Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesday With Story
August 20, 2013

“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.” – Peter DeVries

Tuesday at Barnes & Noble . . . (thank you, Amber)
Lisa shares chapter five of Tebo’s Family Secret. Jerry asks where the manor house is because for a place to have its own zip code, it has to be huge. Pat was surprised by the intensity of some of the chapter, comparing it to Dynasty. Millie requests a synopsis. To Pat it seems really a lot and very violent. Jerry agreed the scene seemed out of place. Pat wonders why the character’s family doesn’t make up a story for her. Jerry expected that character to get fed up and leave. Pat liked the dialogue, though it was out of character for her. Lisa is concerned that she is not giving the reader enough information and says that she may end up scrapping the chapter altogether. Jerry suggests cutting some of the dialogue about hair color and styles.

Andy shares a second set of scenes from Pilleum. Millie wonders where this takes place. Andy wonders what we think of the villain. We all agree that he is unlikable. Pat doesn’t think of him as a villain yet, just an irritating bureaucrat and found the motives of one of the characters unclear. She suggests giving the characters something to do.

Bob shares a couple of poems with the group. Judith liked the second part of Last Snowfall of the Season where he describes a bird without calling it a bird. Pat found some really nice word images. In October Shower, Jerry had a question about the first arc – he never envisioned the sky as an arc. Judith suggested swapping out one of his uses of the word “pavement” as they follow one another closely.

Millie shares chapter 46 of her novel Life on Hold. Jerry wonders: if there are white coated doctors, are there also dark-coated doctors? Pat thought the scene was shorter and much tighter. Jerry likes that the main character thinks of the ambulance as “morbid.” Pat wonders if the character wheeled in at the end will live or not. Millie says that she is thinking about it.

Judith reads from chapter three of My Mother, Savior of Men. Pat liked the descriptions Judith had of the woodworking process. Andy liked it, but he thought some moments cut off too soon. Andy also wanted to see the mother’s reaction to her son starting up the sander to end their conversation. Pat thought it was funny. She also liked Judith’s use of simile.

Amber shares chapter 18 of Noble. Pat liked it a lot and noted that the ‘sarcastic voice’ is very popular in young adult lit. Amber tells that she does not know exactly where the story is going. Jerry commented that Amber’s speech tags are very good.

Jerry reads from chapter three of Capitol Crimes. We all think that Jerry should read when recording the audiobook. Pat had a question about the pile of circulars on the chair at the beginning of the chapter. Bob liked the action tags before the dialogue.

Who’s up next . . .
August 27: Ray Woodruff (“Fringe Benefits”), Erin Syth (essay), Terry Hoffman (synopsis rewrite and query letter), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter, Hales Tales), and Carol Hornung (scene, The Ghost of Heffron College).

September 3: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Ruth Imhoff (chapter, Motto of the Hound), Millie Mader (chapter 47, Life on Hold), Judith McNeil (chapter 4, My Mother, Savior of Men), Amber Boudreau (chapter 19, Noble), and Jerry Peterson (chapters 3-4, Capitol Crimes).

September 17: Lisa McDougal (chapter, Tebow Family Secret), Betsy Draine (chapter 1, Twins: A Love Story), Bob Kralapp (short story), Andy Pfeiffer (novella/part 3, Pilleum), Pat Edwards (poems), and Jerry Peterson (chapters 5-6, Capitol Crimes).

Big change for Fifth Tuesday . . .
Our joint gatherings of our first-and-third and second-and-fourth groups always come on a Fifth Tuesday . . . in those months that have five Tuesdays, right?

Not in October.

We were to gather at Mystery To Me, Madison’s new independent mystery bookstore, on Tuesday evening, October 29 . . . but a scheduling conflict has arisen at MTM. So our next Fifth Tuesday will be on November 5, the first Tuesday of that month. Yes, we will be at Mystery To Me, and, yes, second-and-fourth will host.

The move means first-and-third group will gather on the evening of October 29 for a regular critique session, a session that would normally be on November 5.

Say what?

Remember it all this way: October 29, first-and-third group meets at Barnes & Noble, and, November 5, we all meet for a potluck and writing challenge at Mystery To Me.

Great word . . .
From Word Spy Paul McFedries:

Phubbing pp. Snubbing another person by using your smartphone instead of interacting with that person. [Phone + snubbing.] – phub v.
– phubber n.

Example Citations:
“Coined by Alex Haigh, a 23-year-old Melbourne resident, phubbing stands for ‘phone snubbing’, and describes ‘the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention.”
– Tom Chatfield, The rise of phubbing – aka phone snubbing, The Independent, August 5, 2013.

“Victorians are being called to revolt against a growing modern social scourge branded ‘phubbing’ – slang for snubbing others in social settings while engrossed in a phone.”
– Elissa Doherty, Campaign aims to shame people over rude mobile phone use, Herald Sun, July 20, 2013

Earliest Citation:
“English is heir to some 1 million words. We own the arcane, such as vug (a rock cavity), and the modern (phubbing – or snubbing another with your smartphone).
– David Astle, Wordplay, Sydney Morning Herald, June 16, 2012

Storytelling and formula . . .
From YA author and blogger Nathan Bransford:
There were two articles in Slate last month about summer movie doldrums that hold a lesson for storytellers, including novelists.

The first is about how Steven Spielberg predicted a disastrous summer movie season because of studios’ over-reliance on formulaic blockbusters at the expense of a more diverse lineup. His prediction looks prescient so far, with relatively modest Despicable Me 2, This is the End, and The Conjuring outperforming the massively budgeted RIPD, The Lone Ranger and Pacific Rim.

The gargantuan special effects uber-spectacle this year has resulted in some gargantuan uber-flops. (Though the Star Trek, Iron Man, Superman and Fast and Furious franchises are chugging right along).

And in the second article, Peter Suderman notes how if all Hollywood movies are starting to feel familiar and formulaic… it’s because they are literally following a formula . One book, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat!, has become so thoroughly influential that nearly every movie made these days follows its beat by beat model. Save the Cat! doesn’t just offer suggestions on structure, it literally says what needs to happen on specific pages, from the opening image that sets up the protagonist’s problems to the false victory at 90 minutes to the closing image, which mirrors the opening image.

Read the entire post here: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2013/08/storytelling-is-getting-formulaic-this.html

And now the beat sheet . . .
Here’s Blake Snyder’s formula for writing a blockbuster film script:

Opening image (p. 1): Sets the tone for the story and suggests the protagonist’s primary problem.

Theme is stated (p. 5): A question or statement, usually made to the protagonist, indicating the story’s main thematic idea.

Set-up (p. 1-10): An introduction to the main characters and setting—the background.

Catalyst (p. 12): A major event that changes the protagonist’s world and sets the story in motion.

Debate (p. 12-25): A question is raised about the choice now before the protagonist. Often this section lays out the stakes for the journey ahead.

Break into Act II (p. 25-30): The hero definitively leaves his old world or situation and enters a strange new one.

B-story (p. 30): A secondary plotline that often fleshes out side characters—frequently a mentor or a love interest—who assist the hero on his journey.

Fun and games (p. 30-55): Snyder says this section offers “the promise of the premise.” It’s an exploration of the story’s core concept that gives the story its “trailer-friendly moments.” It’s usually lighter in tone, and it typically builds to a big victory at the midpoint.

Midpoint (p. 55): The A and B stories cross. The story builds to either a false victory or (less often) false defeat. New information is revealed that raises the stakes.

Bad guys close in (p. 55-75): After the victory at the midpoint, things grow steadily worse as the villains regroup and push forward.

All is lost (p. 75): Mirroring the midpoint, it’s usually a false defeat. The hero’s life is in shambles. Often there’s a major death or at least the sense of death—a reference to dying or mortality somehow.

Dark night of the soul (p. 75-85): A moment of contemplation in which the hero considers how far he’s come and all he’s learned. It’s the moment in which the hero asks, “Why is all this happening?”

Break into Act III (p. 85): A “Eureka!” moment that gives the hero the strength to keep going—and provides the key to success in Act III.

Finale (p. 85-110): Relying on all he has learned throughout the story, the hero solves his problems, defeats the villains, and changes the world for the better.

Final image (p. 110): A mirror of the opening image that underlines the lessons learned and illustrates how the world has changed.

Thanks Jerry

Attention writers and artists – have you submitted your work yet?
Calling upon any writer or artist that wishes to celebrate the imagination, energy, and human spirit of the Midwest Prairieland – we want to hear from you.

Published annually, the Midwest Prairie Review considers unsolicited materials from June through September each year. In general, we are looking for thoughtful and thought-provoking written and visual art that interprets and redefines notions of living, working, and writing within the Midwest heartland.

Submissions (poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, scriptwriting, short stories, visual art and photography) will be accepted until Sept. 13, 2013. We are only accepting the first 600 submissions of new work (no pre-published material will be accepted). Our judges will review and choose material until the end of the year and writers will be notified in Mid-January 2014 that their material has been chosen to be part of the Midwest Prairie Review, due to be published in April, 2014.

Questions?
Contact Laurie Scheer, managing editor of Midwest Prairie Review: lscheer@dcs.wisc.edu
608-265-3972

Don’t Limit Yourself
by Dr. Sherry L. Meinberg

Don’t negatively compare yourself to others.

In my youth, I would happily write short stories at home. In the third grade, my teacher let me read them to the class while I took roll. My stories revolved around twin characters – Tizzy and Izzy – and their daily exploits.

Though I was the youngest in my class, I could read at a much higher level than my current grade. I began comparaing my beginner efforts at writing to those of adult professionals, and would moan, “I could never do that!” And I stopped writing. It took more than 40 years before my first book Into the Hornet’s Nest, was published. I lost all of that time – because of a decision I made when I was seven years old. Don’t limit yourself!

Stay open-minded about genre.

Throughout my childhood and teens, I only read stories and novels. I was only interested in fiction and fantasy, as my imagination ran wild. I had no time for nonfiction books, thinking them rather boring. Imagine my surprise now to have published 10 nonfiction books so far. Don’t limit yourself!

For years, I loved reading mysteries, but thought I could never write them. I totally discounted The Bogeyman: Stalking and its Aftermath because it was autobiographical, and considered it to be true crime. (On Dec. 12, 2012, it was the premier episode of the Investigation Discovery television series Stalked: Someone’s Watching.) When I took a good look at my unpublished nonfiction children’s series, which revolved around science subjects, I saw that each book was also a mystery that my student’s solved. So I can write mysteries after all. Don’t limit yourself.

Rethink what you’ve already written.

Even after writing several books, I continued to tell myself that I could never be a short-story writer. (I completely overlooked my story that was published in Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul, wherein out of 7,800 entries, only 101 stories were chosen). When I finally took a good look at my books, I saw that they were actually a bunch of little stories all cobbled together. For example, Imperfect Weddings are Best features close to 300 wacky weddings. How could I notr see that? Don’t limit yourself.

Never say never.

The funny thing is that I went from a sold-core belief that I couldn’t write, to writing my 10th book, Breadcrumbs for Beginners: Following the Writing Trail, which shows others how to write. Don’t limit yourself.

Learn from my mistakes, and stay open to all genres. Don’t set needless boundaries on yourself. Don’t stunt your growth. Break past any self-imposed mental boundaries. Never say never. Allow for an ever-expanding base of experience. Keep your eye on the possible.

Weekly challenges . . .
Wordpress (our TWS webblog host) has a great weekly challenge feed for writing and photos. http://dailypost.wordpress.com/weekly-challenges/ Every week, The Daily Post presents two challenges to push your blogging boundaries: writing and photography. Writing and photo challenges give you a chance to explore new subjects and help you find great new reads. We’re all inspired by seeing others bloggers’ twists on the same challenge.

Want to join in? Here’s how:

Photo Challenges are published every Friday at 12 noon EST. Each week, one Daily Post contributor will offer a theme along with our own photo. To participate, just let yourself be inspired by the theme, take a photo, and publish it. Publish your post at any time before the next challenge is announced. Tag it with postaday so others can find it easily, and feel free to leave a link to your entry in the comment thread of the challenge.

You can see all past challenges here, or subscribe to a Photo Challenge-specific RSS feed to stay on top of all new challenges.

Writing Challenges are published every Monday at 12 noon EST. Some are purely creative, while others encourage you to explore new WordPress.com features to see how they can enrich your blog and your relationships with readers. We feature a few of our favorite responses on Freshly Pressed each Friday.

To participate, simply write a post that responds to the challenge guidelines, and tag it with DPchallenge; feel free to leave a link to your entry in the comment thread of the challenge as well. Publish your post at any time before the next challenge is announced. You can see all past challenges here, or subscribe to a Writing Challenge-specific RSS feed to stay on top of all new challenges.

Thanks Pat

Writers on Writing; Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle
(Elmore Leonard died August 19 of complications of a stroke. In 2001, The New York Times invited Mr. Leonard to share his advice for writing. What follows is the essay in full.)

These are rules of writing I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather.

If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction t the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue that come after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. The prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday,” but it’s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody telling me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks…figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description, but not too much of that…sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle…Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.

3. Never use a word other than said to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to a character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. Once I noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use a verb to modify the verb “said”…

…he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with disclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

The rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialects, patios, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.”

8. Avoid detailed description of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hill Like white Elephants” what do the “American boy and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.

My most important rule is the one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not to distract the reader from the story with obvious writing (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of a particular character – the one whose view best brings the scene to life – I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in “Sweet Thursday” was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Weather” is another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter is “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.”

“Sweet Thursday” came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

Food for thought. . .
“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E. L. Doctorow