Story ideas come from real life. Even when we are inventing new worlds and new dimensions, the events we set forth in words follow recognizable logic and have their origin in lived experiences.
Many writers feel drawn to subjects that are obviously autobiographical. As a memoirist, I think that’s fine. But over time that kind of writing can create a very deep groove. Here’s a suggestion for venturing out of it.
If you feel that the character you are writing about is too familiar, stop and make a list of descriptive phrases about yourself. Then pick a feature and change it. Make that new trait central to your character.
For example, I love music, but due to a few poor decisions along the way I cannot with any honesty call myself a musician. The phrase not musical showed up in my list. So I tried my hand at writing about a violinist. As sometimes happens, this character began to take charge of his story. I was pleased to see that he had the wisdom to decide differently when faced with pressures that might have pulled his career off track.
Encouraged, I tried again, this time writing from the perspective of the opposite gender. That seemed to turn out even better than the first try.
These exercises were my first step in returning to the craft of fiction, which I had set aside for many years while doing another kind of writing. And I believe in their own way they contain as much truth as anything else.
Stephen Gallup is the author of a memoir, What About the Boy? A Father's Pledge to His Disabled Son (2011). He blogs at fatherspledge.com.
Articles about the craft of writing. A blog by Bill Johnson that explores principles of storytelling and articles about writing by other authors.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Author's Road Interview Features Verlena Orr
We’re pleased to bring you the first author interview with one of our favorite poets, Verlena Orr.
Verlena grew up on an Idaho wheat farm where she learned to recite Shakespeare while driving cattle on horseback. Twice nominated for a Pushcart, she’s published three chapbooks, two full-length books, and her work has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies. She has lived in Portland since 1963, and received her MFA from University of Montana.
We interviewed Verlena on a rainy afternoon in June. She was patient while we set up, warmed up and moved around, chatting easily about life, writing and the many paintings friends have made of her.
She nestled in front of her computer in her cheerful Las Vegas tee shirt and wrapped in "Aunt Eunice's Writing Stole," and then we began.
We hope you will be as patient with our first efforts as Verlena was. We learned a lot, and Verlana gave a great interview. What she has to say more than compensates for our sometimes bumbling efforts.
Click on this link to view the interview.
Verlena grew up on an Idaho wheat farm where she learned to recite Shakespeare while driving cattle on horseback. Twice nominated for a Pushcart, she’s published three chapbooks, two full-length books, and her work has appeared in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies. She has lived in Portland since 1963, and received her MFA from University of Montana.
We interviewed Verlena on a rainy afternoon in June. She was patient while we set up, warmed up and moved around, chatting easily about life, writing and the many paintings friends have made of her.
She nestled in front of her computer in her cheerful Las Vegas tee shirt and wrapped in "Aunt Eunice's Writing Stole," and then we began.
We hope you will be as patient with our first efforts as Verlena was. We learned a lot, and Verlana gave a great interview. What she has to say more than compensates for our sometimes bumbling efforts.
Click on this link to view the interview.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Story Notes - The Hunger Games
by Bill Johnson
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins offers an example of how to tell a story about a familar if alien world, here a future United States divided into mini-states and ruled with an iron fist by the Capitol. This kind of story requires raising questions and introducing information about this new world that draws an audience forward to want to know more. This is easy to do, hard to do well. The following is a review of the opening pages of the novel.
In the beginning...
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
The novel starts rooted in the POV of Katniss, a young girl. The opening conveys subtle information about the world, waking up cold, a mattress with a canvas cover, the question, what is the reaping? It also raises character questions, who is Prim? Why is she having bad dreams? What do her dreams have to do with the reaping?
Next...
I prop myself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.
This conveys a stronger sense of place, but more questions. Why does the mother appear 'beaten-down'? What happened to the once beautiful mother? Who is this 'they' who commented on the mother's former beauty?
Continuing...
Sitting at Prim's knees, guarding her, is the ugliest cat in the world. Mashed in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash.
This conveys a description of a cat, but also a subtext about this world, that pets fend for themselves in a harsh world. There's also the subtext here that the narrator does not like this cat.
Continuing...
Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least he distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I think he still remembers how I tried to drown him in a bucket when Prim brought him home.
Again, another question: why did the narrator feel compelled to kill the cat? With the title, Hunger Games, the reason is implied; one more mouth to feed.
Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed.
That confirms the why the narrator wanted the kitten dead, but raises another question: why is she responsible for feeding her mother and sister?
But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he's a born mouser. Even catches an occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.
This conveys the narrator's desire to make her little sister happy. That a pet is fed entrails and not cat food again suggests something about this familiar yet alien world.
Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.
There's a subtext here that in this harsh world, accomodations are made, but only grudingly.
This is the first page of the book. It continues with the narrator getting up and ready to go out hunting, and relates that she lives in District 12 that is crawling with coal miners. Again, questions are raised that will soon be answered, and the answers will raise new questions.
The author next relates that District 12 is surrounded by an electrified fence to protect the inhabitants from wild dogs and other wild animals. District 12 is sounding more like a gulag, which it comes out that it is for most of its inhabitants, but the narrator is willing to go beyond that fence.
Suzanne Collins demonstrates a deft touch in introducing thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhis narrator in a harsh world, but also showing her inititive to not be fenhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifced in. Novels that lack this clearly defined, carefully crafted character and plot and scene development from their opening lines risk being static and dramatically inert.
******************************
To read some of my longer reviews of popular movies, visit my website or check out my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise, available on Amazon Kindle. Or, find me on Google+ and tell me what you think.
In the beginning...
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
The novel starts rooted in the POV of Katniss, a young girl. The opening conveys subtle information about the world, waking up cold, a mattress with a canvas cover, the question, what is the reaping? It also raises character questions, who is Prim? Why is she having bad dreams? What do her dreams have to do with the reaping?
Next...
I prop myself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together. In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down. Prim's face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named. My mother was very beautiful once, too. Or so they tell me.
This conveys a stronger sense of place, but more questions. Why does the mother appear 'beaten-down'? What happened to the once beautiful mother? Who is this 'they' who commented on the mother's former beauty?
Continuing...
Sitting at Prim's knees, guarding her, is the ugliest cat in the world. Mashed in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash.
This conveys a description of a cat, but also a subtext about this world, that pets fend for themselves in a harsh world. There's also the subtext here that the narrator does not like this cat.
Continuing...
Prim named him Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat matched the bright flower. He hates me. Or at least he distrusts me. Even though it was years ago, I think he still remembers how I tried to drown him in a bucket when Prim brought him home.
Again, another question: why did the narrator feel compelled to kill the cat? With the title, Hunger Games, the reason is implied; one more mouth to feed.
Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing I needed was another mouth to feed.
That confirms the why the narrator wanted the kitten dead, but raises another question: why is she responsible for feeding her mother and sister?
But Prim begged so hard, cried even, I had to let him stay. It turned out okay. My mother got rid of the vermin and he's a born mouser. Even catches an occasional rat. Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.
This conveys the narrator's desire to make her little sister happy. That a pet is fed entrails and not cat food again suggests something about this familiar yet alien world.
Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.
There's a subtext here that in this harsh world, accomodations are made, but only grudingly.
This is the first page of the book. It continues with the narrator getting up and ready to go out hunting, and relates that she lives in District 12 that is crawling with coal miners. Again, questions are raised that will soon be answered, and the answers will raise new questions.
The author next relates that District 12 is surrounded by an electrified fence to protect the inhabitants from wild dogs and other wild animals. District 12 is sounding more like a gulag, which it comes out that it is for most of its inhabitants, but the narrator is willing to go beyond that fence.
Suzanne Collins demonstrates a deft touch in introducing thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhis narrator in a harsh world, but also showing her inititive to not be fenhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifced in. Novels that lack this clearly defined, carefully crafted character and plot and scene development from their opening lines risk being static and dramatically inert.
******************************
To read some of my longer reviews of popular movies, visit my website or check out my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise, available on Amazon Kindle. Or, find me on Google+ and tell me what you think.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Quick Cuts - Story Notes on the Movie Take Shelter
Novels that lack a main character in a state of narrative tension are often episodic, a series of events but lacking a clearly defined central conflict.
In Take Shelter, the main character is a blue collar worker of 35. The film opens with him standing outside in the rain, but the rain drops include oil. As the film continues, he has nightmares about a powerful, deadly storm, and also attacks on himself and his six year old, deaf daughter. But then he has a nightmare while awake. Are the nightmares a premonition of something looming or symptoms of mental illness? At 35, his mother began to experience the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.
To save his family, he excavates around a tornado shelter using equipment he's borrowed from his job. This gets him fired, just before his deaf daughter is slated for an operation to restore her hearing. But he can't stop what he's doing if it means the safety of his family.
This film's main character is always in a state narrative tension that is accessible to the audience. He fears he's descending into mental illness, but if he's not, how does he save his family? But his actions to save his family threaten to tear his family apart and seem to prove he's mentally ill to those around him.
When he confesses what's happening, his loving wife helps him get through the aftermath of a storm, and they take a family vacation to a beach before he'll be put on a regime of drugs and institutionalization. While the father is on a beach with his daughter, the fear in her eyes causes him to look up. The monster storm he's seen in his visions is now approaching. As his wife comes out onto a vacation rental deck, she realizes the rain is mixed with oil.
That ends the film and answers the central question of the story, but raises more questions about how and why he was having these premonitions and why they manifested as nightmares about him and his daughter being attacked.
This film also demonstrates the difference between horror and psychological terror. In a typical Hollywood horror film, there are often a series of 'boo' moments, where some sudden action is designed to scare the audience. Here there's a creeping sense of terror that is transferred from the main character to the viewers of the film. I found the film much creepier and more horrifying than most of the horror films I've seen in the last ten years. A well-made, well-acted if unsettling film.
*******************************************
A fourth edition of my writing workbook, A Story is a Promise & The Spirit of Storytelling, is now available for $2.99 from Amazon Kindle.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Author's Road Features Lawson Inada
Lawson Inada
Writer # 10
Happy New Year!
We are so pleased to start the new year by sharing with you an inspiring interview with poet Lawson Inada, Oregon’s 5th poet laureate who proceeded Oregon’s current poet laureate, Paulann Peterson.
Our interview with Inada is proof of how a good poet can make lemonade from lemons. Whatever could go wrong the day of his interview did, starting with giving wrong directions and his getting lost, having to change venues, unusual and disruptive road noises and a blazing sun.
The quality of the resulting film from our interview may leave a lot to be desired, but we think you’ll agree, nothing stops or even slows Lawson down as he finds joy and meaning in every nuance and around every corner, and how his voice weaves wonderful stories.
Lawson is a Sensei, born in Fresno, California in 1938, and four years later he and his family were confined to concentration camps until the end of the war. After the war and following his college career he began teaching poetry at Southern Oregon University in 1966. In 2006 he was named Oregon’s poet laureate and won Willamette Writers' Lifetime Achievement Award.
Like the other poets we’ve interviewed, Verlena Orr and Paulann Peterson, Lawson is hypnotic to watch and listen to as he and they speak, often using their hands to orchestrate the music of their words, and always using their minds to paint the vivid colors of a good and universal story. They are our bards, the people entrusted with the art of storytelling since our earliest times on this earth.
George, Salli & Ella
The Authors Road
Writer # 10
Happy New Year!
We are so pleased to start the new year by sharing with you an inspiring interview with poet Lawson Inada, Oregon’s 5th poet laureate who proceeded Oregon’s current poet laureate, Paulann Peterson.
Our interview with Inada is proof of how a good poet can make lemonade from lemons. Whatever could go wrong the day of his interview did, starting with giving wrong directions and his getting lost, having to change venues, unusual and disruptive road noises and a blazing sun.
The quality of the resulting film from our interview may leave a lot to be desired, but we think you’ll agree, nothing stops or even slows Lawson down as he finds joy and meaning in every nuance and around every corner, and how his voice weaves wonderful stories.
Lawson is a Sensei, born in Fresno, California in 1938, and four years later he and his family were confined to concentration camps until the end of the war. After the war and following his college career he began teaching poetry at Southern Oregon University in 1966. In 2006 he was named Oregon’s poet laureate and won Willamette Writers' Lifetime Achievement Award.
Like the other poets we’ve interviewed, Verlena Orr and Paulann Peterson, Lawson is hypnotic to watch and listen to as he and they speak, often using their hands to orchestrate the music of their words, and always using their minds to paint the vivid colors of a good and universal story. They are our bards, the people entrusted with the art of storytelling since our earliest times on this earth.
George, Salli & Ella
The Authors Road
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