![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Writing and crazy schedules
Feb. 1st, 2012 10:26 amThere is nothing like a day packed with parent-teacher conferences, scouts, Relief Society--and a sick kid. Not sure why it always happens like this. At least there's no vomit--just a horrible headache. (Can you get migraines when you're only six?) Hopefully she just sleeps all day. Sounds good to me.
The rest of February seems to be setting up pretty much like this. The same kid's birthday (so, stuff for school), plus helping with the Valentine's Day party in her class, a friend visiting from out of the country (necessitating a crash review course in Spanish for me), a few days when DH will be out of town, etc. So, good things, but really packed.
I had a good writing day yesterday, though! I finished a rambly NOT-an-outline! for a book, and wrote about 1300 words. Also finished taking apart and making notes on The Scorpio Races (yes, I bought a copy just to write in). Here are some things I got out of it:
1. Repetition. The first and last chapters are very similar--but everything has changed for the characters in between. There are several other instances of repetition--repeated phrases ("I am so, so, alive"), repeated, inverted scenes (one character barging into another's house to make demands, then the same two later, only the other one has the power and does the barging in) (a character watching a job done badly vs. a different character later watching a job done well).
2. Escalating stakes as characters figure out what it is they *really* want--which isn't always what they thought they wanted at the beginning. You need a stake to get you in, but it needs to deepen and get more urgent to hold up the deepening tension of the story.
3. Interiority--seeing everything reflected through a character's filter. It tells you about the surroundings, but it also reveals tons about the focal character.
Also, this week my crit group is talking about Les Edgerton's book Hooked, which is about beginnings. He says no backstory up front, ever. But I dunno--looking through the best books on my shelves, I see plenty of backstory. Not a dump, no--but enough to ground you on who this character is and why you should care. The books that begin with some kind of emotional grounding are the ones that hook me, not ones that begin in action alone. Obviously, the two need to be balanced. Or maybe he and I are saying the same thing, and he's just reacting to the tendency to put a bunch of stuff up front that's meaningless to THIS story.
In any case, it's being a good week for learning. I like the feeling of my brain stretching like this.
What are you learning this week?
The rest of February seems to be setting up pretty much like this. The same kid's birthday (so, stuff for school), plus helping with the Valentine's Day party in her class, a friend visiting from out of the country (necessitating a crash review course in Spanish for me), a few days when DH will be out of town, etc. So, good things, but really packed.
I had a good writing day yesterday, though! I finished a rambly NOT-an-outline! for a book, and wrote about 1300 words. Also finished taking apart and making notes on The Scorpio Races (yes, I bought a copy just to write in). Here are some things I got out of it:
1. Repetition. The first and last chapters are very similar--but everything has changed for the characters in between. There are several other instances of repetition--repeated phrases ("I am so, so, alive"), repeated, inverted scenes (one character barging into another's house to make demands, then the same two later, only the other one has the power and does the barging in) (a character watching a job done badly vs. a different character later watching a job done well).
2. Escalating stakes as characters figure out what it is they *really* want--which isn't always what they thought they wanted at the beginning. You need a stake to get you in, but it needs to deepen and get more urgent to hold up the deepening tension of the story.
3. Interiority--seeing everything reflected through a character's filter. It tells you about the surroundings, but it also reveals tons about the focal character.
Also, this week my crit group is talking about Les Edgerton's book Hooked, which is about beginnings. He says no backstory up front, ever. But I dunno--looking through the best books on my shelves, I see plenty of backstory. Not a dump, no--but enough to ground you on who this character is and why you should care. The books that begin with some kind of emotional grounding are the ones that hook me, not ones that begin in action alone. Obviously, the two need to be balanced. Or maybe he and I are saying the same thing, and he's just reacting to the tendency to put a bunch of stuff up front that's meaningless to THIS story.
In any case, it's being a good week for learning. I like the feeling of my brain stretching like this.
What are you learning this week?
