Oil Rig

I'm lucky: I'm not unduly affected by the rising gasoline prices. (In fact, I welcome their long-overdue prompt of conservation.) But the prices will eventually mandate more of these rigs, or at least differently located ones.

What if living and working on one for 18 months was your next job?

Conceive a week's worth of entries from your gratitude journal -- three things, each day, that you find you appreciate out there.

Marginalia

Readers disagree: is it a “sin” to make notes in a book, or is it a gift to future readers?

From a post on a LibraryThing discussion thread, it’s at least a writing prompt:

I was in the Cincinnati Public Library doing some research when I found [a] genealogy that had writing in the margins of almost half of the pages. At first I was upset, but then it became obvious that the author had come to the library again and again over twenty years to update the book. The most recent entries were in a very frail, shaky script.

What’s the story?

Supervising Assessor

The supervising doctor in the Emergency Room sat with Mom and me in our little curtained cubicle. She reviewed the resident’s medical work-up of my mother. “What’s your relation?” she asked. “Sisters?”

I smiled and waited for her to look up from the chart and wink. After all, Mom was 38 when I was born. Sure, second and third marriages generate some surprising age ranges among today’s step-siblings. But 38 years? Would she look up and wink, already?

Her question hung in the air. Seriously? I looked like a seventy- or eighty-something? Granted, it was early; I hadn’t showered. But sisters?

“I’m her daughter,” I said. She shrugged. “I never make assumptions.”

I’ll use this someday, in some piece of writing. But my character will be edgier. For starters, she’ll say, “Gee, your assessment skills suck.”

Threes

On Saturday, preparing for a little road trip with my mom, I was next in line when the car wash broke. “Need to order a part,” they said; wouldn’t be repaired for two days. I backed out and drove home.

On Sunday, I was on my next-to-last load of laundry when the washing machine broke. “We’ve already repaired it once,” my husband and I said; we’d shop for a new one in four days, when I got back from my trip. We gathered the last loads and drove to the laundromat.

These things come in threes, yes? And in themes, yes?

I never dreamed that the third thing to break would be my mom. “Need to go to the hospital,” she said on Tuesday; she stayed six days. I stayed close for three, then my sister came and stayed close until discharge.

But what’s the theme?

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.

Men in Trees

What's this guy's backstory? (Click on image to see larger size.)

What's his next maneuver?

Baaaaack

The big picture: competing anchors from the three network evening-news programs appeared together, non-competitively, on this morning's Today show to promote Stand up to Cancer, a collaborative cancer-research fundraiser to be simulcast on September 5.

The detail: after a two-year absence, Katie Couric was back on the set of Today.

Surely everyone has experienced such a scene: a beloved or respected (or detested) employee returns to the workplace after an absence. What's your scene like? Or imagine your own return: how do you behave? how do others? how about your
"replacement"? Toss a twist into the mix, to throw everyone off-guard, and see what happens.

Unbuttoned

From a tailor's workspace:

What led to this collection of 17?

Characterization

Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is full of insightful passages, among them a proposition that we tend to define people’s character in simple, binary ways (e.g. good or bad; aggressive or passive) rather than muddy things up by acknowledging their behavioral complexities. But Gladwell argues:

Character […] isn’t a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits […]. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment. (emphasis added; page 163, pbk ed)

Gladwell’s comment pertains to real-people personality traits, but it also speaks to characterization in the writerly sense. Writers are advised to let characters develop beyond simple cliches, into surprising, conflicting, complex people. We’re advised to let more, and worse, things go wrong for them. Aha, I get it: it’s precisely when things begin to go wrong -- when characters lose control of their environments -- that they begin to reveal their complex selves.

Ouch

From a retail display:

And I thought "work of art" referred to the words on the pages.

O! The Suspense!

Oh, to be able to dramatize tension this tight ... but by using words on a page ...

Try it, why don'tcha?

Tipping Points

I’m finally reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, an engaging exploration of how social trends ignite and spread.

It brings to mind an email from a friend who owns a restaurant franchise. He sees people do the same thing at the same time, seemingly out of nowhere:

Sunday was only moderately busy, with lunch rush ending early at about 12:30. Then at 2:50, we had 10 large orders within a 10-minute period. All 10 included a taco pizza.

We see it all the time in all areas of the business: one day everyone pays with checks, one day with credit cards, one day with twenties, one day with exact change, one day with fifties. One day everyone wants breasts, one day thighs, legs, wings, mashed potatoes, green beans, coleslaw, ranch dressing, deep dish crust, original crust, thin crust, on and on and on. Something clearly affects us that we are unaware of.

What trend (repetition) can you weave in to deepen your current piece of writing?

Three Windows

The floorplans are probably similar on all levels of this Chicago 3-flat, but the occupants might use the rooms differently.

Like those windows in the building's narrow extension on the left -- what's in the rooms behind each of them?

[Click on image to see larger view.]

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.]

Uncommonality

It's not the common things we notice, but the exceptions -- the contrast tells us something. On an early morning walk, the overwhelming majority of lawns go unnoticed until I come upon one that bears a fresh-delivered newspaper.

A writer could generalize stories about those households, based first upon the presence of a newspaper and then the choice of which one: most around here are Chicago Tribunes, a few are the Sun-Times. And then there's the lone yard with Britain's pink-orange Financial Times. What related uncommonalities does it suggest? Which of them could be tweaked to make a unique household even more surprising?

Ad Men

Maybe I was an ad man in a previous life.

As a small-town kid in this life, I loved the 1960s TV series, Bewitched, with its peek into a Manhattan advertising office and the spillover of work into home life. Two decades later, I liked thirtysomething’s ad-agency scenes, especially with the evil boss Miles Drentell (and despite their mocking of Bewitched). Today, my to-be-read bookshelves include Joshua Ferris’s Chicago-agency novel, Then We Came to the End and Peter Mayle’s nonfiction, Up the Agency.

And four weeks ago, I added a fifth: AMC-TV’s original series, Mad Men. I missed its premiere last summer; I missed its two Golden Globe awards at this year’s strike-abbreviated telecast. But I finally stumbled onto the series late in the replay of Season 1; I watched four episodes and I’m hooked. What’s not to be intrigued about: 1960 with its pervasive sexism, racism, alcohol and cigarettes. The behaviors are so, so wrong, yet they’re our history. Unfortunately, in some places they're still very much our present.

Season 2 begins in primetime in July, but another replay of Season 1 begins with Episode 1 tonight. Check it out and set your recorder for midnight (Eastern time) on Sunday nights on AMC-TV.

A View To A...

The image is a teaser for MSN.com's article about view-blocking neighbors.

Read the article but for now, forget the non-fiction. Right now, sit your character in that chair and write the scene.

Access Point

For a homecoming? Or an exodus?

What's the story?

Trust Me

At age nine, my classmate Mark was small with dark eyes and dark hair -- even dark peach fuzz on cheeks still round as a baby’s. His terrible grades belied a quick mind and, sitting across the aisle from me, he’d pranked me countless times. Whenever Sister Mary Albertina reminded us to use our talents for good, I was torn -- between watching how long her eyes stayed on Mark, and looking at him myself.

So, after nearly a year of fourth grade, I was ready when his heyday came around. By the afternoon, he’d been able to squeal, “April Fool!” a dozen times to other kids. But not to me. Finally, he did lean across the aisle and poke me.

I ignored him.

“Hey,” he persisted, “there’s a dollar on the floor.”

Was he crazy? Did he think I was still that easy?

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really! It’s on the floor in front of your desk.”

I could feel others listening in. So I didn’t look at Mark and I didn’t look where his hand reached over and pointed.

Instead, I shrugged. “You can have it.”

“All right!”

He jumped up and as he took a step, I peered around my desk. And saw a dollar on the floor. He snatched it and waved it at me and I heard laughing as my face got hot.