Another Friday Past...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 00:46:48 EDT

[oops. it seems that yesterday was the end of the week, even though it felt more like some strange beginning as I finally returned to work and wailing and wallowing in email...so I sort of missed a Friday. Here we go!]

1. Pick a number (one to six? why not!)

1. a stone (type, shape, etc. left to your indiscretion)
2. a flower (ditto!)
3. the pit of a fruit (the seed, the little bundled knot inside)
4. a bent, perhaps broken wand (willow, ash, metal, plastic? you decide!)
5. an empty casing (could be a paper bag, could be plastic, could be an organic husk, could be any kind of wrapper you like)
6. an impression in the ground (a footprint in mud? a hole left by a cane planted in the sand? perhaps a dip in stone, made by dragging flesh again and again over the same sad spot? guess what - you get to decide!)

So, you have now picked a little piece of the universe. You have thought carefully about it, considering the cracked quartz, the bell of snowdrops, the hardened pit of a peach, the sadly bedraggled willow whip left after a flash flood, the twisted paper bag from a wino's last bottle of mouthwash, or the odd handprint so carefully made in the setting concrete--with all seven fingers clearly displayed?

In any case...

2. Pick another number! Roll that die and here come the fly?

1. "We cannot live, sorrow or die for someone else, for suffering is too precious to be shared." Edward Dahlberg, "Because I Was Flesh" (1963)
2. "Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary." Emerson, Journals, 1840.
3. "The charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others." Homer, Odyssey (9th c. B.C.), 6, tr. E.V. Rieu.
4. "Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (1954), 241.
5. "Wherever any one is against his will, that is to him a prison." Epictetus, Discourses (2nd c.), 1.7, tr. Thomas W. Higginson.
6. "When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn." Ovid, The Art of Love (C. A.D. 8), 2, tr. Rolfe Humphries

And now we have a quotation (from The International Thesaurus of Quotations, compiled by Rhoda Thomas Tripp).

3. Pick one more number? Okay!

1. death
2. broken love
3. broken trust
4. false friendship
5. the heartbreak of jealousy
6. defeat

And the situation is...

Character A has suffered the problem you just picked. You, as writer/artist, are comparing them with the physical point from number one (a rock, a flower, a seed,...alone in the world, suffering...)

Character B, being a helpful type, is doing their best to explain how the thought contained in the quote applies to this little contretemps.

Put A and B in a setting, consider their relationship with each other, and let the quotation meet the person dancing in metaphorical tights, all dressed up and nowhere to go but onword and upword with poetical delites?

Short start? How about:

"I just can't believe it," he said, hands twisting a napkin into shreds on the table.

Let's write!

Where did the time go?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 08:48:59 EDT

[oops - somehow, it turned into Friday, and I haven't even sent out the Wednesday rererereminder about the FAQ? okay, do one, then send this exercise, then sleep a bit, get on a great silver bird and fly out of the sunset into yesterday (we leave at 6 pm, fly east away from the setting sun, and land at 11 am the day we left. I wonder if I can call myself before I leave?)]

Let's try something simple. Pick three characters. Flesh them out a bit, get a feeling for them. Got them in mind? Make a list, with A, B, and C...

The situation - A is interested in B. B is interested in C. Sadly, B is not really interested in A, nor is C really interested in B.

Got that? A wants B. B doesn't want A. B wants C, but C doesn't want B.

In case you're wondering, I don't have the slightest idea about the relationship of A and C - you can twist and turn that one yourself.

Oh. The exact nature of the interest - from simple rutting lust to the most gentle desire to see someone's etchings - is also up for grabs, plunders, and other mixed confessions. Do it up right, have a bit of contrition, maybe a penitent dissolution, or even a razzle-dazzle erection from below...

And, now, let's try picking a number (one to six?)

1. trapped in a stopped elevator
2. traveling in a bus to another town
3. sitting with each other at a posh restaurant
4. in a hospital waiting room
5. sitting in a church pew during a loooong service
6. on the banks of a lovely river, watching a thunderstorm roll in

So, your three friends (at least two of whom would really like to get to know another one a bit better, but - there's a slight problem of unrequited interest) are in this situation. Tell us a little about what happens, the way they look at each other, the way they talk, the way they drop the silver on each other's toes...

By the way, instead of telling us who likes who, and who couldn't care less, leave that as your little secret - and show us who has what kind of interest, just by the way they respond, the little touches, the strokes and filibusters of their social tete-a-tete-a-tete. (three heads, no waiting)

Be reading you!
(coming soon to a town near you, far, far from here)

(in case anyone is a bit confused - I'm now in the U.S., about to go to some meetings in California. The above was written while still in Japan, but there was this little problem about getting a telephone connection that stayed connected for longer than 15 seconds - so you get this a bit late, a bit bewildered, and more than likely a bit sleepy - later, philabusters and other rusting towns, as I'm tired now. look it up, the correct spelling is filibuster:-)

TECH: Find The Passion (an article review)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Find The Passion by James Scott Bell in Writer's Digest, November 2004, pages 24 to 27 talks about how to put emotional power into your writing. He suggests five steps:

1. Feeling authentic emotions
2. Playing with the possibilities those emotions create
3. Planning
4. Writing
5. Editing

So we start by finding the emotion. Pick the tone that you want, the emotional feeling, and then into your own emotional memories. Actors put themselves in the characters place and then imagine what they would be feeling. Remember when you felt the emotion. Remember what you saw, heard, smelled, touched, tasted -- what you felt! Other people use music to remind them of feelings. Get in touch with that emotion.

Next, we improvise. "In the theater of the mind, we learn to let scenes and characters play around; we keep things hopping in new and interesting ways just by giving our imaginations free reign." (p. 26) Take a character, and imagine them in a scene in your mind. What does the character do? How do they move, what are they wearing, how do they act and react? Where are they going and why? Now put in some opposition, another character, or a problem of some sort? Watch the scene unfold and feel the emotions, the struggle, the fight. Find the passion. Bell talks about the imaginary movie that we run in our own head.
 
Oh, and keep track of images or scenes that your imagination tosses up at odd times. I woke to the phrase "getting up on the wrong side of the Bard" today. I have no real idea what that phrase had to do with anything, but I wrote it in my journal and expect that sometime it may expand. Especially if you get images, take the time to write them down.

Third, we're going to plan the scenes. Analyze the results of the brainstorms and improvisation, and put it in working order. Remind yourself of the emotional tone that you want to achieve. Think about whether the scene you're working on will be mostly action or mostly reflection. Should the stakes be high or low? Are the characters working at the top of their game or are they recovering from a major scene? And make sure that the end of the scene makes the reader desperate to turn the page and keep reading. One hint: you don't have to resolve everything. Leave the reader wondering!

Fourth, write the first draft. Write your heart out. Many writers recommend writing the first draft passionately and quickly. Put the inner critic away and just let the words flow.

Fifth, finish the job. Clean up the draft. Cut out the big, stupid mistakes. You may be cutting entire sections, but that's okay. Then clean up the details. Refine the cliches, tighten up the wording, make those diamonds that you wrote sparkle.

"Great fiction is formed by heat. Feel your characters and plots intensely, write in the heat of passion, then cut judiciously." (p. 27)

A razor, a cross, and YOU?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 09:30:49 -0400

Quick and quirky.

Start with your character in mind, please. Male/female/other, young/old/immortal, good/bad/interesting, all those little things that make someone fun to know. And with that person in mind, go on...

1. Pick your number (one to six, please?)

1. a razor
2. one card from a deck of cards
3. a photograph
4. a fork
5. a postcard
6. a tube of lipstick

2. and again?

1. a cross
2. a small wooden buddha
3. a copy of the Book of Mormon
4. a plant
5. a book of poems (poet? You pick one)
6. a stopped clock

3. Last, but not least. One more number.

The last time they met, this was

1. a person who your character would happily kill
2. a person who would happily kill your character
3. the person who stole your character's lover
4. the lover who was stolen from your character
5. a person who was busily making a fortune by stepping on people
6. a person who intended to kill to become famous

So, on to the scene. Your character (should they follow directions) has just walked into a room (where? You decide). In the room is a body, the two objects, and the person.

It seems likely that a crime has been committed (a body, after all, is somewhat suggestive). However, as usual, you may elect to do something else (hospitals have bodies. Morgues. A garage has a certain kind of body. And then there could be other reasons for a body to be there - perhaps one or more of the characters has a slight tendency to the vampirish side? Or is tonight the night for a sacrifice to Baal?)

And of all the people that might be at the scene of a crime, for it to be this person!

The objects? You can mix them into the crime, you can use them to help resolve the old conflict between these two, you can even forget them.

Before you let yourself go wild, don't forget that both characters should have goals or directions that they are going now, too. We know they had a problem in their previous life. But where are they going now? And how do those directions coincide or collide?

So, if you would, let us see this scene through your words, through your writer's eyes. Make it lurch along, a breathless pace or perhaps the fine slow paced detailed description of minutia making every second seem like an eternity. Show us the hidden secrets of these two people, ill-met over the bloody corpse of a corpulent stock-broker or perhaps well-met in the hospital ward where she whom they both worshipped lies on the border between life and death.

I.e., write.

One Sentence?

As she knelt and felt the neck of the corpse, she stared at the person sitting there and said, "What are you doing here?"

You may use this as the beginning point for your story if you like...

Be reading you real soon now!