Write On SC

Get the full show notes on the blog here.

We did an episode on raising the stakes and one on “White Knuckle Scenes” back in October of last year. And when I texted you and asked, “What should we talk about tomorrow?” you (Rex) said, “tention.” Leaving off that “tention” is a misspelled version of “tension” I assumed you meant how to create drama, conflict, or action in the scene.

So we’re going to work on that today: how to make the scene interesting by building the conflict. Because, while we did the tension thing a year ago, we haven’t done “conflict” since episode 10.

Conflict, according to this resource from Oregon State, basically means “thwarted, endangered, or opposing desire. It’s when a character wants something, but something else gets in the way.”

In the broadest terms, there are 7 types of conflict (link):

1. Character vs. characters
2. Character vs. society
3. Character vs. nature
4. Character vs. technology
5. Character vs. supernatural
6. Character vs. fate
7. Character vs. self

At the scene level, these conflicts play out in dialogue and action, and drive the plot forward.

Read more on the blog.

Get the full show notes on the blog here.

We have done character episodes before. Early on, we did Despicable Characters, Archetypes, Names, and how to Be Mean to Your Characters. Then, more recently, Do you Have to Like the Main Character? and giving them agency, diversity, patriarchy, and arcs.

So we might have done it all. Except we haven’t. We haven’t done origins – where do characters come from? And we haven’t done values – what do your characters believe in? And we haven’t done sketches – how do you get to know these characters before you write them?

As an admitted pantser (Kasie) and an evolving planner (Rex), we will today talk about those Voices in Your Head – the ones you hear and cannot ignore and the ones you’ve heard for so long they’re more like friends.

All those weirdo writer things – the things we blame on characters – are up for discussion today.

What is character development and why is it important? (masterclass link) Do characters simply spring from your head unbidden? Are they living in there, lurking in there, like parts of yourself you won’t let out?

Read more on the blog here.

Get the full show notes on the blog here.

Wednesday night we had a fun time at The Aristocrat on Washington, reading short pieces called “flash” fiction. The official definition of flash fiction is stories that are 1000 words or less. Fiction, obviously, not true. But the crucial part of it is the length. Lengths vary, though, which makes it more confusing. Between 5 and 1000 words? Or between 300 and 1500?

So why write flash fiction? What’s the purpose?

According to this Writers’ Digest blog it’s to focus on the “narrative movement” rather than focusing on character development or any other trivial things like setting or plot. So what does the writer mean by “narrative movement”? I don’t know. She never explains. Just provides a list of links to other people’s articles on the topic. The fuck? Yup.

So these bits are from some of those articles. Come on. Rabbit hole with me.

Characteristics of flash fiction (FAQs link):

• Few Characters
• Descriptions that show rather than tell (isn’t that all fiction?)
• Verbal efficiency of a poet – yeah, I’ll give you this. Flash is a read-aloud form.
• Clear vision – know where the story is headed from the beginning and get there in the end (again, isn’t that all fiction?)
• Who publishes flash fiction? I dunno. Contests. Lit journals. Instagram. You name it.

Actually, this blog was written by someone who started a flash fiction press. So there’s some specialists. And she answers the question, “Why do it?” 

Read more on the blog...

So we’ve done some cool literary devices in the past but we’ve never done personification. It came up in my house this week because my mom’s dog, Clemson, has been staying with us and we’ve been speaking for her all week: “But, Kasie, I love walking in the neighborhood and sniffing everything and never peeing. Let’s do it again.”

All the sarcasm, silliness, and fun of pretending we know what the animal thinks led Charlie to suggest this topic for the show. It made me think of books that have animals as main characters and how and if the author chose to put us in the mind of that animal. So that’s what we’re talking about today. It’s an animal lovers’ paradise, complete with silly voices.

Definition time: personification is a noun meaning the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.

So the first obvious thing to unpack is how authors assume one of two things:

1. We have to get in the mind of the animal and think about what it knows, doesn’t know, and cares about or doesn’t care about.
2. We pretend the animal acts and thinks like a human.

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Last week we worked personification and anthropomorphism. So this week we’re going to go through the list until we run out of time: Simile and Metaphor. We’ll work these two together like they do in English classes. 

What is a simile? A simile is a phrase or comparison to describe something. They’re spotted when you see the word “like” or “as” to create the comparison.

Metaphors, on the other hand, are figures of speech that describe something through comparison without using “like” or “as.”  

• You act like a dog | You ain’t nothin but a hound dog
• Life is like a box of chocolates  |  Life is a box of chocolates
• Like the back of my hand  |  better than I know myself
• She walks in beauty like the night  |  Hela is night and darkness and fear.
• I wandered lonely as a cloud  |  I am a feather on the breeze.
• What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?  |  Our dreams had pruned.

Get the rest of the show notes on the blog here.

Last week we continued our work with literary devices working on flashback and juxtaposition. We took a little bit of time talking about extended flashback novels like The Orphan’s Tale which is also a frame story. So we’ll start with frame story today.

What is a frame story?

There’s a great video and full definition from the Oregon State University’s English department here. A frame story is a story-within-a-story – think Hamlet and the play happening inside the play, or The Princess Bride where the grandfather is reading to the grandson and over the course of the experience, the grandson changes his perspective on the story – “Maybe you could come back and read it again to me tomorrow?”

The Canterbury Tales may be the most famous of these. It’s Chaucer’s masterpiece that brings travelers together and gets them each to tell a different story so we have the bigger story – the journey and the travelers – and within it, each of the tales, ranging from moral to baudy.

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Last week we continued our work with literary devices working on themes and their workhorses: symbolism and motifs. This week we’re looking at flashback and juxtaposition. Juxtaposition – is another theme workhorse so in the interest of continuity for our binge-listeners, we’ll start there. 

Juxtaposition

What is juxtaposition and why should you use it? Not exclusively a literary term, juxtaposition means to put two or more things close together to demonstrate the contrasts between them. 

Grammarly provides this guidance on when to use it:

• Strengthen an argument
• Create an emotional response
• Add deeper meaning.

Sufficiently vague? I thought so, too. Some juxtapositions are antithesis – “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” or a deafening silence, a sweet sorrow (also oxymorons, btw).

Full show notes out on the blog here.

Leaving aside that we’re both of the generation totally fu**ed by Alanis Morissette’s inaccurate read of “irony,” and that hyperbole is So.Everywhere. that we probably don’t need an episode on it, and directing you all to the other episodes we did on archetypes (Episode 181 The Fool, Episode 72 Feminine Archetypes, and Episode 45 Cliche Characters), this may very well be our last deep-dive literary devices episode. But who knows.

We didn’t expect motifs to go into a second week. And yet here we are.

Themes, symbols, and motifs are frequently treated together when taught, but they’re different (link):

• Themes are abstract or conceptual and live in the backdrop of a story as a main idea.
• Symbols are objects that represent something else: a white dove, a skeleton key, a snake
• Motifs are symbolic, but not objects rather, phrases or words repeated: the scent of oranges in Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris is used to indicate the triggering of a migraine by the characters’ mother. The smell of peanuts at the circus is used to taunt the little girl who wants to be part of proper society in The Greatest Showman.

Full show notes (cusswords and all ) out on the blog here.

Okay. Rejection. Got another one this past week. The journal is called The Rupture and they didn’t want my short story, So Close. Today we’re going to talk about all the ways writers get rejected and what you can do about it.

My Submittable account has 88 declines in it dating all the way back to 2012. A bunch in 2013, a pair in 2014 and 2015, a few in 2016 and 2017, and the bulk of them in 2018 when I went on my submit-every-week tear and racked up 52 “no thanks yous.”

Is that how you build calluses? Well, yeah. Get told “no” enough and you get used to it.

We all have our great rejection stories. What’s yours?

Show notes out on the blog here.

Last week we talked about rejection. We’ve all been there. Felt it. Had visceral emotional responses to it. We did not, repeat NOT email those who rejected us with stupid arrogant vitriol about how sorry they’d be someday. We didn’t trash them on social media or lose our fucking minds about their industry, practices, or personal hygeine. Be a grown up.

No, we did what professionals do. We moved on. And revised the crappy out of our stories. What did that revision process look like? That’s the topic of today’s episode: Rejection sucks and so does your story.

Full show notes on the blog here.