TECH: Nanowrimo Wake UP!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 5 Nov 20111

Okay. Here we go. Look, your characters are doing things, running around, waking up, whatever, right? And they are going charging off to do good, to win their job back, vanquish the invisible dragon, take care of something? So...

Along the way, just as a complication, try one of these. Pick a number from one to six? Got it? Here's what you have picked...

1. As they are going somewhere, the car breaks down, there's an accident, there's road construction, the horse throws a shoe... something happens out of the ordinary to make that trip more difficult. Commercial travel has its own difficulties. Take your pick, but perhaps the airplane is delayed, the train has decided to derail, or whatever... leaving your protagonist trying to decide what to do! No matter how they are traveling, something makes it harder. How do they react? What do they do?

2. Just getting up, and... the toilet breaks. The bathtub springs a leak. The oven door falls off. The window cracks. Something that was working fine yesterday breaks, and really needs fixing, urgently. What do you mean, the roof sprung a leak? Okay, sure. Again, walk through your character reacting and dealing with this household emergency.

3. And... oh, he really shouldn't have had that vending machine hotdog. Or maybe it was letting that little kid sneeze nearby yesterday? Or... once again, the character encounters some illness, some failure of the physical plant that makes it just a bit more difficult to get anything done!

4. He was going to walk over to the girl next door, and... it's raining? It's SNOWING? Hail, ice, wind, flood, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami... the weather is against him! Go ahead, whether it's the ordinary foggy morning in Half Moon Bay or something a bit more severe (crossing a lava flow on flaming boots? Sure, why not!), whatever it is... neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom of night will stay your protagonist from the speedy completion of his plot action? GREAT. Oh, yeah, don't forget heat waves, forest fires, dust storms, and other things on that side of the weather.

5. The neighborhood association is holding the yearly bazaar? Yard sale at the next house over? The guy with the dachshund is using the front corner as a place to rest, and wants to talk? The minister is collecting for Lent? Girl Scouts on a cookie drive, high schoolers washing cars, something unexpected and somewhat time consuming is happening! Your protagonist runs right into the local social network, and gets all balled up. How do they react to this disruption in plans, and what do they do?

6. Just the news, or maybe it's a movie? Anyway, the wonderful media gets into the act, and tosses out some bits and pieces of news, dialogue, action, whatever that distract your protagonist from whatever they were planning. I mean, toss in something happening out there in the big wide world that the protagonist is interested in, and tell us a little about how they react to all that.

There you go. Whether it's trouble with travel, household, body, weather, the neighbors, or just the world in the news, add some bits and pieces of grit to make the wheels turn a bit rougher for your protagonist.

TECH: Nanonotes Day 7?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 7 Nov 2011

Okay! Everyone running along, doing your thing, getting those words out?

Here's a tantalizing extra. Over here, http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better.html
Julian Treasure talks about 5 ways to listen better. Fun talk, go ahead and listen, it's pretty fast.

And, now that you have heard it, put it to work in your Nanowrimo writing! After all, the only  sound in so many stories is the dialogue. But you and I know that there is a whole panoply of background sounds out there waiting for you to notice them! Yes, and for your characters to ponder over, too. That creaking sound in the backyard in the middle of the night, the pop-pop-pop of something in the tree in the front yard, the ting-ting-ting of the dripping faucet in the bathroom... add them in, give us some texture and depth to the world around your characters.

You don't have to add in the music like so many TV shows, but you can certainly add grace notes here and there. And sometimes even some music. Or just the crash of the climax, deafening your characters for a few moments with the tintinnabulation of the cannon fire exploding all around them?

Whatever you like. Remember the sounds of silence, and all those other sounds \too, and make sure your story has a healthy aural tapestry waving in the background. On a muddy pizza?

'saright?

TECH: A Writing Prompt a Day?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 7 Nov 2011

Over here, Jonathan Maberry talks about staying out of writing pigeonholes. Lots of good stuff, and I'll let you listen to the podcast for the details. But I thought I'd pull one of the last bits out of the transcript...
http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/11/06/writing-excuses-6-23-pigeon-holes/

[Jonathan] That's exactly how I work. I do a writing prompt every day. Even though I'm on deadline, I do a different thing every day. I make lists of things that I'm going to do. Like I might say, "All right, tomorrow I've got to write the first page of an insect Western." So that's what I'm going to write tomorrow. Or it might be a love story for 13-year-old kids. Well, that's what I've got to write tomorrow, the first page of it. Every day, I try something different, something outside of my comfort zone. I do it every single day. So that every day I'm stretching the limits of what I think I can write. It's a 15 minute exercise that somebody can do every day. Within a couple of weeks, you're pretty sure that you're able to write anything. Share those writings with other people. Put it on a blog, put it on Facebook, send it to your friends. It's only the first page of something. It doesn't have to be a flash fiction. Just write the first thing.

There you go! Start your day with a writing prompt, and keep a list of ideas as you run around so that you always have more coming. An insect Western. A love story for 13-year-olds. A steampunk version of Alice in Wonderland. Push those boundaries!