Nate's Workshop On Horrible Writing #5

Copyright 1998-2004 by Nate Leved

And This too: SETTINGS / BACKGROUND: Most stories, particularly horrible ones unfold or happen somewhere in time. Choosing the most likely time frame is the job of the author. Will your story unfold in the past, the present or the future? In some cases, the plot may transverse all three. Consider the case of the great vampyres who were brought across eight hundred or a thousand or more years ago. Many such stories begin on day one to establish roots, then jump ahead through history to the present or even the future, presenting the story in a linear and understandable fashion.

Then, there is the choice of where. Will you have your story unfold in the old world, the new world or the third world? Perhaps, you will opt to bring it to life on another world or dimension altogether. In writing, there are no limitations, and the author is god, unless of course, you choose to author an historically correct period piece. You see, I just gave my age away by using the article "an" preceding the word historically. In old fashioned English, of the type taught pre nineteen-sixty's, it was considered correct to use the article "an" instead of "a" before a word that began with the consonent "h" that was followed by a vowel as in the word history. The English people commonly pronounced the word history "istory." They, because of their "Cockney" accent, dropped the preceding "h" when pronouncing such words. Things change. Periods change. People change. Today, a college English professor will more than likely look at you aghast if you used "an" before the word history. I know that mine did. The more you know about a particular period, the better and more appreciated will be your story by knowledgeable readers. That means that you will have to research the place and period carefully, as so much of your yarn will transpire there. In that case, a superficial knowledge just won't do. You will need to know something about language, weather, conditions, architecture, cities, governments, laws, traditions, dress codes, styles, food, coins, tools, equipment, transportation and so on to pull your story off in grand style.

SCENES: Stories are composed of segments which are called scenes. There can be one or more scenes within a chapter, or at times, a scene might extend over more than one chapter. The night in the graveyard is one scene. The visit to the haunted house is another scene. The descent into the catacombs is yet another. The alcove where your monster bricks up Alice is still one more scene. It is well to transist between scenes to establish a smooth flow, unless of course, you wish to wake up your readers. Then, you may jump from a placid scene right into the frying pan of Hell. A scene might also change because the characters are beginning to do something else or other characters are interjected even though the background stays the same. In any case, there should be a noticeable change or shift between scenes.

...And there were Mary and Joe, sitting on their red, plaid picnic blanket, oblivious to the world. Joe strummed his old, Martin guitar while Mary sang falsetto folk tunes from the sixty's. The bright strains of 'Puff, The Magic Dragon' filled the afternoon as the yellow sun spread its delicious warmth upon the velvet green and gold meadow. A cricket chirped off in the distance, calling for a mate. Mary's friend, Janet, who was really Mary's lesbian lover, had walked down to the river to take a swim, temporarily leaving the couple to their own devices...

...Janet, languishing at the riverside, finally decided to take that refreshing swim she had been thinking about and eased into the cool water. She swam out into the slow current and let it carry her along while drinking in the warm sunshine. Janet dreamed about her lover, Mary, up there on the bank and made hasty plans for the evening that would fulfill her need and release her passion. She couldn't get Mary's long legs out of her mind. The itch on the inside of her thighs was about to drive her mad with desire, but she had to wait. It just wouldn't do to let anyone find out about her affair with Mary. No, that would ruin her reputation for sure, and Mary's too...

...A slow moving shadow placidly passed over the eyelids of the dozing alligator, and its catlike, golden eyes flashed open to see what had disturbed it's world of quiet peace and dreams. The big lizard hadn't eaten in several days, and it was about time. He liked to catch his food early, rough it up a might and then stash it under that old, rotting log on the bottom for a couple of days to tenderize it a bit before eating his fill. Knowing that it was about time to feed, the old gaiter slowly rose to the surface barely breaking the skin of the water with his stalked eyes. Janet didn't see him as her own eyelids were closed in sweet reverie. With a few slow movements of his broad tail, the ancient reptile caught up with Janet and locked his jaws around her midsection. Then doing a slow roll, he submerged, dragging Janet, kicking and choking down into the darkness. Startled, she had gotten out a short yelp, but it wasn't loud enough for anyone to hear her last word... Did you count the scenes?

PARAMETERS: An author must take into consideration the possibilities and limitations of his virtual environment, those of his characters and the conditions in which they exist in order to construct a believable story. Should your characters be descending a mine shaft, keep in mind that the temperature generally rises as they descend. In the big Arizona Copper Mines, the temperature generally reaches about 130 degrees at the thirty-six hundred foot level. It's so hot down there that they have to utilize chilled water air-conditioning and blow in fresh air so that the miners can work. "Hell, Carla, I'm suffocating down here," complained Harry as he wiped the sweat off his forehead. If your story unwinds on a space ship, then keep in mind that the average temperature of the vacuum of space is about minus two-hundred and forty degrees F. If your characters are in a war zone, then crossing the enemy lines could be construed as dangerous. Does one of your characters have a wooden leg? Then he'd make a poor mountain climber, but a great boat captain. Assume that your characters are from the future and they travel backward in time to the period of the Salem Witch Trials. Consider the socio-environmental constraints and limitations placed upon your characters in such a situation. One slip, and they would wind up being burned at the stake.

OUTLINE GENERATION: This chore is also known as brain storming. College students do it when they are forced to write essays, term papers or reports. Good writers do it when they contemplate a story or a book. The preliminary main outline structure should resemble the trunk and branches of a tree. Then, upon the limbs, you may hang the various elements or possible threads for your story. The finer points, you may hang from the branches. The fill or trivia of the story may then be attached to the twigs. The advantage of outlining in this manner is that you will know the basic direction and elements of your story before you write it. This knowledge of the main thrust of your story should give you a definite advantage in character selection, development and in choosing various background settings. At this stage, you can even fiddle with the plot and its various options, toying with, perhaps, several flavors of endings. More than that, you can decide if you are happy with all of your elements and make coherent decisions as to whether you wish to keep them all or to change or even exchange selected elements with better choices.

Write your overviews of the various elements on separate sheets of paper or index cards in as few words as possible so that you can quickly and easily work on any single segment apart from the whole. That will give you the most freedom of choice in organization, editing and snipping, allowing you to change your mind easily when and where necessary. Consider the veteran artist who, using a large brush, lays down massive sections or blocks of color, delineating the foreground, the background, the water, the sky, and perhaps, the mountains. In doing so, the artist achieves the correct balance and perspective of his or her painting. Once that is satisfactory, the artist may then fill in the details. Do the same sort of thing yourself.

Then once you have a basic idea of where you are going with your story, bring it all together by writing a basic trial draft in as few words as possible. Lay out the basic plot with broad strokes. Decide upon your various threads in the same manner, always keeping in mind that any book length story may be reduced to a synopsis or short story. The idea here is to begin with a bare- bones synopsis and then flesh it out. In other words begin with a workable short story and then envision the possibilities in fleshing it out to book length if you wish. How much you flesh it out will determine whether your work will become a short story, a novella or a full-fledged novel.

Pick up any story or book that you are familiar with and reduce it to its main points. You'll find that you can do it in a few hundred words. Then with a little more effort, you can block it out with say a couple of hundred words or less. That is what we are looking for here in reverse. Start small and grow large. That's the logical progression. Then once you have the basic story in hand, make that the trunk of your new outline tree. At this point, you can probably figure out about how many chapters you will need to complete your story or book and what information each chapter or section should include. Now, should you choose a book length, you know that your novel should be at least three to four hundred pages in length. A quick look at a few books of that approximate length will quickly show you that your book will probably fill up approximately twenty-five chapters at 14 or 15 pages per chapter. If you don't have enough material, then you'll need to weave in a few more threads or elaborate further on the threads that you already have. It is also possible to add sub-threads. That is the purpose of the pervious brain storming exercise. It is there that you generate ideas that can be developed into your various threads, both main and supporting.

By now, your project should be making sense. Your outline should keep you on track, so theoretically, you should be able to write any chapter in any order that you wish. The beauty of this style of operation is that should a bright idea pop into your head about any segment or element of your piece, you can jump on it and write it while it's fresh and hot in your mind. Thus, you may write a rather lengthy story in any order that is convenient for you. By-the-way, that is how most movies are shot. They do it in groups of related scenes, the order in which they are shot, matters not as long as they adhere to the outline or script. Always remember that from tiny acorns, mighty oak trees grow...

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: Somewhere in your outlining process, you will need to consider your cast of characters. You will decide the qualities, ages, genders, nationalities, experience, physical attributes, limitations, strengths, disabilities and demographics of your characters. Go ahead, play god. Create your characters one at a time and flesh them out to your greatest satisfaction. Strive to be realistic and make your characters true to form and believable. A hero should be a hero and exhibit accepted traits and tendencies. A villain or antagonist could either conceal or reveal his or her character flaws until such time when they proliferate their dirty deed(s). Should you decide that you wish to change a character or even start fresh, so what? Try again! At least you don't have to create the ostrich the platypus, and the camel. I like to create a dossier on each character, even the monster, for future reference. That way when working with a character within the confines of the story, I can consult the oracle and determine if that particular character could actually do such a thing! Having a hero type shoplift a candy bar or even an apple would be out of character. However, the Frankenstien Monster could easily crack skulls with one fist while protecting a little child with the other. A traditional Dracula type, however, is easy as such a character is always of single-minded purpose.

Nate

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