This was a good day. My mind and soul just basked in beautiful things that were read and taught.
Here are a few things that I took away for me:
• It’s you and page, a thankless work and easy to get discouraged, so forget about writing a novel or getting published. Just write a story.
• Be motivated by an issue you want to solve or something you want to bring out or a concept that eludes you until you put it on paper in a poem or a story. Don’t be motivated by getting published. Even best selling authors dont publish everything.
• Writing is practicing. Pianist practices his skill for many hours and then performs and we love it. Novell is the performance. Write (practice) much.
• Begin with a character, someone we can care about. Give character a desire.
• Create a story satisfying to me.
• If you worked for a while on something (a story, writing education, novell) and at a high point of your work (thesis, final essay, first novell) someone prominent says that what you did is just not good enough or this career is not for you or you dont have what it takes – that may mean that you need to destroy the “yourself which you built over the years”, the “constructed self” and show your real self, the one you were eluding. That is going to lead to “what you really are” and possibly bring out the “good enough.”
• A story has to break your heart and then put it back together.
• On dialogue. When two people talk they think about many things which they don’t say and even things that have nothing to do with the conversation. Conversations are not linear and flat, dialogue is not when we ask and answer, conversation jumps around and introduces things that were never part of it initially, the phrases may even appear random or odd.
• When tasked with describing an object do a quick brainstorming session and write down all common words that are used to describe that object. Then start writing a description without using those words.
• 3 stages to writing a story:
◦ (1) Setup the story: no journey yet, no call to adventure.
‣ Every scene must develop the character or advance the plot.
‣ Sense of place: where are we in the story.
‣ Place can almost be a character.
◦ (2) Flushing the character out
‣ Put character in motion. Give enough to do, keep busy enough.
‣ Measure, what is this person. Give jobs to do (send him to the store, make character spill coffee, drive somewhere)
‣ Give stimulus to respond to.
‣ Somewhere in this part give a call to adventure, to action.
◦ (3) Hitting it home.
‣ This is the adventure, the climax, the disappointment, the peak, the lesson learned.
‣ Never stop reminding what character wants.
Comment on what you liked or didn’t. Maybe you have other suggestions or ideas. Thanks!