EXERCISE: Horrors, horrors, everywhere!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 5 October 2007

Let's see. It's Friday, October the Fifth, and the deadline is Monday? Monday is the eighth, fifteenth, twentyoneth? Eep, that's only a couple of weeks away?

Yipes! Let's consider what you might write about. Horrors and fears, right? But which ones?

Okay, pick a number from one to eight. Got it?

Here's what you picked:

1. Fear of death and danger
2. Fear of the unknown
3. Fear of Animals
4. Fear of School
5. Fear of Medical
6. Fear of Failure
7. Fear of Criticism
8. Fear of scary things

Now, given a fear, refine it. What exactly is the fear? Go ahead and make a list of between five and ten specific fears in that area. For example, death and danger - starvation, fire, drowning might come to mind. What else? Or maybe animals - do you dislike snakes, insects, spiders, bats, llamas? Medical - there must be enough diseases and such to fill volumes, just pick some that make the sweat run cold on your back.

Think about which ones you know something about. You might want to do a bit of googling to get some details, or just dig into your memory. Remember the time when . . . oh, does that make goosepimples rise? Good!

Or you can take a look at the phobias on the web! Over at http://www.realfears.com/ they will give you a random fear, or you can look around at some of them. Fear of demons?

Don't like that spin of the wheel? How about taking a look at the hierarchy of needs? You remember. Maslow. Physiological, breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, shelter. Safety: security, employment, resources, morals, family, health, property? Love/belonging: friends, family, sexual intimacy. Esteem: self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect. And that self-actualization one up top, with creativity and such for all? Now flip it, and consider that the loss of these things is a kind of hierarchy of fears. Losing esteem, belonging, safety, and physiological needs will drive a person - well, that's your story!

Again, stretch it out and pick your details. Make a list, think about the alternatives, maybe consider how the dominoes fall. Losing your job may not seem like much, but when the house goes, and then . . .

Then quickly pick the worst possible thing for your character. Suppose that little itch really does turn into the creeping crud, and the best the doctors can come up with is repeated amputations? Choppity-chop, his scalpel went snickersnack?

Okay, let's get started here, there isn't a whole lot of time left to put together a story that makes stomachs clench and tears start, that makes people hold their breath to see how it all comes out, that makes them shiver when they finish!

But you can do it! Let the horrors roll!
tink
(where is fear of deadlines? That really should be in the list somewhere, shouldn't it?)

[Based on a couple of factor analyses of youthful fears, based on the Fear Survey Schedule. Citation? Okay, take a look at: Shaefer, B. A., Watkinds, M. W., and Burnham, J. J. (2003). Empirical fear profiles among American youth. Behaviour Research and Therapy 41: 1093-1103.
Available at http://www.public.asu.edu/~mwwatkin/Papers/EmpiricalFearProfiles(2003).pdf
Identified five factors:

1. Fear of death and danger
2. Fear of the unknown
3. Fear of Animals
4. Fear of School/Medical
5. Fear of Failure/Criticism

There's another one by Burnham, Shaefer, and Giesen (2006) An empirical taxonomy of youths' fears: Cluster analysis of the American fear survey schedule that looks pretty good from the references. This one is a bit harder to get - have to dig through the reference libraries, and - Aha! Got it - six factors, separating school and medical, dropping failure/criticism, but adding fear of scary things. Not much help, actually.]

FILL: Please step off the airplane and change your shirt?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 5 October 2007

Intriguing notion, there.

Over at http://us.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/10/05/airlines.dress.debate.ap/index.html
there's an article about Southwest Airlines and their problems with people's clothing. Apparently the employees have gotten in some hot water for telling people that they must change clothes to fly. And the company has gently reminded the employees that there is no dress code. BUT, say the employees, we're supposed to deny service to customers whose clothing is "lewd, obscene or patently offensive." The company is mulling over how to explain to the employees just what should be considered lewd or offensive.

And that's kind of the fun part. I mean, imagine trying to explain to a roomful of employees just what the line is for lewd, obscene, or patently offensive. Do you give examples? Try for a definition? Given the mixing of cultures, this is an area that is not easily defined.

Does one person wearing a t-shirt with "Master Baiter" on it constitute a problem?

What about the Japanese woman wearing the highly fashionable outfit that bears the words "the best little cathouse in Texas" emblazoned proudly on prominent portions of her anatomy? (I think some of them include "nothing could be finer than living in the best little cathouse in Texas" but that could be my imagination running wild).

Where would you draw the line for lewd, obscene or patently offensive? And how the heck do you explain it to employees in a way that they can determine who has crossed the line or not?

A puzzle for the fun of it!
Tink

(OWC: you could probably do a funny little sketch about this topic. It lends itself to a comic treatment, I think.)

TECH: One More Step Toward Plot and Structure (18)

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Original posting 10 October 2007

One More Step Toward Plot and Structure (18)

So here we are, nibbling at scenes in Chapter 7 of Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell. Scenes are the building blocks, and they need to do four chords: action and reaction; along with setup and deepening. Your scenes need to include a hook, have intensity, and finish with a prompt to keep the reader moving into the next scene (HIP). And right now, on page 125, Bell is about to talk about the intensity scale. How do you balance show and tell, intense moments, great emotion, and vivid writing against the descriptions and shortcuts?

Bell suggests making a little diagram of your scene, or even of several scenes. Along the bottom is the scene progression, the passing of time. Along the side is the level of intensity. Use a scale of zero to 10, with zero as no intensity, dry and boring background, just telling the reader about it, while 10 is over the top melodramatic madness. You judge the intensity, and decide the points you're going to put on your chart.

You don't want your chart to be all zero or all 10, or even really get too close to the edges. You wanted to rise and fall. Many scenes will have a natural kind of a build in intensity, starting low and then peaking at some point. Others might start high to engage the reader, drop down, and then build again. The key is for you to be in control of the intensity. You want plenty of showing -- 5 and above  -- but you also want variation. The intensity chart gives you a visual map of what you are doing.

One way to use the intensity scale is to pick out the big scenes that really are the framework of your novel. Make sure that these are high intensity, with plenty of showing. Then provide the transitions, and look at how you're using intensity across the whole novel.

Okay? Let's take a look at Bell's exercises. His first one is to take a random novel, open to a scene, and read it. Then analyze whether it is an action or reaction scene. If it is an action scene, where do you learn about the character's objective and conflict? Does the scene ending make you want to read on? If it is a reaction scene, what emotion does the character feel and how does the author show it? What does the character decide to do, or how do they change?

The second one is to find an action scene and chart the intensity using the intensity scale.

Third, is to take one of your scenes and analyze the hook, intensity, and prompt. How can you make each one of them stronger?

I have to admit that when I read something like this I feel like an artist being told to copy old masters. I know it will do good things for me, but it feels kind of boring. I want to jump in and splash some paint on that canvas instead of taking little steps. But then I think of . . . say the Picasso exhibition we saw recently in Spain, with the notation that Picasso did something like 83 studies of one older painting!

And then I notice in reading a novel that I'm seeing the prompts - those little trailing hooks and hints of what is coming that keep me turning the pages.

Kewl!

So hang in there, and write!