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 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
| Stealing a Character A colleague recently told me she has “No Imagination” and wondered how great writers come up with such wonderful characters. To myself I answered the question… Why they steal them from real life or from the works of others. I know this sounds like a terrible thing to do but it isn’t. By the time you get a character you like (From wherever you dredge them up) settled into your novel they have changed in sound and appearance to the point where they are unrecognizable. What I do is “CAST” around on all the screen plays, TV miniseries or soap operas I can recall until I find someone who fits the bill for a story I am writing. Now keep in mind that in the three medias mentioned above, you have a screen and a sound track. In your novel you don’t have either one. So you have to convert the image and sound into imaginative wavelengths and vibrations… By the time you finish doing this, the character has changed even more, but at least you started out with a character you like, who is close to who you are looking for. An alternative method is to start with someone you know or have seen. In the case of the screenplay you have an image and sound that has “authenticity” and of course in a real life character you have the same thing. This is important as your character must look and sound the part. Next you want to take on the role of actor with your character. I don’t go to the length of make-up and wigs and all that but I do stand in front of the bathroom mirror. I squiggle up my face and mimic the lines they spoke from the screen play or recollection of they spoke in real life. I want to become this character in the same sense that an actor tries to become the character they are seeking to portray in a stage or screen drama. Work on the accent and mannerisms and the squiggly face thing….Oh and make sure nobody is watching, especially co-workers or children or spouses…. They will rag you unmercifully… although children will catch on readily enough to what you are up to. What is happening is that your subconscious is creating a template of your character and the richer this template becomes the more vivid the character will appear in your writing. Have you ever seen someone who was a great mime. My wife is, I have friends who can keep you in stitches, and there is no shortage of comedians who do this sort of thing professionally. Well, as a writer you have to develop a modicum of talent and skill in this regard to aid you in your character development. Now you know you have the authenticity thing down pat when you begin to write about a character and you “HEAR” them taking in the voice of the character you are writing about and you “SEE” their mannerism repeated in your imagination. Then you know you are getting a handle on your character… When they begin to sneer, or strut and fret, or evidence that mannerism… as their twang, or nasal intonation or silly laugh fill your mind as you write you know you are on the road to a character that will come alive in a reader’s mind as they turn the pages. If you don’t feel them as you write…go back to the mirror and get some more face time….if you can’t hear the resonance of their voice, talk to them some more. You should be able to see them in your mind’s eye, looking back as you write the dialogue. If that isn’t happening, if the experience is not close to speaking with a friend in a conversation, you don’t know them will enough….Get up from your desk or laptop and find a safe place to walk around in circles for awhile. |
| Beyond “Liking” a piece of writing Many of my students come back to me and say that a huge benefit of taking the “One Act Play” (OAP) was that it forever changed the way they read literature. No longer is it strictly for pleasure, but now it is with an inquisitive understanding of what it was that makes a play or a novel work or not work. If that was an unexpected spin off from the OAP it must be even more the case with the Exploratory Writing Workshop. My students this semester are all in the range of competent “Tactical Writers.” This means that they can write a chapter sized work that moves effectively from start to finish. What they don’t have however, is a visceral understanding of the operational and strategic aspects of writing. Operational: The stringing of chapters, Outlining, foreshadowing, symbolism, repetition, crisis building and a host of other requirements. Strategic: Research, A Dramatic Premise…A life changing event, themes… a “Central” central character. (Someone with the amperage and opportunity to carry the story) While tactical writing often flows naturally, Strategic and Operational writing needs to be consciously dealt with and “manually” poked into the outline. These levels of writing do not simply happen by accident as in a case where a writer cranks out, following their muse, a good essay or entertaining short story. Good tactical writing is possible without a whole lot of prior planning however the Operational and Strategic levels need some deliberate and conscious thought. There is one more vignette to go and we will be then be plugging them into the structure of an outline. I have been surprised by the struggle many of the students are having with Crisis development. A crisis is an event that puts the Central Character on the rack and requires him or her to make some agonizing choices….In the process the reader gets a great look at the character and sees where they’re at on the developmental curve. Think about virtually any novel you have ever read and you will see a string of crisis that is introduced to achieve exactly this. I do hope the students are beginning to understand better the dynamics that are taking place at the operational and strategic levels of writing. |
| Fluidity in an Outline As I shadow take the Exploratory Writing Workshop (EWW) I see the dynamics of what the students are going through much more clearly than if I had not. It is one thing to see an issue developing in a paper you are reviewing and quite another to see it rear its head on your own. I use the evolution of an unanticipated Central Character (CC) as an example; however there are many more that I could choose. For example the evolution of an unexpected Dramatic Premise (DP) that profoundly affects the nature of the story. Allow me to follow these threads and explain more fully. First, despite the fact that he is the classic Hero, Rindar begins to fade as a person of interest once the bloodletting is done. He lacks the amperage to take the story where it needs to go. Volusia, who is more central, who has a spiritual connection with the Gods, who is the smarter and launches her man on the right path supersedes Rindar after the first crisis. The story gains momentum in the first crisis as she journeys to the spirit world to petition the Gods then picks up steam when she finds herself unable to kill Lord Marcutti as he lays vulnerable and finally Prince Koltar returns In need of his son Moogy… Koltar begins casting about trying to get a grip on what has happened and is drawn towards the Buffalo village where the natives are waiting in anticipation of the Wardarian wrath. The complexity of the story has deepened and in the exploratory process it has gone from linear to multidimensional. This is possible because the constraint equations we come up with to box the story window are not allowed to set up and narrow the outcome to what the writer originally had in mind. This is huge! Our minds are not big enough to embrace the fullness of a larger work and if we reach too far to fast we have to brush aside too many things in order to stay focused. Keeping the assumptions fluid and malleable allows them to serve as place holders that stick ideas to the story web without drawing it down into a limiting structure. The writer comes back to the question….how do I write an outline if I don’t know what the full story is? The answer is that you have to have an outline but that outline does not have to be written before you start doing the vignettes. The vignettes allow the writer to explore and coax the fullness of the story from the genesis of an idea into an outline that blossoms as the parts emerge and are adhered to the structure. Most of my students had a story that was already written prior to taking the course and the structure had set and they were frustrated by having to change or scrap it. The lesson learned is that a writer should not start to write seriously until the outline appears in some semblance of a final form. |
| Another Dream Recollection Sometimes I feel on about the forth or fifth day following a head cold an amazing clarity of mind. I wonder if maybe the cold virus has a symbiotic attachment to human kind and about once a year they come in and perform a housekeeping function. Last night I had a vivid dream….I was in a military sniper’s class and I was about to be eliminated from the course for want of aptitude. I noticed on the blackboard some algorithms that had been erased from a previous advance class and copied them down. A study of these equations led me to speculate that they were used in a computer program designed to detect and eliminate a sniper that had been particularly effective. In WW2 for example there were Russian snipers, particularly in Stalingrad, no doubt Leningrad and elsewhere who ran up a particularly high head count of German Soldiers… That the problem became so acute that Berlin sent in a special team of operatives to try and eliminate these Russian ground“Aces.” I was reading something about Stalingrad and one of the Aces was talking about Berlin’s intentions and speculating what sort of techniques the German team might intend to use to track them down. In other words the Russians concluded it would be a step beyond using a more sophisticated, highly trained and better equipped rifleman. I recall being intrigued at the time but remember the discussion stopped short of discussing further options. One hypothesised was to use a specially equipped armored vehicle. This seemed like a particularly good idea but only one of many possibilities that present themselves in host of technological advances that have surfaced in the past fifty years. Anyway these algorithms I concluded came from a “Counter Sniper” program that was part of the package used to track these shooters down. I recall in the dream trying to identify what the variables stood for and some stood out…like 60mm mortar, 81mm mortar, 4.2 mortar, Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV), Abram’s tank, (M-1), ATV, UPV (Un piloted vehicle) RR, (Robotic Rifle), 8in. Then acronyms that applied to control systems for these weapons, like cell phones, lap tops, and finally sound sensing systems linked to GPS tracking devices; how the equations were designed to be used in concert depending on the MO the shooter used. In other words like a combination of antibiotics targeting a resistant threat organism. So this brings us back to the cold virus, dreams and waking up with a clear mind. |
| Winding up the Exploratory Writing Workshop Lessons 7 and 8 I’ve been thinking about these last two lessons in the EWW. Once the six vignettes are written… what is the best way to go from there to complete the full developmental outline of the student’s story. Trying to keep the process as simple as possible I’ve concluded the following approach. Lesson 7: Take a piece of paper and list “Chapters 1-20” Take the six vignettes and plug the names into six of the above slots. For each of the six choose the key events in each vignette and list them beneath as subsets of the chapter. When you finish you might have plugged Chapters 1, 3, 7, 10, 15 and 19. Lesson 8: Name Chapter’s 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9,11, 12, 13, 14 ,16, 17, 18 and 20. Look at how each plugs into the other in the sequence and develop the bullet events each must contain to transition and fill the gaps . After writing the six (6) vignettes the student should have enough information to complete the outline. With this outline it is rather easy to go on and finish the novel. It is on a piece of paper in bite sized chunks and the thread of the story has been percolating for six weeks. Think of a vignette as the sketch of a chapter. If you can write a vignette a chapter should be no problem. These are tactical issues the student has already demonstrated proficiency in doing as they worked lessons 1 through 6. Advantages: 1. The student now has a much clearer sense for how the story is going to flow than they did to start with. If they had just started pushing the pencil (pounding the keys) about a third of the way through they would encounter a big mess. A protagonist who is an “Uncentral Character” is one of many problems that result from not integrating strategic and operational thinking into the developmental process. 2. The strategic and operational items are now front end loaded into the outline and the student has an appreciation for what they are and how important they are to the story. These involve things like a Dramatic Premise, Life Changing event, Want need or desire, and three crises that build in magnitude and intensity, moving the story along, as well as transitions and how to identify a chapter’s essential events, doing chapter outlines, writing a synopsis and doing an initial draft. 3.These are some of the structural underpinnings that form the framework of a longer and more complex work, upon which the key components are appended. Once that is in place the student is ready to take that familiar palate of tactical writing skills and paint over in the strokes that make their voice and style of writing unique. |
| Diatribe Well today I got all my reviews written for this week’s Exploratory Writing Workshop lesson. My students are making a lot of progress and starting to get a visceral understanding of what a life changing event is, a Dramatic Premise and what constitutes a crisis rather than a hick-up in the road of life. They are all good writers but how can someone really write a complex work without being on an intimate basis with these ideas and so many more that exist at the operational and strategic levels of good writing. We learn by doing and it isn’t enough to provide a good lesson….a student has to do the work for themselves before the light really comes on in the gut. Something as basic as a central character is not someone a writer nominates but rather someone who emerges during the developmental process… I know! Most of the experts disagree and say their characters are galley slaves and there is nothing mysterious about where they come from but I disagree… There is a spiritual quality to writing that resonates in your heart, just like a catchy tune resonates in your awareness… Just like a line of poetry quivers in your soul, crying out with an unmistakable authenticity. I wrote a free verse poem called “Diatribe.” It is a sensual prose piece so don’t read it if that’s not your cup of tea. There are some lines however; that I liked and I found that free verse captures the spirit of the physical experience in ways that prose will never approach. The more I write in the poetic media the more I am amazed at how the spiritual dimension can be captured in a written work. That to me is why Shakespeare’s dramas have such power to this day. He found using iambic pentameter that he could capture that spiritual essence weaving it into a tapestry that intermingled both the prose and lyrical threads and thereby retain the spiritual essence. It can be any poetic form and not exclusively one that Shakespeare, Kipling or Pindar used. I even see evidence of it in my most recent poem. |
| Hating a Head Cold I have a bad cold. Yesterday my nose started running like a faucet. I took some Nyquil got in bed and began riding out the storm. It got worse in the night and this morning my lips are swollen and I look like a Neanderthal. I am one old and ugly looking dude. On the plus side I did get one uplifting review on my poem “Love on a Platter.” Don’t hear much on that one and it’s one of my favorites. It shows the value of persistence. Then I read Karen’s weekly Newsletter and as always she does a good job with it and the other instructors provide such good input. When I have a cold and fever, I have particularly vivid dreams. I dreamed I was back in college and while having aged in the dream I was not beset by any of the infirmities. Everybody was saying nice things (Very unusual in my dreams) and I would have none of it….Told them if they wanted the accolades to take them and leave me alone. Then I started sneezing and the floodgates of my sinuses opened and I really felt miserable. This morning is better. I took some antihistamine and am returning to some semblance of normality. The sun is shining outside and soon I will have to get up, dressed and go out and stoke the stove. Missed a blog yesterday and I hate it when that happens. Still since most of my readers don’t drop by every day I don’t think that anyone but Karen notices. She is a sharpie. Yesterday morning a student had to remind me to open my lesson for the week. Why am I ‘fessing to the world all my shortcomings….Never used to do that… Kept them to myself and became indignant when others pointed them out… Now I admit them like some geek looking for absolution…..”Forgive me readers, I have sinned… I forgot my blog…. I forgot the windshield appointment at Pfeiffer’s. “Is that pitiful or what? Who wants to hear that drivel? More tomorrow. See ya. |
| Paradigms Today I had fences to mend…. My friend Bill was not over impressed that I missed the windshield appointment. Anyway I dropped the car off and we had Lunch at Mickey D’s. I have been cutting wood and splitting. The temperature is going down to 14 degrees tonight. I am thinking about the three things I have in the Hopper. I need to finish them and will start (continue?) with the first crisis that Rindar is facing. This morning I worked for several hours on “Diatribe.“ Then there is “The Hooker” simmering on the back burner. Woke up from a “Death Nap” half hour ago… My mind is really sharp but my body is sluggish. The House is quiet except for Linda talking on the telephone. I better get cranking… short Blog Today. My blog gets a lot of activity but not many comments. My life is pretty ordinary and I know my views of writing are not exactly worthy of acclaim. Still when I read some of my reference material I shake my head….That people are actually getting paid to crank our this fire hose litany of material that I have read in different forms at least a half dozen times. At least the things we are doing in the EWW are delving into better ways to develop material and write about it. I am reading a new Janet Evanovitch novel that she co-authored with somebody else. It is not her voice but it is credibly written. A nice “Who Done It” story line that moves liltingly along. I have been thinking about going back and diagramming the ten books I most enjoyed reading in my life. Its like drawing up the blueprints of a house instead of taking a picture of it….you know not walking around the grounds and looking from the outside, or going through the rooms and see how they adjoin but instead… sitting at the kitchen table with the floor plan and studying all the “House Systems” that make it breath and come to life….Like the plumbing, wiring, heating and Air-conditioning, ductwork and where the bath and showers are lfixtured. When we visit a house as a curiosity we look at things in a manner similar to how we read. Its one thing to read for sheer pleasure and another to read in order to understand function and utility. I guess it’s the old form and substance understanding pyridine. I think we should put that word in our dictionary…Paradigm: “Twenty Cents.” Cluck cluck! Smile Karen, it’s the best I can come up with right now. |
| Good Enough for Me and Linda Barkley II We took the dogs to the groomer today to get rid of some of the winter crud that builds up on the nasty beasts. These are not normal dogs. Every dog we ever had started slinking and slanking when we showed up at the “Dog salon” Hey, Chloe and Honey love going to get bathed and have their hair done. They greet the groomers, jump up and down and make a big fuss… I don’t know how those girls do it…. Must be some secret trick they have….Dardest thing I ever saw. Now they are both primping around and the cat Felix is confused. Felix is one of the outdoor cats that auditioned for a dog position. She started hanging out with the dogs when they went into the farmers field next door. Then she started going on walks with us. Then she started frolicking with the dogs…woof woof. The other cats treated her like a pariah and Felix decided…what the heck…I’ll become a dog. I forgot I had an appointment today to drop my car off to get a new windshield. When we got home there was a call from Pfeiffer’s Automotive… Shucks I uttered or something that sounds similar. Now they’ll be asking how my Alzheimer’s therapy is coming. I hate it when I screw up… Maybe I can say the pick-up was stolen, then drop it off next week with some kind of nonsense recovery story….That will work! This is Wisconsin (Don’t you Know?) Personal responsibility is not anybody’s long suit. I am behind on my “Shadow Writing.” I have two creative works in the hopper that have siphoned off all my extra writing time. I might not have time to do a vignette this week. Tomorrow is Thursday and I only have one half written….Maybe tomorrow I’ll crash on it…. Whenever I do that my compositions turn out to be a piece of crap or really good… Who says you can’t sometimes crank out good work facing a deadline? Linda has been cranky today… she gets that way sometimes… Occasionally it is my fault but even if it isn’t it soon becomes my fault. She has this huge backlog of things to bitch about and if one approach doesn’t pan out there are plenty of others she can modify and adapt to the situation… Then there is always the old fall back….do you remember when (twenty years ago) you did this and that…. I have to signal the time out sign and go outside and cut some wood or do something in the garage or with the stove. I don’t know what a photographic memory exactly is. My daughters can recite every line in a movie they just saw and my wife’s mother worked in a laundry with over five-thousand customers and knew every garment they owned, the names of wives and children and who was cheating on who…Does that qualify….? And I will tell you with absolute certainty that my wife is the Alfa-matriarch and nobody before or after is a pimple on her patootie. Its humbling when your wife can correct you on things…. that took place when she wasn’t even there. |
| Simple is Better Last night I got drawn into a sensual prose piece that went on forever. It was mostly a man’s harangue at his girlfriend who had already made up her mind and had little more to say. She sits next to him in the car and motel saying little as he waxes on and on. I haven’t posted it yet….it isn’t really finished…The prose flowed more like free verse poetry and when I broke it into lines the epistle ran for fifteen pages. Most was a one sided view of their relationship but a third got into some of the physical aspects. Then I wrote another vignette and got about halfway through…. About a writer who interviews a hooker in order to develop a sketch of a character in his novel. How when he expands and embellishes the sketch she becomes the new character with the characteristics he improves upon to make her more interesting to the reader. It is really turning out well. I don’t know why the sudden interest in the sensual motif. It comes in spells and has little to do with the affection Linda and I show to one another. Our human sexuality is such a powerful and overwhelming force that it seems to lurk out there on the edge of everything I write… and often right there in the middle. However, I am finding that as I grow older that the spirit remains even though the old curmudgeon finds himself on the backside of the physicality curve. One of the things I have discovered is that less is better. That is a truism I try to get across to my students, who get carried away with all forms of modifiers. When I edit my work if I see a line like…“ She looked at him with steely eyes and addressed him in a voice, fraught with contempt...” gets changed to “She gave him a hard look and said with contempt…” The Greeks were said to have written like this….”The red sun set on the horizon” instead of “As radiant beams of daylight settled upon the distant waves, the soft ambient glow of muted sunshine, shimmered across placid waters and sank languidly below the distant horizon.” I don’t know about you but I like the first version better. |
| Super Bowl Sunday I had an idea for a story this morning and set off to write enough of it so I would not lose the main thought. It is a good idea and I plan to write at least a vignette in developing it. After church I finished the last of my Lesson 3 Reviews. That is always a relief to get that accomplished. Trying to maintain my writing, blog and EWW requirements is hectic and I can imagine how hard it must be for someone who has a real day job. Today is another sunny day in the 30 degree range…It is supposed to get cooler but only drop into the twenties. I have not burned half the wood I did last year. Hopefully I can get ahead. I started this year without a stick on the property. My students have been very quiet this week. I think the lessons are keeping them busy. Everybody submitted on time and here it is, the afternoon of the Super Bowl and I won’t feel guilty watching the game. I am predicting that New York will win on account of their defense, however the teams are very evenly matched. As I read the submissions for this week I was again struck by the quality of what the students are turning in. The overall quality on the average is higher than the past two terms, however the top submissions have consistently been high regardless of semester. One of my students, bertie brite dropped me a note and it was good to hear from her. This country church I belong to is a very unusual congregation…The leadership goes well beyond the minister and there are many members who step up with their skits and music to make the weekly service a success. The minister is not charismatic but is the “Real Deal” with a loving heart and sincere interest, and there is a diversity of people in charge who don’t seem to get in each other’s way. It should be a model for how a church is run, however it is the only one I have ever seen that so operates. I think I’ll go out and fill the stove and take a nap. Then I’ll be rested and ready to go for the Super Bowl. |
| Saturday is Dump Day Today Mark will be over and we will go and cut wood. I suggested 2 truckloads and think that will be enough. I have three (3) reviews to complete having done four (4) already. One has some sharp edges I need to smooth off. It is going to be a beautiful day. This has been a mild winter and I have only burned about half of what I did last year. When the temperature drops below zero and reaches down to twenty below for a few days in January I have to fill the stove up to five times a day. That is cold….real cold. This year it gets down to zero at night but goes up into the teens or higher during the day. Yesterday Linda and I took a drive around the country side. We visited a number of local antique shops and didn’t buy anything. The quality is just not there like it once was. My brother and I and our wives are planning a trip to France in September, to the village we grew up in as boys. I am looking forward to walking around and getting reacquainted. When I do a review I put the student vignette on my Apple and crank the font size up three times. The Apple also has a capability for sweeping pages and I can really navigate around well while reviewing. On an older laptop I call up the word processor, take the review template and commence to reviewing. This really works well for me and takes at least an intense half an hour to complete one…sometimes longer. These are comprehensive and great reviews, (better than anything I have ever gotten) and the students usually respond with a “Thank-You”… even when I think at time they would prefer a “Kiss my grits, Percy.” Actually I have gotten some pretty sharp, albeit gloved replies….”I must respectfully disagree with this review,” I hear from time to time. There is the one that questions my competence to teach the course…. That’s when I know I have hit a raw nerve. I used to get the dreaded, “How Dare You!” opening but I must becoming more socialized because I don’t get that one anymore. In one group I had to respectfully withdraw to the tune… “Don’t let the screen door hit you in the butt.” These days, however, the tension level is low and the students seem to enjoy, even if they don’t always agree, the comments they are receiving. Oh my Goodness! Linda just brought me a plate of grapes and donuts and a cup of hot steaming Coffey. Am I pampered or what? |
| Son of EWW After seeing my blog yesterday Karen provided an insightful comment. She said maybe there is room inside the current course, if I cut out some of the fluff and redundancy to fit in some of the things I mentioned. Looking back at some of the course objectives I think she is right. As time permits I will be working on making the course more concentrated with some of the better ideas that keep bubbling up. Linda and I have been going to see some more movies this week. We saw “Red Tails” and “The Grey.” In Red Tails the visual effects were dazzling but the story line and characters were nothing to get excited about. In The Grey, the scenery was beautiful but again not a whole lot that interested us. As I have mentioned, Linda and I are hooked on the TV series Justified. Last night I read the first part of the book Rayland Givens, upon which the series is based. If you want to see some good materials and examples on how to develop characters it is there in abundance. Still if you want to see a good example of the story telling model, I have to refer you to Real Steel. The treatment might not make it the greatest story ever told but the arrangement and use of components makes it an amazing rendition of the story telling model. As I write the EWW vignette reviews I have a pile of references I use and I have mentioned in the past that I like the Dummy and Idiot books. Like most “How to Write” books they have a lot of space where they ramble on not really telling the reader much about what they want to know. For example one that I am reading now is talking about all the genres and how they are different from one another…In doing the reviews this is useful information because all my students are from a different genre. I have Gothic Horror, Action Adventure, Period Romance, Detective, Biographical, and Children’s Lit. So before I start doing the review I read the section that gives pointers in writing in each genre. These give me something useful to examine in general comments that regard tactical writing. However the EWW isn’t so much about tactical writing but is more focused on the operational and strategic components. The students tend to be fixated on tactical writing but the whole point of the workshop is to get them thinking about how chapters go together and how to develop and plug in some of the strategic aspects. This stuff doesn’t happen by accident and needs to be planned and poked into the outline that allows the writer to write in bite sized chunks. So after some general comments I write a review based upon the lesson objectives, prompts and checklists provided in each lesson. For the most part I am lucky if the student has written one thing in their vignette that addresses the requirements of the lesson. What most are doing is taking something already written and after procrastinating most of the week submit what they have or marginally adapt, to meet the deadline. I don’t mind this too much, in that I am not a Jesuit Priest and I see value in what they are doing even if it is contrary to what I’m asking them to write. They do seem for the most part to be meeting me half way and no doubt will learn by some sort of back door realization…probably long after the course ends, some of the things I am trying to point out. The reason I am not too indignant is because I was pretty much the same type of student that I have in my classes. It was usually long after a course was over that the light came on. Statistics is a great example of this happening. So I am not lamenting because I am having fun and learning is taking place and the students are adapting the material to suit their individual needs, even though it is not happening quite according to my expectations. Rather than sap the joy I am riding the curl and sort of herding them to the end where we will be writing the outlines designed to pull the whole she-bang together. That is where I believe the rubber is going to meet the road. |
| Evolution As I teach the course, the Exploratory Writing Workshop, it raises as many questions as it answers. For sure writing a novel is an exercise of considerable complexity and in order to deal with it you need either a very powerful mind or a very organized mind, not to mention reams of imagination. As a building block, I ask the students to write a series of vignettes to see if they can get a handle on their story and characters. So it is not surprising that I see them hard at work on these two aspects. Concurrently I am shadow taking the course as they do and working on the same lessons and objectives. With regard to some of the objectives in the Lessons I have to smile. I am reminded of a Vignette in a class while teaching at Fort Leavenworth. The class was asked to read it and write a problem statement. Without exception every student always selected something different from the vignette to point to as the problem and there-in revealed a problem that had huge implications in War Planning. So I wrote a little synopsis and asked the same sort of question….Well the same thing is happened when I ask who the Central Character is, what the Life Changing event is what is the dramatic premise, what are the themes and all the strategic components to writing that we are talking about. At the end of the course I will have to maybe provide a vignette as a final and see if they understand better how to identify these in larger work. What I see coming… (I can already hear Karen groaning) is a course called, “Son of Exploratory Writing.” In this course we will talk in lesson 1 about creating a story world….In lesson 2 Expand that into a Back Story, in lesson 3 extracting the thread of a story line, lesson 4 writing an outline, lesson 5 a synopsis, lesson 6 a vignette, lesson 7 a chapter and lesson 8 stringing the chapters together into a novel. In this course the lessons will be aimed at tactical and operational writing and the current EWW will focus more on the Strategic. Maybe even make the EWW into three parts, tactical, operational and strategic writing and how this developmental work goes into writing a novel. Just thinking out loud but what is wrong with that? |
| Trying to explain what most don't. One of the things I did this week is write a synopsis of the vignette, before trying to actually write it. This allowed me to dip into the back-story and pull out the thread of a story line that represented a Life Changing Event(LCE) in Volusia’s life. Yes I know it is not a Lesson requirement to do this for a supporting character but there is nothing to say you shouldn’t. As a matter of fact there is nothing like an LCE to give the reader and writer a good look into who a character is. I mean insight gushes out like a fire hose. For example the assault scene in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo launched her character into orbit. Anyway I started with back-story. Where does this come from you ask?. In response I can only say that some days I‘m inclined to write back story knowing it will never see the light of day or only receive formal expression in bits and pieces. Sometimes however, I open a chapter with a chunk if I really think it adds something and strikes me as effective. Keeping the back story on the right side of my brain and the tactical requirement on the other (I.e. essay, short story, vignette or chapter) I hope you are getting the picture of what tactical writing means in the Percy Goodfellow sense of the term… I write an outline of the story action. Having done this I clear the right side of my brain of any vestige of the story line to make room for some thoughts on two things. Operational and Strategic writing components. I want to think about the dramatic premise, dramatic ingredients, rising action WNDs LCE and all that other strategic stuff that I want integrated into the Story Line, outline….Then I think about transitions and foreshadowing and repetition and mannerisms and how I will paint some parts with a heavy and other with a light brush….The imagery of the details and how less is often better especially when it comes to modifiers…. Words and phrases. So when I finish I have an outline of the vignette. Then I write the synopsis, a piece at a time, as shown here and finally the vignette which I have already posted. Sounds like a lot of work….Perhaps, but it goes fast if you have a clear picture in mind of what you are about and what you intend to do. Finally I read the vignette at least once a day for grammer, spelling and all that but mostly for resonance….I read with my ears and that is a whole different dimension of writing I won’t go into now. Synopsis"Writing a Synopsis"  [13+]Vignette"Lsn 3 Vignette: Powerful Enemies" [13+] |
| “My Way” So here I am trying to wake up while at the same time fishing around for a blog thread to write about. After the first sentence something usually comes to mind. Yesterday I worked on my shadow writing where I am taking the EWW course along with the students. For some reason I wrote a synopsis of the vignette first and then the vignette. I am not sure exactly what this accomplished except that it freed my mind from having to suspend a whole lot of detail as I wrote. When I finished I had the story line, less everything else. Writing the vignette became an exercise in appending those details on the structure of the synopsis. The technique worked out OK and I wonder if I’ll be inclined in the future to use this model again. Maybe that’s a glimmer of how the last two lessons of the EWW are going to play out. My students are working hard, however most are using the workshop to test drive material that is already well developed. I don’t mind if they do this but when they do they miss much of the benefit the course offers. They become very rigid and struggle pounding that square peg already written into the prompt requirement of the vignette. Instead of spreading butter and seeing how it flows they are chipping at cement. They are going to make that old dress fit come hell or high water. Then when I suggest this or that I feel an immediate frustration….”That isn’t my story, Percy,” they say and I think…of course it isn’t we are exploring some of the possibilities that were eliminated shortly after you birthed the story and brushed ideas aside that locked it forever in concrete. For everybody the course is becoming a struggle, like the One Act Play course. In that I have more latitude as a dramaturge to make content recommendations… There it is part of my job however in a Novel Workshop, there is less wiggle room and writers are more sensitive to considering content changes especially since they tremble at the thought of having to rewrite major portions or perhaps the whole darn thing. It is the same old issues that keep cropping up. Central Characters are not central characters, Life changing events are not life changing events, wants needs and desires are not compelling and we have yet to get to the crisis that will start small and get bigger and bigger. Still I guess I should quit grousing and be grateful for what I see happening. Like the one act Play, eyes are beginning to open and while the awakening is not happening as designed by the course it is none the less happening. At least I am trying to remaining fluid and flexible as they struggle to find themselves and grasp the lessons the course offers in the most painful and convoluted of ways. There is simply no easy way to go from an intellectual recognition to a visceral understanding without some suffering. I should realize that by now being an old curmudgeon. |
| Tactical Writing I do not consider myself a particularly talented writer. Yesterday I was looking at the process by which I write and it has evolved quite a bit since I have been at WDC. Sometimes I just get an idea and write it from beginning to end. If the vignette is less than 5K words I just “Do it.” What I wind up with is whatever popped into my mind to begin with and when I finish it is pretty rigid, although I can tweak it on the margin. Then I go back over it a half dozen to a dozen times to get the resonance right. As I have been teaching the Exploratory Writing Course I have found my vignette process changing. Now I like to think about an idea a bit more before writing about it. In this latest one I have Rindar talking with the Great Spirit in poetry, like a chant, like something a rapper might do. I am told that the verbal histories of primitive peoples are written like this and have a beat that makes them easier to remember so there is that aspect of the vignette. Then there is the question of what “thoughts” must sound like and I am exploring what this primitive man’s prayers might have been like. For the body of the vignette part I am using some old material as source… material that wasn’t going anywhere and trying to rekindle the old ideas and get them to smoldering anew by adding some new tinder and organization. What happens is that I read the old vignette, and add some new structure and thoughts. Once I have the idea for the “chunk” I outline it before trying to write the short story sized piece. From the outline I then write a synopsis and from the synopsis the final piece. Now I realize this sounds like a lot of bother for something I just fire hosed in the past... However what I was doing before was the Adidas Approach and now I am finding that some structure and development allows for the management of greater complexity and work that sounds more effortless and free flowing ...like we do in life, flirting from thought to thought and then through some process weaving them together into a richer tapestry. In this process there is structure to hold the ideas and thoughts allowing me to suspend them without fear of them floating off and dealing with them in a bigger window.... in more leisurely fashion. I am considering showing the process in some of the blogs coming down the road just to demonstrate a process that goes beyond pushing the noodle. No Wonder so many writers suffer from writer’s block. I can honestly say this has never been my problem. Idea#1+Idea#2+idea#3 = Paragraph. Paragraph #1 + Paragraph#2+Paragraph#3= Vignette. Adding in outline and synopsis = a 2 dimensional structure with a quadrant of ideas instead of just a sting. This is doable in a normal human mind. Finally is the possibility of adding the dramatic ingredients to the soup, suspending them in a three dimensional orb. Great writers seem to do this in a mysterious and incomprehensible manner but I’m beginning to think that with a little structure the essence can be achieved, even by a bone head like me. |
| Characters When my wife Linda and I go to the movies we generally know something about what we are going to see. Of course there is the endless barrage of commercials of upcoming movies and then there is usually a book that has been written which the movie is based upon. So we have usually read that and seen the preview on commercials. We discuss all this in the car on the way to the movies. Once we arrive, with our soda and popcorn in hand, we wait for the previews to begin and speculate on how well the movie will do justice to the book. Linda is a particularly severe critic and yesterday we went to see "One for the Money," the first in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovitch. Linda didn’t want to even go see it because she thought the casting of characters, as evidenced by the TV promos, did not jive up with her preconceptions of who the casting directors should have chosen. I made her go anyway and it was a delightful movie. Maybe not academy award material but fun to watch and thoroughly entertaining. These were Linda’s picks Stephanie: Katherine Heigl (Linda didn’t think Heigl was right) Ranger: (Linda Wanted “The Rock”) Morelli: (didn’t have a particular someone in mind) Grandma Mazur: Debbie Reynolds Lula: Sherrie (From the View) (Linda want Queen Latisha) On the ride home we talked about the parts we liked and it was interesting that what we were commenting on were the lines some of the characters spoke…and words like…”Who was the guy that got blown up in Morelli’s SUV?" I don’t think we had a single comment on story line. Everything we talked about was character based. As I do my reviews for this weeks vignettes in the Exploratory Writing Workshop EWW, I see as the greatest shortcoming, character development. Now story line is important but I submit that character development is even more so. Think about the movie “Girl in the Dragon Tattoo.” In the books she isn’t even the central character. She steals the show and no doubt the publisher changed the title to reflect that but I will bet my butt when the author began writing she was a supporting character like Boyd Crowder in “Justified.” These characters often show up and are so compelling they eclipse everything around them. It is these characters that we remember far more than the thin story lines of what we read and see at the movies. So why is it that aspiring writers are so hung up on story line that they fail to give equal developmental footage to their Characters? I see the importance of both but for heavens sakes if you want to be remembered as a writer it will be by your characters. |
| Central Wisconsin in Winter Every morning I get a cup of coffee and check my email. Then I run my “Summary Statistics,” to see what the members have been reading and then I scan the list and if I don’t remember the vignette, click on it to refresh my memory. Anyway that gets my day up and running. Today it is beautiful outside. The sun is shining off the snow and the sky is blue. I will need to write at least two reviews today and maybe get started on my week three vignette. It is Friday and most of my students have gotten their lesson 2 requirements in and I can get started. I really need to take a closer look at lessons seven and eight as I have had some ideas that are firming in my mind regarding how those two need to go down. Yesterday I worked on my chain saws and cut wood. The logs that Mark dropped off by the stove needed to get cut up and blocked. I have three piles of wood that I burn. There is the pile in the shed that is dry, the pile behind it that is semi dry and the blocks that I cut yesterday. Every morning I put equal parts of the three into the stove and that seems to be working OK. I hope I don’t have to buy a truckload this year like I did last. I don’t think I will have to because this winter has been much milder than last year. I brought Felix the female cat inside like Karen suggested last week. Felix is a “Walk On” cat who is mostly black however her face has white around her nose that looks like a handle bar moustache. I am sure she is related to my other three cats but wasn’t raised with them and they hate her. So when I put the rest in the heated garage there was no way I was going to put Felix in with that bunch. They were salivating I think for that to happen. Anyway Felix gets on pretty well with my two dogs. Yesterday Linda and I saw two eagles feeding on a carcass. It is fairly common to see eagles but what we witnessed was a Golden and Bald Eagle together. The Golden was huge and the Bald was a youngster. Those are magnificent birds and one of the perks to living here is getting to see them. Another is getting to see the annual migration of the Geese when they gather at the Mill Pond in Westfield. You can stand in the parking lot of the bank and see close up thousands come swooping in on their trip south. It is something to see a huge formation approach, circle and come swooping in and alight on the pond. Last year there was a strange white goose that looked like a barn yard escapee that flew in with them. It reminded me of Felix auditioning for the dog role. |
| Encounter in the National Forest Today when I powered up onto WDC I noticed one of my Short Stories on the Random Reads. I had almost forgotten writing it and so I clicked on it and read it. I have a strange sense of humor and this short story reflects it and I hope I don’t sound vain by saying that it made me smile. I like the stuff I write and while I realize much of it isn’t anybody else’s “Cup of Tea” I can’t help it….I will read something I wrote over a year ago and when I finish give myself a little slap on the back…. Some of the vignettes I read, written by my students must strike them the same way. If they don’t the should. After reading the first batch I remember thinking… These guys and gals aren’t half bad. Tonight when I opened lesson 3 I was again struck by how well this workshop came together and while I can only take part credit, how proud I was at the enhancements made by my favorite Head Mistress. I guess the point is that good stuff makes me feel good to look at it. On a recent trip Linda bought me a pair of Book Ends. They are bronzes of a Middle Ages Heroic figure in a cape with his lady love in his arms. Originally they were painted green with white faces. They stand about ten inches and are gorgeous. The green paint has flaked off revealing the bronze underneath and they take my breath away. Last Month in an antique shop my wife bought me a porcelain figurine of a girl holding open her nightgown. It was risqué in the 1920’s and probable considered “Naughty Art” but the workmanship is exceptional. If you look from the top you can see her breasts and from beneath her bottom parts. It stands about four inches and next to her is a pedestal that was used to hold a quill or maybe a thin pen, that has been long since separated. I can see it sitting on a writers desk and giving him occasion for a wry smile. On the walls of the bedroom where my office is are four (4) Icarte prints which represent some of his best work. He was (is?) an artist who painted females in a romantically sensual motif. They aren’t expensive and have a warm ambience about them. When I get bored I search Google Image fantasy which gives me a strip of images that really electrify my imagination. I will copy one or two a night and if I have a story to write will bring them from my computer to WDC and save them as a created image ** Image ID #number Unavailable ** Then I will paste them on top of my vignette and draw from the energy they elicit as I write. Sometimes I will write a synopsis and make it into a poem and put that underneath. Poetry unlocks the spiritual forces of creativity and the words taken with a visual image bring to mind a rush of wonderful thoughts. |
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