A Quick One or Two (A Quote, A Disease, and Thou?)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 12:54:04 EST

[Assuming that whatever happened has now passed--the phase of the moon having turned a corner, or perhaps the gamma ray blossoms having faded? in any case, assuming you are out there reading this...I always hear when there is a problem, but sometimes it is hard to tell when the difficulty has ended...]

Start with some vague notion of characters, setting, and so on...

1. Pick a number from one to six...come along now, pick your number.

2. Look up your number in the following quotes from "The International Thesaurus of Quotations" by Rhoda Thomas Tripp...

1. Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one. Elbert Hubbard, The Note Book (1927)
2. Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! Robert Louis Stevenson, "Crabbed Age and Youth", Virginibus Puerisque (1881)
3. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right. Learned Hand, speech, New York City, May 21, 1944
4. A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
5. To understand is to forgive, even oneself. Alexander Chase, Perspectives (1966)
6. It [television] is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome. T.S. Eliot, New York Post, Sept. 22, 1963

2. Pick a number from one to six (roll that die, roll...)

a. flu b. head cold c. laryngitis d. diarrhea e. nausea f. toothache

(pick your favorite illness, infirmity, or other bodily distress!)

3. Pick a few Characters, give them some goals (preferably conflicting), put them in a scene, and afflict one with the illness, another with the quote (essence or actual words--your choice).

4. Ready on the mental set? and...roll 'em.

Write it down. Expand on it. Polish it into something you are proud of.

Be reading you!

Color In The Background

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:41:26 EST

Let's knock this out early...

1. Pick some characters, a short plot, a little scene of some kind. Think about what you are trying to say or do with this scene, but don't get too comfortable with it yet...

2. Pick a number from one to six. And here is your color:

1. red 2. orange 3. yellow 4. green 5. blue 6. violet

3. Pick another number from one to six. And here is your setting:

1. Outdoors, country 2. Outdoors, city 3. Outdoors, desert
4. Outdoors, seaside 5. Indoors, party 6. Indoors, office

4. Pick one more little number from one to six. And here is the background news event:

1. A snowstorm has hit the other coast
2. A large foreign city has had a major earthquake
3. A small middle-eastern country has threatened its traditional enemy--with a suicide attack using nuclear weapons
4. A large foreign country admits that a plague has been killing people in one area
5. A terrorist group explodes a bomb in an American downtown area
6. A study shows Daytime T.V. Programming damages the minds of watchers

5. Now, resettle your scene. Start with a background description, focusing on that color, of the setting. Mix in a little action, perhaps some dialogue, and throw in the incidental news item. Use the characters' reactions to that news to build their personas in the readers' minds. Then return to the conflict or persona sketching that makes this scene fit your story, perhaps with echoes of that far-off news rippling through the local interactions.

Write...