TECH: Killer Stories? With Lipstick?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 3 March 2011

Aha! Over here http://johndbrown.com/writers/ John Brown offers some observations about writing. Now, I'm going to skip down the page (we'll come back to suspense later... maybe! :-) to the part about 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories. And...

Let's take a look at Lesson 1 under Thing 1. Thing 1 is What Stories Do. Good thing to know, eh? And Lesson 1 is Lipstick! Yes, John uses lipstick to reveal the first mystery underlying killer stories. You see, if you just look at the ingredients in lipstick... oh, my. Wax, fats, emollients, pigments... not terribly appetizing. And if you asked an alien to make some up from that list, well, you might not appreciate the results. What's missing? Ah, what do we do with lipstick? Well... he uses a picture of a woman with lipstick on her lips to point out that we (at least some of us) feel something when we look at that picture. Lipstick (in the right place)  makes us FEEL something!

Guess what. Lipstick creates emotion. Stories? Well, yes.

He suggests a simple exercise. Make a list of say five of your favorite stories. Novels, movies, cartoons, whatever, what sticks in your mind?

Then, look at that list. What do you love about them? What do they do that makes you enjoy them?

Make you laugh, make you cry, make you feel emotions!

What do you think? Is John onto something here?

Want to take a look at Lesson 2? Coming soon...