I Used to Believe

One reason to wander around at I Used to Believe is to be reminded of the childhood perspective -- or any naive, or out-of-context perspective. From the site:

I Used To Believe is a funny and bizarre collection of ideas that adults thought were true when they were children.

But another is the quick opportunity to analyze different ways of communicating the same thing. Choose one of the site's most common beliefs, and read through the multiple entries describing the same belief. Notice that the entries are rated quite differently by the site's visitors (readers). Take a look at those with the highest ratings (they're shaded in blue and marked "rated beliefs") and notice how the writing goes beyond exposition by incorporating techniques of craft: sometimes an arc; a setting; a scene; dialogue.

Setting Maps

Further along into the book with the Scene Map that I blogged about the other day, was a Setting Map -- an overhead, blueprint-style rendering of the TV town of Mayberry, North Carolina, laid out by postal worker/artist Mark Bennett.

Interesting! So I googled Bennett and discovered he’s released a whole book of similar maps: TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes. I’ve mapped floorplans myself -- childhood classrooms, my house, a neighbor’s house, the house on my first favorite TV show (Bewitched). I borrowed Bennett's book from the library and am making my way through it as a series of puzzles about TV shows from the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s: I cover Bennett’s map with a sheet of paper while I re-assemble my own mental image, then slide the paper away little by little to reveal his map and see how closely we match. The process feels like a really slow computer trying to load a screen image.

Next to Bennett’s book on the library shelf was Diana Friedman’s Sitcom Style: Inside America's Favorite TV Homes, loaded with both wide-angle and close-up photographs of familiar rooms from 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s series. I leafed through her book from back to front (to avoid chapter-heading spoilers) and instantly recognized almost every set. Then I read the accompanying design notes to learn how the furnishings and decor were selected to develop story, characterization, and theme.

While looking through both books, it seemed that my mind had organized and remembered the layouts and details of rooms more along the style of Bennett’s overhead blueprints, but that I now recognized them faster via Friedman’s front-facing photographs. Either way, I’m encouraged that, decades later, the TV fictions are so memorable … kudos to the storytellers who developed them so fittingly.

Scene Map

From You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katharine Harmon, this image was created by graphic designer Tibor Kalman to promote a NYC restaurant. (Click on image to see larger size.)

Notice one napkin on the floor, the other curving onto a lap. See how the forks are held, take in the atmosphere of mirth.

Try mapping a still-shot of one of your scenes … noticing details like these along the way … then write out a first draft.

Word Count

Although tending to length isn’t critical while drafting a novel, I decided I wanted some parameters … that I might as well try to keep my manuscript within the realm of acceptable length all along rather than over-write now and need to seriously prune later.

So I researched publishers and gathered their preferred word-count ranges. Then I opened some of my favorite novels and estimated their word counts: the general number of words per line, multiplied by the number of lines per page, multiplied by number of pages in the book. For novels I don’t own but which are similar to the one I’m drafting, I planned to go to Amazon.com, where I’d view a page of the book and proceed as above. In the process, I stumbled upon a cool feature.

For some (Amazon says all) of the books with the “Search Inside!” feature, Amazon now provides text statistics, including word count. Simply select a book and scroll down the page past the Editorial Reviews and past the Product Details to the Inside This Book space. In the New! section, click on Text Stats. I’d estimated 60,000 words for Harriet the Spy, my favorite middle-grade (ages 9-12) novel; Amazon says 57,959.

You can compare the word count (and the book’s readability statistics) to other books -- by default, the comparison is against all others; click the arrow to target it to related titles, e.g. other books for children aged 9-12. Harriet the Spy is a slightly easier read than other middle-grade books, but much longer. And though it still sells today, it was first published in 1964; it will be important to consider the lengths of recently published novels.

[As to the absurdity of Amazon’s Text Stats, read this and this.]

Big, Fun, Scary

I love the new year.

It’s like the morning -- or a new piece of writing -- that stands ahead, wide-open and welcoming.

The possibilities are infinite.

Wanna read about some possibilities? Check out what the NaNoWriMo folks have put together at The Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge (read the overview here). Then read the list of challenges people have taken up for themselves. Guaranteed, some will resonate as ideas for your characters.

Maybe even for yourself.

Say Yes

"Scales fell from my eyes" … a couple years ago when I learned that, in good improvisation, the actors always say yes to one another. Not a literal “Yes” of dialogue, but a creative Yes -- an agreement to openness; that whatever is offered from one actor is accepted, built upon, pivoted on, by the other. Saying yes moves the improvisation forward; otherwise, it dies.

Yesterday, while marinating on Astrapo’s comment about how to construct ideas, improvisation came again to mind. But how could a solitary writer use it to develop a story?

A few hours later, a writer-friend handed me Ron Carlson Writes a Story. Discussing first sentences, Carlson writes that, disregarding (during the writing phase) whether it’s good for the reader, a first sentence is good for the writer if it creates...

What I’ll call inventory -- there’s something in it. The writer David Boswell says it perfectly: “ ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ is not a terrible sentence from a reader’s point of view, but it is a terrible sentence for the writer because there’s no help in it. ‘Lightning struck the fence post’ is much better because there’s that charred and smoking fence post which I might have to use later.” I’m constantly looking for things that are going to help me find the next sentence, survive the story.

Say Yes to your drafts. More scales!

Mr. Nice Guy

In a writers’ workshop, each participant chose a bunch of their favorite words and wrote a different one on each of a bunch of index cards. (A solitary writer could gather words by pointing blindly in a dictionary.) Then participants exchanged cards and used their new stack of words in a story.

My word stack:
accolade
barrel
cement
exercise
flashy
foreknowledge
genre
intricate
jangle
obnoxious
please
role
silly
snow
tear
usability

My story:
Yeah, I like to please the customer, I like to get accolades from the boss. But what can I do on the jobsite when I’m halfway through pouring cement and snow starts falling -- those intricate little flakes that melt into drool all over my work? C’mon, do I have foreknowledge of the weather?

And right away, the obnoxious little lady-of-the-house comes tearing out the front door, her wrists loaded with those flashy bracelets that make her jangle like she’s wearing silverware. She barrels down the steps toward me and screams that her sidewalk’s ruined. I want to tell her it’s not even done yet! It’s gonna have perfect usability, she just needs to exercise a little patience. But she’s from that genre of female that should only come out after dark -- the kind that inspires me to forget my role as a nice guy.

I step aside and let the silly woman march right into the muck.

Prompt Yourself #2

As I do periodically, I collected writing prompts yesterday by running through the TV channels and writing down the first sentence I heard on each.

I narrowed my list to the following dozen. Pick five or ten and let your subconscious connect them into a story.

How’s that harmonica solo coming?

I don’t want to say my vows with you.

I’ll forgive you if you want to use a fork.

I’m going to make the most of the daylight.

It’s all going to be done by e-mail.

Mom’s cooking sucks!

On an unrelated note, why don’t you take this pie?

One of my colleagues developed an instrument.

They laid sod over it.

We always follow state regulations.

Who cares about better blood-sugar control?

You remembered my name?

So Many Writers ...

… so little time. I can’t possibly listen to all of the web’s audio/video about what writers write and how they go about it. But I do check the following sites periodically and choose judiciously:

Amazon’s Amazon Wire

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett’s Writers on Writing

Barnes & Noble’s Meet the Writers

Penguin USA’s The Penguin Podcast

The Tattered Cover Bookstore’s Authors on Tour

and

Live (*note -- not recorded*) audio from Prairie Lights Bookstore’s visiting authors, streamed at WSUI online

On the Edge

I'm a believer in method writing. Should you find yourself stuck about what a moment of panic feels like, here's inspiration.

Artist Date

A few times in my life, I’ve bought an issue of Vogue magazine -- the September fashion issue (invariably their “Biggest Issue Ever!”) -- to see what was in, see how far out I was, and gauge how I felt about that. Always, I was 90% out-of-style, and 90% okay with it.

My most contemporaneous brush with high fashion was a time I recognized it on someone else -- on television. Circa 1990, Vogue had filled its September issue with plaids -- and not long after, there was Murphy Brown's Corky Sherwood, costumed in a fitted plaid blazer lifted right off the issue’s pages.

But as I’ve been encouraging my creativity, I’ve found myself seeking out the September issue every year. I bought it at Border’s this week, where a seventysomething checkout lady barely managed the leverage needed to drag its 840 glossy pages across the barcode scanner. “Only $4.99?” she marveled. “It’s all ads,” I said.

At least for the first 300 pages -- editorially, only the table of contents, editor’s letter and masthead appear there. But the creative ads make the issue so much fun! I like the 8- and 12-page spreads that sometimes build into little narratives ... and I like noticing them excerpted in 1- or 2-page Cliffs Notes versions later, in other magazines.

It seems that every writer knows about Morning Pages, from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron -- three pages of handwritten, stream-of-consciousness writing done first thing every morning, intended to clear the mind. But few writers acknowledge Cameron’s twin creative tool, Artist Dates -- solitary playtimes intended to repopulate the mind with pleasing images and energy.

When I reached page 51 of Vogue and saw the ad of a young woman resting on a woodpile in a barn -- dressed in couture! -- and caught myself wondering about her backstory … I realized this issue is going to be a terrific Artist Date.

Map It

When I was 11, I watched until my neighbors across the street were gone, then crept into their house and drew the floorplan on a page in my writer's notebook.

I look at the diagram now and wish I'd included enough detail to bring the rooms to life this many years later. Yet I also smile, because the major item of interest on their property didn't require a break-and-entering, and doesn't even require a notation for me to remember it. It's off the page at the upper left, at the alley-end of a fence that ran along their driveway. Each week, the trash cans there held (to my mind) an intriguing number of empty beer bottles.

These days, if I feel stalled while writing a story, I'll draw a map of the setting (a room or workplace or city) and make marks in areas that interest me. When I figure out why they're interesting, the story usually gets going again.

Psychic Distance

I saw these excerpted recently and, along the lines of show-don’t-tell, thought they did a better job of communicating differences in narrative psychic distance (“the distance the reader feels between himself and the events in the story”) than two pages of exposition would have.

It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.

Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.

Henry hated snowstorms.

God how he hated these damn snowstorms.

Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul.

[From John Gardner’s "The Art of Fiction."]

What's in the Bag?

Our "stuff" says much about us, and it's fascinating to get a peek at (and sometimes great ideas from) other people's things: the contents of a house, a car, a drawer, a purse. (For me, a pocket: as often as I can, I leave the house with just keys, my driver's license and a credit card.)

Flickr, a photo-sharing website, gives thousands of these peeks through its cluster of “What’s in Your Bag”-tagged photos. Some people even include descriptions of their bag's individual contents -- click on a photo, then hover over it to see descriptions -- the best ones use specific details that hint at the person's "voice" and open up a backstory.

Cinematographer

Take a look at Hawaii's beach cams from Starwood Hotels and Resorts.

Surf-watch or people-watch -- you decide which, because you can control the camera's direction and zoom views for 3 minutes. You can even snap pictures to save to your computer ... inspiration to write the story up later, offline.

Noticing

From the archives on Jerry Weinberg’s writing blog, a terrific exercise: “Pay attention and see if you can notice five things that were not meant to be noticed.”

I love this! And even stronger than "not meant to be noticed" is "meant to be not noticed." Details like these show character like a cut-away medical illustration shows anatomy.

I should be good at it -- after all, I read Harriet the Spy in fifth grade, then spent the next three or four years recording observations in my own series of spy notebooks. Instead, it turned out to be a difficult exercise. I discovered that I have strong rules against noticing these things -- outing people about what they’re trying to keep private. Heck, it took me a month to collect these five:

The wind blew open a woman’s spring jacket and she quickly pulled it closed again over her midriff bulges.

A friend saw her job -- her current job -- posted on Craigslist.

During the Consecration (the most sacred part of a Catholic Mass), a door opened at the side of the church. No one appeared and the door closed. A few seconds later, it opened again, then closed halfway. The moment the Consecration was finished, the door opened again and the associate pastor came in to assist with the distribution of Communion.

A woman sneezed with the teeniest choo! choo! Then, not having cleared the irritant, her nose proceeded to run, making her sniff! sniff! sniff! for the next 10 minutes.

Everyone renewing their driver’s license at the DMV wore dark, drab overcoats. But one woman removed her coat for her photo -- and underneath, she wore a pretty outfit.

How about you? I’m going to keep noticing, and I’ll report back when I’ve got the next 10.

Secret Prompt

What could be a better prompt of fiction than the tension of a secret?

There are compilations of secrets, such as PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives and its two (so far) sequels. They come from a project whereby people write their secrets on homemade postcards and anonymously mail them in.

But even more accessible are the secrets posted on the project’s website. They simply beg for a backstory and a what-happens-next.

Dialect

For a fresh perspective (or just a giggle), run a section of your prose through The Dialectizer.

The site translates your voice into your choice of dialects, with results that are 75% comic relief and 25% inspiring in new energy.

Wed Cam

Want to see what details come out in a high-emotion situation? Try people-watching via streamed video from the MGM Grand wedding chapel in Las Vegas.

Approximately 15 minutes each, the wedding ceremonies tend to combine incredible nervousness with touching moments and, occasionally, the bizarre. Check the calendar to see when upcoming weddings are scheduled and watch them live. Or, easier, watch a past wedding: choose a date and click on any entry with a "View Now" button.

Spring ...

... and the Avalon Fishing Pier in Kill Devil Hills, NC is open for the season!

I watch the piercam year ’round to get my fix of ocean and surf and sunrises. But when the pier opens for fishing in mid-March, the camera also provides for people-watching. (Well, fisherman-watching ... basically a still-life.)

The site offers options for a live, still shot that can be updated manually via a browser's Refresh button; or a Java-script feed that auto-updates every few seconds; or a feed with the sound of surf. It's a great site during hurricane season.

[Photo cropped from an old -- and timeless -- issue of Martha
Stewart Living]