I babysat my sister’s brood recently. The sisterly offspring currently numbers two; the Niece and Tiny. They were both overly excited, the Niece especially due to my pretty, red nail polish (High Roller by China Glaze, highly recommended for impressing little girls).
Tiny is going to be three this summer and he loves cars. Tenderly. He puts them to bed and tucks them in and makes them kiss each other. True love, if you ever saw it. Cars is his fave movie of course, and Lightning McQueen is his absolute hero. He has two McQueens, one big that he calls “Mommy McQueen” and one small that he calls “Tiny McQueen.” They are the light and air of his existence. He can’t sleep, eat or brush his teeth unless they’re both there.
Anyway, after a few hours of aunterly storytelling, child tossing and other exciting adventures, Tiny crawled onto my lap and yanked my hair to attract my attention. Looking me deeply the in the eyes, he said with great sincerity: “You are just like Lightning McQueen!”
I mean, whew. Have you ever had a better compliment?
I find the shit gets balanced out by chunks of magic eventually.
-Michael Sheen
Today I walked past a man waiting for the subway. He was staring intently into nothingness, a phone pressed to his ear. His feet were planted firmly on the ground, a little apart. In his free hand, he held some flowers, wrapped up in white paper. With great sincerity he announced: “I would do anything for friendship.”
That halted me. How intimate isn’t that statement? “I would do anything for friendship.” It’s spilling your heart’s content, the very essence on your soul, on the floor of a subway platform. Tossing it, randomly, at the feet of strangers. Such as me.
There’s a story there, clearly. He might have been talking to a friend. His wife. The girl he hoped would become more than a friend. or he might have been conversing with his shrink.
“I would do anything for friendship.”
Is it a beautiful statement? Or a tragic, pathetic, desperate one? I couldn’t make up my mind. But all the way home, that unknown man followed me in my head, riding my mind.
Such a simple statement, yet so unspeakably complicated.
I have a new addiction. Plotting.
Admittedly, I’ve always loved plotting. I love coming up with a story, turning it into a plot, thinking up highlights etc. etc. Problem is, I tend to stop there because I feel that by plotting I’m stalling the writing which is the actual, real work. So I plunge right in to prove that I’m not afraid. And since I have the highlights, there are just the details, such as “hero and heroine fall in love” that need to be completed when actually writing. No problemo, right?
Wrong. I get lost in the plot and I twist it around until everything becomes more and more contrived and I just add words so I’ll end up at the next scene that actually has a point (plus I have word count goals, and unless I churn out those words, I feel I’m stalling). Each time I find that having the first scene and then one “later on” and then some, about two-thirds in and the final scene, probably isn’t enough plotting.
So I’m trying something new. I’m plotting it all out. Every detail. I think the fact that I can do that without much trouble is a sign of me having a solid story to start with. But there’s more to it – things I can see would have been a tangle later on are actually de-tangled before I even start.
One of the best advice I ever got (and I have no idea where, I just know I didn’t come up with it myself), is to use as few story elements as possible. If you have a secondary character in chapter one, don’t introduce a new one in chapter five to fill a plot point. Use the first character. In fact, you shouldn’t have anything in the chapter one that isn’t necessary to resolve the plot. Trim the fat and make the elements you have do double duty. That way, things connect. There are no lose ends. I can’t say how much this simple thing has helped me.
Another brilliant advice is (I think he was the one who said it anyway, but I haven’t been able to verify it) SF-writer Gordon Dickson’s statement that you should make sure that every character wants something in every scene, even if it’s only a glass of water. If you start out the plotting of each scene by simply listing what all the characters want out of it, you’ll soon find that you know how they’ll act. And they’ll all act. There will be no wallpaper characters, because they all have drive.
And thirdly, NoteBook. I’m a sucker for NoteBook. Colors and post-its and pretty fonts make it so much simpler to organize and visualize your plot.
So, I’m a complete slut for anything plotting related right now. Help me feed that addiction, will you? What are your best tips? Any recommended craft books? Links? keep ‘em coming, because like Depeche Mode said back in the day: I just can’t get enough.
What’s the Use of Wond’rin’? performed by Amanda Palmer, with the support of Annie Clark of St. Vincent.
I love this video. In the world of videos, this rates about 6/5.
Today we are going to address something of vital importance, kiddos.
Movies.
What, you may ask yourself, makes a good movie? The answer is simple. Costumes. Yup, you heard me. Costumes. Anything where people dress up is awesome. Historical, space or super heroes; it’s more or less the same to me. If it’s based on a comic book or they poke each other with swords, BIG BONUS.
There are, however, exceptions to this rule. For example, it might involve blue radioactive geniuses with tiny g-strings and Hallelujah being played during a sex scene, both things which are listed in the 1987 International Convention of Things That Are Outlawed Because They Are Basically Foul And Possibly An Abomination. Not even costumes can save that hot mess. Also, I don’t like movies that make a mockery of kick-ass Greeks by pitting them against what looks like the 1994 Self-Destruct Tour entourage. But apart from those exceptions, it’s a fool proof rule:
Costumes + Swords + Comic books = Teh Awesome.
(if it has neither, but it does involve Bruce Lee, it usually gets a pass too).
Bad movies are anything that involves Nicholas Cage, the premise of “Oops, I have to many shoes because I have no man” or cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on fluffy bunnies, even if said cruelty is imposed on them by other fluffy bunnies. Heck, especially then. Also, if the movie’s basic plot is that the world is ending either because of aliens or climate changes, you don’t want to see it. Trust me. The Apocalypse needs to involve angels and demons and possibly the Four Horsemen to be cool (a little semi-nekkid male flesh to go with the brimstone usually pushes the rating up about 1.2 points for me as well).
And finally, remember that if it says “Ingemar Bergman” on the cover, you will want to check that it has Max von Sydow and Death playing chess in it, or it’s no good. Even if it has a cool name like “The Hour of the Wolf.”
Did I forget anything important?
Chess is often used as a shortcut to showing that someone is smart in novels. Like the flighty heroine or rakish hero – putting them in front of a black and white board and having them whup ass is a very convenient and simple way of showing that there’s more to this Duke of Slut than just hot buns enclosed in a pair of smexy angsty pants. He’s smart with a capital ‘S’ as well, because, eh… I guess we all know that smart people like shuffling bishops across squares. Or something.
If this sounds like sour grapes, it totes is. I suck at chess. Always have.
When I was a child, my father would sometimes play chess with me on Sunday mornings. This was for a very brief time, you see, because he soon grew tired of it. I was an impossible opponent because I simply refused to grasp the rules.
See, I liked horses. The knights were little horses. Ergo, I did everything to conquer dad’s knights and everything to preserve my own. When I had all four of them, I considered myself a winner. That whole check mate business – I couldn’t be bothered with that. I just sat down to play with the all pretty horses, ignoring the board.
Today I can’t even be bothered to care about the horses. I suppose I’m a lost cause. Please tell me I’m not the only one.
Tuesday was one of those days.
To kick it off, I had forgotten to turn on the alarm so I woke up an hour too late, which also meant I didn’t have time to style my hair, which in turn meant I spent the day looking like Edward Scissorhands (or rather, Edward Scissorhands on a bad hairday).
It went downhill from there. Everything that could go wrong did. You know, just barely missing the train, banging your knee on your desk, having the printer refusing to cooperate. Etcetera.
One of those days.
So, getting home that night, I figured I had earned a nice dinner, just to make up for all the bad things that had happened. I prepared a very nice meal and put the potatoes in the oven. Then I brought a glass of red wine (that was how bad my day had been) and sat down on the couch to write.
That’s when the phone rang.
In my surprise, I jumped, sending the wine flying all over my white carpet. It now looks like I’ve performed some sort of peculiar ceremony, involving the ritual decapitation of a goat, right smack in my living room. At least, seeing that, one will hope it was a goat and not a small child.
The phone call was of course one I had dreaded that forced me to put the writing aside and do something I’d been putting off for ever (note to self: never again try to convince elderly ladies that it is fine to send email addresses in emails, because apparently, they know better than that and your empirical data will not make them change their minds). Anyway, once that was out of the way, I went to get my dinner.
That’s when the oven door came apart in my hands.
I’m not kidding. It did. The handle came off and the glass pane fell off and there were screws and thingymahbobs everywhere. I just stood there, like an idiot, resigning myself to the idea that I might have to get a new stove.
And that, my dear friends, is when I gave up. The day was meant to be absolute sh*te. Nothing I could do would ever change that. So I confess I didn’t write that night (which was just as well as the WIP would likely have exploded if I had). I just curled up on the couch and watched Van Helsing and know what? I put it up as research, because if you can’t do that, what’s the point of being a writer? You might as well get a hobby cleaning pipes if you’re not going to let yourself get away with watching Hugh Jackman and calling it work every now and then.
So, how’s your week going?
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Happy Valentine’s Day if you spend it with your husband. Happy Valentine’s Day if you spend it with your Mom. Happy Valentine’s Day if you spend it with your dog. Happy Valentine’s Day if you spend it all by your lonely self. In fact, especially if you spend it on your own.
These flowers are for you. Enjoy!
When I start a new project I rarely have all the details worked out. I know how it will end, and I know a few things that mus happen along the way, but I don’t know the details. What is very vivid to me as I set out, though, is the flavor of the project. Not anything near as substantial as a theme, but I know how the story feels. Sad, funny, quirky, dark… I can almost taste it, if that makes sense.
And then… I get lost. There are all these words tumbling about, all these random ideas pulling at me… It’s so easy to get entangled and lose what the story was originally supposed to be like – the initial vision, if I may be so presumptuous (and frankly, who’s going to stop me?).
One thing I do to keep this from happening is make playlists. Now, if you knew me well, you would not be surprised. Usually, it’s my reaction to a lot of things (fall in love? playlist. Major trauma? playlist. Wednesday morning 8 am? playlist – you get the picture), but it’s especially useful in my writing.
Now, I rarely listen to the lists when I write – I usually need silence for that. No, they’re for my plotting sessions. See, when I get stuck, I put on a pair of comfy shoes, put the playlist on repeat and take a really long walk. And that, my friends, is when the magic happens. The music helps me to just see things about the story and my characters that, somewhere, deep down, I already know only I can’t seem to get them to surface on my own. Those are the times when I fall in love with the story all over again.
So playlists are a very important part of my writing. Heck, I’ve had entire plots come to me through one single song. Not so this time, though. This story came to me first and then I tried to find songs that would fit the various parts of it. The playlist contains, among others, Paint It Black by the Stones, Fuck the People by the Kills and Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes. It’s mostly pretty dark and destructive and decadent. But there is this one, very different, song I stumbled over by mistake that has sort of grown to become a very important part of the story. It was funny, because I just happened to put it by chance, and suddenly things I’d been pondering just shuffled into place. Just like magic.
And that is why I love my playlists.
While We Were Dreaming – the Pink Mountaintops
(I hope you like it as much as I do – this band doesn’t get nearly enough recognition)