I Love The Image Of The Princess And The Pea, Though I Don’t Love The Idea Of Being Tall Making You

Writing from Scratch #9: Complex Plots, Part 2

Writing from Scratch #9: Complex Plots, Part 2. Writing from Scratch is a weekly blog series that takes writing back to the basics. #writing #writingadvice

Writing from Scratch is a weekly blog series that takes writing back to the basics. Each week we’ll build on what we’ve learned before to craft our stories.

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Complex Plots, Part 2: Modifying Plots

The second way we’ll try complicating a plot is through plot modifiers. This happens when a try-fail cycle not only furthers the solution of…

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Writing from Scratch #7: The Event Plot

The Event Plot

The problem of an Event plot is a disruption to the status quo. The solution comes either from setting everything right again or adapting to the change. The Event plot is probably what most people think of when they think “what is a plot?” Any story that deals with a life-changing or world-changing event is an Event.

The first plot I analyzed, from The Expanse television series, is an Event plot. Let’s look at another: The Princess Diaries. As we did with Lord of the Rings, we’ll look at the movie rather than books because more people will be familiar with the movie (which is a damn shame).

The Event: Mia Thermopolis’s grandmother tells Mia that she is the princess of small European kingdom Genovia, and she must take the throne.

First try: Mia tries to reestablish the old status quo of being a nobody by running away from her grandmother to her mother’s house. Fail: No, she is not allowed to ignore that she is a princess, and she must undergo “princess lessons.”

Second try: Mia tries to adapt to the new status quo of being a secret princess by taking princess lessons and letting her best friend in on the secret. Fail: Yes, Mia gets a makeover and goes to a state dinner, but she is kind of a mess emotionally and embarrasses herself.

Third try: Mia tries to ignore everything that is happening to her status quo. Fail: No, everyone knows she’s a princess now, and because horrible school bullies school-bully she is a laughing stock.

Fourth try: Mia tries to run away from the city to avoid reestablishing the old status quo by renouncing the crown or adapting to the new status quo by accepting the crown. Fail: No, she doesn’t successfully run away, and she arrives at the ball looking like a drowned cat.

Final try: Mia tries adapting to the new status quo by accepting the crown. Solution: Yes, Mia adapts to being a princess, and she impresses everyone with her speech.

Prompt: write a flash fiction with an Event in which the plot-problem that disrupts the status quo is a marriage proposal. How a marriage proposal would disrupt the status quo is up to you. You’ll also choose the character, setting, genre, and stakes, as well as what is preventing this status quo from being reestablished or adapted to immediately. This simple plot can create a story from a rom-com to a fantastical action-adventure.

If you like this and want more, check out my website theferalcollection.com

Review of The Dresden Files: Peace Talks (spoilers ahead)

This review is gonna be slightly different than my normal reviews as I am the only Paules Sibling of Awesome who reads The Dresden Files, so I have not talked through my thoughts with B beforehand. I also don’t see the necessity of providing a rating for a book that is the sixteenth in a series (not counting the short story collections) - clearly I enjoy the books. Spoilers ahead!

So, the peace talks in question went about as disastrously as expected knowing Harry Dresden was involved, but obviously I didn’t expect that. Years ago, Jim Butcher promised us an apocalyptic trilogy to end the series (titled Stars and Stones, Hell’s Bells, and Empty Night, in case you missed it), but I never figured we’d actually get to a point where that ending seems in sight.

My big fear going into this was that Karrin Murphy would not survive. I was pleased to see that a) she did and b) she was as badass as ever, despite her injuries from Skin Game. Of course, who knows what will happen in Battle Ground, but really my only hope is that Murphy makes it to the end of the series. Just Murphy and Harry at the end of things, just as they were at the beginning.

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I always find it kind of weird that matriarchal cultures in fiction are always “women fight and hunt, men stay home and care for the babies” because world-building-wise, it makes no sense

think about it. like, assuming that gender even works the same in this fantasy culture as it does in ours, with gender conflated with sex (because let’s be real, all of these stories assume that), men wouldn’t be the ones to make the babies, so why would they be the ones to care for the babies? why is fighting and hunting necessary for leadership?

writing a matriarchy this way is just lazy, because you’re just taking the patriarchy and just swapping the people in it, rather than actually swapping the culture. especially when there are so many other cool things you could explore. like, what if it’s not a swap of roles but of what society deems important?

maybe a matriarchy would have hunting and fighting be part of the man’s job, but undervalued. like taking the trash out or cleaning toilets: necessary, but gross, and not noble or interesting. maybe farming is now the most important thing, and is given a lot of spiritual and cultural weight.

how would law work? what crimes would exist, and what things would be considered too trivial to make illegal? who gets what property? why?

how would religion work? how would you mark time or the passage into adulthood? what would marriage look like? if bloodlines are through the mother, bastardy wouldn’t even be a concept - how does that work?

what qualities would be most important in a person? how would you define strength or leadership? what knowledge would be the most coveted and protected? what acts or roles are considered useless or degrading?

like, you can’t just take our current society and say you’re turning it on its head when you’re just regurgitating it wholesale. you have to really think about why things are the way they are and change that. 

Now THIS is art. 😍

Year 5: Surviving, Living, Changing

Surviving #TSS changed me. But one turn that I have never talked about is in my politics.

#WhenIWas is trending today on Twitter, and while that is about sexual assault and harassment, it strikes me as particularly, I don’t know, fateful that it would be today, April 19, 2016.  When I was 21, my world changed.  When I was 21, I died.  And when I was 21, I became alive again.  And everything that happened on April 19, 2011, everything that has happened in the five years since, so much…

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Quick Plotting Tip: Write Your Story Backwards

If you have a difficult time plotting, try writing or outlining your story backwards—from the end to the beginning. Writers who have a difficult time outlining, plotting, and planning their stories often benefit from this technique. You’ll need a general idea of what your story is about for this to work, and of course you need to know the ending, but you might be amazed how helpful this trick can be.

Why is writing backwards easier? Basically, instead of answering the question “this happened… now what comes next?,” you’ll be answering the question “this happened… so what would come right before that?” which narrows the possibilities for your next move and can help keep your story on track. (Incidentally, it’s also the way Joseph Gordan-Levitt’s character comes out on top in the film The Lookout.)

Writing backwards can also help you more tightly weave together your subplots, themes, and character relationships, and keep you from going too far down any irrelevant rabbit holes.

If you don’t want to write or outline completely backwards, remember that you’re free to jump around! If you’re feeling stuck in your story or novel, jump to the middle or end and write a few scenes. Many writers get stuck because they feel they have to write their story linearly from beginning to end, which results in an overdeveloped (and often irrelevant) beginning and an underdeveloped ending.

So go work on that ending! It’s much more likely that you will need to change your beginning to fit your ending than the other way around, so spend time on your ending sooner rather than later!

Writing from Scratch #1

Welcome to Writing from Scratch!

I’ve been writing a long time, and sometimes it feels like I lose the trees for the forest. Writing from Scratch is a chance for me (and you!) to get back to the basics of storytelling.

If you’ve never written a story before, if you’ve never felt like you could come up with one that would be worth writing, my hope is that if you follow along with me here, you will have the confidence and know-how to come up with an idea, build it into a story, and share it with the world.

These posts will be little, easy-to-digest nuggets. At the end of every post, look for a prompt and share your response in the comments!

What Is a Story?

A story can be defined by what it contains: at least one plot, character, and setting, and a style through which it is told.

Story Bits

To begin, let’s take a look at the second smallest unit of a story – the sentence. A sentence is a set of words that conveys a complete thought. And communication is fractal, meaning each part shares the same pattern as the whole. A story and its components, therefore, will also convey a Complete Thought.

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My 90yr old Irish Catholic grandpa doesn’t miss with my gender. He’s never gotten my name wrong, or my pronouns, never even faltered over it.

It’s all so natural too: son, big man, young man…

We’ve never talked about it. He’s the only one who hasn’t pushed for details. He just accepted it and carried on because it’s not a huge deal.

It’s so comforting.