EXERCISE: Now playing...

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Original posting September 24, 2013

I was listening to some music on my computer the other day – I use Radio Locator http://www.radio-locator.com/ and listen to streaming radio. Admittedly, my tastes are odd, I've actually grown relatively fond of country and Western music. You may have other tastes.

In any case, I was listening to a song and thought about the fact that most songs actually provide us with two different exercises for writing. First, they usually have a story that they are hinting at or rather blatantly describing. An obvious exercise is to take that story and fill it out. Show us the setting, the characters, the conflict, and the resolution.

Some years ago, someone took me to a showing of what they said was a very special Japanese movie. The title was something like Yellow Handkerchief. As it started, I quickly recognized a gentleman riding on a bus, relatively concerned about something. He was talking to the other people on the bus, slowly revealing that he had just gotten out of prison. He was riding the bus to his girlfriend, and he was worried about his reception. But, he explained, he had sent her a letter, telling her that he would understand if she didn't want him to meet her. But if she forgave him, she should tie a yellow handkerchief outside...

Somewhere in here, I started chuckling. I was quoting lines from "Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree..." And having a real hard time paying attention to the movie. Sure enough, the whole bus cheered as we saw yellow flags tied all over the place. And while other people were feeling very romantic, I was having a hard time controlling my laughter.

I did explain to the people with me that there was a song... And sure enough, in the credits, it mentions that the movie is based on the song.

Anyway, you might like to try something similar. Take your song – hard rock, jazz, country, whatever you like – and see if there is a story that you could put into words. Just for practice.

Similarly, you might consider the emotional appeal of the song. Most songs between the words and the music, have an emotional pitch. They may make you laugh, may make you cry, may make you angry – they're working on your emotions. And you might want to try putting that emotional beat into a story. Can you get your reader to feel that same sort of tug on the emotions?

Anyway, think about taking some of what you find in the song and put it into words.

EXERCISE: These tropes, these tropes, they're going to walk...

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Original posting September 27, 2013

I'm sure some of you are familiar with the wonders of TV Tropes, one of the better ways to lose track of time on the Internet. But with the Halloween story contest coming up, did you know that there's lots of horrible things there? Here, take a look at

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HorrorTropes

Starting right off with lots of abandoned places, ghosts, haunted and progressing through evil elevators, invitations to dinner with the cannibals, museums... The list just keeps on going. Even the categories -- bloody tropes, cosmic horror, Gothic horror, haunted, madness, nightmare, psychological, religious, slasher, subverted innocence, survival, undead, werebeasts and werewolves... Wow!

Phobias, fears, horrors. What sends shivers down your back?

Just right for Halloween!

TECH: Using Interruptions (moldy oldie)

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Original posting October 1, 2013

Nancy Kress has an article on pages 8 to 12 in Writer's Digest, February 1995, with the title, "Dictus Interruptus." The subheading says, "You may be tempted to let your characters tell the whole story, but sometimes you must interrupt."

Nancy starts by pointing out that if you're reading a book that's not bad but not gripping, and you decide to skip ahead a little bit, you're most likely to skip over dense blocks of prose and look for sections of dialogue. People like to read dialogue. So should you write mostly dialogue passages without descriptions, action, exposition or character thoughts? Well, no. It depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

So you might want to use a chunk of virtually uninterrupted dialogue for fast pace and easy readability. Building background, setting up the characters, keeping things moving. You can also use it when there is something tense happening, because it feels fast. "Building a scene of mostly and interrupted dialogue can be an effective way to build tension toward a culminating physical action."

On the other hand, sometimes you gotta interrupt. Just like in real life, don't interrupt someone who is talking. Bouncing back and forth between speech and action can be distracting. But, correctly interspersed interruptions can increase tension without injuring the pace. Make sure that the interruptions have vigorous action, so that the dialogue in the action reinforce each other. Even description, characters' thoughts, or exposition can be used to build tension. Just be careful where you place them. Use them as contrast. Pick a section of dialogue that has a culminating important speech. Then put the narrative block before the pivotal dialogue. Also, put the whole thing near the end of the scene -- otherwise what follows may be anti-climactic.

Another reason to interrupt is to decrease tension. Shakespeare often has a very emotional scene followed by a comic scene. The contrast raises the tension and the effect. Similarly, you may need to provide your reader with some down time. Backfilling in the beginning or during the climax probably won't work very well, but put it after a tension-filled, exciting scene, and give your readers a break.

Incidentally, you may want to consider breaking up that long stretch of narrative prose by interweaving it with some dialogue. I'm not sure which one is the interruption here, but breaking it up with some dialogue makes it easier for readers to swallow. Background and characterization can slow things down, and a little dialogue can help keep it moving.

Nancy finishes with a section called, "Putting It Together." She starts out, "I want to caution you that everything I've said here about interrupted dialogue -- as with all else in fiction -- has exceptions, implications, dissenters, counterindications. These are guidelines only. Try them, and see if they work for you."

Then she suggests taking a story that you're working on or have finished. Find a scene that is heavy in dialogue. Yank out all of the interruptions. Does this improve the scene, speed it up, increased the tension?

Then Nancy suggests, "Add to the dialogue only those sentences that deepen reader visualization or understanding of the immediate emotional atmosphere (or both): gestures, bits of description, tones of voice." What does that do to the scene?

Third, look at the mostly uninterrupted version. Is there a place where contrasting block of emotional narrative could raise the drama? Where's the best place for this kind of interruption?

Finally, is this a relaxing scene where you could introduce some useful backfill? Try working that in, and see whether you like that.

Nancy finishes by reminding us that we've always been told, "Don't interrupt!" However, "In your fiction, interrupt your characters -- or don't -- in whatever way benefits the work as a whole."

You might think about it as embroidering. Yes, plain fabric is easy, but adding a little bit of embroidered fancywork can certainly make it more interesting.

Write?