Another great video!

This is from Bookfox.  Enjoy!

9 Steps to Take Your Writing from Mechanical to ALIVE

Another great video from Brandon McNulty

This video discusses 11 great tips to get a story done faster.  These are fantastic tips.

I have done most of these things at some time in my life.  How do we do them more consistently?

How to be a terrible writer

Just found Grayson Taylor, and this video made me smile.  Enjoy!

Revisiting Fight Club

After listening to the interview with Chuck Palahniuk (reshared November 18, 2023), I reread Fight Club.  If you haven’t listened to this interview, it’s worth it.  He’s fascinating. 

I recall reading Fight Club 20 years ago and thinking that, aside from the ending (which was actually better than the movie), most of the book was similar to the movie.  Strange, but the movie adapted the book well with the voice-over narration and the unreliable narrator.  It worked well.

 

On my most recent reading of Fight Club, however, I focused on Palahniuk’s use of rhetoric and rhythm. 

 

Bob’s big arms were closed around to hold me inside, and I was squeezed in the dark between Bob’s new sweating tits that hang enormous, the way we think of God’s as big.  Going around the church basement full of men, each night we met: this is Art, this is Paul, this is Bob; Bob’s big shoulders made me think of the horizon….

Bob’s shoulders inhale themselves up in a long draw, then drop, drop, drop in jerking sobs.  Draw themselves up.  Drop, drop, drop.

I’ve been coming here every week for two years, and every week Bob wraps his arms around me, and I cry.

Fight Club, 16-17

 

Bob, Chloe, the nameless boss, Marla.  Yes, the movie gave them mass exposure, but the book describes them with metaphors, rhetorical repetition, and yes, a bit of music. 

Add in violence and the lost generation and a crazy narrator, and no wonder this book is such a crazy success.  Funny, when I first read this, I knew the writing was smooth and easy, but I’m developing a deeper appreciation his the complexity of his style.

 

Novelist interview-Chuck Palahniuk

This YouTube channel is called, "Soft White Underbelly," and Nick has been listening to these videos.  

Nick played this one for me, and this left me a bit speechless--well, it's Chuck Palahniuk.  His background and story sound like a crazy novel alone, but he talks about writing and workshops and style, too.  

I may need to reread a few of his books and study his style a bit closer.

Everything You Need to Know About Writing Workshops from ShaelinWrites

This is a reshare from ShaelinWrites.  I've listened to a few of her videos, and she is very insightful and smart.  She has some great thoughts about writing workshops in this video.

Interestingly, we had some drama in our workshop last week, and as long as I have been in this workshop (15 years?), the drama always surprises me.  I expect people to respect others and put in the effort that the writer expects others to put into his piece.  This is not so.

That being said, Shaelin comments on a few things that I would love to reinforce and a few things that I would like to respectfully disagree.

She told a story about a writing teacher that opened the class explaining that the people in workshops will be your best friends, future spouses, and mortal enemies.  I love this.  Writing is so vulnerable that when you trust your workshop groups with your deepest, dearest treasures--and you trust them to criticize your treasures--this suddenly deepens your trust and love for these people.

She says the ideal group is 4 people of your friends because 4 people will have the opportunity to say everything and because they are invested in you and understand you.  I was in a workshop of 4 friends once, and this was horrible.  We met for about two years, but we were unfocused and unorganized.  I am currently in a group that is around 10, depending on the week, and the diversity of opinions is excellent.  Also, I think there is a danger in trusting your friends because they may know you well and make assumptions about what you write based on what they know about you.

In the video, she also talks about forming a workshop based on compatible writers working in compatible genres with similar skill levels.  I'm not sure I agree with this.  Shaelin is talking about a smaller group, but in our slightly larger group, I like working with different writers, different genres, and different strengths and skills.  Different genres shouldn't really matter in a group because we should all be working with the same basic elements and tools, and we should be trying to help each other make our work stronger.  Additionally, different skills and strengths help us all to learn lots of tools and perspectives.

The last section Shaelin talks about is workshop etiquette, and I may suggest adding something about this to our workshop guidelines in the future.  Be objective, avoid moral judgement, help the writer improve,  and don't try to be the smartest or best.  Last, help the writer, and the writer helps everybody; put into the critiques what you expect others to give you.

Lots of good information in this video although it is a little long.  

The First Guy To Ever Write Fiction--reshare from Ryan George

I recently found Ryan George, and he does these skits about the "First guy ever to" do such and such.  I find these videos quite amusing.

The one above is about fiction, so I'm sharing this here.  Enjoy!

Bad Dialogue vs Good Dialogue (Writing Advice) by Brandon McNulty

Just watched this video.  This has some interesting and amusing examples of good and bad dialogue, and the explanations are fantastic.  

Worth the watch.

I'm going to watch some more of Brandon McNulty's videos.  Anyone know his books?

Grammar Foundations

Maybe a couple of years ago in our fiction group, I said something about perfect tense, and Kristen asked me how I knew so much about grammar.  I shrugged and said I learned a lot in graduate school.

Funny, I have thought about that brief comment and that pseudo lie in the years that have passed. 

I didn’t mean to lie. 

I didn’t have an answer.

Truth is, my love of grammar started long before this.

My story begins when I was in tenth grade.  My family had moved to New Jersey when I was in eighth grade, and I struggled in school—but that’s not quite true, either.  My older sister was a year ahead of me, and she excelled in everything without trying.  I may have been smart, too, but I had different skills and different interests, so I bounced back and forth between the college prep courses that required an A to continue to the next year and the regular courses.  

Funny, I would get As in the regular courses without trying which would kick me into the college prep courses.  Then, I would get a B in the college preparatory course, and the system bumped back down to the regular course.

This was a typical pattern for me.  

I didn’t care much for my grades.  I didn’t much care to follow in my sister’s footsteps.  I was a gloomy teenager without much hope.  But I loved writing and words.

Freshman year I was in the regular English course.  I breezed through this with an A.  

Sophomore year I was in the accelerated, college preparatory course taught by Ms. Stout.  She was particular about being addressed by Ms., and God planned for me to be in this class.

This was years ago.  Decades ago.  

Ms. Stout gingerly handed each of us a small blue writing handbook, a paperback, which was unusual for a textbook in high schools in those days.  This was a paperback named The Lively Art of Writing, and we called this the LAW book for short.  

We sniggered and called it the bible for Ms. Stout’s outside of class.

Ms. Stout was an intense woman with fiery blue eyes.  I wouldn’t want her to know that we joked about the LAW book.  

But maybe she would have laughed, too.

I think we had a list of about 30 rules outlined in the LAW book, and I think I wrote about this in an earlier blog.  These 30 rules were LAWs.  According to Ms. Stout, if we broke any of these laws three times in an essay, this would our grade to a C.  Any subsequent infracture would drop our grade down.

So, three broken rules would bring us down to a C.  Four to a D.  Five to an F. 

We learned quickly.

I doubt any teacher today could get away with such strict rules, but we learned the rules and how to identify them very quickly.

Most of these rules I have forgotten.  The best I learned quickly.

Passive voice was perhaps the most valuable.  I recall combing my essays for passive voice on the bus before school, looking for the tell-tale be-verb combinations.  I found them quickly and learned to distinguish them well.  Once, I questioned her passive voice question, saying it was not a verb phrase, and she agreed with me, raising my grade with a smile.  She seemed pleased that I knew the difference between a passive verb phrase and what might have been an adjective phrase.

Passive voice seemed to be the most useful tool.  Ironically, I use passive voice steadily in my current, medical job, and this continues to annoy me because the requirements of my job demand the passive.

The other rules were numerous but logical.  The only other one I remember clearly is, Avoid “it” and “there” as a subject when they are placeholders without any specific meaning.

Other rules are less impressed on my memory but probably just as marked on my style.  Not using “wise” at the end of words was another rule: “Grammar-wise, the class was very fruitful.”  This sloppy contraction never seemed useful or helpful except when I needed to avoid it.

Ms. Stout was a funny woman with large blue eyes and dark black hair.  That classroom in New Jersey was just a partition off a larger common walkway, and yet I remember Ms. Stout vividly talking of essays and meaning and words.  Every word conveyed meaning, she had said.  Make every word count and make every word effective. 

I made a B in her class and ended up in the regular class the next year.

Funny, when I started in college, diagraming sentences and learning about transformational grammar, I thought of Ms. Stout.  The foundations of my grammar probably started earlier, but Ms. Stout solidified some of the excitement and passion for what I learned.

Then, I read tons of Chomsky and Pinker, and I don’t know if I agree with everything that Ms. Stout taught us as a straight rule.  I think I learned that grammar is communication and understanding, not just rules and formulation.

But I learned some rules and formulation to understand the expectation and parameters around us is extraordinarily good.  The more we understand about language and its patterns and its deviations and its transformations the more we can communicate more effectively.

Or so we think.

Or so I have thought.

 

Neil Gaiman is coming to Butler!

Neil Gaiman is coming to Butler!

Saw this on Youtube a few weeks ago.  A couple of sections of this made me smile.

We--Nick, Randy, and I--are going!  How exciting.

I'll post an update after we hear him speak!

Online Writing Groups--A New Kind of Body Language

 Perhaps I am a little sensitive to body language and personal space.  I actually took a psychology class on the Psychology of Space--personal space, body language indicators, and other body language extensions--and I learned about lots of interesting things that I had sensed before taking the class.  This was many, many years ago, so I have forgotten the terminology and facts with this, but the ideas and implications have stuck with me.  Fascinating stuff.

Body language comes in lots of different forms--eye contact, personal space, hand gestures, and body posture for a few.  

I want to give several examples from our face-to-face writing group.

New comers may seem more withdrawn into their personal space--you know, arms crossed, weak eye contact--but over time, they can become more relaxed and comfortable.  Their body posture reflects this.

Some group members are highly respected and valued.  When they are speaking, the members generally stop, listen, and make eye contact.  When Tom talks, everyone listens.  When Kristen gives a critique, we are paying attention.  When Randy is talking, we are ready to laugh.

Group members that talk too much or do not contribute as much to the group do not receive the same response to the group.  In the past--I am thinking of two past members who workshopped their novels and did not spend much time on reviews and then stopped attending when their novel was finished--the group generally recognized the lack of reciprocation.  The body language would be more shut off, personal space would not be open, and body posture would close off when these people spoke.  As awful as this is, I was less likely to pay attention when these members were talking then when Tom or Kristen or Randy are talking.

The converse is not exactly true for the online groups because the video chats attempt to create a sense of "meeting."  But the meeting does not really work to read how others are responding to each other.

In an online writing group, eye contact is not obvious.  A writer might appear to be looking at me, but they might be just looking at their screen/word doc/self video.  Body posture and hand gestures are limited, too, because we can only see a small window of their body.  Personal space and body posture are very limited because most writers are posed to see their computers in the best position possible.

And of course, sometimes, writers may use a photo or image to hide their video.  This hides all body language.

Perhaps I sound old-fashioned, but the face-to-face writing groups allow for a plethora of body language that helps us to understand each other and our reactions within the group.  Even if we do not understand body language directly or have all the vocabulary to explain this, I think we all sense this.

Online Writing Groups--the Hiccups (burp)

In my last post, I discussed how our writing group has grown over the last year--probably because we are now online and not meeting in the 'hood in downtown Indianapolis.

This leads to another "difficulty."  I use this term loosely because this is not really a problem--more of a hiccup.

Previous to the 'Rona, when new members joined, we would take a few minutes to review the writing group guidelines, once a year or so.  The guidelines are not extensive, but they are loosely based on the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  Our previous noble leader, David Hassler, defined our guidelines and put them into practice.

Please indulge me.  This was one of David's favorite quotes.

In the last year (as mentioned), we often have had new members every meeting.  New members receive a copy of the guidelines, but I do not recall discussing them as a group in some time.  The online format and larger group size cramps time, so we do not have time to go over the guidelines.

Perhaps I am a little too type-A.  I like my rules.

We have had several submissions with 10-point font or single-spaced.  They are within the page limitations, but because the guidelines are 12-point, double-spaced, the submissions are much longer.

Also, with the larger group sizes, the submissions become almost a "competition" to get reviewed.  I do not like this.  For one thing, our group has seen many members join our group long enough to have their novel reviewed, and then we never see them again.  Also, the new members are often more anxious about having their work reviewed, but reviewing can be more important than having your work reviewed.  Sometimes, too, the newer members do not seem to put much effort into reviewing others' work.  This gets lost in the larger groups and with the competition to submit--often the same people submit, and the older members do not submit to stay out of the "scuffle."

Now into the grit.  Some of our guidelines are about the discussions.  Again, we are based on the Iowa Workshop, so the writer whose work is being discussed is to remain silent, and each critiquer is allowed a turn to speak.  Over time, we have allowed the writer to ask questions and respond.  Mostly, this has been fine.  In the last months, a few writers have taken this time to defend their writing and explain what they are trying to write.  

Cringe.  

Mostly, I can't listen to this for too long.  Recently, I stopped a writer who was explaining what her main character was thinking and doing.  The writer has done this before.  I tried to gently say that this was not coming through on the page and she should not explain this but write it.  She continued to explain, and again, I said I would rather read her next draft than for her to tell me what she intends for the character to do.  She started explaining again. 

Oh, dear.  

Randy says that critiquing is a little like volunteer work.  We spend lots of time reading and reviewing others work for no money.  

I think this is funny, sort of.  

Mostly, this is true.  

Online Writing Groups--Open the Doors!

Over the years I have been in our writing group (13?), we have seen people come and go, sometimes staying for a few meetings and sometimes staying for a year or more, but this year has been different.   In the year of the 'Rona while our writing group has met online, we have had a flurry of new members.  

Because meeting online doesn't require us to drive to the 'hood in downtown Indianapolis, we have had people join us from Washington, Gautemala, Texas, North Carolina, and other places.  This is both tremendously interesting and difficult.

Obviously, meeting online allows for people all over to join the group (during our set time at 7pm, two Tuesdays a month).  The diversity in this group is excellent.  I do not know how many new members have joined over the last year, but at a few meetings, we had over 15 attendees.  

This was both exciting and awkward.

A few of us talked offline about keeping our comments brief, but some of the newer members talked long.  With 15+ people critiquing 3 pieces in 2 hours, we ended up timing the critiques to make certain everyone had time to comment.  

As happens often in the summer, the numbers have dwindled a bit.  We have loyal members that continue to attend, and a few others are busy with writing projects (yes, exciting publishing and promoting endeavors--I hope to devote some posts to them in the future!), and they will probably return.

So as exciting as the ease of online meetings encourages more people, the large meetings have been difficult.  

This also poses a problem for us as we ease back into the world of non-'Rona.  Will we continue to meet online or develop a hybrid system?  Will this exclude the members from other places in the country and in the world?

And now I leave you with this quote.

A Whole New World of Fiction? @GR3GORY88...

 My husband found this video the other day.  He shared this with Randy and me.  It's a little long, but if you have 45 minutes, watch it to the end.

So I'm stuck in the traditional world of storytelling with plot, character, setting, and all the rest.  

But I'm so intrigued by this.  Creating a fictional storyline in Twitter has its own development--even plot, character, POV, and setting, if on a different level.  This is clever on so many levels because it creates suspense and readers and a platform over time.

This is a novel form of storytelling, and I'm sad to think that by the time I could draft a "Twitter fiction," this will probably be overdone and old news.  It's like a novel in series or comic books or trilogies--but the platform is very unique and timely.

As I am dreaming up ways to market and to build a platform for my own writing, I wonder if this could build a foundation for upcoming publications.  Could this be a new way to market and to build interest for an upcoming book?

Could GR3GORY88 be building a world for his own writing?  This is a wonderful piece of storytelling, and if GR3GORY88 is building interest and marketing for an upcoming book, well done.

So what's the next experiment with fiction?

How would you use social media to tell a story?

Playing at Writing

Steven Pinker, a rockstar linguist (and yes, this example is a few years old) writes,

Now our grammar is recursive.  The rules create an entity that can contain an example of itself.  In this case, a Sentence contains a Verb Phrase which in turn can contain a sentence....

For example, I think I'll tell you that I just read a news story that recounts that Stephen Brill reports that the press uncritically believed Kenneth Starr's announcement that Linda Tripp testified to him that Monica Lewinsky told Tripp that Bill Clinton told Vernon Jordan to advise Lewinsky not to testify Starr that she had had a sexual relationship with Clinton.  That sentence is a Russian doll with thirteen sentences inside sentences inside sentences.  A recursive grammar can generate sentences of any length and thus can generate an infinite number of sentences (Words and Rules, 8-9).

This is the wonder and magic of writing and language.  We can create uncountable, diverse, unique,  amazing sentences.

Sometimes, as we write, the marvel of this becomes diluted.  Barbara Baig says, "writing is a dance between content and craft, between the content mind and the word mind" (Spellbinding Sentences, 25).  The plot and the characters can outweigh the language.  The lovely alliteration wanes.

And we sometimes fall into our patterns.  I see this in other writers, and I know this pitfall traps me.  The same sentences show up on my screen.  The same words repeat themselves.  The patterns of speech sound like a dull, monotonous rhythm.

I once loved words and language with a fiery thirst.  Reading those writers and theories gives me more excitement about language than I have had in some years.  The exercises in Elizabeth Berg's Escaping into the Open are excellent--I've been going through them a little at a time.

Yes, journalling and writing exercises can seem a waste of time.  Finding the words and exercising the language to become a better writer... these are the things that seem most enjoyable when I can't quite force myself to write anything else.

A Grammar Interjection

The last months have been busy, so I fall back on my old friend, grammar.

Today, I give you interjections.

In one school of grammatical thought, interjections are a classification of English words, like nouns, verbs, pronouns, and the rest.  Interjections are words typically used in dialog or informal writing: well, eew, uh, um, yes, no, huh, aha, hey, wow, and lots of other words.  The point about interjections is they, well, interject into a sentence, usually with some emotion or emphasis.

Three interesting things about interjections.

1.  Interjections (in traditional writing) are always separated from the rest of a sentence with punctuation, usually a comma and sometimes an exclamation mark.

Well, yes!  I did know that the eggs were spoiled, but I didn't think that mother would mind eating them.

2.  The placement in the sentence does not really affect how we use interjections.  We still put commas around them.

That's the funny thing about cats, huh, you can only skin them one way, right?

3.  Like nouns and verbs and almost any other type of speech, interjections can be people, swear words, and more.

I don't want to walk through this horrible field, Randy!  Oh, hell!  It's been raining in Indiana for weeks, and, oh, drat, Mike, I have enough water in my boots to fill a bucket!

Here are a few more (remember, these can act as other parts of speech but can interject as interjections):
fantastic
whoops
careful
okay
no way
oh, dear
whoa
any swear word
onomatopoeia, too?

What else you got, huh?

The New White Board

Once again, I'm writing about my new office.  Having a space and a supportive husband make for amazing improvements in my writing life.  

Now, I just need a little more time and structure.

A few months ago, I told my husband I wanted a white board for my office.  He put it up a month or so ago:

I'm only 5,000 words into this new beast, but I'm enjoying it.  The rough background and inspiration are the craziness of work politics and Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party. 

Anyway, this is the ramblings of my latest, crazy idea.  The top part of the white board outlines characters, setting, and conflicts.  The bottom part snakes through the main plot parts, starting with,

And, of course, here is the ending:

Not to give the ending away, but, yes, someone will go postal.  And, yes, I'm thrilled about who this character is--I look forward to writing this character's downfall.

I fully recognize that prewriting and outlining and mapping are not for everyone.  On the other hand, I have enjoyed mapping out this project in a short amount of time, seeing who these characters can be, and pushing this plot further than reality or Greene could push this.

So here I go again, on a fun journey through fiction that helps me laugh at reality....

Verbs: Episode One Million

Back to the Passive

After a brief interlude, I’m returning to the lovely world of verbs, specifically passive voice.  Check out previous posts for more of the discussion.

Here, let’s talk about removing passive verbs (quick reminder—passive is neither wrong nor bad.  It simply removes the action from the sentence).

When I am trying to remove passive verbs from sentences, I either look for subjects and check that they are doing the actions or check the verbs to make certain that the verbs do not have a BE + PAST PARTICIPLE form. 

Let’s take a look:

My mother and I walked downtown after the football game but the street was blocked off because the gas station had been robbed.  We walked past the barriers and talked of going to the Mexican restaurant for a margarita and a taco, but we were stopped just past the barrier and were questioned.  My mom seemed a little upset by the situation, so we turned around and went home.  We had a pizza delivered to us instead.

There is nothing wrong with this paragraph really, but as a creative writer, the overwhelming passive verbs remove the potential for action and tension.

Here is the same paragraph with the passive verbs marked:

My mother and I walked downtown after the football game but the street was blocked off because the gas station had been robbed.  We walked past the barriers and talked of going to the Mexican restaurant for a margarita and a taco, but we were stopped just past the barrier and were questioned.  My mom seemed a little upset by the situation (this isn’t passive despite the “by” phrase), so we turned around and went home.  A pizza was delivered instead.

This quick paragraph that eludes at tension (“My mom seemed a little upset by the situation”) really has no action or suspense because the passive fizzles out anything that might happen.  Not only that, but this paragraph is thin on details and scene.

Take a stab at revising this.

Verbs: A New Saga

Ahh, passive verbs.  One of my favorite subjects.

One huge misconception about passive voice—otherwise known as passive verbs—is that they are grammatically incorrect.  This is very wrong.

Passive voice is completely correct, fine, and acceptable.

In fact, in my job, an FDA regulated and highly documented business, passive voice is rampant.

Which is perhaps the problem.  Passive voice, like any other tool, should not be overused (ha, passive voice) but should be consciously tried and manipulated (passive voice here to keep with the structure of the sentence).

I’m going to start this discussion about passive with 3 different aspects of the definition because looking at passive verbs from different perspectives may help to gain a fuller understanding.

1. Flipping the sentence order

2. Verb construction

This is the basic, identifiable construction, but with other tenses (perfect, progressive), some of the verb constructions can be awesome and complex.  Here's one just for fun:

This year, that couple will have been married for a million years.

will (future) + have (perfect) + BEEN (be + past participle) + married (past participle)

This great sentence shows how the "be" takes the past participle for the perfect form and the "be" verb for the passive structure.  Very cool, and this happens all the time.

3. The "PASSIVENESS" of the verb

This may sound a bit obvious after you understand how the object "receives" the action of the sentence and how the verb is no longer active.  However, I find this an important point to mention: passive voice removes much of the action in sentences, making the sentences less powerful and more diluted.  As writers, we invoke as much action and power as we can--diluting as infrequently as possible.

Of course, when we understand the potential power and use of passive voice, this tool can be used in interesting and slightly manipulative ways.  More about this next time....

Verbs: Episode 7, BE—again!

We touched on the basic reasons why the verb, “be” is so complex.  One of those reasons is that be is the main building block for other verb tenses—one of the future tenses, the progressive tense, and the perfect tense. 

But all by itself, not working with other verbs, be can be a complex verb with lots of different meanings.

Let’s take a quick look at the conjugation. 

PRESENT TENSE	PAST TENSE	FUTURE TENSE	PERFECT TENSE
I am	I was	I will be	I have been
You/we/they are	You were	You will be	You have been
He/she/it is	He was	He will be	He has been

Be takes the prize for the most irregular verb.  The verb changes with every tense and with almost every subject.  And most of the forms are not similar to the base form “be.”

What an awesomely cool verb.

Let's take a quick look at the first level of meaning: to exist. 

Basic linguistic theory breaks down English clauses into 10 patterns.  The first 3 use “be” verbs.  Let’s take a quick look at them.

1.     SUBJECT + BE + ADJECTIVE => She is creative.  This classroom was cold.  We are old.

2.    SUBJECT + BE + NOUN => She will be a teacher.  We are Christians.  They are kids.

3.    SUBJECT + BE + ADVERBIAL OF TIME OR SPACE (this is a cool way to say a preposition or adjective that can change and describes position or time) => She is late.  We were at the Writers’ Center in Broadripple.  The dogs were in the garage.

The meaning of be is generally the same in these sentences, but the use is slightly different.  All of these types of sentences use the verb be to show that the subjects possess a quality, but in #1, the quality is an adjective, in #2, the quality is a thing, and in #3, the quality is place or position.   

Let’s look at this in a different way, and pull in some linking verbs next time…