TECH: It's Okay to Play (moldy oldie!)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting March 28, 2014

Writer's Digest, July 2001, on pages 23, 24, and 25, had an article by Mari Messer with the title "It's OK to Play." Under that there's three sentences in red. "Quit worrying about exactly what you're going to get out of a creative exercise. Take it easy and enjoy yourself. Then, when you're ready, check out our nine ways to rev up your creative juices." Let's take a look at the article, and then the sidebar with nine different exercises!

Mari starts with a short reminiscence about a workshop on drawing mandalas. The teacher urged the members to be playful, to be relaxed, to enter into their drawing. One member of the workshop had a hard time because "she keeps thinking she should be doing something more productive." The teacher responded, "It is important to have something to do that has no purpose."

Mari says she has encouraged students in her classes to have a practice without purpose. At one class, someone asked what would be the purpose of doing that! And then said, "Oh, I get it. The purpose is to have no purpose. You want us to remember how to play?"

Play. Not competitiveness, not passive watch the boob tube, but play encouraging creativity. "In my experience, having a practice without purpose helps you drop down into the intuitive mind were creative insight occurs."

Mari has several metaphors for why play is a good thing to do. "Play is a ballet dancer working out at the bar before the big performance... Play is a warm-up, a way of centering.... Play is the crunched paper and the kindling for your creative fire."

Imagine...

• Toying with an idea or thing, seeing it from many angles
• doing something just for the fun of it without worrying about practicality or usefulness
• approaching a project with the innocence of a child and the dedication of an adult
• alternating between logic and creativity, appreciating and generating humor, exercising imagination

Those are all elements of play, according to Mari.

So when you play, you don't need to worry about what other people think, how you compare, or whether what you do is good enough.

"Practice without purpose allows you to discover things you couldn't discover in any other way. Creativity can't be forced."

Mari recommends these five criteria for your practice -- of play!

1. Be alone.
2. Be regular.
3. Being without purpose. "Let's see what happens..."
4. Be intense.
5. Be spontaneous. "Telling someone to be spontaneous is a lot like yelling at that person to relax. Trying to be spontaneous defeats the purpose. Think instead of allowing yourself to take risks, make mistakes, play and have fun."

All right. Here are nine things you might try...

1. Keep a notebook in which you write daily for at least a half-hour about anything that crosses your mind. (Free writing)
2. Buy an inexpensive sketchbook, colored markers, and a compass to draw circles. Start in the center of a small sized circle by drawing a simple symbol such as a star, flower, or butterfly. Keep expanding the drawing outward into larger and larger rings by inventing other forms to fit the space. To add drama, experiment with pastel gel roller pens on dark paper.
3. Play recorded music and invent a dance or do motions that suit your mood and the music. Write or draw the dance.
4. Assemble a box of interesting objects. Keep adding to your collection. Write for a half hour each day about one of them.
5. Sing out loud when you're alone in your car. Turn on your radio if that helps. Make up words as you go along.
6. Turn an ordinary activity -- swimming, walking, exercising on a rowing machine or stationary bike -- into a practice without purpose. Do it for no reason. Forget about muscle building, weight loss and fitness. Just swim, walk, or row.
7. Play with clay, but don't try to make something with it. Experiment to discover the qualities and limitations of the clay itself. Squeeze it, slice it and poke holes in it with your fingers. Have a conversation with the clay. Write about what you have learned.
8. Open your thesaurus at random and point to a word on the page. Write a short poem inspired by the word. Repeat this process once a week; if you like, substitute the Yellow Pages of the phone book, a clothing or novelty catalog, or an encyclopedia volume.
9. Put together a box of creative media: paints, crayons, paper, scissors, glue, etc. Spend an hour a week experimenting with these materials.

There you go. Take a chance and play. Practice without purpose. It's almost like taking a vacation in the middle of your workday!

Imagine that.

EXERCISE: 100 word wonders?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting April 2, 2014

Here in Japan, my semester starts next week, which is kind of keeping me busy right now. Yes, it's all classes I have taught before, but I like to go back over things and think about ways to improve, or even rearrange the classes and the content in hopes of making it easier to understand and remember, all of which means that I'm busy. But I was thinking about perhaps doing a small exercise/contest. Specifically...

How about a round of 100 word blund... er, make that wonders? Maybe do four weeks of submissions? So you can turn in one, two, three, or four 100 word stories during that period. Five words or less for titles, and the body of the story with exactly 100 words? So you can do one a week or so.

That means at the end, we would have roughly 4 times... Well, it depends on how many people play along, of course. Then we can vote for winners!

[There's something about this that reminds me of the barkers in various circus sideshow's, carnivals, and other places happily calling out, "Everyone's a winner! Put your money down and try your luck!]

Anyway, 100 words. Flash fiction or just a stripped down story. When we done these before, I know a number of us found that doing 100 word stories is almost addictive – bet you can't write just one! It's fun.

What do you think? Are you interested in writing 100 word stories for a while? That would get us past spring fever and into May flowers, I think? Heading into the summer doldrums, but at least we would have some momentum going.

TECH: Story Turns

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting April 7, 2014

John Brown gave a presentation at a conference called Life, The Universe and Everything, a.k.a. LTUE, back in February. Over here, http://johndbrown.com/2014/02/ltue-presentation-materials/, he has provided the presentation slides – Story Turns v2. He also had an audio recording, and I undertook the task of putting the audio together with the presentation slides to produce a YouTube video. If you go over here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQPVnVTi2iHj7CRDiOEkmFilwHMLnfasd&feature=em-share_playlist_user you can play the whole thing yourself! In the meantime, here's my notes on what John is saying.

First of all, story turns are called a number of different things by different writers and people talking about writing. Basically, these are the things that grab our interest, keep us turning pages, and really control the pace of the story. Story turns are really information – revelations, if you will, or changes – that make the reader curious, feel hope or fear for a character, and create anticipation that something dramatic is going to happen.

To turn that around, readers are looking forward to story turns, changes and information, that raises a question or makes them anticipate something, that extends the question or anticipation, or that satisfies either a question or the anticipation. Readers want to look forward, with puzzlement, and sometimes find out what happened. Basically, readers really enjoy puzzling and worrying. When a story turn extends, we make readers uncertain about the outcome or the answer.

But what's the concrete steps in a story turn? Well, John provides us with two acronyms to help us. First, story turns start with a THOM. A threat, a hardship, an opportunity, or a mystery. Second, we have a CAT. A concrete goal, action, and turns – that change the situation, affect progress, raise a question, or make us anticipate something. They are often surprising.

I have to admit, listening to John talk about them, I kept thinking of a pinball machine. Where the ball goes flying up to the top, then starts bouncing and clattering and banging back and forth, and sometimes gets caught by the flippers and tossed back up again, until eventually it falls out the bottom. That's almost what happens to the character, they get tossed into a situation, and start bouncing around.

Another way to look at this is the story cycle. Go take a look at page 11 of the PowerPoint slides that John has provided. Here you see the inciting incident presenting us with the THOM, which leads to reaction – the internal sequel -- and then down into the action block, where the character sets out after a goal, runs into conflicts, and hits the result, which is usually trouble. And with conflict and surprise pushing in the middle, that story cycle spins until we finally get a resolution.

John also provides several tools that he uses when he is writing. The first is a set of questions that help to define what kind of a story it is. Start with what is the main problem that needs to be resolved. Think about what is the main question, and what is the main anticipation. Then think about what is the main THOM? Is this a mystery, a romance, a crime, or some other genre? Are there multiple storylines?

Next, the second tool is to decide what the end and beginning states are. Notice that we start by defining the end, and then decide what the beginning state is based on that ending. And all we have to do is add story turns to get us from the beginning to the end.

The third tool is almost obvious. Recognize that different types of stories have different types of progression patterns. A love story is not an action drama is not an epic fantasy is not... Know the genres, and the story types within those genres. Use the right kind of progression pattern for your story.

The fourth tool is that story cycle that we've already taken a little bit of a look at. The fifth tool is thinking about one man chess. When you are writing, it's easy to fall into the routine of thinking about things from the protagonist's point of view. But stop yourself and walk over to the other side of the chess table. Think about the antagonist's point of view, and look at things from that side, too. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to write from that point of view, but the story should take into account both sides.

John also provides one page of options to help your thinking about story turns. That's page 33 in the slides. Lots of possibilities!

So there you have it. Slides, audio, a video that puts them together, and some notes.

Keep your story turning!