It's a story thing. When does the story start? Is it with a big bang moment, or an introduction to the normal life? None of the above, is what I'd say. Why? I read a lot of stories that open with a big moment, or a deep character moment, and after a page or two, … Continue reading Where to start?
writing
An Element of Change
A short story, 500 words. Dark. Brown grass. Who needs to mow brown grass? Not Ted. He had a beer, a bit of tree stump to sit on, and distance from the house. All he’d done was mention the new neighbour, and the list of jobs fell from her mouth like a shovel-load of shit. … Continue reading An Element of Change
Past, Future, or Now
A short story: Lasting The last Sunday of the month, the last Sunday of the year, the first light of sunrise. The phone alarm wakes me on the last day. No sounds filter through the window, just light. I roll onto my side and open one eye, not too wide in case I see what’s … Continue reading Past, Future, or Now
Looking, Looking, Looking
for a quick-bite post. Looked up all the places I usually go for a bit of a gnaw of meaty inspiration. Fandango has FOWC (but I hate the word ravish -- do people understand the full implications of that word and it's associations? It's one of those words with two meanings at polar opposites:To ravish … Continue reading Looking, Looking, Looking
Summary Tell, or Interactive Show?
It's that old conundrum of show versus tell. Every story has summary, every story has immediacy, but they don't usually end up in the same paragraph. There are reasons for that. A tell is summarising something, a conclusion made, or an unmoving description (static, unattached to a character). There are several ways to tell. Summarising … Continue reading Summary Tell, or Interactive Show?
And Then There was the … Synopsis
What -- you do it first? I don't, and there's a reason for that. It's not that I do things back to front, at least not from my perspective. The start is the beat sheets, one for each character in the story, but the main two characters (usually the main character/protagonist and the antagonist) get … Continue reading And Then There was the … Synopsis
Lucky Be, Lucky
(for Fandango's FOWC Lucky). Lucky Be, Lucky Rain pattered on the glass. Lucky held his ear to the pane and smiled. “What does it have to say?” Rona asked as she tidied the kitchen. “It says it’s going to rain today, that the plants will be watered, that the river will flow, that the dust … Continue reading Lucky Be, Lucky
What comes after?
Remember the story process posts (combined post here)? Well, that was just the start! What happens next? The next level down for a story plan (yes, it's a real plan, but not a synopsis or outline -- this is a process, my process): Scene Outlines What is a scene outline? This is a bit like … Continue reading What comes after?
It’s All In The Point of View
Or POV, as we more often say. This is a story, a personal rendition of how I learned how to understand POV. It's told from my perspective, so it's in First Person POV. No, I'm not going to talk about tenses. That's a different matter altogether, and POV is tough enough to get right without … Continue reading It’s All In The Point of View
Chit, Chat without Context
The writerly term is talking heads syndrome. What does it mean? Dialogue happens, but there's nothing there, no sense of the where for setting, nor grounding of context or situation. Dialogue can be great, but if there's no world setting, no place for it to happen, the mouthpieces can be set on a piece of … Continue reading Chit, Chat without Context
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