Friday Forays in Fiction: "The The Impotence of Proofreading," by TAYLOR MALI

"The The Impotence of Proofreading," by Taylor Mali

Poet, Teacher and Stand Up Comic

I frilly kneaded the these belie loafs two dais.

Deicide it wood make a good Fryday Four raze posed to. Knaw I'm free to watch snore Tailor Molly.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: The Influence of Reading on Our Stories -- and a snippet

Thomas Covenant Trilogies

Several months ago I started reading Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series.  The first two trilogies are re-reads but I've not yet read the final quartet.  This rereading of the first six books had two purposes--to prepare to read the final four and to facilitate the rewrite of my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss, because I'd given one of my characters an obsession with it.

The first time I read it was the year the first one came out, the year I married.  I introduce Ed to it and he became as enthralled if not more than I and over the next decade or so that story colored all of our communication.  We found shorthand ways of saying what we were trying to say via everything from themes to metaphors to scenes.

Remember that Star Trek Next Generation episode where Captain Picard was kidnapped by an alien captain who isolated the two of them on a planet with a dangerous entity that would take cooperation to defeat and proceeded to use the situation as a way to teach Picard their very alien language?  That language was entirely based on knowledge of the stories of their culture.  Nearly the entire vocabulary consisted of phrases of this order: [Name of character] at [name of place].  Well that's how Ed and I once used the Thomas Covenant story.

Since I discovered that the story problem in Candy Kiss was the damaged communication between husband and wife, Iris and Greg, and because some of the themes in the story, especially those represented by Greg, are the same as those in Thomas Covenant, I decided it fitting to incorporate it into my story.  It gives me a lever with which to move them out of the rut they had dug for themselves.

I thought I'd share a snippet of the the current structural rewrite of the opening scene, incorporating advice from my beta reader and Hooked by Les Edgerton and showcase  how Donaldson's story is influencing my rewrite.

If you would like to compare the original 1990 version of the opening and/or see how the story ends:  part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5;

Blow Me a Candy Kiss [the beginning]

by Joy Renee

Turning the last page, Iris let the book fall closed on her lap where it settled the weight of despair on her thighs.  The lengthy expose of the foster care system by an investigative journalist had just quashed her latest (last?) hope of creating a family with Greg.

An indignation propelled surge of words swell in her throat, threatening to flood out of her mouth in a helpless harangue. How can an agency created for the best interests of the child actively discourage their foster parents from getting attached to the kids or allowing the kids to get attached to them? 

By policy no less! Love, they were told, was not their job.

What?  Are they trying to create a generation of sociopaths?

She desperately needs to talk to Greg about this and about where do they go from here--overseas adoption? open adoption? surrogacy? in vitro?  But the cost of any of them was prohibitive.

Besides, the fact of their childlessness was a topic they had talked to death long ago and buried under a tombstone marked TABOO.  

Yet it remains, a black hole to which all other subjects gravitate and  distort, leaving naught between us but the vacuum of my womb. She looked across the chasm separating them knowing Greg's face was hidden behind this weekend's fat novel.

After a brief glimpse of him laid back in his recliner with his book propped on his chest, she quickly looks away for fear the welling tears blurring her vision for the last fifty pages would slide free just as he happened to glance over the top of his book while turning a page.

Then he'd ask what was wrong or (guessing) not.  Which would feel worse?  Not something I want to find out.  

Either way, it's better to save the tears and rants for when she's alone.  For above all she couldn't bear to see his silent agony whenever he saw the sadness or anger overwhelming her--that look of pain and defeat in his eyes as his shoulders slump, his hands hang empty and impotent at his side and his eyes find anywhere to gaze but at her.

As she waited for her tears to dry and to be sure she had them well banked, she stared unblinking out the window beside her solitary seat in the loveseat-rocker--once one of their favorite weekend hangouts--watching the tops of the trees along the creek bordering their backyard converse with the sky.

Even the trees can shoot the breeze with the sky, while Greg and I can barely discuss anything besides the weather, aches and pains, or what's for dinner anymore.

Eying the whiplashed treetops again she noted that the predominant gusts seemed to be coming from the west.  She couldn't see the horizon in any direction so could not tell if there were clouds moving in on their summer-blue, heat-shimmered sky but the sensation of weight pressing down on the top of her head and pushing out from behind her eyes seemed more intense than what could be accounted for by the summer colds she and Greg were nursing on the only day of the week they both had off.

Sunday's and summer-colds.  Two things we can still share. Iris crooked her mouth in a grimace of irony.  All is not lost yet. 

"Hope it's not raining at the coast.  The girls were so excited about playing in the surf." 

As was she!  They were supposed to be camping at the coast with their parents and sisters this weekend but when they'd woke up Friday morning feeling miserable the others had gone on without them to soak up surf and sun, leaving Greg and Iris at home to soak up tissues and time. 

Greg did not respond as he'd started snorting and coughing just as she started speaking. Casting furtive glances toward him she sighed.  Not worth repeating.  What could he say anyway?

Staring at the cover of his hardback copy of Donaldson's The Wounded Land which blocked her view of his face she fumbled for something she could say that would prompt him to close the book on his finger or let it lay open across his chest so she could see his face.  How is it possible to miss so intensely a face that's in the same room with you?

What she really needed was to lay her head on his chest and listen to his heart beat as he talked about this story that had so enthralled him since his teens he'd reread the series from the beginning every time a new one was about to come out and from the beginning to the end of the second trilogy every two or three years since.  

Sharing in his enthusiasm for The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant had been an integral part of their courtship in their late teens. Reading the first trilogy through together the year after her high school graduation, they'd carried on impassioned discussions about the relationship between Thomas' two worlds and between them and our world.

They'd shared many such rousing discussions on numerous topics in the early years.  But not only had it been years since the last one, she couldn't remember when she last saw Greg roused about anything.  His reticence had gone beyond stoicism into implacable guardedness. 

He’s Colossus of the Fall, she thought, flashing on that iconic image from Donaldson’s Land.  Nothing represented his stance toward his world better than that monumental clenched fist of rock raised against a vast sky on the edge of Landsdrop, a ward against enemies of the land.  

Once this trait of Greg’s had given her comfort, a sense of protection against threat inside the circle of his ward. But of late she felt exiled from that circle.  When did I become an enemy to be guarded against? She wondered with a surge of adrenaline spiked surprise.

As she watched him find the corner of the page with his right index finger, she smiled at the memory of Greg's reaction to his professor's response to his essay analyzing the metaphors in Donaldson's series carrying the themes of shame, grief, regret, guilt and redemption.  She'd said that, though she hadn't read any of the books, she could not imagine such serious themes being so trivialized by wrapping them in the frivolous fantasy venue.  He was over-the-top outraged.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Channeling the Women of Star Trek

The Women of Star Trek

I just watched the last episode of Voyager which concludes my marathon rewatching of every Star Trek episode of every series since early September.

It started out as prep for NaNoWriMo because my coming of age YA novel character was a fanatical fan of all things Star Trek and the concept for the story was that whatever dilemma or crisis was thrown at this teen girl a solution or insight could be found in one or more of the Star Trek episodes or Movies.


Since my character was a young girl she would be consciously or unconsciously finding role models among the Star Trek women so for the first time ever I consciously focused on the women characters throughout my marathon.

Oddly enough I feel as though I've just been through my own coming of age story arc.  Or at least the first half or so of it since I don't yet feel I've reached a resolution.

I'm astounded by how strongly I've been impacted by the experience.  I'm still processing it.  Much of it is not at a level where verbalization is possible but I began feeling a strong sense of a shift in my own psyche about half-way through November--right around my birthday--and I'm sure I'm never going to be the same.

In my story synopsis on NaNo I said my character would be channeling the Star Trek women.  Now that has become my own aspiration.


Cool fb page.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Writer Tics

As part of the prep for my NaNo novel last September, I started streaming Star Trek episodes on Netflix and Amazon.  I started with Enterprise as I wanted to watch in the order of the story's timeline.  I'm now in the last half of the final season of Voyager.

The point was to prime my consciousness with as much of the info as possible as well as with the immediacy of immersion so that I could begin to think with my character's mind.  She was a dedicated obsessive fan(atical), teen who know all the episodes of all the series, including the animated, as well as all the movies by heart.  Even some of the novels.  She was a walking encyclopedia of Star Trek trivia, hung out in online fan forums, played Star Trek RPG, wrote fan-fic and wore costumes she made to school.

I intended to make this post mostly about that and about the experience of rewatching all of those episodes while writing a character who was an over-the-top exaggeration of me as a teen.

Except that all I had was the three seasons of the original Star Trek reruns at the whim of syndication and a mom who thot ST was sacrilegious , a mail-order fan-club offering only a few black and white autographed photos with one way, one time communication for $$ and the James Blish short stories based on the episodes.  While Nova Jayne Travers can stream at her whim all 5 series (or 6 counting the animated one) and a dozen movies, the World Wide Web, conventions, comic books, RPG games, interactive fan-fic, and fanclubs with video chat, and social media where actors, writers, directors, and producers actually interact with the fans.

Because I'd set out to watch with an eye to the stories' influence on the pyche of a young girl, I paid close attention (for the first time oddly) to all of the female characters throughout.

I planed to go into that here a bit too so I headed over to YouTube to look for some clips that showcased the women but I ran into this one instead and decided to save all of that serious sociological contemplation for a later post when there are more light bulbs on in my brain and instead to pose some questions:

1. Do you have any writer tics with the potential to annoy your readers?
2. Could you trust yourself to spot them?
3. Do you ever spot them in other author's works?
4. If so, is your annoyance ever enough to spoil the story?
5. Enough to make you give up on the story? On the author?

My answers:

1. I'm not sure.  I'll have to keep an eye and ear out when I start rereading my stuff again.  Tho it has been pointed out to me by more than one reader that I overuse punctuation which I suppose would qualify as a tic.
2. Not with confidence.
3. Yes
4. Sometimes
5. Not so far.  That I'm aware of.  At least not with stories and authors that have won my heart.  But it is possible it played a role in stories or authors I gave up on early.  I will have to start paying attention to what turns me away from them from now on and not always assume it is my own inadequacies as a reader when I can't finish a story or when I turn away from a second helping of a new author.
   
   I know I would never give up on Star Trek.  Though I now wish I'd watched the final 12 episodes of Voyager before encountering this vid.  It is occasionally breaking me out of the dreamstate stories put me into.  A couple of times I had to pause until I could get a grip.  That's probably because by the midpoint of this vid I could not keep from snorting and giggling and seeing the clips in situ only an hour or two later triggered the same reaction.  I'm hoping that a good night's sleep will fix that.

But going forward I will never, ever, ever be able to use the phrase, some kind of or any of its variations or permutations in my writing or conversation with a straight face.

Not sure that I ever did anyway because my high school typing teacher had a fanatical distaste of the phrase kind of and did a pretty good job of breaking us of it use.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Winging It

Ravens Gathering in the Fog
by Alice Popkorn flickr

Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon is tomorrow.  It really snuck up on me.  I discovered it late last evening just as I was heading to bed and then had to be away from home all day today. Away from WiFi!  Horrors. :)

 Now I must get to sleep!  It starts for me in 8 hours.

I made no plans.  No prep.

I guess I'll be winging it.

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Friday Foray's in Fiction: Quote

Visions by Alice Popkorn -flickr

“The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes.”

― Robert Olen Butler

From Where You Dream

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Plot Points Punning

Literary Plot Points in Pun Form

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Quote

yore memreez ai rewryt 4 u k?

I've been inundated by a flood of memories this week as I've been tending to our dying fur baby, Merlin.

It has struck me that memory is crucial to story.  It is in fact story telling.  Your memories are stories you tell yourself.  But the moment you put them into words you are telling a story to others as well as yourself and its no longer the same story.  It seems you can't avoid fictionalizing your memories when you capture them in words.

This flood of memories has dominated the theme of the last three posts:

• Merlin Moments
• 164th ROW80 Check-In
• Of Magic, Memories and Coping Mechanisms

This makes four.

I've also been contemplating the role my memories have played in my fiction and poetry and noticing how this current flood has been stimulating ideas for more poetry and fictional stories.

I've been holding this vigil with Merlin since Tuesday morning.  He's still with us.  Barely.  He's still drinking water but to my knowledge has not taken any food since the slivers of salmon off my dinner plate Tuesday evening which gave me a burst of hope.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Quote

Warz teh wyteowt?

Yeah.  I kinda got rewrite on my mind this week.

Scrivener and the Whiz
My Other Desktops

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Personal Breakthrough and Insights

Last Friday I reviewed Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton.  I reviewed it before I'd quite finished it and then finished it during the read-a-thon the next morning.  From Friday afternoon on tho, I was champing at the bit to get back to work on my Camp NaNo project, the structural rewrite of my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss.  Only something as important as Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon could have held me back.

Go read the review to see why reading Hooked had goosed my motivation to over-the-top eagerness.  Today I am sharing about the experience of the major breakthrough several hours into an intense session with Candy Kiss and the three insights I had about myself as a writer.

The breakthrough relates to the story itself.  After I'd been completely engaged with the manuscript and notes digital and hardcopy, keyboard/screen and pencil/paper for some time, I felt something huge shift and suddenly I was holding the story entire in my mind.  It wasn't a storyboard or a timeline, a story arc or plot chart.  It was 3D, spherical and multifaceted like a jewel or a geodesic sphere.

The three insights relate to me as a writer and followed on fairly quickly after the story-sphere:

• I am loving the process of the structural rewrite stage exponentially more than the first rough draft.  It's a jigsaw puzzle, a tinker-toy set, a fiber art tapestry, a solitaire game and a sorting, organizing and rearranging activity.  Some of my favorite things.
• I am no longer dismayed at the thought of my dozens of fiction WIP--not even the Wrimo messes that have made me so anxious I seldom open the file again after the Wrimo month ends.
• I am a literary short story writer rather than a novelist.  Even though many of my WIP exceed 10K and a few approach 20K they are more like short stories in their structure than novels as they have a very condensed and highly focused feel to them.  Also every one of my WIP that I've labeled a novel is really a collection of short stories with the same protagonist as every chapter finished, begun or intended has its own story worthy problem while most of the 'novels' they belong to do not but instead have a theme. Tho that could change now that I consciously understand the surface problems vs. the story worthy problem.

I'm going to leave it at that for now tho in future posts I may expand on these insights and include some history of my writing habits that show the clues have been there all along.  That history goes back to when cut and paste was with scissors and glue.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Les Edgerton's Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go -- Book Review

Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go
by Les Edgerton
Writer's Digest Books (April 12, 2007)
256 pages

My experience with this book is a good example of one of its precepts: the abstract won't reach the reader where she lives only the particulars that allow you to live the scene along with the protagonist will.

I received a free ebook of Hooked in early November 2011 as a NaNoWriMo participant.  After NaNo that year I began the book but got distracted half way through the second chapter.  A few months later I began it again and didn't finish the first chapter.  Half a year later I started over again and may have finished the second chapter before other books and passions preempted Hooked yet again.

I think there may have been a time or two after that.  I never got beyond the second chapter.

This time was different.  This time I had a purpose.  A very specific purpose.

When I began it again at the beginning of April it was specifically to get help for the structural rewrite of my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss as I knew the biggest problem with it was the beginning since several of my early readers had expressed issues with it. And I confess I was uncomfortable with it and also with the ending which is why I never submitted it anywhere.

This rewrite is my Camp NaNo project for April so my focus has been on it all month.  My usual method to prepare for working on a story is to daydream in the storyworld until it feels as real or more so than reality.  When I began Hooked again this time, I'd already reread the story twice and had been dreaming the story for several days while jotting down thoughts, insights, questions.  That is what made the difference for I was soaked in the particulars of the story and especially the opening scene.

Thus it was that as I reread the first two chapters again I was applying every suggestion, explanation and example to Candy Kiss and making notes on paper and marking up my hardcopy as I experienced on Aha! moment after another.

I am feeling fairly confidant now that I see where I went wrong and why and how to fix it.

The amazing thing is that I was much closer than I thought to being on the right track.  It isn't going to take a major rewrite only some tweaks scattered throughout, a change of emphasis here, a new image there, an added phrase or three, a new sentence or four or five and maybe three new paragraphs besides the rewrite of the opening paragraph.

The breakthrough for me was Edgerton's explanation of the difference between the surface problems and the story problem: The first can be encapsulated by a photograph but the latter exists deep in the protagonist's psych and any attempt to depict it other than telling the whole story would be nothing but abstract psychobabble or monotonous stream-of-consciousness navel-gazing.

But, goes on, the first surface problem triggered by the inciting incident needs to be rooted in the story problem.  And every surface problem thereafter stems from the failed attempt to resolve the previous surface problem. Neither the reader nor the protagonist is aware of the story problem until its resolution in the final scene but the author MUST know before she begins.

I must have had good instincts back in 1989 because I identified the inciting incident in my first paragraph just where Edgerton said it should be but I had intended that first surface problem to be the story problem.  Consciously anyway because I found evidence scattered throughout the story that I was developing the story problem all along.

And that explains why I got so confused when the story seemed to reach a good resolution without that final scene I was so attached to because it had been the storyseed for me: the image suffused with raw emotion that catapulted me into the story and served as its north star.  Because of that I couldn't bear to part with it and had to tack on that little epilogue like a tree that had been pulled up by its roots and replanted in a too small pot.

I finally realized that I'd set out to write the story in which the first surface problem was the story problem which would have made that final scene its resolution but the real story problem was also peeking out by the third paragraph.

I have, as well, developed a second story featuring Greg and Iris with Greg as POV protagonist which might carry that original storyseed scene.  Unless it turns out to belong to a third or even a forth story. Their story has been growing in my heart for decades and I've long suspected there might be a short novel's worth of story left; or a novella's length collection of short stories centered on Greg and Iris.

After I finish the Blow Me a Candy Kiss rewrite, I'm going to start moving through my fiction files taking each story or novel one by one, applying the inciting incident/surface problem/story problem paradigm.  I expect this to give me breakthroughs on every one.  At the very least I believe it will eliminate that fear I have of going back to play in my plethora of NaNo messes.

Yes Mr. E.  I used that word on purpose.  I understand you hate it.  I imagine you have good reason.  But I won't let you murder a perfectly good word because you've seen it misused by dozens of newbie fiction writers who probably plucked it out of a thesaurus with no true understanding of its dimensions in meaning, connotation, history, etymology and typical class/education level of it users.

I could go on.  But that would belong in a separate post.

The core reason for my defiance is a refusal to allow yet one more fear to be added to the already overabundance of fears I have about sending my stories out to be read.  That's exactly all the  knowledge that you, editors, agents and, in fact, every reader has a handful of trigger words that makes them stop reading is worth.

But, as usual, I digress.  So, in closing, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your little book. It has already had a profound impact on my concept of story-craft.  Only two others rank above it: Janet Burroway's Fiction Writing which I was reading for the first of many times as I wrote the first draft of Candy Kiss and Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream which taught me the storyworld dreaming method I've used for over a decade.

Burroway taught me how to make and use the jigsaw pieces of all the disparate elements of good story telling.  Butler taught me how to make the story live.  You have taught me how to arrange the pieces and put them together.

From the Publishers:

The road to rejection is paved with bad beginnings. Agents and editors agree: Improper story beginnings are the single biggest barrier to publication. Why? If a novel or short story has a bad beginning, then no one will keep reading. It's just that simple. 

In Hooked, author Les Edgerton draws on his experience as a successful fiction writer and teacher to help you overcome the weak openings that lead to instant rejection by showing you how to successfully use the ten core components inherent to any great beginning. You'll find:

• Detailed instruction on how to develop your inciting incident 

• Keys for creating a cohesive story-worthy problem 

• Tips on how to avoid common opening gaffes like overusing backstory 

• A rundown on basics such as opening scene length and transitions 

• A comprehensive analysis of more than twenty great opening lines from novels and short stories 

• Plus, you'll discover exclusive insider advice from agents and acquiring editors on what they look for in a strong opening. 

With Hooked, you'll have all the information you need to craft a compelling beginning that lays the foundation for an irresistible story!

From the Book:

• This is the only scene in the story that the protagonist doesn't enter with the goal of resolving some type of problem, and that's simply because it's the opening scene's job to create the initial problem in the first place.
• A good, quality story beginning is a microcosm of the work entire. If you capture the right beginning, you've written a small version of the whole.
• What transforms a story is the inner psychological problem of the protagonist being laid bare on the page.
• once the story-worthy problem is introduced, nothing can take precedence over it
• As the author, you should have a firm understanding of your story-worthy problem before you begin writing

Les Edgerton

From the author bio on amazon:

Les Edgerton has published fifteen books, the latest being two novels from StoneGate Ink, the noir thriller "Just Like That", the thriller, "The Perfect Crime", the short story collection, "Gumbo Ya-Ya from Snubnose Press, and his latest, the noir thriller "The Bitch" from Bare Knuckles Press. His most popular book is the writer's text, "Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go." His own favorite is his collection, titled, "Monday's Meal," which received a glowing review from the NY Times in which he was compared favorably to Raymond Carver.

He has a blog on writing at: http://lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/ he invites you to visit.

He lives with his wife Mary and son Mike in Ft. Wayne, IN. He has two daughters--Britney and Sienna--from a previous marriage. He teaches a private writing class online as well as a class via Skype for the New York Writer's Workshop. In the past, he has taught creative writing for the UCLA Extension Writer's Program, Trine University, St. Francis University, and was Writer-in-Residence for the University of Toledo for three years.

Edgerton is an ex-con, having served two years of a 2-5 sentence at Pendleton Reformatory in the sixties for second-degree burglary. The sentence was the result of a plea bargain where it was reduced to a single charge from 182 burglaries, two strong-arm robberies, an armed robbery, and a count of possession with intent to deal. Today, he's completely reformed and you can invite him into your home and when he leaves you won't have to count the silverware... Prior to this little "trouble" Les served 4 years in the U.S. Navy as a cryptographer who had "up close and personal" experience with the Cuban Crisis and the beginning of the Vietnam War.

After making parole from Pendleton, Edgerton obtained his B.A. from Indiana University (Honors of Distinction), where he was elected Student Body President, and then received his MFA in Writing (Fiction) from Vermont College. He teaches workshops nationwide on writing, specializing in classes and seminars on the writer's voice and story beginnings. He also coaches writers on their novels and the fee is $100 per hour.

He was born in Odessa, TX on Feb. 13, 1943 and grew up in a variety of places, including Freeport, TX and South Bend, IN. He is the oldest of five and has two surviving sisters (his sister Jo passed away) and a brother. Growing up in Freeport, his family ate all their meals at his grandmother's bar and restaurant, and before the age of twelve, Les had worked every job in the bar, including serving alcohol and food (those were different times, before the government assumed the job of parenting and protecting us from ourselves). When he turned 12, his grandmother told him he was old enough to learn the taxi-cab business which she owned and he began his first day on the midnight shift. An hour after he began, one of the cab drivers shot and killed another driver who was tormenting him with a rattlesnake, and he made the call to the police. Later, he was called on to testify at the man's trial and the defendant was found innocent as he was acting in self-defense.

These days, he's working on a memoir, a new writer's how-to, several novels, several nonfiction projects and appearing at various workshops. He invites readers of his work to contact him. His contact info is on his blog at www.lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/. His newest novel is a noir novella forthcoming from New Pulp Press titled "The Rapist.

His novel "The Bitch" was a finalist in the Snubnose Magazine "Best Novel" in the Legends category and was the winner of the best novel in the 2011 Preditors & Editors award. His first novel, "The Death of Tarpons" was awarded a Special Citation from the Violet Crown Book Awards.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Story on the Ropes? Get Tropes.

The Periodic Table of Storytelling, Second Edition
by Dawn Paladin
Designs & Interfaces / Infographics

I found a new playground for storytellers today: TV Tropes Wiki.  It began as an exploration of tropes in TV stories but has expanded to include all media.

On this page for the trope spoofs and parodies of the periodic table there is a list with links to examples, including one that is a periodic table for the TV Tropes wiki itself.  When linked to the relevant articles in the wiki it almost amounts to a table of contents.  Some are calling it a cheat sheet for storytellers.

In my exploration in the forums on TV Tropes and the comments on the image's page on Dawn Paladin's Deviant Art site I saw several nay-sayers who felt something was wrong about thinking you could break down the rich complexity of all stories into these simple (simplistic?) elements. Or that it meant there was something wrong--simple headed? shallow?-- about the human mind that needs story to be comprised of simple, familiar elements that can be moved around like lego blocks.

My answer to that is:

• Look at all the rich complexity in all that computers can do, including the internet.  Would you complain that breaking it down to the two states of on and off, which is what the ones and zeros represent, is proof of some lack in that complexity or that it somehow dishonors it or the mind that comprehends it? 
• And what about the four elements that make up DNA which is the code for building all living things?  Does that make living organisms less awesome? Or the brains some organisms have less useful?  
• Then there are the atoms and molecules that the original periodic table was designed to organize which are the building blocks of all matter in the universe.  Does that lessen the astonishment and awe one feels when contemplating the universe?  Or reflect poorly on its existence? Or in any way make it irrational to admire it? 

At any rate that Storytelling Periodic Table only captures a small subset of the thousands of tropes that have been added to TV Tropes.  That should calm the naysayers objections.  Though I think it is the fact of the existence of repeatable, reusable, recognizable mix and match elements they are objecting to.  Some are confusing tropes with cliches.  Do I really need to make another list?

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Flash Fiction by Joy Renee

That's me on the day before the 2007 Southern Oregon Library Closure.

This little flash fiction was written (and posted) in 2006. Years before my recent diagnosis of ADD.  Yet it is obvious now that's what's going on with Juneau.

That Was a Mistake

by Joy Renee

Juneau began to wonder if getting up was a mistake the minute she put her foot on the floor that morning and it landed in a squishy pile of cat barf. Her consternation was reinforced when she pulled an ice-cube tray out of the microwave instead of the bowl of oatmeal she thought she had put in there. She found the uncooked oatmeal in the freezer. And again when she sat down in front of the hot bowl of cereal with her mug of coffee only to find it was the jug of cream and she had put her freshly poured coffee in the fridge.

Things continued to happen to set off the warning alarms that it would be a mistake to leave the house that morning. But she had a couple of dozen library books and DVDs due that day and failure to return them would result in loss of library privileges until the fine was paid.

Now that would be the worst mistake of all.

So she plunged ahead, getting ready to go, maintaining her determination to stick to her plan even in the face of finding her hair lathered with shaving gel and her loufa lathered with shampoo.

Even when she forgot to zip up the backpack before she picked it up off the bed and all of the books and DVDs fell out and scattered all over the floor, she just methodically repacked them and grabbed up her sunglasses and sun visor and headed for the door. Out on the sidewalk she turned left and walked at a good pace for three blocks before she realized she was headed to the park where she liked to watch the ducks and swans while she read or wrote instead of to the library. Keeping her mind on what she was doing in the moment was one of Juneau’s biggest challenges. She would always rather be thinking about the story she had been reading or the one she was writing than about the curb that was coming up or even her next meal.

That is why she was hardly surprised to find herself sprawled on the ground having just fallen over a tyke on a small trike. Luckily she had not landed on the toddler and his mother was full of concern over her skinned knee and embarrassment with her son’s gleeful laughter.

“Oh, let him laugh.” Juneau said as the woman tried to shush her child. “He knows funny when he sees it.”

Her knee cleaned up with the damp paper towels the woman had brought to her, Juneau continued on her way. At the library things went surprisingly smoothly and she thought maybe she had been jolted into good sense by that tumble. But apparently it had just been that being in the library, handling the books and movies--the stories--was just one of those things that could manage to keep her in the moment where mistakes were more easily caught before they were committed.

One of the books had been so captivating she had to pull it back out of her rolling backpack as soon as she was out the door and sit on the bench under the cottonwood tree to read until it was brought to her attention by a series of convulsive sneezes that she had made another mistake in not noticing that the cottonwood was shedding its fluff.

When she discovered that she had forgotten to pack her allergy meds and eye drops, not to mention tissues, she knew she had no choice but to head home and hurriedly packed the book and her reading glasses into the front pouch of the backpack instead of in the roomier interior where the glasses could ride safely atop the pile of books. With visions of the books spilling out as they had done that morning, she thought it would be safer to not open the main compartment.

When she decided to hoist the pack onto her shoulders rather than pull it along behind her on its wheels, she thought she was insuring a safer return trip home for herself, the books and the glasses. But that was a mistake of monumental import she realized as she found herself laying in the crosswalk ten minutes later, having had to throw herself backwards to avoid being hit by a red pickup that had just run the red light. Of course it was a mistake not to have looked both ways before stepping off the curb the moment she saw the walk signal. But all she could think about, even as the bicyclist who had slammed on his brakes just behind her as she fell back and was now somersaulting over the top of her, was her reading glasses in the front pouch of the backpack which were now undoubtedly crushed. Even the realization that she could not move her legs was not as alarming as the thought of not being able to finish that story.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Camp NaNo Reconsiderations

My Camp NaNoWriMo Profile
See an excerpt of Blow Me a Candy Kiss there

I'm going to revise my Camp NaNo goals.  Sigh.  Am bringing the focus back to the storywork--the polising for self-pub of my short story Blow Me a Candy Kiss.

Below is the list from Tuesday's post.  The strike throughs are completed.  The grayed out are postponed for May's project:

• An edit pass to create a printable rewrite draft for marking up with page breaks at end of scenes. The primary fixes will be formatting, changing the indented paragraph and no line spaces to the WWW friendly form with no indents and blank lines between paragraphs.  Also increasing space between lines inside paragraphs to provide room for notations.
• Print hardcopy.  [The computer and printer's need marital therapy.]
• Print hardcopy of my beta reader's marked up copy
• An edit pass on the hard copy noting any issues as listed in edit passes below but primarily for structural and expansion and breaking up overlong paragraphs
• A structural rewrite that incorporates suggestions of my one beta reader and includes expansion of scenes, addition of scenes and extensive rewriting of many paragraphs. [This, the biggest task, has begun and will be ongoing at least through the second week]
• An edit pass for grammar and punctuation, word choice and word overuse and consistency of story facts.
• Read aloud noting any issues with how it sounds, listening for sour notes and tongue twisters and out-of-character voices in dialog, rewriting to fix
• An edit pass for spelling and typos and formatting consistency, including reformatting paragraphs to remove the extra space between lines.
• As time permits throughout, write new material for future Greg and Iris stories as encounters in Candy Kiss trigger memories or spark new ideas.  [Also begun and will continue throughout the month]
• Convert to epub
• An edit pass of epub for formatting issues created by the conversion
• Convert to mobi
• An edit pass of mobi for formatting issues created by the conversion
• Upload epub and mobi to Smashwords
• Upload mobi to Amazon to convert to Kindle
• Another edit pass of the Kindle for formatting issues

I realized as I created that list that I had not thought through all that will be involved in taking a text document into ebook formats.  Aside from the fact that it would be my first time and thus I would be learning new applications and their quirks, it adds several more editing passes which would mean I'd need to spend the whole last week of Camp NaNo on the ebook project.  

That is not the spirit of NaNo for me.

I want to spend the month rewriting and polishing the story. And adding new material for future stories with the same characters as encounters with things in this story remind me of things I'd intended or spark new ideas.

But the musing I did in Tuesday's post about increasing this story to 12K or more, even to novella length in time for the publication has been set aside.  I will allow work on first rough draft of new material for future stories but I know my style of rewrite and that first draft of musing on plot, snippets of dialog, snippets of description, character sketches, character monologues and musing on symbol, imagery and theme will need weeks worth of editing and the good protocol is to set it aside for a couple of weeks first and again between each of the edits.

So I'm going to make the epub project part of ROW80 round 2 goals and aim for mid to late May.  And then continue to work on the material for future stories for JuNoWriMo possibly completing the first rough draft of one of them.  The one I have in mind at the moment follows this one beginning on the following day but is in Greg's POV.

My plan is to publish Blow Me a Candy Kiss priced at 0.00.  I  know this is controversial and counter-intuitive but the story has been available on line in one form or another since my first web site in 1998 so I'm reluctant to start charging for it now.  My thought is this will be an icebreaker for me and a marketing benefit for the future stories and I hope, eventually, the collection of all the Greg and Iris stories into a full length novel.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Spring Challenges

hello mai purritteez
see my 1st caption of this pic here
with my poem Prioritizing Agony
both with the same theme as this post

There are four challenges I'm joining this spring.  That I know about so far.

It is not the first time for any of them.  I always seem to go into them with sparkling expectations and excitement but by the 1/4 mark I can already see I'm not going to meet my goals then the remainder of the challenge is tainted by demoralization, stress, and desperation.

And at the end, in spite of all that I did accomplish that would not have gotten done without the challenge and community support, I come away with a pervasive sense of failure.  Not just failure to meet my goals but personal failure as in Looser or Fool, Clown or Fraud.

So this spring, in the spirit of the time-management coaching goals my husband has in mind, I am running my goal concepts past him to get his observations, suggestions and explanations of what makes a reachable goal and how each of my concepts would impact both the goals weeks, months or years out and the already in place goals for the foundation of self-care we are working to put into place to support the other goals, dreams and aspirations.

It is very important that I don't sabotage what we have already got in place or set myself up for another experience of failure.  Thus it is better to keep the stated goal a reachable challenge--doable but only by pushing myself a bit.

UPDATE: I added Bloggiesta Saturday morning because I found out it was currently in session this weekend only after I'd posted.

SPRING 2014
March 27-30

Bloggiesta -- The Blog Improvement Fiesta  SPRING 2014: March 27-30

I found out just before midnight last night (Friday) that Bloggiesta was on this weekend and I'd already missed two days.  The last one I participated in was fall of 2012 because I keep missing them by a few days to a month, learning about them by stumbling upon someone's Bloggiesta posts after it was all over.

I need to find a way for the information to reliably reach me ahead of the fiesta.  Now that Bloggiesta has its own hub blog maybe it also has a newsletter or subscribe to post form?  [DONE]

I almost decided to let it go but I'd been needing a Bloggiesta for the impetus and info it provides along with the community support and the sense of accountability provided by publishing the 2DO list.

I had to wait until I was able to consult my time management coach (aka my husband) before I could publish a 2DO list though as I'm utterly convinced that I could not make a list that would not sabotage the success we built up this past week. See final paragraph of the top section.

During this morning's (Saturday) vid chat Ed immediately saw the importance for me to participate.  He said it was analogous to a college course or seminar in blog management and would tie me into a community with the management expertise in an area he was not up to speed on but that was essential to my aspirations to self-publish and freelance among other online biz concepts I have.

So after conferring with me on the most urgent tasks he helped me create this list:

Saturday:

• Update Friday's Spring Challenge post to include Bloggiesta
• Sign up on Bloggiesta blog
• Finish the structural rewrite and fine edit of the draft for Saturday's post which was promised in Tuesday's post for Wednesday and then postponed because I mismanaged my time Wednesday
• Post Saturday's post, I Tried it My Way and link it on the fb fan page and twitter. Share fan page post with fb ROW80 Group (those whom I made the promise to on Tuesday)
• Subscribe to Bloggiesta post via email. (yeah. I just added that. It was not on my radar when discussing with Ed this morning)

Sunday:

• Prep and post the Sunday Serenity post.  Link on the fb fan page and twitter. 
• Prep Monday's IMWAYR? post and schedule it to go live after midnight
• Clean up the Joy Renee on the Web section removing defunct links and adding new
• Clean up social media section and add links to SM I signed up for after the last time this was done..  Most urgent is to get small discrete buttons for a more professional look. I would like that section to take up no more screen real estate than a credit card
• Clean out old and defunct buttons and banners in the challenges section of the sidebar and replace with current ones.  The five in this post at minimum
• Break my lurking habit and interact socially in the Bloggiesta community by commenting, asking a question, do a mini-challenge, or participate in the twitter conversation
• Update Camp NaNo profile to reflect the goals for April Camp

Wrap up:  I didn't get the sidebar work done, nor the mini-challenge and socializing,, nor Monday's post to give me a day out from under the pressure.  But I did spend a lot of time exploring the mini-challenges both current and archived.  I focused on organization, sidebar, social media and monetizing.  I don't think I'll wait for the next Bloggiesta to continue reading and then applying what I learn. I may even add blog management goals to my ROW80 for the next two rounds at least.

Camp
NaNoWriMo

Camp NaNo --  Kickoff at midnight (12:00:01) April 1st.  That's Monday night folks!

This is different from the November NaNo in which the majority of participants comply with the original challenge of a 50K novel in 30 days.  For the NaNo camps you can choose your own writing project in any category or genre.  And establish your own word count and/or other measurable goal(s).

My original idea was to

• Create a backlog of 15 book reviews ready for posting from the many I have in progress or from other books I've already read.
• Rewrite and edit my 6000 word short story Blow Me a Candy Kiss
• Complete all the writing exercises for my AWAI  copywriting course

I'd only got as far as listing the first one when Ed said he needed to think about it overnight.  Two days later he said 7 reviews was a reachable goal.  It took a detailed explanation of his logic before I agreed.  Its not that I couldn't do more just that I shouldn't state more as the goal so that I would get the rush of success when I achieved it and again for every extra one.

But then I told him that I had also been thinking about a structural rewrite and fine edit of Candy Kiss.  Which would entail two to three passes through the 6000 words and likely a bit of expansion up to an additional 2-4K.

That's when he said Drop the reviews and do that!

I was reluctant and it took a lengthy explanation of his reasoning before I agreed.  The most salient point he had was that I had set as my first goal in my first round of ROW80  Spring of 2012 to get Candy Kiss prepped for a self-pub experiment and not only is it still not done, it is a pivotal task in the establishment of my dream of self-publishing my writing.

He would like to see me actually publish it by the end of the month as he believes it is important for me to get the ice broken on that and realizes that the hardest part of that challenge is the emotional work I'd have to be doing as I write and edit in order to be ready to take the plunge when the time comes.

No, I didn't even bother to share my intent to add the AWAI exercises.  I dropped the idea as his reasoning on the others was convincing and I could see it ruled out adding anything else as his estimate on the time investment required for the Candy Kiss project was well above 30 hours.  I would guess 20-30 hours per pass through the manuscript.

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2014
The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

ROW80 --  A Round of Words in 80 Days -- The Writing Challenge That Knows You Have a Life

Altho this is modeled after the November NaNo it is four rounds a year of 80 days each with brief hiatuses between.

It's about flexibility and learning to adjust goals as needed.  You can work on any kind of writing project or multiple projects but your goals must be defined such that they are measurable.

Since I knew how crazy word count often makes me I started off in April 2012 to use time investment goals and as of January this year I use a Google Doc spreadsheet to keep track and then share both a screenshot and a link to the chart itself in check-ins.

My goals for round 2 this year will combine the goal of regaining the ground I lost as reflected in the spreadsheet in March by the end of April with the goals for Camp NaNo in April and JuNoWriMo in June along with the Time Management, Self-Management and Project Management goals Ed is coaching me on which are all designed to support my writing and entrepreneurial goals.

Add caption

Dewey's Read-a-Thon -- 24 hours of reading, sharing, mini-challenges, prizes, cheerleading, bloging, social networking...

There are no goals for this one other than to enjoy it and go with the flow. It will depend on my mood when the time comes what the ratio between reading and the other possible activities will be

I used to pride myself on my ability to stay awake the full 24 but that is no longer a given.  Unless I have had a solid week of good sleep (7.5+ per night) I shouldn't even try.  But even then I would have to do it without fudging on my med schedule which is tricky with the bedtime Trazadone which I'm rarely able to resist more than an hour.

JuNoWriMo 2012

JuNoWriMo -- Begins June 1.  It's a little more flexible than NaNoWriMo which encourages you to start with a fresh story and write a 50K novel as it allows for continuing with a WIP while counting only the words produced in June.

I thought I remembered that it didn't have to be a novel or even fiction but I can't find that mentioned on the site today.

I was hoping to transfer my Book Review Backlog concept to JuNo but if that isn't possible I'll save it for July Camp NaNo and choose among:

• put another short story through the rewrite and edit wringer
• wander around my fiction files adding words to character sketches, character monologues, scenes, back story and NaNo messes drafts
• select a previous NaNo mess draft and do a structural rewrite aka clean up the NaNo mess
• select a previous NaNo mess draft that is likely to need another 40K to complete and start working where I left off at the end of its NaNo
• start a fresh novel from the long list of story seeds I have backloged

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Quote

hao sad hoominz mus b remyndud ob dis troof

Ever since I read Shan Jeniah Burton's Monday pep talk on Row80 a couple weeks ago, I've been ruminating on the role of play, improv and imperfection in the creative process.  Which has led me to search out book titles and quotes on the theme.

I discussed the impact of  that pep talk on me in my 145th ROW80 check-in February 23 and the imprint of that impact persists.  Maybe this time I won't loose sight of its importance.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Quote

soon az mai pawz stops maykng mi pauz ai tayx teh plunj

I've been thinking a lot recently about the role that doubt, fear, anxiety, and the need to be in control has played in my tendency to collect unfinished stories, novels, essays, book reviews and poems that never seem to reach the publishable stage.  All told there are several dozen now.

This is a huge issue for me and I plan to take it by the tail this year.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Quote

Wish...Wonder...Will...Woo...Voila

This is a quote from Marina Warner, author of Stranger Magic: Charmed States & The Arabian Nights  which I've just checked out of the library for the third time in a year.  It is actually from a different book--From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers.

I've just explored all of Warner's books on Goodreads and now I want to own them all!  My first encounter with her work was in the late 80s when I was in college with Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary.

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Reading Hungers

Hunger's Brides
by Paul Anderson
1358p
counting end notes and acknowledgments

This was in the third box that arrived Tuesday afternoon. One was my Valentine's Day gift from Ed. Another was my Nexus 7 with Keyboard Case from Amazon.  And this from an Amazon seller shipping from Happy Valley OR just half an hour's drive from where I live (lived, will live) in Phoenix.

I've been trying to finish this novel since 2009 the first time I had it out of the library in Longview the year I was here to help after Mom's broken hip and stroke.  I was gratified to discover that our system in Southern Oregon had a copy and I started checking it out there.  Every time it went back unfinished and when I was unable to get it back again inside six or eight weeks I would have to start over or at least turn the pages reading snatches until I identified a scene and if my memory of it felt clear move to the next one.

Oversized
Opened it covers my printer.

The book is heavy both literally and figuratively.  The print is small.  And the prose is both dense and lyrical and thus cannot be read quickly even if my eyes still allowed me to do so.  In all the times I had it checked out--three to four time a year for five years--the furthest I reached was a bit passed page 200.  I'm not even sure whether I recognize the scenes in the previous pages because I'd read that far or because I'd browsed ahead.

I kept watching for a Kindle version to become available hoping that would alleviate the issues of trying to hold a large, awkward to hold book in the light at just the right angle with one hand while holding the magnifier with the other.  Then when it did become available the price dismayed me and while I dithered over it they took it down.  I watched for over a year for them to make it available again.  Then last week I saw a price for a used, very good condition, like new, hardback for only $4.49 + $3.99 shipping.

In spite of the hardback coming with all the issues of difficulty discussed above, at that price I had to snap it up.  The factor that is different and makes it worth a try is that now I won't have to keep sending it back to the library.  I can make a slow and steady plod through it savoring every sentence at my leisure.

To round this out and to provide the who, what, when and where re the novel, I'm going to quote two passages from my 2009 April Dewey's Read-a-Thon::

5:25 AM I'm beginning the day with Paul Anderson's Hunger's Brides. This novel is HEAVY and I mean that in both senses of the word--it's over 1300 pages and annotated like an academic treatise.

It is also smallish print so I know I couldn't stay with it for the duration today even if it didn't need to go back to the library this afternoon. I checked it out on my sister's card nine weeks ago and have used up the two renewals. I started it the first time that first week but set it aside to finish the novel I was already reading. I've restarted it at least twice since then but life keep getting in the way.

It is not the story's fault. It is the kind of story that enthralls me--stories nested inside stories. Anderson handles language like a poet. One of the central characters is an historical figure--17th century poet, nun, mystic Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz of Mexico.

The principle reason I've kept setting it aside is that it does not lend itself well to being read in snatches of moments nor to being schlepped about the house under the arm and held one-handed while stirring a pot or even two-handed while high-stepping on the mini-tramp. Like I said, HEAVY.

4:55 PM This is my entry in the Hour 11 mini-challenge at Flight into Fancy which is to write a letter to a character in one of the stories we read today.

Dear Juana Inez de la Cruz

Your precociousness in verbal and reasoning skills do not amaze me nearly as much as your tender heart. It is one thing to learn how to read at age three by spying through your sister's schoolroom window, it is another to notice and be disturbed by the way in which your family's native born servants are treated as less-than.

It is one thing to read with comprehension the reports of Thucydides at age 9? 10? it is yet another to be heart-broken when Thucydides' Athenian compatriots (representing to your mind the epitome of rationality and civilization) follow their logic to the bitterest of conclusions thus displaying it's empty heart when they slaughter all the males on the isle of Menos and sell their women and children into slavery because the people of Menos refused to swear loyalty and subservience to Athens.

You, at such a young age, 9? 10? were able to see the equality of the Athens and Menos peoples, even the parity of their respective logic (ATHENS: Exceptions would weaken us in our enemies eyes; MENOS: Acquiescing to slavery is cowardice and worse than death.) As head-shaking stunning as that achievement, it is as nothing compared to the way in which you saw your own beloved Abuelo (Grandpa) through new eyes and found him wanting in some unnameable crucial thing when he attempted to explain that ancient conflict as pragmatism (ATHENS) vs. idealism (MENOS) clearly favoring pragmatism.

The only explanation is that you were born with the soul of a poet.

Oh that we had a few such as you living in our generation.

If I could ask you to answer one question for me, it would be: Why, as an adult, did you choose to enter a cloister and take not only the vows of a nun but a vow of silence as well? Based on the reason suffused with heart you exhibited as a pre-teen, I cannot believe it was simple expediency. Not even the expediency of protecting your own life.

Your awed admirer from beyond the 'Unstable Margins'
Joy Renee

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Quote

moar Lit Kits
Nao wud B gud!

I've always loved that Ray Bradbury quote.  I've seldom been able to implement it.  I'm constantly in the grip of analysis paralysis.

Maybe I should include working on this issue in the ROW80 2014 Round 1?

Can't quite picture what that would look like...

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