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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. |
| Shadow Student This blog of mine makes absolutely no sense. It goes up and down. One day there is six hits, the next 50 and one day there was over 150. Then overnight the number of WDC members doubled. Anyway fame is not the reason I write it…. I write it because journaling is one of the keys to becoming a better writer and since I don’t care who reads my journal why not use a blog for this purpose? Yesterday, my friend Mark and I cut about a semi load of wood. I cut and he loaded. For an old man a chainsaw after eight hours becomes a real ass kicker. I am sore but we got it all out. Today there is snow on the ground and the roads are icy. Glad we didn’t quit early yesterday. I think I will write six Manny Hardin vignettes when I shadow take my course, The Exploratory Writing Workshop. Tomorrow signups begin and I suspect there will be no shortage of writers to sign up. On the other hand it is a lot of work to mentor a writer along and if we get no takers the course has still been a good exercise for me. If the interest isn’t great I will have more time to devote to my mystery novel. As some of my readers might know Manny Hardin is a character I became interested in when I was writing flash fiction sensual prose for the Quickie Contest. Nobody liked my material until I wrote “Pageant” and that went off the charts. Anyway what I was trying to learn was how to write it effectively and I tried everything under the sun I could think of. I wrote about gay men, lesbian women, bisexuals and mild BDSM. In every instance I learned something new, and I mostly got panned for my efforts. Ironically when Pageant garnered so much interest I was left scratching my head. This was a story about a man that exploited young women and I figured the ladies at WDC would tar and feather me. Nothing of the sort happened and it went on to get more views than anything I have written here. It’s one of those huge mysteries like the day I got 150 blog views. More importantly though I seem to have learned some things which are included in my essay on writing sensual prose that is on my port… That too has been an extremely popular static item. I know I am all over the screen this morning and no doubt everybody thinks I am recovering form a hangover… Last night I drank no alcohol and went to bed when Linda turned off the light at ten O’clock. By the way HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody and I hope you do well on your resolutions. From time to time I get questions as to what Manny Hardin is up to with his “Interns.“ At first answering was easy because I hadn’t really gotten to that point in my thinking. I was trying to learn how to write sensual prose in a manner that would push the envelope but not cause my mainstream readers to throw up their hands in dismay. I am thinking about combing some of the strong aspects of “Enchantment” with the style of some of the essay monologues in Andromache. The central character will be an enigmatic girl who he at last finds perfect for the instrument he is looking for. What is that you ask….what is Manny angling for anyway with these interns of his…Sorry… there will be clues in some of the vignettes but anyone interested in learning more will have to either figure out what lurks in Percy’s weird mind or eventually read the novel. I have no delusions about how big the circle is of those who have the silghtest interest. Still for illustrative purposes those who take the course will get to see examples of my work that parallels their own vignettes in the course. |
| Psyching Up Today I was thinking about my class the Exploratory Writing Workshop. Actually everything I have written at this site is of a much larger scope than the workshop. I have close to 350 items and many connect with the novel I am planning to write. The hard part was learning to write the sensual prose. I have been experimenting for a couple of years and understand better how to write it at least to my satisfaction… I know there are those who disagree and see my efforts as remedial at best however, I am satisfied. The sensual prose is only a small part but a part that needs to be artfully done. It needs to leave no doubt but it needs to have a certain poetic elegance. It is like the yeast in the dough. Anyway today all the threads began coming together and the synapses have began to form in my mind. I think I know where all this is heading. So I will teach he class once or twice and students will have a chance to join me in a journey to study how the process works. Concurrently I will be taking the class as a shadow and developing various parts and components that will be fitted into the overall structure when I sit down to write my tale in phase 2. I might even allow the students to watch over my shoulder so to speak. Thus I am not telling but showing as best I can how this mechanism works. It is amusing to sit thinking about something that seems to go nowhere and suddenly see it flash together. To see the connection between Manny Hardin, my fantasy novels and some of the sensual prose ideas I have been experimenting…. Actually this whole experience at WDC has been an experiment and in the process I have learned more things about writing than I can recount. However what really gave ignition to all of it was the novel I read recently… |
| Steig Larsson I think that everybody who writes thinks their stuff is good…not that it couldn’t bear some improvement but that at the core it’s good. I know that I like my material and lately in the morning I look at my Summary Statistics for yesterday and pick one of the selections that someone chose to read and reread it myself. A flood of recollection comes over me and I remember my state of mind as I wrote it. Now I know that everybody doesn’t think my work is particularly suited to their tastes and that there is what appears to be a darkness to what I write and there is a recurring theme of mild bondage that perhaps some find disturbing. However, what I write is mild compared to what is out there and I find myself disturbed reading the series Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The author, Steig Larsson died at a young age…I believe in his 50’s and there is a big court battle in Sweden over his estate. He lived with a woman for over twenty years in a common law marriage and when he died suddenly all his estate went to his family… (According to Swedish Law) The girlfriend got nothing except for one thing….a manuscript for a 4th book which she has threatened to burn. This leads me to suspect that his family is in ways as dysfunctional as some of those he writes about. This opens the door to the basement, or the Understory that in Steig’s mind must have undergirded his writing of the trilogy that I am about halfway through. I am not in any sense suggesting that Mr. Larsson is any more than a writer who had an aptitude for writing about dark things. There is some really dark shit out there that goes on and for most, myself included, readers are totally unaware of at a visceral level. It takes reading Larsson’s series to jerk the reader awake in the night to the realization there is more to this iceberg than what the pages reveal. It is a sordid dark world that exists out there, a world that many victims have the unfortunate situation of living in. What is worse is that this world is not something that exists far away on some back alley city street but a world that exists in the minds of most intelligent people who are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I suspect there is a thread of the darkness in all of us and I hope my readers find it as unnerving as I do. Our sexuality has a dark side and while most of us don’t take that too seriously, there is enough to provide evidence that taken to the nth power… that the terror that lurks in the world at large has roots that go to the very core of our humanity. The statistics of abuse that he uses for Sweden are probably similar to what happens on the domestic scene on a recurring basis in the United States. Growing up I got in fights and while my school experiences don’t come anywhere close to what Elizabeth experienced I got the shit knocked out of me more times that I care to remember out on the school ground. I fought back and like ‘Lisbeth” people left me alone. What it showed me was how close to home the darkness lurks and how painful it can be to confront. However, this is not autobiographical. My childhood was not bad all the time, and I have some pleasant memories mixed in with all the rest. My father never hit my mother, even though she often pushed him to edge and beyond, Linda’s parents never hit one another, although there was emotional violence…but shucks…who hasn’t experienced that? We both had experiences with relatives who had a bit of a sordid agenda. Still I had friends who were beaten severely and regularly and came to class with bruises to show for it. That to me is a whole lot worse that getting fondled even though that kind of unwanted attention still sends a shiver through me. It might have been worse and I sort of think we both got through our childhoods relatively unscathed. So what Steig is talking about is closer to home that many might acknowledge and that first thing we need to do is make damn sure we keep an eye in that dark thread that weaves and wends its way through all of us. I guess that is my point. You can’t legislate away something that a part of everyone. Sure we can lock up the offenders that go well beyond the behaviors of human decency to the extent that society can no longer ignore or suffer them to exist… but we really need to start with ourselves. I see the evidence all around me, in the way children are disciplined, In those bruises and lifeless eyes… Steig’s book isn’t just another crime thriller… It certainly makes a sensation out of a murder mystery however the characters are right out of real life and if they don’t send a chill though you I don’t know what will. |
| Felix is Home Well, last night I finished the book Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I have to concede it was a great mystery novel. It was as Linda said a little slow getting into but once it started rolling, became a most exceptional read. I already mentioned some of the structural issues and they remained but the book was very entertaining. Linda said the next two are even better. Felix the cat returned yesterday. I think that she got caught in one of Tim’s live traps and he turned her loose. He has seen Felix on several occasions running with the dogs and I. I didn’t realize it by there are under the “MY STUFF” on the left hand side of the Port Menu an entry you can click called “Summary Statistics.” This shows all the hits your port got in a single day. Here I have been almost two years at WDC and didn’t even know it existed. It is fun to look at what everybody read yesterday and even reread some of the stuff over. A couple of pieces I wrote were not all that bad. Today we have to go to Marshfield and I have to turn in some labs. So I’ll have to cut this short. More tomorrow |
| Cats and Kitchen Cabinets Now that Linda is retired too we are having to figure out once more how we are going to live with each other. Luckily I like her a lot but she can be hard to get along with at times. Today however, we got along great. She left this morning to spend the day with her old Nursing Buddy and didn’t get home ‘til late this afternoon. Then she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse….. Anyway before she departed this morning she told me I had to show the contractor where the cabinets are falling off the wall in the Kitchen. Two years ago we did a major renovation of the house adding a new kitchen, bathroom and master bedroom. It really turned out well except last week she noticed that one of the cabinets was about to fall off the wall in the kitchen. So I called the contractor and said, “Garry, one of the cabinets is about to fall off the wall…” and he said, “What is Linda storing in them now, her bar bells?” (Linda does tend to keep the cabinets full.) “Don’t blame Linda.” I shot back….”Not her fault your handy men couldn’t find the studs” Anyway he came out and took a look…. “Not my fault,” he explained in true Wisconsin fashion. “Look here, where my men fastened them is not the problem…the problem is that the damn things are pulling apart… Oh and it isn’t just this one its at least two more that are coming apart at the seams.” Sure enough he was right. Those expensive cabinets we bought at Lowes, that were custom ordered, where coming apart. “SHUCKS!” I exclaimed, “Forgive me for ever doubting you ole buddy…. Now tell me the best way to fix it.” “ Hmmmm,” he said,” Before I do anything find out if there is a warranty and if there is let the factory representative get involved.” So tonight Linda and I went to Lowes and would you believe it…They have a lifetime guarantee. I’ll keep you all posted on how the rest of the story turns out. Felix the female (Cat) who walked on several months ago and thinks she is a dog is gone missing. I will go looking for her tomorrow. Like I don’t have more important things to do. These strays are such a pain in the butt and I don’t know why I worry… Most of the time the cats disappear and come back after a while. I got a bad feeling about Felix though…. Like I used to get in Vietnam… Don’t go there Percy!… Wish I hadn’t brought the subject up…. Damn cats. |
| Chinese Underwear Today I think I will go cut some wood. The Church has some property that was hit by a recent wind storm and there are trees and branches down everywhere. I still haven’t finished cutting my wood for the winter and have been procrastinating. Yesterday I went to Gander Mountain to purchase a magazine for my rifle. The place was packed. You had to have a number to get waited on. Had to wait for over an hour then to be told they didn’t have any…that I needed to go on line. The gun business is not suffering from any economic woes. I must have seen twenty sold as I waited to get served. Some of this stuff we are importing from China is semi-lethal. I told you I had been suffering from the hives and the location of the rash was around my thighs and genitals. We narrowed it down to some Haynes boxer shorts that I got in a 3-Pack for Christmas. At first I thought washing would do the trick but that didn’t work either. The symptoms returned when I wore a pair yesterday even though they had been washed two times. Those suckers went in the garbage. The Chinese don’t get quality control and if they don’t get a handle on it their exports are going to suffer a serious blow. Already I look for the made in China logo and avoid it wherever possible. Other than that Christmas went well and was a very jolly time of the year. I am reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series and enjoying it. One of the Central Characters is Elizabeth Salander, a female who is four eleven and weighs 90 lbs. She is a security investigator. Anyway she writes security reports on people and doesn’t use euphemisms. For some reason I have always liked reports that followed the thread of facts to the exclusion of any attempt at providing verbal softening or spin. I don’t write this way because I know it doesn’t fly well in the world at large but I find a character that writes and thinks in this manner to be a very interesting one. This, in addition to the fact, that the book has two central characters has perked my curiosity. I probably should be cleaning up my upcoming class, The Exploratory Writing Workshop but Think I will just tidy up a bit and make the major revisions as a matter of course once the class starts. That I will dial things back a bit for the next two weeks and refill the pitcher with some new and interesting things |
| Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I am currently reading the book after having seen the movie. I liked the movie and give the book high marks where the “Wow!” factor is concerned. I think a writer should look closely at the stories they like and examine the structure to see how they are written. One of my former students tells me that the Playwriting Workshop changed forever the way she looked at the stories she was reading. When my wife read the Novel above she told me she had a great deal of difficulty getting into it but when she did, enjoyed it very much. So when I read it I made it a point to see why this might have been the case. I am now in the pleasure read phase of the novel but a part of my mind can’t help but attach to the structure of how this novel was written. It is a story within a story and has two Central Characters. Yes, I say again two central characters. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the story is hard to get into because at the end the reader is still confused as to who the central character is. Now I am not panning the novel because it works and is masterfully written. On the one hand it is difficult for the reader to figure out who to attach to and on the other having an internal story proceeding concurrently with an external story certainly propels the action once they both get loaded into the reader’s brain. As I read the story it seemed to me that the writer had a central character in mind to begin with, however as he wrote, the supporting character gradually began to steal the show. By the end of the first novel it is clear to the reader who the more fascinating of the two are by a wide margin. The book starts as a rather ordinary mystery novel with a mystery to solve and suddenly there comes the supporting character to steal the show. I find it hard to believe the writer planned it in this manner but he certainly did a good job keeping both balls in the air at the same time. The tradeoff was a slow beginning and my wife actually put the book aside. The high side was the synergism of the two main characters working together. It strongly recommend it to my readers as an example of a variation on the story telling model that is an interesting example of the craft,.. That worked well in this case, but one that is extremely hard to pull off |
| Kicking the can down the Road My dad was a tough old rascal. He could really take his suffering like a man. ME? I’m a wuss and when I get to hurting it shows. For example I remember my dad had the hick-ups once for over a month. He bore it like a stoic…the Dahlia Lama would have been proud… Then he had a bad case of shingles and it brought him low but he really sucked it up. ME? I remember once beating my forehead on the wall after an impacted wisdom tooth got pulled. Then there were the kidney stones…ouch! My latest malady are hive like symptoms and I am one big ITCH…actually today has been better, maybe the Benadryl helped. Linda tells me that having little hurts from time to time is better than having one big hurt once in a blue moon…. Like a stroke or a heart attack. It is a subset of her philosophy that having a bunch of little setbacks frequently is better than having a big one. It’s like your body vents the bad a little at a time instead of holding it in until bango you go off like a firecracker…. You know blow your cork? My wife is pretty smart and comes from a family with a lot of Voodoo in it. When we’re driving in a car and she sees a cat (it doesn’t have to be black) she scribes an X on the windshield. Her mother is even stranger and makes Linda look like an amateur in the art of superstition. She believes in hexes and jinxes… One time she told me in the supermarket… “You see that woman over there looking at me? She’s giving me the evil eye.” I don’t know what to make of it really. What if there is a germ of truth in it? I’d feel pretty stupid at scoffing at something like that only to tick some old crone off and have her turn me into a mushroom. So I just go along with it….not really believing but thinking its better not to tempt fate by being some kind of a wise ass. Linda told me that I was a big disappointment to her family. I turned out to be “Normal.” Not somebody they could brag about and not somebody they could wring their hands over. Linda really makes me laugh at times, so I said, “What would they have preferred instead?” “Oh,” she replied, “A criminal locked up in the state penitentiary… someone they could have cried “woe is me” over and lamented what an SOB son in law they had…. Or someone like JR on Dallas who was worth millions and used it to make everybody else miserable. They hate it that you’re just an everyday normal type of nobody… You give the family a bad name.” My Labrador knows when a storm is coming. She starts behaving in a characteristic manner. She slinks from room to room, follows her tail and then slinks off into the closet. She used to crawl under the bed but she got too big for that. When she starts in Linda says, “Storms a coming, get everything put up and tied down.” Sure enough the clouds roll in and we have quite a blow. Now what you must be thinking does all this have to do with the price of eggs at the farmers market? Well here is my take….There are things in this world that can’t be explained by the wonders of our science and technology. We aren’t as smart and sophisticated as we think. There was a lot of living that went down on this earth before the invention of cell phones. The human spirit is being buried in layer upon layer of technology but it’s still there. You have to look harder and deeper to find it but it’s still there and marvelous to behold. The world might have changed but people haven’t. |
| The Complexity of the Exploratory Writing Workshop There are many words in the writing vernacular that a student might not be familiar with. Karen pointed out and rightly so, that many of the words I use the student might not be familiar with. For example what is the shade of meaning difference between Flash Fiction, a Vignette, a Short Story, A Novella and a Novel? The big difference has to do with theme and word count. Karen suggested that the first time a second tier word is used we ought to define it on the spot and then put it in a Dictionary for the class with a link to the Assignments. This will work and it is something we will be working on. In past blogs I have lamented that the need for supporting materials exceeds that which a student would find in a classroom. In a classroom there is a real live teacher and he/she can intervene with the student when there are questions. In an E–Class there is not that instant feedback, so the course design needs to take that into account. In the Workshop there are six class pages, eight weekly assignments, forty Objectives, not to mention numerous examples, a contest, and a Dictionary of Terms. This level of complexity and detail is necessary to head off questions the student has and provide answers, without having to wait a day or two after asking with an E-Mail or posting in a Forum. On a typical assignment in the EWW the student gets the requirement from the assignment page. The page shows the objectives (typically 5) the student is expected to read. Then there is the contest prompts which provides the minimal essential elements that the Vignette will include. Next is the checklist that shows how the vignette will be evaluated and finally discussion topics and Practical Exercises the student must complete. After digesting this student writes the Vignette and posts it in either the Classroom Forum (if they are shy) or in the Contest Forum. Then they submit to the Classroom forum the Discussion topics and Practical Exercises. Now all these levels and components must be coordinated, and linked. It’s like writing a computer program. In the last two weeks the student collects and organizes what they have learned in the workshop into an outline and then expands that outline into the format of the larger work thy plan to write after the workshop. Anyway the Workshop is finally roughed out and it would fly if we had to run it tomorrow. However, there is still some fine tuning in parts and in others a need to explain things more clearly. |
| More on the Genesis of the Exploratory Writing Workshop Today I woke up one big hive ball. I am taking Benadryl but the itching drives me crazy. I used to have these spells in the military but this is the first one in a long time. Mine are allergy induced, usually from something I ate or wore. Oh well, I get them, they linger and after a while they go away. Often when I write a contest entry I let it cool overnight and post it the next day. I write fast and can knock a 3K vignette out in one sitting. If I let it sit until the deadline, that is what it does…SIT. So I usually post early. I like to have it out there where people can read and review. However, it’s more than that. I find myself reading my submissions after they are posted like a reader instead of a writer. I like the material I produce and when I read it on the contest forum, I keep picking up glitches that hick-up, the flow. Often these hick-ups don’t count for much in themselves but collectively they create stones in the road to easy reading. Sometimes it’s the overuse of modifiers, sometimes imperfect word choice and often it’s a plain case of having written a sentence in a suboptimal manner. Now that my contest is roughed out, I find myself going back and reading over it. As I do there is plenty to tweak just as there is in a contest submission. Fortunately, since I had some “High Speed” help from Karen I finished the roughing out phase earlier than expected and will start going back through it and setting the house in order. This undertaking really expanded as I started to write. The idea was to teach how to do developmental work before embarking on a larger work. This of, course, means writing an outline. The question thus becomes, how does one write an outline when the story line is an amorphous and elusive thread. Trying to push that thread forward is much more difficult than pulling it backward. So the reasoning went why not write some serial pieces and do a little exploration of the characters and the story line and see what the heck was going to rear its head. While many have difficulty writing a novel most writers can manage a short story and what is a short story but a shorter version of a novel? CLANG! Off goes the OOGA horn! The differences are huge. For one thing you can juggle the components of a short story around in your mind if you have a talent for that sort of thing. But you can’t say the same for a novel. It is just too broad in scope. Your bio-processor is soon overwhelmed and even if you get to the end you probably outran the efficiency of your brain to do a quality job. This brings us back to the basic question, how do you write an outline if you don’t know the story line? The Outline allows you to work in bite sized chunks and write these well. You go and write one baby step at a time. I suppose you could just push on through a writing and then come back and do a cleanup edit. However, this is not such a good idea either because when you get to the end you are burned out on the story. When you get to the end, you want it to be the end. Not that there isn’t a whole lot of editing that lies ahead but this is tactical or what I call sentence editing. It isn’t chapter editing which I call operational editing. Another point I might add is that if you tie your racehorse of Muse to the manure wagon you will go out to the barn one morning and find her long departed. The Exploratory Writing Workshop is a pretty cool approach. Each week you write a vignette for a contest and just focus on that. A vignette is a piece of tactical writing and you can relax and enjoy yourself writing it. You simply go where the flow takes you writing. After you have the six vignettes written, you pull out the thread of a story line and insert The Life Changing event, Dramatic Premise, Themes, Dramatic Ingredients, devices and Character sketches. With this outline in hand you are now postured to begin to do some serious writing. You can focus on those little chunks of tactical writing and the Operational and Strategic aspects will have taken care of themselves. When you get to the “THE END” that is where you wind up. Sure there is still some tactical cleanup and this can be extensive but it is sentence level sweat work, which is much easier to manage. |
| More on the Genesis of the Exploratory Writing Workshop Today I woke up one big hive ball. I am taking Benadryl but the itching drives me crazy. I used to have these spells in the military but this is the first one in a long time. Mine are allergy induced, usually from something I ate or wore. Oh well, I get them, they linger and after a while they go away. Often when I write a contest entry I let it cool overnight and post it the next day. I write fast and can knock a 3K vignette out in one sitting. If I let it sit until the deadline, that is what it does…SIT. So I usually post early. I like to have it out there where people can read and review. However, it’s more than that. I find myself reading my submissions after they are posted like a reader instead of a writer. I like the material I produce and when I read it on the contest forum, I keep picking up glitches that hick-up, the flow. Often these hick-ups don’t count for much in themselves but collectively they create stones in the road to easy reading. Sometimes it’s the overuse of modifiers, sometimes imperfect word choice and often it’s a plain case of having a poorly written sentence. Now that my contest is roughed out, I find myself going back and reading over it. As I do there is plenty to tweak just as there is in a contest submission. Fortunately, since I had some “High Speed” help from Karen I finished the roughing out phase earlier than expected and will start going back through it and setting the house in order. This undertaking really expanded as I started to write. The idea was to teach how to do developmental work before embarking on a larger work. This of, course, means writing an outline. The question thus becomes, how does one write an outline when the story line is an amorphous and elusive thread. Trying to push that thread forward is much more difficult than pulling it backward. So the reasoning went why not write some serial pieces and do a little exploration of the characters and the story line and see what the heck was going to rear its head. While many have difficulty writing a novel most writers can manage a short story and what is a short story but a shorter version of a novel? CLANG! Off goes the OOGA horn! The differences are huge. For one thing you can juggle the components of a short story around in your mind if you have a talent for that sort of thing. But you can’t say the same for a novel. It is just too broad in scope. Your bio-processor is soon overwhelmed and even if you get to the end you probably outran the efficiency of your brain to do a quality job. This brings us back to the basic question, how do you write an outline if you don’t know the story line? (Hold that Thought.) In her book , "The Art and Craft of Storytelling" Nancy Lamb refers to the concept of "Play It Where it Lays." She says, " Make a few notes about your characters and scenes." Then go for it. She goes on to caution that "Winging It." is even for experienced writers an approach fraught with danger. There are however benefits, one of which is spontaneity. This is what we are doing in the workshop. Its like having your cake and eating it too. We will do much more that she advocates above and still keep the benefits of a well defined structure The Outline allows you to work in bite sized chunks and write these well. You go and write one baby step at a time. I suppose you could just push on through a writing and then come back and do a cleanup edit. However, this is not such a good idea because when you get to the end you are burned out on the story. We don't want to still be facing a massive rewrite that become more confusing the longer you work. When you get to the end, you want it to be the end. Not that there isn’t a whole lot of editing that lies ahead but this is tactical or what I call sentence editing. It isn’t chapter editing which I call operational editing. Another point I might add is that if you tie your racehorse of a Muse to the manure wagon you will go out to the barn one morning and find her gone. The Exploratory Writing Workshop is a pretty cool approach. Each week you write a vignette for a contest and just focus on that. A vignette is a piece of tactical writing and you can relax and enjoy writing. You simply go where the flow takes you writing. After you have the six vignettes written, you pull out the thread of a story line and insert The Life Changing event, Dramatic Premise, Themes, Dramatic Ingredients, devices and Character sketches. With this outline in hand you are now postured to begin to do some serious writing. You can focus on those little chunks of tactical writing and the Operational and Strategic aspects will have taken care of themselves. When you get to the “THE END” that is where you wind up. Sure there is still some tactical cleanup and this can be extensive but it is sentence level sweat work, which is much easier to manage. |
| The Back door of the Workshop Well finally we are at the end of developing the “The Exploratory Writing Workshop.” For those who have indulged my “Thinking Out Loud” as I struggled with trying to pull this workshop together you have my heartfelt thanks. A special thanks goes to Armor-bearer who must have sensed that I was getting in over my head and stepped in and helped me pull the whole thing together. Now at the final Assignment that will end week eight the students are told to write the Comprehensive Outline So, what’s the difference between the Thread and the Comprehensive Outline? you might be asking. Simply stated the Thread Outline, outlines what the student has done in the workshop. The Comprehensive Outline Outlines what will be the chapter or Act/Scene structure of the student’s continuing work. No longer are we talking about Vignettes. Now we are thinking about chapters or in a drama, Acts and Scenes. Except for the list of Dramatic Ingredients, the students are taking the outline from last weeks lesson and expanding it. Now, they will be adding in the Chapters or if it is a Drama, the Acts and Scenes. If the work is going to be a novel, they start with between twenty (20) and thirty (30) blank chapters and start filling in the names. Some of the ideas in the vignettes will come in early chapters, some in the middle and others at the end. For example, in chapter 1 the central focus might be a life changing event. In chapter 2 maybe a flash back on some key elements of the back story that requires telling. In chapter 3 maybe a good snapshot of the CC and his/her MO: And in Chapter 4 the first crisis and so on and so forth. Actually this is the part I enjoy most about a novel, or stage play…. moving the ideas, the building blocks and dramatic ingredients around. Each Chapter will have a synopsis of three or four sentences explaining the highlights. Then the student will begin plugging in the Dramatic Premise and themes. While these are undercurrents and not transparent the writer needs to show evidence of where they lurk. Then the student will shown evidence of the devices, such as foreshadowing, repetition, humor and anguish. Now I know this is a bit of a leap but the crevasse is not as broad as one might think. Yes! I realize there will be more than six chapters to the novel, however in these vignettes are contained the seeds of the rest of the story. Once they are arrayed in the thread outline they can be expanded taking the ideas, stretching them out and giving name to the chapters. Actually this is pretty artsy stuff and by now I hope everyone realizes that art isn’t my long suit… However, for many of you it is. So they take the Thread Outline of a story, (Assignment 7) and expand it into the Comprehensive Outline for the work. I hope by now this part is pretty self evident. Now I want you to pause and ask yourselves. Is this not a better way to prepare for writing a longer work than simply pushing the pencil or pounding the keys and hoping the work will wind up going somewhere? I hope this class makes a believer out of the students and causes them to realize the importance of developmental work… That it’s possible to write a great outline coming in through the back door using techniques learned in the “Exploratory Writing Workshop.” |
| The Thread Outline Once the climax is written, that is the end of phase 1 of the Exploratory Writing Workshop. The students can sigh with relief. Now what remains is to write the Thread and Comprehensive Outlines in the last two weeks of the course. The Thread Outline begins with learning how to move images around. Before the actual writing starts the student needs some visual imagery. For openers there will be images of the Central and supporting characters. Then there will be an image for the overall work. For extra credit are images like illustrations in a book. These images are for the benefit of the writer at this juncture. I have this theory that it is possible to trick your subconscious with vivid imagery in your imagination. That your main operating system doesn’t know the difference between imagined images and actual images…. That reality to your bio processor can come from either source and if your computer thinks something is reality, it reacts viscerally and when a writer feels something at the gut, the spirit of what he/she writes get etched and captured on the medial being produced. Have you ever seen a child walk out of a movie still caught up in the euphoria of the story. Have you ever found yourself, hours later still under the sway of a book or movie? How much evidence do you need? After the images are taken care of the rest of the template will be devoted to organizing the vignettes into a core concept. Here will be shown: Name of the Story Author: Dramatic Premise Central Character: Template Prose synopsis Want Need or Desire Life Changing Event Supporting Characters: Template Prose Synopsis Synopsis of Story Themes Synopsis of each Vignette Now this outline is the entry point for a more comprehensive and expanded version that follows in Assignment 8. |
| The Last Crisis... The Climax So at last we’re there…. This is the climax of the story. This is the big time, where our CC is either going to shine or complete the death spiral and implode before our very eyes. This is the final test and if the story is comic it ends well and if it’s tragic it doesn’t. It’s about to resound with a “Ya-hoo!” or an “Oh my Goodness Gracious!” This is when the writer really begins to show their craft as they milk the action and squeeze the last drop of emotion out of the Central Character. At this dramatic moment the reader or audience is brought to edge and tossed in. As the writer has labored diligently it has been to lay the groundwork for this huge moment of conflict and drama. The spade work is finished, the channel dug and now the emotion rushes down the trench to its inexorable conclusion. This is the moment the reader or audience is waiting for. It is where the dilemma is resolved and it should be the high water mark of the work and a moment of great magnitude. For better or worse the whole matter is going to be resolved… an explosion is about to happen. This is often referred to as the Last Minute of Suspense or the Climax. The CC will either accept the inevitably of fate or Triumph over adversity. Now we see the CC in final form, crushed and dying or trumpeting his dominion. He has finally succumbed to all those deficiencies in character or been overwhelmed by forces beyond control…. or has grown in stature and became the person they wanted to be. The reader sees this at the end or the audience watches spellbound as the character they rooted for or agonized with, flicker or is born again. They withdraw now from the character they briefly became and bid its spirit adieu. Then comes the resolution and it needs to be dramatized. Don’t go short-changing those who paid to revel in the suffering or triumph. Don’t drag it out or keep the reader in the dark. Give the audience the imagery to put the story to rest and go home with something to talk about. |
| Trying to do the right thing, Changing but not there yet. After the CC has that life changing event and resolves to get his/her life in order, the awareness settles in that this is the right thing to do. There was a situation comedy on TV awhile back where the CC has done some bad things in life and when he hits the Lotto, resolves to go back and set things right. He makes a list of all the mean spirited schemes he has been part of and all the people he’s hurt and with his sidekick set about righting the wrongs of a lifetime. The humor comes from seeing the before, and now snapshot. Nobody wants to take him seriously. The theme of redemption is a strong one and can be found in most stories that follow the traditional model. Think about all those movies and books you read. Readers and audiences simply love it and really connect with a hero or heroine that is trying to make things right. Usually, for most of the story the CC is caught up in the quest, taking one step forward and two steps back, getting knocked down by adversity and finally triumphing. A writer needs to milk this tried and true thematic formula. People love it. The second part of the puzzle is to grow into the new person they've resolved to become. The consumers are continuously assessing how well the CC is doing, smug in the certainty that they could do better in his/her shoes. Why don’t they try this or that the reader thinks. That will never work, the audience laments. This is the response the writer is working to achieve and the better the job the better the read. Slowly this change is what needs to be seen in the product improved version of the CC. It should represent a huge improvement over the character the audience was first exposed to. The final test comes, of course, in the climax where redemption is achieved and good triumphs over evil. Now to some, this pat little approach to growing a CC is considered trite and not something to be viewed as a serious literary undertaking. BALONEY! Before you consider yourself too sophisticated make sure you can do the basic stuff. Picasso could paint a realistic picture when he was a mind to… To start with get a command of the basics. |
| The Dramatic Intensity Curve (DIC). It should go without saying, however, this is a good time to hammer the obvious. As a story goes along it should build in intensity…It doesn't alway happen this way but it should. If the reader or audience is going to maintain interest, it better build. Still, how often do you read something where the rising action comes in fits and spurts interspersed with periods of sheer boredom? Like the writer remembers a trick from his/her term paper writing days and stuffs some filler into the middle. Sorry, I know that none of my readers ever tried this. Anyway, someone, somewhere down the line, came up with a tool to measure Dramatic Intensity for stage plays. It’s one of those fandango little graphs that has two axis. On the horizontal is the time line of the story and on the vertical is the rising action. Every play or novel has a time line, or word line and the number goes up as the manuscript ambles along. Some writers actually plot this and any writer will benefit from keeping an eye on their DIC.  ...So as you read your story, put the key events on the vertical cue and the time line on the horizontal and take note of where the line of the graph is heading.It should be moving steadily upward and to the right, albeit in a squiggly line. As something interesting happens it will spike and fall back and then repeat as something else cool happens. It makes sense in theory and it should prove out on your story. If it doesn’t…if it flat lines or drops during the boring part..., (You know, that vein of prose certain to win you a Pulitzer Prize...?) Take note. As an alternative you might decide to forego some of that fame for something faster paced. |
| The Intermediate Crisis Well now it's time to move onto a larger crisis. Not the biggie, but one that is intermediate in scope. If the first one was analogous to a field goal, this one is a touchdown. The game isn’t exactly on the line yet but this is a big hurdle for the Central Character to deal with. For this one I ask the students to present an external crisis. Here somebody else or even God is responsible. It can be an act of nature, or it can be where that evil antagonist takes a halfhearted swing. I say halfhearted because the intended knock-out punch is intended for the climax. That will be the old round house left hook. Say the CC gets word that his nemesis is back in town and is determined to bring the CC low. It is like the corrupt sheriff without the posse. In the finale the posse will arrive on the scene. But for now the sheriff feels that bringing the CC low is well within his means. Now these crises are not exactly sequential. They are more like a metamorphosis. In the last one the CC did something stupid that made it possible for the second one to develop. Maybe he ran off at the mouth one night at the bar and told everybody about the gold strike he had happened onto. So what happens next? Well a host of disreputable characters want to steal it and the worst of the lot is Sheriff Scumbag. All the others are not a pimple on Scumbag's petotti and only by the narrowest of margins does our hero survive the second encounter. Get the idea? These are not sequential unrelated crisis we are discussing but interrelated crisis that build on one another. They might happen in sequence but they are a progression, with one growing out of the next. Interwoven is the Central Character and his/her want need or desire. Then there is a life changing even and a resolve to do something that will make life better than doing nothing at all. In a story, as in life, there are bill payers to everything and our CC doesn’t want to become another sad statistic. Good must triumph over evil and rightousness snatch the prize form the jaw's of defeat. It’s fun to kick back and think about all the components of your story. Ponder them in the abstract and decide where they will get poked into the manuscript. Today I was writing a short story and I remembered getting hammered by one of my instructors about the use of the senses. Hmmmm, I asked myself. Did my story include all five, maybe six (Da da da da). I had plenty of visual, effects, lots of sound and feeling but you know what….there was no smell and taste….Imagine that! A story with two of the five missing. How did that ever slip through the cracks? So I went back and there was room enough in the word count to add them in and guess what….They enhanced the story. So I tell my students…This is a workshop. As you go along think about all the things we've discussed and make sure they are each being given their due. |
| Our Own Worst Enemy Continuing the discussion regarding the first in a series of crisis, the initial one I have the student do focuses on the problems we create for ourselves. It is a great irony in life that some of the dumb things we do become our downfall. Everybody likes to think that the reason they fall short is because of some external force, but the truth is that the real cause of most failure is ourselves. I’ve yet to walk into a bar and hear someone say, “The reason my life is so “Fracked Up,” is because I’ve made a mess of it.” Instead I hear a never ending litany of blame shifting heaped on bosses, teachers, politicians and clergy…..do I need to go on? Listeners are constantly served this unending stream of BS and the more inebriated everyone becomes the more it gets laydled on. So for the, story’s first crisis, on the road to redemption, I require one that is self induced. As that first obstacle rears it’s ugly head, the CC should begin to experience at least a twinge of self doubt. Isnt’ that the way it always happens in life, that when a course becomes difficult all the naysayers outside and inside chime in and give their two cents worth? To me this is always an exciting moment in the story. The CC begins to question and wonder if they're going to make it. This is where the voice of the cynics begin to whisper all that negativity predicting failure. "Who the heck do you think you are?" they proclaim loudly. " Once a bum, always a bum.” Using the football analogy (I like this one) the CC wonders. will I be able to kick that field goal, complete a thirty yare pass play or take the ball and score the winning touchdown? To a writer it is a well-known state of mind. It sets up a moment where the CC pushes through self-doubt and meets the crisis head on. Hopefully he/she succeeds but not always. Sometimes the hurdle gets kicked, our hero bounces off the tackle or makes that spectacular shoestring catch and the reader breathes a sigh of relief. Success builds confidence. The reader sees the CC growing and they thrill to see success and wonder how the next one will play out. Another dimension of this is margin of error. It’s always more interesting if the CC barely succeeds rather than makes an easy triumph… (How fun is that…?) It’s the squeakers that make the audience heart go pitter-pat, pitter-pat. While all this is happening on the surface, there is a tension that builds between the visible and the invisible in a story. There is the Dramatic Premise and how the CC doing using that a yardstick. There are the various themes at work that show the character’s struggle between expectation and reality. Then there is the struggle between what I was and who I want to become. Of course there is the struggle between truth and façade. This is the underworld of the story, exerting a pull on the CC independent of the transparent events unfolding in front of everyone. This is where the CC squirms between a rock and a hard spot. The inconsistencies are abrading and they create friction and heat and often flare up without warning in the emotions and actions of the characters and the CC wonders, what is that all about…. but the reader or audience knows, even if the CC doesn’t. These are elements of the story that the writer needs to incite. The reader loves this tension that simmers below the surface and so does the audience in a Drama. |
| Crisis Building In many books on story telling referenve is made to "The Three Crisis." In the class, Exploratory Writing, the first of these will be the one the CC enounters after the Life Changing Event. This one will take place after our hero/heroine decides to get off their duff and make some changes in their lives. Remember, following the Life Changing Event its time to step out of your rut and embark on a new path. This is what the CC does after the final wake up call. It id the “attention getter” that opens the door to a whole new set of adverse circumstances. These begin rearing their heads as obstacles. There are two types of adversity, the self induced version and the type that springs up from the world around us. When the CC decides tries to defy the inclination of nature, and chooses a new path, nature adjusts by serving up a whole new set of obstacles. Sound confusing? Well it isn’t really. Consider the first crisis you will be writing about as the smallest of the three you will have in your story. The number isn’t locked in cement, it could be two or it could be four but for the purpose of discussion, lets assume it is going to be three. The first of these will be the smallest (relative to the others) and be one that the CC has brought on themselves. Now, I realize there are countless variations to what I’m asking you to do and your story will no doubt vary from this model. However, be gracious and indulge me. I want you to practice the self-induced crisis first and concurrently think about starting small and building momentum as you get to the bigger ones that will follow. The idea is to start with a baby step and build from there. In football they say that scoring the first points is always the hardest. Once that is accomplished a team can begin to build momentum and go on to bigger and better things. To take that analogy a bit further consider the first points you score will be like a field goal. It is the first step, only three points but an important first step. In the second crisis think of this as a touch down. That is harder to do; however it builds even more momentum. Finally a team faces the game winning moment and that is the biggest hurdle of all. So this is the idea, get the ball rolling with a small crisis, let it gain moment as it rolls faster over a medium crisis and finally let it overwhelm the final and most daunting obstacle of them all…. That is the climax, if you haven’t already figured that out |
| Thoughts on Writing Good Sensual Prose This week I am judging for the Sensual Moments II contest. When I judge I ask some of my friends to help me out by rank ordering the submissions. and then I do the “Obligatory Review.” Here at WDC it seems to me that sensual prose is used more as an end than a means. By this I mean the main judging criteria is the “Excitement” the submission generates. I don’t subscribe to this and see the sensual prose as a means to an end and not an end in itself. To me the sexual experience is of relatively short duration relative to everything else that is happening in the day. What are we talking about….thirty minutes on average? I’m not denigrating the act because it is satisfying and important, not to mention a necessary function, however, it is not the single focus of most people’s lives. Without trying to beat a dead horse, this is the Percy Goodfellow take on writing good sensual prose. Sex without mood is obscenity. What makes writing about sex pornographic is not the level of language, or the graphic nature of the words, but the physicality of the sex act not tempered by mood and emotion. What happens in lovemaking is a growing emotional as well as physical attraction. This is the seduction. This is when lovers work themselves into a lather that makes the flesh slapping less carnal and more euphoric. They are put in the mood to where both the physical and emotional compulsion go hand in hand towards a fulfilling sensual experience. As a writer you have to show this happening. In the Weekly Quickie where the word limit is below 900 words this is almost asking the impossible. In Sensual Moments II with a 3K ceiling there is a greater opportunity to get it right. If I were to teach a sensual prose class....(I teach Drama and Exploratory Writing at New Horizon's Academy at WDC) I would suggest the writer devote time to the setting, story line and the wants, needs and desires of the characters. Then show how the seduction is working in getting from the world at large into the nest. Then I would show the physical aspects revealed as they explore one another’s body, then the building emotional attraction. Gradually, make your words transition from graphic description to aid the reader in forming images, to the emotional euphoria that takes the human body from the gross to the sublime. When this is done well you can almost see a shifting of gears from clinical description to poetic expression. This is a combination of physical need and the emotional desire that builds to climax as the lovers come to experience an orgasmic moment. Then, don't forget the aftermath as lovers return from the high and reenter the world of reality. How do they feel afterwards about what they have done and where is their life leading now that they have been intimate? |
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