EXERCISE: Summer Doldrums?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 12 July 2012

Well, pooh. I have to admit, I really don't want to do much of anything. It's hot, sweaty, or sometimes pouring rain. Frogs croaking in the rice paddies at night, everything green and growing... and it's so easy to put everything off. Just for a little while?

Over here, John Brown suggests that we think about stories in terms of six core parts

http://johndbrown.com/2011/11/generating-story-3-develop-the-6-core-parts-start-anywhere/

Genre, Character, Setting, Problem, Plot, Text

So, while we're enjoying the summer sun, tell us about your tricks for tackling one of these. What do you do with genre? Do you really model characters on the descriptions from the personal ads? What about setting -- is everything in your backyard? How do you pick a problem, or aggravate it? What about plot? Just roll the dice for the next event? Words on the screen? How do you do that?

Go ahead. Tell us something that you find useful. Something from a book, an article, a workshop, or even just something that you stumbled over one day and decided that worked pretty well!

In the meantime, I'm going to try a little red mint juice with soda. And relax in the sunshine...