know the economists among you are out there waving your arms and shouting 'opportunity cost!', but I choose to ignore you since this is, after all, my blog.

The flow of information is not going to stop, and I'm not going to stop wallowing. So my only alternative is to turn this vice into something productive, channel it, control it. That way, I can rationalize all that time I spend BIC (Butt In Chair), or even (dare I hope?) allow myself even more BIC time. Hey, maybe this blog thing could be part of the solution. Definitely needs more research!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute to subscribe to my blog (the subscribe box is near the top of the right sidebar).

Published on Leave a comment on Rejected And Loving It

This is so not me. But it is the me I want to be.    
Photo by Lanakila McNaughton, part of a
series of great photos here.
 

I hate to admit it, but I'm a lifelong nerd/teacher's pet. I am an easygoing, rule-following, non-wavemaking, non-stuff-starting conformist. It's been ages since I got in trouble for anything, much less was kicked out of anything.

So I was a little nonplussed recently when a couple of my shares got removed from a writing community I joined. They were not spam. They were not of the Notice Me/Buy My Book ilk. They were relevant (IMO) links on the craft of writing, with my brief comments as to why they might be found interesting by the community. 

I'm a little embarrassed that I troubled them with inappropriate posts. But I'm also a little ticked. I went back and read their posts about what they did and didn't want submitted, and I can't for the life of me see why mine didn't pass muster. Particularly when I see some of the other posts flowing through unimpeded. The most amusing are the lame attempts to circumvent the community's 'no promotions' policy, such as this recent post:

"So far my free book promotion on Amazon has reached the rank of #169 overall and #4 in my genre (fantasy/epic). Is this pretty much par for the course in your experience with free books, or should I be excited?"

Oh, that's not self-promoting. No, not at all.

I dropped out of the community just to avoid any future misunderstandings. It was tempting to reach out to the admin for clarification and stay active in the group. But have you seen how many other writing and blogging communities I belong to? That would be like a drowning person asking the lifeguard to please add a little more water to the pool.

Still feeling all black-leather-jacket-and-motorcycle about my shares getting the boot. Wonder what I will get kicked out of today?

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute to subscribe to my blog (the subscribe box is near the top of the right sidebar).

Published on Leave a comment on Are You Trying? Or Doing?

When I first dipped a toe into the social media pool, I chose what I thought was a clever moniker for my brand: 'trying2write'. Now of course at that time, I had no idea what a brand was. I was more focused on how clever I seemed by wordsmithing that puppy like a boss.

Most of my writer friends were beginners like me. Finding the time to write was something we constantly fretted over. I was pretty proud of myself for grabbing that handle first. In hindsight, it now appears to be a self-fulfilling defeatist prophecy. As Master Yoda says:

However, being a Glass Half Full kinda gal, I don't view trying as failure. To me, trying is doing. Lack of trying is failure.

I suspect that for many of us, 'trying' is a euphemism for 'thinking about [fill in your unfulfilled goal here - in my case, writing] while procrastinating and doing just about anything else including scrubbing the bathroom grout with baking soda and a toothpick to avoid actually [writing]'. So the ugly truth is this: I am not further along in my writing process because I am decidedly NOT trying.

For someone (me) who professes to enjoy all aspects of writing - the solitude, the goal-setting, planning, plotting, brainstorming, organizing, publishing, marketing, networking, promoting, payday, and oh yes, THE ACTUAL WRITING  -  I certainly don't set aside much time for this thing I supposedly prize so highly. And I don't even have the formidable obstacles many aspiring writers have to overcome. I don't work a full time job. I don't have young kids to carpool. So what's the issue? The issue is the Not Doing. If I put as much time into my actual unfinished manuscripts (7 at last count) that I do into all the other stuff I just listed, they would be finished by now.

I've since changed most of my social media accounts from the clever to the practical - most of them are now some version of my name. Pro tip: at around the same time I did this, I deleted the word 'aspiring' from all of my author profiles.

So as much as I would love to continue blogging and surfing and tweeting, I need to unplug and devote the precious next two hours I have available today to working on an important scene in the middle build of my current WIP.  If you need me, I'll be trying2write.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute and subscribe to my email list.

2

Published on 2 Comments on 10 Things I Hate About My Critique Group

When I first started writing, I took someone’s advice and joined a critique group. I didn’t know anything about critique groups. I thought it would be like a book club – the ones where nobody actually reads the book and the meetings are just an excuse to get together for lunch. I guess I joined the wrong group. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Photo by rawpixel at Unsplash

I hate the way I have to have something ready to read every time we meet. I could be napping, or ironing, or grocery shopping, or scrubbing toilets, but instead I have to take the time to write so I’ll have something ready for them to critique.

I hate the way they critique. It never fails, if they have something critical to say, they always follow that up with something positive. It’s so formulaic!

I hate they way they are constantly sharing market sources. Every time we meet, it’s a new contact or magazine or contest. And of course I have to submit something because if I don’t, the rest of the group will wonder why I’m the only one who doesn’t.

I hate they way they pick out the typos in my work. After all, I have been working with this stuff for days, weeks, sometimes months. How did they catch it when I didn’t?

I hate the way they hold me accountable for what I write. For once, why can’t they just say, “It’s good enough the way it is”?

I hate the way they push me to submit every single thing I write. They even critique my queries, for crying out loud!

I hate how they waste so much time brainstorming. Why would they want to spend so much time on a plot twist that isn’t even their story? So what if it makes all the difference and sends me in a direction I hadn’t considered before? Wouldn’t they rather be spending that time on their own work?

I hate they way they insist on celebrating every time someone has a sale. All of that shouting and hugging and praise embarrasses me.

I hate they way they prop me up after yet another rejection. Don’t they realize I will never be any good at this and I just need to stop trying?

Most of all, I hate how I feel when I have to miss a critique group meeting. I miss the input, even if it is critical. I miss my writer friends, even if they sometimes tell me things I don’t want to hear.  So if you will pardon me, I have a deadline. The toilets and the ironing will just have to wait.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute and subscribe to my email list.

2

Published on 2 Comments on 6 Things I Learned About Writing From Trans Siberian Orchestra

One holiday season, the hubs and I saw Trans Siberian Orchestra for the first time. We got the tickets as a thank-you gift during a public radio pledge drive. As a long-time supporter I usually don't claim a gift, but when I heard these tickets were available, I had to go for it. I had heard positive things about this group and was curious to see them live. We were not disappointed. The seats were way better than I expected. I had visions of oxygen tanks and safety harnesses but they were not required - we were on the floor level only twelve rows back. My fear of falling to my death from the 'crow's nest' seats was supplanted by fear of being decapitated by the massive lighting rigs suspended over the stage.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew they were an orchestra - duh! I knew they had some seasonal music connection. I imagined an evening of jazzed-up holiday standards, attracting the kind of audience who is excited about the first opportunity to wear their new Christmas sweater. I was wrong.

TSO is a holiday act in the same way Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Yes, there are a few token Christmas references, but at heart they are mind-boggling, eye-popping special effects vehicles. The artists are very talented. But the main attraction was the lighting and video effects. Think Lady Gaga concert meets the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios.

So I'm sitting there enjoying the show, observing my fellow audience members, and I realized TSO has a very solid business model that can be applied to many endeavors, including writing.

Start on time
We've all heard the nightmare stories of spoiled, irresponsible, drugged-out musicians appearing ridiculously late - or not at all - for their concerts. Not these folks! Concert was scheduled for 8:00p.m. We were underway at 8:00 p.m. No opening acts, no teasers. Clock struck 8 and away we went. As writers it is tempting to assume we are the masters of our own schedules. If we want to sleep in or take a long lunch or hit the mall during off-peak hours, why not? We can make up that precious writing time. Folks, that is the road to perdition. Have a schedule. Stick to it, same as if you were catching a train or driving the kiddos to school. Must happen in a timely manner on a regular basis.

Find a niche and work it
There can't be that many 80s-hair-band-industrial-light-and-sound-Christmas-orchestras out there. That's what I call a niche. Works for TSO, works for writers. Fiction genres have become so splintered. If you can't find a niche that fits your work, that's probably a great sign that you should start your own. Also a great sign no one is filling that need, so you can corner the market for paranormal-fuzzy sleuth-amnesia-whodunits!

Understand your strengths and stick to them
TSO's performance included a long ongoing narrative preceding several of the musical numbers. The narrator had a great voice, but the story was lame and, frankly, boring. But when we got back to the lights and music, all was well. Note to TSO: get an editor.

Understand your audience and give them what they want
Many in the audience had obviously been to a TSO performance before, or owned their recordings. They cheered at the first strains of various songs. They stood on their chairs and waved that Y-shaped hand sign meaning either they are from Hawaii or a member of the Crips, I can never remember which. So hurray for brand loyalty! The arena was pretty full and from what I understand, the retail price of those tickets ran about $75 a pop. People will pay for something that meets their entertainment needs. Find out what that is, and give it to them.

Show your audience you are giving 110%
One of the cast/band/orchestra/whatever was a violinist. Now keep in mind we were in an arena setting. Seats thousands. Sound system second to none. The set was two stories tall, with speakers to match. We are talking LOUD rock music, multiple electric guitars, not one but two electronic keyboards, and a drum set bigger than my car. And the guy with the smallest, lowest decibel instrument in the place is brandishing his violin like a Tahitian fire juggler. Could anyone hear his violin? Nope. Did he care? Not a whit. He wore himself out running all over the place, bowing that fiddle like there was no tomorrow. I don't know if he sounded any good, but A for effort. Your writing should show the same amount of dedication in the finished product. Show the reader you care enough to provide a quality entertainment experience.

Craft a satisfying ending
Endings are tough for musicians. No matter how great the performance, they can't possibly play every song in their catalog, and some fan is bound to disappointed not to hear their favorite. Not having any knowledge of TSO's music, I didn't judge their performance on what they may have left out. Rather, I evaluated it on the 'story arc'. Overall they did a good job. They started with a literal bang, had some peaks and valleys, built to a big finish, didn't stop there, and finished a little bigger. Much like a good fireworks show, it was disappointing but obvious when it was over. As writers, we have it a little easier in that we aren't expected to include each and every character or setting or situation in every story. Because we are not performing live, with proper planning and editing, we can wrap things up neatly and avoid disappointing the audience with sloppy loose ends.

We enjoyed the performance, but I'm not ready to become a TSO groupie. That's not a knock on them. I'm a change junkie. There aren't many experiences that I enjoy repeating ad infinitum. But I do appreciate their professionalism and talent. I look forward to bringing the same level of dedication and hard work to my next project. Anyone know where I can buy a fog machine and some strobe lights?

this post first appeared in 2013

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute and subscribe to my email list.

2

Published on 2 Comments on NaNoWriMo: It’s In The Cards

Pardon me if this post seems wordier than usual. What can I say? It's NaNo season.

Here we are in November once again, and that means many writers you know are starting to look a little wild-eyed. November is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. More than 300,000 writers have accepted a challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to be finished. It just has to be 50,000 words closer to a finished product than you were in October. If you divide 50,000 words by 30 days, you'll find you need to write 1667 words a day. 

A while back I purchased a writing tool called Story Forge. It's a deck of cards you use in a myriad of ways to spur creativity, organize your writing, and generally have some fun. NaNo is the perfect time to try them out.

The cards are larger than your average playing card. They're more similar to a tarot card, very sturdy and well made. They come with a small instruction booklet. It took me just a few minutes to get the gist. There are several suggestions on how they can be used. Since I am at the beginning of a project, I chose to use them to guide me in creating an outline. They have a couple different layouts, or 'spreads', for a book-length project. I shuffled the cards as best I could (they're quite stiff), and laid them out as suggested. Then I keyed them in to my Scrivener outline, and voila! in less than an hour I had a very workable outline.

Story Forge borrows from the master of story structure, Joseph Campbell. I merged my layout with Campbell's 12 Stages of the Hero's Journey, then plugged them into the Scrivener outline feature. As a secondary project, I played around with color coding and labeling each stage of the journey based on whichever card had popped up in the layout. The end result was a 22 step outline, complete with brief descriptions on what was supposed to be happening in each step and why. Like my NaNo project, it's just a first draft. But a first draft of an outline for a complete novel in under an hour is pretty dang cool IMO.

You may be thinking this sounds a little too formulaic, but what book or movie isn't? In fact, the sociological research of Campbell and others indicates adhering to certain basic patterns contribute significantly to how much the reader/viewer enjoys the story. I figure, why mess with success? Rather than feel constrained, I feel comforted that Campbell is my guiding light so that I won't leave out any important components.

But back to the Story Forge cards: they can also be used for smaller projects. Here's an example of using them to flesh out a minor character. It requires only 7 cards. If you're doing NaNo, feel free to give it a spin and use this layout to crank out those 1667 words each day.

Character 'Quick Pick'

Here's the layout, or spread:

The 88 cards are grouped into six different categories. The instructions explain the meanings of the categories, suggest some spreads, and indicate what each card position in the spread represents. Here are the results for helping develop a minor character, completely at random after a few shuffles. Since the writing is a little small in the picture, I've spelled it out for you below. The card number indicates its position in the layout. Directly below is a description of the card that landed in that position as I dealt them out.

Card 1: The character's base nature

WAR. Negotiations break down. No equitable solutions can be agreed upon. Conflict escalates to violent combat.

Card 2: The influence of the universe

THE BUREAUCRAT. As someone who accepts or even embraces bureaucracy, this person could be a powerful foe or ally in the political or financial arenas.

Card 3: His/her 'Achilles heel'

A WEALTH card. While wealth cards can be taken literally to represent money or finance, they can also stand for nearly anything in the physical, material world, including issues of shelter, employment or security.

Card 4: The influence of family/friends

RELAPSE. Forces or patterns that were thought to be left behind rise anew, stronger than ever.

Card 5: The character's driving passion

CHAOS. Chaos prevails. Rationality and predictability give way to random or seemingly insane events.

Card 6. The character's destiny

Another WEALTH card.

Card 7. What stands between them and their destiny

HEALTH. The body is strong and free from disease. Can be a generally good constitution or a return to health after having been injured or sick. Notice this 7th card is laid across the 6th. Crossing cards represent a barrier or obstacle to the card they are crossing. So in this instance, there is something about the health status of the character that is preventing them from achieving that second Wealth goal.

Obviously these spreads aren't going to make sense 100% of the time. No one is suggesting you become enslaved to them and try to make their suggestions work against the grain. If you turn up a card that doesn't work, there are several options. I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but each card has two meanings, usually opposite. For example, the bottom half of the Health card is Illness. If a card turns up that doesn't fit your needs, turn it around and try it that way. If it's still not working, draw another card. If the whole spread is a mess, reshuffle and try again.

Story Forge is just another way to get the creative juices flowing. I thoroughly enjoyed using it and will continue to do so, even though part of me keeps envisioning a scene from Tin Cup. If you haven't seen the movie, Kevin Costner plays a down-at-the-heels golf pro. Feeling some pressure about an upcoming tournament, he turns to some unusual training tools to help get back on track. He looked silly using them, but underneath all the silly tools, he had some mad skills. I like to think we have that in common.

I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute and subscribe to my email list.

4

Published on 4 Comments on Nipping At My Heels

Every day I wake up feeling pressure to write. It's there before I even get out of bed, nipping at my heels like my cousin Helen's hateful Chihuahua. What to write is not the problem. I'm one of these types who has no problem generating writing topics. It's the finishing that's the issue for me. I have half a dozen manuscripts in various stages of completion. Some are products of NaNoWriMo. I can get going, but my adult ADD soon kicks in and I become bored with the project. I get a wandering eye. Anything and everything appears like a better idea for a new project than the one I am current working on.

Last year I put the hammer down and refused myself the luxury of any new book projects until these unfinished orphans are complete and e-published. I chose one and have been working on it again. It's not the best one. It's not my favorite. It's not the one with the most potential for success. But since it is the one closest to completion, logic dictates I finish it so I can move on to something else. Honestly, my heart is only halfway in it, like a philandering spouse. Sure, I come back to it, but I also lust after everything new and different and exciting that passes by.

I am making some progress, but my re-commitment is somewhat suspect. I have this blog plus a Facebook Page plus Instagram plus my guilty pleasure and apple of my SM eye, Twitter.  I tell myself I am 'building my brand', but let's face it - what good does it do to build a brand when I don't have any product to sell? The social networking and tweeting and branding are all just delicious diversions from the actual business at hand: finishing the dang books.

So for me, it's not about the work. It's about choices. I need to take a lesson from the girl in this old Moonraker clip. Why on earth does she tried to evade vicious, slavering four-footed killing machines in her clunky heels, rather than just hopping in the golf cart and high-tailing it outta there? I need to choose the golf cart here! Sometime soon, maybe I will be blogging about the blessed relief from pressure when my book is complete and out there on the virtual bookshelf at .99 per. Here's hoping the golf cart stays charged.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll take a minute and subscribe to my email list.