Write On SC

Since last episode we worked on non-linear, this week we’re on the linear conversation.

Linear Storytelling (from this link)

Linear storytelling, the conventional and time-tested approach, follows a chronological sequence. It presents events in a straightforward manner, adhering to a clear cause-and-effect progression. This structure provides a sense of order, enabling audiences to follow the narrative with ease. A classic example of linear storytelling is the hero’s journey, where the protagonist embarks on a transformative adventure that unfolds in a linear fashion, from initiation to resolution.

Advantages of Linear Storytelling (from this link)

1. Clarity: Linear storytelling offers a straightforward and easy-to-follow narrative structure. It provides clarity to the audience, allowing them to comprehend the story’s progression without confusion.

2. Emotional Buildup: The chronological sequence allows for a natural buildup of tension, emotion, and suspense. This gradual development creates a powerful emotional impact on the audience, drawing them deeper into the story.

3. Traditional Appeal: Linear storytelling aligns with the traditional storytelling format, making it a familiar and comforting experience for many audiences. It caters to a sense of expectation and satisfaction derived from a well-structured narrative.

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Have we ever done a show on May the 4th? Yes. Way back in 2019 we were 41 episodes into this journey and working through the hero’s journey (perfect timing) so we did a little May the Fourth be With You in that episode (link here).

So today we’re going to focus on Star Wars, not just sidebar it, and talk about worldbuilding (like this episode) and apprentice-mentor relationships (like this one) and writing in existing lore (like this episode).

So what is Star Wars? Here’s an entire YouTube channel dedicated to explaining Star Wars to you. With 4,028 videos. Yep.

The basics are - there’s a sith lord that wants to take over the galaxy and does and builds a strict and evil empire. What’s a sith? Someone extra powerful with the darkside of the force. What’s the Force? It’s an energy that lives in and all living things in the galaxy and it’s wielded like magic by the Jedi. Who are the Jedi? They’re knights meant to protect the galactic senate (the rule making body of a democratic republic) - a body of equal representation for every star system that is thrown over by the sith lord.

The story began for all of us in 1977 with Episode IV: A New Hope. In this movie, we meet Luke Skywalker, son of a deceased Jedi knight thrust into a hero’s journey.

We have a special guest in the studio this week, Hollie Whitener. They don’t give PhDs in Star Wars but if they did, this kid would be halfway there.

We’ll see where the conversation takes us. Everything is fair game.

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It’s the end of the term for me (Kasie) and so that time of year when I’m ruing the way I set up my class and how labor intensive all the grading is. I’m also fielding emails from students looking for a few more points and begging for higher grades. Sigh.

As such, I’ve had very little time for anything else although I did manage to take six more pages in the vampire rewrite to our writers’ group meeting on Wednesday. Slow progress there.

Didn’t have a topic for today. So I took to the internet to see if any writers were asking something magical we could unpack for a full hour. There’s a few here but mostly it’s one shot and done. So it’s a GRAB BAG week.

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So Rex has been hired to help someone build a new Dungeons & Dragons game. As Gamemaster, he has some specific responsibilities. Maybe he can tell us about them? The game’s owner needs to organize himself and his resources and this is an experience we’re all familiar with.

So today we’re talking about some major projects and the general (and specific) tools and techniques for organizing them.

Examples of major projects that we’ve worked on:

• A novel
• A short story collection
• A podcast
• An anthology
• A website
• A book launch

Some common themes and questions to ask:

• What is the purpose of the project?
• Who is the target audience?
• How will I reach that audience?
• What resources do I need to accomplish this?
• What resources do I already have?

Some common barriers:

• What do I not know about the work I’ll have to do?
• How much time do I have available to allocate to this project?
• What are my deadlines?
• What do I need to get from others and how long will they have to complete their parts?

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After we fully explained beginnings last week and kept coming up with the benign suggestions of “make it interesting” and “show don’t tell” we figured we ought to dive deeper into the bricks of the “show” universe. Those bricks are adjectives and they’re used to describe nouns and pronouns.

Adjectives are modifiers. They modify a noun to make it more specific. House becomes tiny house. Cat becomes lazy cat. Grandfather becomes grumpy old man. Full explanation here.

So when should a writer use them? Like all things, there’s a blog about that. Find it here. But in general, here’s the suggested guidelines:

• Brevity - don’t over do it. In drafts sometimes we’ll have two adjectives and then revise it to one or none. If the noun can get the job done, it doesn’t need the adjective.
• Specificity – be specific about what you’re describing. The adjective should do the work of narrowing the reader’s WIDE imagination into the very specific image you want to impart.

Types of adjectives:

• Telly – informing or surmising such as “She was angry.” in which case, we see the summation of her emotion as ‘angry’ instead of the symptoms of that emotion like a glare, narrowed eyes, or some other indicator of rage.
• Showy – dramatize or activate the noun such as “The drink was fizzy and cheerful.” You might just say “The drink fizzed cheerfully.” to replace the weak “to be” verb, but either way “fizzy” is a pretty descriptive word.
• Overwriting – applying multiple adjectives like “he London bus was big, red, and smelled of lentils.” We know it’s big and red, it’s London. The interesting part is its smell but if the sentence read “big, red, and smelly” we wouldn’t really know what it smelled of, would we?

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It’s been a couple of years since we dealt with first lines and opening pages and in our revision efforts, we only just touched on where the story should begin and how many times we’ve rewritten Page 1.

So today we’ll look at what makes a strong opening page, how to work through the opening scene in revision, and whether you need to revisit that opening scene in subsequent pages or at the end (kiss the beginning as they say).

We’ve done this topic before, as mentioned, in Episode 94 way back in 2020 and again in Episode 171 but that was in January 2022. So we’ve learned a lot since then. Right?

This time, we’re going deeper in the rabbit hole. I’ve taken the links from our blog and clicked through their links. It’s very meta.

Let’s start with this “How to Start a Story: 10 Tips from Literary Editors” (we should have run these by Heather last week):

1. Start with something unexpected (they gave the 1984 example - clocks striking thirteen)
2. Start with a compelling image (leverage the 5 senses - what does it smell like here?)
3. Start in media res (we did a whole show on this) – get right to the action, just make sure your reader isn’t untethered from the character so much so they don’t care what’s happening no matter how exciting it is
4. Start with something short. An observation that makes us curious enough to read further.
5. Start with a question. But not a question, really, except that it makes the reader question or maybe the main character is questioning something.
6. Start with curiosity. Give enough to make the reader curious but don’t make it so cryptic they’re frustrated by it.
7. Start with building the world and the setting. If that setting is dynamic - a storm coming in, the coast after the storm has receded, the busy terminal of a train depot, etc. Or could a peaceful stroll through a quiet town interest a reader enough to keep reading?
8. Start with something new. So this is that insipid “be creative!” advice that we loathe, but the example of it: I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. Is actually more explanatory. It means to use your writing to say something that hasn’t often been said or to pose an unpopular opinion.
9. Start with tension that has room to grow. So, rather than the literal explosion, something intense that leaves room for the scene to grow or be revisited.
10. Start with something that will intoxicate your reader (I know, I know, ‘how?’). Remember your POV, put yourself in that position, share his/her experience in a way that draws the reader in.

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You’re on what version of this vampire novel? Tenth? Yikes. It’s called revision and it lasts an indeterminate amount of time. What to google to prepare for this conversation:

• How many revisions does a novel need?
• How long does revising a novel take?
• What is a reasonable revision schedule?
• What is a good revision process?
• Where should someone begin when revising a novel?
• Why does revision get such a bad rep?

The answers, of course, are 10, two weeks, every waking minute until it’s done, and beginning-to-end, repeat.

Only joking. Mostly. In truth, revision is as personal as writing and every writer does it differently. Show’s over. Joking again. We’ll unpack a few approaches and set some expectations and also explain what these different levels of revision actually are.

Revision - this is a holistic look at the story, characters, plot, etc. You’re re-visioning, seeing it again. This requires distance on the original creation of the thing.

Editing – this is the scene-by-scene paring down or pillowing out of the novel. Where do we get too much description of 17th century modes of travel and where could we use more description of the murder’s collared shirt?

Proofreading – this is grammar, punctuation, and if you’re a true stickler, it’s where you

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Let's talk about Dragon Boat racing first. What is this sport? Who does it? How does it work?

Why was Dragon Boat racing the right occupation for Tripp Avery? What is it about the challenge of Dragon Boat racing that requires more of Tripp than anything else he's done? He worked his way up from poverty to prosperity, became a 'someone' out of 'no one' roots, so how is Dragon Boat racing a different kind of challenge?

We all write what we know. Some of Tripp is some of Roger -- just as some of Brian Listo from After December is part of Kasie -- so how protective are you of Tripp as a character? I am fierce about Brian (flaws and all) so I imagine you're especially attached to Tripp. What made you decide to go first-person narrator with Tripp and put us in his head for the entire book?

Some of the book takes place in Charleston. A city you know well. What opportunities did setting the book there give you to celebrate (or maybe question?) Charleston as you know it? How important is setting to the story?

There are some great characters and relationships in this book. Among them are Amy, Tripp's wife, with whom he has a special bond celebrated through their mutual love of flowers. Amy is the one who encourages Tripp to coach the Dragon Boat in Beaufort. It's a devastating loss in a previous coaching life that makes Tripp reluctant to compete with such fragile athletes. How important is Amy's encouragement to get Tripp to take another risk like coaching the Dragon Boat? What does she know about Tripp that he doesn't know (or believe) about himself?

Tripp questions (in Chapter 12) if his commitment to the Dragon Boat work is his own love of turning underdogs into champions. There's a kind of selfishness to the undertaking, which he seems acutely aware of, and which he battles with throughout. In his "pep talk" he reminds the athletes that cancer is not an excuse and warns we will not allow them to humiliate themselves or each other by not giving all they have to the undertaking. What is it about a cancer diagnosis that brings this kind of determination to the front of any character?

The Final Victory is a difficult book, one that looks at mortality with eyes wide open and challenges readers to make the best of every minute they've been given in this life. Said one reader, "I had to put it down for a while." The journey for Tripp and his boat mates may hit a little close to home. But through its grief and triumph, the spirit of the novel is to be encouraging, to be certain good things can come from bad circumstances. Buy it local here.

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We did some revision work last week and didn't get to this part of the show notes. So here we go, a whole episode on what would have been one segment last week. ::wideeyedemoji::

So how is it actually done? Well, here’s the link explaining what Six Pass Plan among others:

1. The Framework Pass
2. The Story Pass
3. The Plot/Scene Pass
4. The Feedback Pass
5. The Writing Pass
6. The Tweaking Pass

These aren’t really after-the-fact at all. They’re in fact a process for drafting and revising. The Framework Pass is actually the discovery of the novel, your first pass at it where you build in the basics of the plot, characters, setting, etc. You might try different points of view how the story will be told, distance from the narrator, that kind of stuff here.

The Story Pass is still big-picture stuff, only it’s not writing stuff (like POV), it’s story stuff like character motivation and plot holes.

The Scene Pass is where you examine each and every scene for its impact on the novel and its fitness or rightness for the overall book. Don’t skip this step, this is where you really tighten up your writing and find those lackluster or lagging places.

The Feedback Pass is where you give the novel to others to respond. This is usually after the beta readers have rendered their mark ups and you are incorporating their feedback or making their suggested changes. Did you notice how the first draft wasn’t given to readers yet?

The last two passes – Writing Pass and Tweaking Pass – are you going through to edit the writing. Sentence structure, repetition, phrasing and length of paragraph and chapter. The tweaking pass may be spellcheck, grammar, and punctuation, too.

Next week, we have areal editor joining us to talk ab

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So last week we talked about basic outlines and discussed the turning point method versus the beats method for figuring out the structure of the story.

We debated whether or not to write from a detailed outline in the initial draft – it provides direction, it stifles creativity – the age-old debate of planner vs. pantser. In any case, we agreed the outline is useful for knowing the trajectory of the characters and the plot.

Which brings us to the common structures for a piece. This link gives us 11 basic structures:

1. The Fichtean Curve
2. The Three Act Structure
3. The Hero's Journey
4. Freytag's Pyramid
5. The Five Act Structure
6. Save the Cat Beats
7. The Snowflake Method
8. Dan Harmon's Story Circle
9. The Seven Point Story Structure
10. The Story Spine
11. In Media Res

We covered the Save the Cat beats last week and the Seven Point Story Structure is basically the turning point structure. So this week we’ll look at the 3 and 5 act structures and then tackle some of the others next week.

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