A Physical Experiment

by R.S. Mellette

Let's play a game.  It should take about 10 minutes, and be fun for you and educational for us all.  I'll explain why after the game.

Here are the rules:

1. Read the following few words of a work in progress.

"You're in a lot of trouble, young lady." 

Adults say the stupidest things sometimes.  Of course twelve-year-old Suzy Quinofski was in trouble.  She was covered in dirt and dried tears.  Her fingers were cracked and bloody from digging in the ground, and she was being questioned in a police interrogation room.  The man informing her of the obvious was Detective Mark Danner. 

"You don't know the half of it," she said to him.  Actually, he didn't know a tenth of it.  He didn't know a millionth of it.

"Then why don't you fill me in?"

"Because you couldn't comprehend it if I did."

"Suzy!"  Janice Quinofski, a.k.a. Mom, used what Suzy called her "bad dog!" voice, reserved for those rare occasions when Suzy needed disciplining.  Obviously, Mom wasn't accustomed to seeing her sweet, straight-A, multiple-scholarship-contender, daughter acting like a street kid.  This was a whole new world for both of them.

"What, Mom?  It's true."  Then to Danner, "No offense.  I don't think there's anyone on the planet who could understand it."

"It's not that complicated.  I just want to know what happened to Billy Bobble."

"I told you.  He disappeared."

"Disappeared to where?" asked Danner.

"If I knew that he wouldn't be 'disappeared,' would he?"

"There was an explosion," said Danner.

"No, there was an endoplasmic eruption of what we think might be Bose-Einstein condensate on an OTC scale."

"OTC?"

When Suzy didn't answer, Danner turned to her mother.  "Off the chart."

"Out of all of that what you didn't get was OTC?" asked Suzy.

"Maybe I'm not as dumb as you think."

Suzy nodded her head toward the two-way mirror that filled a wall of the interrogation room.  "Maybe you've had too many lawyers complain about abbreviations in your transcripts."

"Call it what you want," said Danner to Suzy ...  "Something blew up and it took Billy with it."

"Maybe so," said Suzy, "but not in the way you think."

"How then?"

"If Billy exploded his guts would be all over the school yard.  Did you find any bloody remains in Linda Lubinski's hair?"

"Suzy!  Billy was your friend."

"Is my friend, Mom.  Billy is my friend and I wish they would let me out of here so I could help get him back."

"How would you do that?" asked Danner.

She hung her head.  "I don't know."

"Okay, good.  That was honest.  Keep it up and together we can find Billy."  Suzy's silence passed as capitulation. 

"Your friends have told us—"

"They aren't my friends."

Danner stopped to acknowledge what she said, then went on.  "They told us you and Billy were working on some sort of elaborate magic trick."

"Not a trick.  Actual magic."

"Hey, I need that honesty.  You're smart enough to know there's no such thing as actual magic."

"Okay, if you want to get all Arthur C. Clarke on me; 'Technology advanced to the point of being indistinguishable from magic' - which for you would probably be a cell phone."

"Suzy!"

"That's all right, Ms. Quinofski.  Suzy, you can be as surly and sarcastic as you like, so long as you tell me what happened.  How did Billy disappear?"

"It's a long story."

"I get paid by the hour."

"You won't believe me."

"Try me."

"Okay."  Suzy glared at him with as cold of a stare as she could muster and told the truth.  "Billy Bobble has a magic wand."

###

Done?  Good.  Now:

2. In the comments section write a sentence or two describing what the characters in the excerpt look like WITHOUT GOING BACK TO RE-READ IT and WITHOUT READING ANYONE ELSE'S DESCRIPTION. 

3. When you've done that, read the rest of this blog, then feel free to add another comment at the end and read the other descriptions.

You've had to go through this experiment because I am still bitter about something a high school teacher did to me grade-wise decades ago.

It was my senior year.  English Composition.  We were told to write a paper describing a person we knew.  I'm sure our teacher – whose name escapes me – was just following along in the lesson plan.  I don't think she'd been out of college a full year yet.  We were supposed to learn about descriptive paragraphs, so the assignment was to describe a person.

I happened to have an afterschool job in an ice cream shop at the time, and a girl I worked with was extremely annoying, so I wrote about her.  Thing is, I never wrote about what she looked like, only what she said.  The story was nothing but dialogue.

My teacher gave me a B+.  I think.  I do remember she thought I'd be all excited about the plus.  "It's really good," she told me, "but you didn't do the assignment.  You didn't describe the character."

"Sure I did," I complained.  "Tell me what she looks like."

I kid you not, a police sketch artist could have drawn a picture from her description, and you'd have sworn it was a photo of this girl.  I nailed it.  I put the image of the character in her mind.

No go.  Still a C+.  Or B+.  Whatever it was, it wasn't an A.

Flash forward years later to someone giving me advice on screenwriting.  "You don't want to paint too clear of a physical picture of the character because you don't know what star might read the script.  If you say she looks like Pamela Anderson, and the script lands on Meryl Streep's desk, then you've screwed up."

But now I write novels as well as screenplays, and I like using actions and dialogue to make the reader think I've told them what the character looks like, when in fact, I've only given them clues and they've filled in the rest.

OR...

I'm fooling myself and what I think is style is simply laziness.  Honestly, I don't know, which is why I created this experiment.

If you wrote a description in the comments – and I hope you have, because this post will be embarrassing without them – go back and re-read the excerpt to see if you can find where you got your ideas from.  The writing is from my latest WIP, Billy Bobble Has A Magic Wand.  I'm curious if the magic has worked.

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers anthology.

Writing Prompts: 5 Great Ways to Inspire Your Writing

While some of us are blessed with a muse that overwhelms us with ideas, some of us have moments of drought.

And then there are some of us who simply desire to keep our craft's gears well lubed with constant writing. We want to grow, learn, and build our skills.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter which kind of writer you are, sometimes we could all do with a writing prompt or two to boost our creativity, add another element to our writing to freshen it up, or simply to get our creative juices going.

Writing prompts are fabulous for building story muscle. On occasion, I use writing prompts when I can't get to my computer to write. So, as I go about my business I build stories in my head. It's fantastic, error-free, muscle-building practice that keeps me entertained and thinking creatively at times when it would be easy for that side of me to fall out of practice.


Five Awesome Writing Prompts That Build Creative Muscle:

1. Images
If you are a visual type--or even if you aren't--images can be an awesome prompt for starting a story or for fully imaging what you are writing about. If a writer can fully envision their character and the scene they are building, they are much more likely to put meaningful details into the scene and really add that extra oomph to their stories that brings it alive for their readers.

Image source

This image really tweaks my imagination and gets the 5 Ws (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How) burning rubber in my mind. What is the story behind this church? Where did it come from? How on earth did they get it here? When did it get moved here? Why is it there?

Where can you find good images? Try these:
Pinterest
Deviant Art
Google--search out strange and wonderful things in the image search

Have you stumbled upon (accidental reference to the online service!) some great images online?

2. The Storymatic
I got this game (The Storymatic) for Christmas and LOVE it. My daughter and I regularly use it to amp up our oral storytelling.

How it goes: One of us starts the story and we switch back and forth building on each other's additions to the story, pulling a card to add to the story at each turn. (The game is a series of cards that you mix and match to build a story. For example, you might pull a character card that says: "taxidermist" and a story card that says, "travel agent was wrong." You put them together and suddenly you have a very interesting story.)

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me reference this story on my casual "finish the story Friday."

Do you have a game you like to play that gets stories rolling?

3. Books
There are some great books out there for inspiring one's writing. For my birthday I got the book "Plotto" which supposedly references every story plotline ever written! Stumped? Add one of the elements listed to juice it up or continue forward. Or how about a book like: 350 Fabulous Writing Prompts.

Do you have a writing prompt book? Which do you/have you used?

4. Online
The Teacher's Corner.net has a writing prompt for each day of the year. Wondering what today's is? Check it out. (It's about a pencil!)

If you are on Twitter, follow @writingprompt. (Sadly, the prompts have been a bit sporadic lately, but there have been some good ones making it worth the follow.)

Do you know of a good online source?

5. The Five 5 W's
Ask yourself Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.
About what? Look out your window. Go people watching. Channel your inner child--you know the one, he's that little guy who is always asking, "Why?" Channel that little dude and question the world! It's your oyster.


Now that you've looked at writing prompts from the write angle, you have no excuse for writer's block, a lack of story ideas, or general sluffing off. (Sorry!) So let's get down to it and let's get creative!! And… go!

Do you use writing prompts? Where do you get your best prompts? (Yes, in the shower counts.) Share them in the comments!Jean Oram has an inner child who demands to know "why" which works really well with her creative inner child who enjoys making up crazy replies. She tweets inner child stuff as @kidsplay and writing stuff as @jeanoram. So far she's kept the two from having a twittersation online, but it's been a tough battle. When she's not moderating the two inner children, she blogs about writing.
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Confessions of a NaNo Newbie

by R.C. Lewis

Okay, I admit it. I've never done NaNoWriMo before, and I never thought I would. I have reasons, though.

November 2009: I joined my first online writers' community on November 1st. I'm sure I heard about it at some point that month, but I was still getting my bearings and trying to figure out what to do with my one finished manuscript.

November 2010: When the month came around, I was on the homestretch of the third novel in my little trilogy, and my goal was to finish the draft before Thanksgiving. (I met that goal with days to spare—go, me!) I also started drafting snippets of my next project near the beginning of the month. I figured I was busy and motivated enough without official NaNo-ness.

October 2011: I registered an account on the NaNo website. Why now?

Confession #1: So far, I'm finding it's pretty much the same as my usual writing pace. I'm even ahead of the curve right now. (I know! It's only the second week—still plenty of time for me to crash.) So it's not the "fire under the butt" aspect that made me join up this year.

Confession #2: When I saw the ready-made stats and graph provided on the website, I had to say, "Be still, my math-geeking heart!" But if I wanted to, I could set the same thing up in Excel. In fact, I probably will. So it's not that.

Confession #3: It's not even the much-reputed camaraderie. I'm reasonably social in small-to-medium groups, whether in real life or online. I only get into something involving a really large group for specific reasons. My existing writerly support systems (ahem—AgentQuery Connect) are comfortable and sufficient. When I'm really rolling on a writing project, I just want to roll.

All right, already—so why did I give into peer pressure and join NaNo this year?

License to experiment.

This annual "special occasion" for writerdom let me give myself permission to take one month off from my usual fare and try something different—in my case, YA Contemporary rather than something in the speculative fiction realm. Is it something I would ever want to query and/or publish? Maybe not. (Of course, you never know.) But I'm stretching myself in a different direction, playing with new elements, which is a lot of fun.

Maybe during another year's NaNo, I'll try writing a non-YA novel. Maybe a mystery. Maybe I'll dive into a more complicated narrative structure. Maybe something that hasn't occurred to me as any kind of possibility yet.

What drew you to NaNoWriMo? If you're not into NaNo, what kinds of out-of-the-box experimentation do you hope to have the guts to try someday?

Why Are You Writing?

by J. Lea Lopez

Recently I held a contest on my personal blog where I challenged participants to write a very short story that was sexy, but where no one got naked. I thought it would be a fun way to entice people to try writing something erotic without the embarrassment of actually having to write a sex scene, and also a good way to encourage some outside-the-box thinking by taking the “sex” out of sexy writing.

So why am I telling you this, especially since I already named a winner? Because it told me something about some of my fellow aspiring writers. I was surprised—shocked, even—by the number of people who scoffed at the idea of entering because I’ve never read/written erotica. That’s not my genre. Or I’m no good at those kinds of scenes. I can’t do that. And then the handful of entries I did get were mostly prefaced with statements like I’m sorry if it sucks and I know I won’t win. Does no one have confidence anymore? Or even a good sense of just for the hell of it fun?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for having realistic expectations and being able to honestly assess our own talent. The last thing I want is for any of my writing friends to suffer from the same delusions that cause some people (you know which ones) to audition for American Idol and then throw a hissy when everyone laughs. But don’t you want to challenge yourself, ever? Don’t you want to branch out and try something completely different, if only for 1200 words that only a handful of people will ever read? (My blog isn’t the most highly-trafficked corner of the Web. It’s not like I asked anyone to submit their writing to the New Yorker.)

All career considerations and aspirations for wealth or fame aside—why are you writing? If not to stretch the limits—of the imagination, of a genre, of your own talent—then why?

One of my favorite and best English professors in college told our Creative Writing class that we should always be pushing the envelope. Always. He told us to write what we love and want to write, but push the envelope. That’s stuck with me over the years, and I think it’s something we should all be doing. Write a formulaic bodice-ripper for Harlequin if that’s what you want to do, but for goodness sake, push that envelope! Write the best damn bodice-ripper we’ve ever seen.

We always have an eye toward marketability and the like, because we do want to make a living at this writing gig. I’m not suggesting you expect your literary YA space opera about werewolves and vamps forming an alliance against the aliens from galaxy XSr429-6 to be an easy sell. But don’t just regurgitate the same stuff that’s been circulating for years, either. Oh, hell, you know what? If that literary YA space opera is what you are just aching to write – do it! Write the best damn literary YA space opera you can, and then strip it down and do it again. Learn the shortcomings of the genres you choose, and the weaknesses in your own ability, then fix them. Find ways to exploit your strengths. Write something in a genre or viewpoint you’re uncomfortable with, to see how it feels. Find what you can learn from the experience, trash the rest, and move on. But do it. Stop sabotaging yourself from the word go by filling your head with negative talk and doubt and do it.

Challenge yourself. Challenge your audience. Strive for the growth that comes from pushing the envelope.

Otherwise, why are you writing at all?

Writing the Back-Cover Blurb

by Lucy Marsden

Inspired by Cali’s recent post on queries, I thought it might be fun to talk about that most helpful of pre-query writing exercises: the Back-Cover Blurb.

Anyone who’s ever read the back cover of a novel knows that the blurb is the essence of the book: a 100-word (or so) distillation of the characters, tone, and conflict of the story that should, if it’s effective, entice a prospective reader into plunking down hard, cold cash in order to learn more.

Thinking about it, this is not so different from the desired outcome of a query letter, right? Certainly, it’s in keeping with the constraints of a query letter, where we’ve got two paragraphs to showcase our hook and Act I of our story. Blurbing, because it forces us to articulate the essence of our stories, also hones our our ability to share that core in a concise and compelling fashion. Blurbing demands that we have a handle on the story that we are telling, so in addition to providing us a tool with which to “sell” our story, it illuminates the elements of our story that are fuzzy, or worse, outright missing. Some folks may even use a blurb as part of their pre-writing process, to determine whether they know their story well enough to begin writing, or as part of their revision process, to double-check important story elements. Bottom line, blurbing has a lot of potential applications for writers.

So how do we do it? How do we highlight and hone the elements of our story so that we can make those high notes sing in 100 words or less? One approach, which I’ve personally test-driven with my critique partner, is to use the 10-point “Art of The Blurb” brainstorming process developed by former romance novelist Suzanne McMinn. Although Suzanne has literally moved on to greener pastures, she has graciously granted me permission to reproduce those blurbing points here. Any gaffs in the elaboration of this content are entirely mine, so remember that Your Mileage May Vary, and feel free to ignore or challenge anything that doesn’t make sense for YOUR story. Here we go:

THE 10 POINTS OF BRAINSTORMING A BLURB:

THE HOOK
These are what they sound like--story elements that immediately grab a reader’s attention. It’s great if you’ve got something unique, but a fresh twist on a beloved trope can work too. Seeking Persephone by Sarah Eden, for example, is a Regency romance that’s mixes a Marriage of Convenience plot with a Beauty and the Beast story.

THE CONFLICT
List both the external conflicts (zombie attacks, rogue asteroids, disapproving mothers-in-law) and the internal conflicts (survivor’s guilt, fear of failure, feelings of inadequacy).

THE HINT OF EMOTION
Think in terms of the emotional state of your main characters (vengeful, determined, grieving), and the emotional tone of your book (a wild ride, a joyous romp, a gritty faery-tale).

THE TOUCH OF DANGER
Something is at risk for your characters--emotionally, physically, socially, or whatever. Something important to them is endangered. This is the place to define what’s at stake for your MC if they don’t achieve their story goal, OR what is being put at risk because they are pursuing their story goal.

CHARACTERIZATION
Deb Dixon, in her fabulous book Goal, Motivation, and Conflict, gives some great tips on nailing the short-hand essence of your character. Although the descriptive phrase may use your character’s actual occupation, it’s more helpful to think in terms of their emotional “vibe” in the story. Examples Dixon uses are Princess Leia as a “royal rebel,” and Han Solo as a “cocky smuggler.” Throw out lots of descriptive phrases for your characters until you feel you’ve got a combination that sums them up perfectly. The punchier and more immediately evocative, the better.

SETTING
Define the geographic location (real or imaginary), but also the emotional tone of the setting: lush jungle, bleak moor, treacherous Fey court, sparkling Regency society.

GOALS
What concrete object or achievement are your characters pursuing in this story? What are they fighting for? Defining the characters’ story goals is a KEY aspect of creating a sense of the story stakes, which in turn, deepens the reader’s emotional investment. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example, Indiana Jones MUST get the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do.

MOTIVATION
Why MUST your character achieve their story goal? And don’t just define the concrete consequence of failure or success. Define for yourself what it will MEAN to your character to fail or succeed. In the movie Dodgeball, Peter LaFleur cares about his underdog clients; it matters to him that Average Joe’s is a place where they can feel accepted as their own goofy selves. Losing the gym means letting them down. Worse, Peter is someone who has built his life so that he will never have to deal with disappointment or failure. Losing to White Goodman of Globo Gym would mean trying and failing in a very public fashion.

WHO/WHAT IS STOPPING THEM?
Who (preferably) or what is blocking your main character from achieving their story goal? This is another way of looking at internal and external conflict, with an opportunity to focus closely on your major Antagonist.

WILL THEY OVERCOME?
Yes, I know, rhetorical questions are verboten in a query. Nevertheless, it’s important for you to be able to articulate (if only for yourself) your central story question. This is the question that summarizes the central element of tension or suspense in your story, the question that, once it has been answered “Yes” or “No” ends your story. And because you don’t HAVE to frame it as a question, you can use it in your query once you’ve articulated it for yourself. An example of a story question would be, “Will Indiana Jones save the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis?”

OK. These 10 points are a lot to think about, I know, so I’m going to return on August 10th to talk about how to assemble these elements into a blurb. In the meantime, please weigh in with questions or comments, because blurbing is always more fun with group participation. Enjoy!