Framework, or Cage?

I’ve been following a blog by a self-admitted mid-list author offering an ebook on writing (and which mid-list author isn’t offering a how-to book on writing?), in which he asserts story structure is the most important thing in the writing universe.

Now, anyone’s who’s spent a bit of time reading my online (rough-draft) manuscript, Ghost Hunters, knows in-depth plotting and story structure aren’t big strong suits of mine.  My plots (to me) feel very simplistic, straight-forward, lack twists and turns, and seem about as thickly woven with subplot, subtext and theme as a Stephenie Meyer “novel”.  In part, I want to believe this is due to lack of story structure and architecture.  Because that’d mean I can fix it by learning about and practicing those things.

Let me tell you the story of the story.

I started writing manuscript-length works in seventh grade.  Before that, most of my stuff was short.  Vignettes and short fiction seems to be where I excel; with novel-length works, there’s a lot more stuff happening, and a lot more interest-holding has to take place.  I’m on shaky ground there.  Eventually, I started trying longer pieces, but I either lost interest or lost control of them.  In 1992, I finished a manuscript which, being kind about my first effort, sucked like a Hoover.  I stayed away from writing for a long time after that, and focused on art.  In 2004, I finished a (very, very) long manuscript, and when I look back on it now, it’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve written since 1992.

Then, in 2006 or 2007, I started getting serious again.  I began writing my childhood memoirs, and found if I focused and worked at it, I could write something entertaining and fun.  Then I decided to tackle something I found especially troublesome in my writing historically – dialog.  I decided to create a situation in which two very different characters talk to each other with speech patterns so different, speaker tags would be unnecessary.  Then introduce a third character and keep the distinctions going.  Beyond three, I felt, would be way too hard.  I’d have to use speaker tags.

Well, I showed my wife the exercise, and she gushed.  She said she loved it, it was great, write more, please.  Every day she urged me to write more.  Keep going.  Push on, you’ve really got something here.  You know what?  That turned into Ghost Hunters, and I’ve received a lot of compliments on it despite how it’s lousy with adverbs, overwrought descriptions and too-long back-and-forth banter between the characters.

It’s the first time I’ve written something manuscript-length which 1) kept its focus, 2) had a single, unaltered storyline, 3) had scenes which either focused the reader on the story or developed characters, and 4) wasn’t completely lame.  Oh, and I received the most compliments on my dialog, which I always held as my weakest point.  But there wasn’t any real planning in it; because of how organically it grew, it just … happened.

It was easy, and mostly fun, but it feels very simple, basic, uninteresting.  To me.

Part of me thinks it’s because there’s no structure, no architecture, and I’ve long heard how important those are.  Pants-seat writing, I’ve heard (though I can’t tell you where or when if pressed), is bad writing, is strictly luck when it works and flows and has depth, and isn’t something anyone serious about writing should do consistently.  (My wife thinks I’ve over-structured my current WIP, which is why I can’t bust through this wall and write.)

What do you think?  I think for me, I need to have some combination of both.  I need to have flexibility in the structure, but I need the framework to keep me focused (though I did write all 94K words of GH’s first draft by the seat of my pants with no clue about how it’d turn out) and to solve sticky plot issues like I’m facing with my WIP.

If you’re a writer, do you do it with structure, pants-seat, or a combo?  If you’re a reader, how do you read?  Do you look for story structure, plot points, subplots and subtexts, foreshadowing and theme?  Or do you just … read?  Also, anyone have recommended books on plot or structure?  A favorite you have, one you swear by?

Let me know.  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

-JDT-

Related articles by Zemanta

• [personal|writing] Progress of the day (jlake.com)
• Books Selling Books: Today’s Bestsellers Hawk Yesterday’s Classics [Metafiction] (jezebel.com)
• What my writing blog means to me (penwritings.blogspot.com)

Sucking at Social Networking

Yeah, I’m so not good at this social networking thing.

I have an LinkedIn account, and I’m there because it’s supposed to help you make connections with other people who might help you get a job or know someone who might connect you with someone who might know someone who might need someone who does what you do in their industry.  Or something.  I can’t handle it.  You’re supposed to be able to get recommendations from people there on work you’ve done in the past.  But when I ask people for recommendations they run screaming in the other direction.  It’s supposedly has a great job search and posting feature, but I’ve had zero luck with it.  And while I appreciate having the account, I don’t think I’m doing it right somehow and can’t make it work well for me.  I feel like a redneck hayseed who just found a piece of alien technology and is trying to figure out whether it’s a tonsil cleaner, an anal probe or something else altogether.

I have an account with Twitter, too.  Guess what?  I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with Twitter.  I can follow job accounts and I do, but they’re usually pretty generic.  I haven’t found one yet I could actually apply for.  In the meantime the most use I’m getting out of Twitter is monitoring the activities of people I know who actually have lives and do things they can update about.  Me?  Not so much.  I bust out with the occasional #5secfic update because those are fun, but for the most part?  No one cares what I have to say or what I’m doing.  “I’m sitting around imitating a manatee out of water.”  “I’m watching myself gain weight while scouring the Internet job boards and looking for free pr0n sites.”  “I’m about to go to the bathroom and, based on how I feel right now, it might be a while.”  These are not things people want to read, y’know?  Go figure.

I have a Facebook account too.  Initially, I really thought very little of it.  I joined thinking, hey, why not?  Can it hurt?  I tried to connect with my high school buddies at first, then I realized I don’t have any high school buddies, and for the love of Pete I never did.  I knew them; they knew me.  I was a loner in high school, and don’t even go by the same name.  A lot of these people have no frickin’ idea who I am or why I sent them a friend request, but they accepted anyway.  That’s weird.  But I keep (and will keep) my Facebook page because they have some cool games.  What the heck, right?

Yes, I stink at social networking.  I guess it’s because I’m not sociable.  Never have been.  These sorts of things are not for people who are introverts, melancholy and not sanguine.  I don’t fit; I’m the proverbial square peg being shoved into a round hole.  What about you?  How are you at socializing?  Are you outgoing and friendly and energized by contact?  If so, does social networking seem natural to you?  And if you’re more like me (not a hermit, but maybe more shy, reserved, introverted), do you struggle with the idea as much as I do?

Have a great weekend and God bless, all.

-JDT-

Related articles by Zemanta

• To friend, or not to friend: That is the workplace question (seattlepi.com)
• STUDY: 20% Increase in Companies Blocking Social Media Sites (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• Success Tips for Using Social Media (myventurepad.com)
• Sex Offenders Banned from Social Media Sites (mashable.com)
• Facebook aims to become the next Google (macworld.com)

Rock-a-Bye Bully

I stood in the fresh country air, feet on the lower runner of a split rail fence, elbows on the upper. The strong sun beat down from behind the hazy clouds in the cadet blue sky and beaded sweat from under my long, silky bangs. The tall grass tickled in the muggy breeze and bugs buzzed and whined somewhere in it.

In the distance the trees seemed dense. Jungle dense. To a west coast kid, this place was like Africa or South America. It felt like being in the Amazon basin, and I expected night time to be filled with alien sounds of nocturnal animals crying their bloodthirsty wails into the stillness at the moon.

But it’s only Kentucky, and this is just my first visit to a farm. I’m less than ten years old, and while it feels like I’m in a tropical foreign country, it’s just a family vacation. I’m standing beside my cousin Michael, with bottle-brush haircut and ragged sneakers, wearing a shirt with sleeves ripped from the torso and hands toughened by years of being a farmer’s kid.

Pages: 1 2

I’m SO STOKED!

When I was a child, the one thing which frightened me more than anything was … werewolves.

Lord, I’d cry when werewolf movies came on!  I’d shut my eyes, cover my ears, and weep like … well, like a frightened child.  Once, when I was little, my mother found me crying in my bedroom.  She asked what was wrong, and I answered by showing her my arm.  She perked a brow, and asked for clarification.  Apparently, the tiny, wispy hairs on my arm indicated to me I was becoming a werewolf and would feast on my loved ones at the next full moon.  She had a good laugh, explained (as best her pickled brain could) about hair follicles and the nature of human skin, and reminded me of the hair on my own father’s arms.  I felt better, but my attachment to werewolves remained.

I have no idea when it happened, but somewhere along the course of my life I stopped believing in movie magic, and it might’ve been because of my desire to overcome my fear of werewolves.  By 1981, I had no fear of any monsters any more, of course, but I’d also lost the ability to suspend disbelief for any form of entertainment.  When An American Werewolf in London was released, I not only was able to enjoy the movie without any chills, it became one of my all-time favorite horror movies.

Now, werewolves are my favorite mythical monsters.  Ben and Bryce have their zombies, Twilight and True Blood fans have their vampires … but give me werewolves.  Not the sissy ones like in the Underworld franchise, but the nasty, mindless, monstrous ones like in … well, see for yourself:

These film makers beat me to it.  If I were going to write and make a werewolf movie, this looks like the kind I’d make.

This is going to be awesome.  I’ll have to wait for either Pay-Per-View or the DVD, but I’m going to see it.  And I can’t wait.

-JDT-

All original content © 2009 DarcKnyt
ALL rights reserved.

Book Review – Jump Start: How to Write…

Over the weekend, I read Jump Start: How to Write from Everyday Life by Robert Wolf.  I mentioned part of it last week, but wanted to give a full review.  It’s not a new book – it was published back in 2001 – but since I’ve only recently been reading about the craft of writing rather than learning from other writers, I suppose the information in it is new to me.

The author is the founder of Free River Press, which grew out of writing workshops he put on throughout the Southeast and Midwest in which he encouraged people to think about their lives through writing, and gave them practical tools to perform the task.  He targeted small town farmers and even homeless people as he worked with them to develop their ability to write.

Jump Start is broken into seven very easy-to-digest chapters, each of which is made of up a bit of information relay, then examples of the discussed technique, followed by exercises for practice.  The chapters each cover various aspects of the author’s workshop seminars.  The first chapter addresses preliminary matters, in which he emphasizes the importance of writing (practice, practice, practice!), reading, memorizing special passages of favorite books (yeah, even fiction), and several other things he feels are valuable practice to prepare for writing.

The second chapter covers strategies for either getting started in writing, or breaking writer’s block down.  This is my favorite chapter, for obvious reasons, and represented solid gold.  The techniques included free writing (which I talked over with you last week), storytelling (I also blogged about this one), Jack Kerouac’s favorite technique of spontaneous prose composition, “sketching” (which is just like it sounds, except with words instead of lines) – and this can also be used as note taking for fast-action events or fast-moving ideas – and a couple of others.

Chapter three discusses observation, and how to use the other techniques to capture your observations.  Whether people or places, whether edited or raw, the author shows some examples of observations from his workshops.  Portraits are especially cool.  Chapter four goes over writing and revision, and how to work through the other techniques learned to compile a more finished product.  Chapter five discusses dialog and conversation, including accents and dialects, which are fun and a weakness of mine.  Chapter six is focused on how to go about writing a memoir, from recollection through to decisions about relevant stories for storyline and theme, and the final chapter is all about group exercises in the event you’re working with a teacherless sort of group or class.

I can’t say enough good things about this book.  At 155 pages including the credits and bibliography, this book is packed full of real, digestible information and excellent examples.  The exercises will be sure to challenge you and are set up for use either alone or with a group.  The author’s experience in helping people write is clear and obvious, and his language has been adapted to suit every level of understanding.

On a scale of one to ten, I’d give this a ten.  But that’s me.  It’s small, a quick read, delivers excellent information, has exercises to reinforce the concepts and principles, and really does provide great techniques to give the writer that Jump Start so many of us desperately need.

If you get a chance to read it or pick it up, and you haven’t done so already, you won’t regret it.

-JDT-

All original content copyright Darcknyt, 2009
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED