A Word in Your Eye

Writing Excuses 11.49: Elemental Ensemble, with Michael Damian Thomas

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2016/12/04/11-49-elemental-ensemble-with-michael-damien-thomas/

Key points: Ensembles are more than just heist stories. Ensemble stories have a team of specialists, each with a different role and part to play, who get together to accomplish some important goal working together. Get people together, let them bounce off each other, and together solve a problem. Why do we like them? We get to see lots of different people, see them interact, and make friends with them. Multiple character arcs intersecting in unique ways. A team of interdependent specialists, hyper competent in individual ways, but holes as a team. How do you make one? Start with a cast of characters, but give each one similar emotional weight. Make sure your characters are specialized enough. They don't all need a POV, plot arcs can happen offstage. One of the keys is introducing the members of your ensemble quickly, usually in action. Make the scene do multiple things. Don't infodump! Think about your competency porn scenes, where you show us how good the characters are at what they do, usually while doing something else at the same time.

( It takes a village to... )

[Brandon] Well, we have to stop here. We've gone like 25 minutes almost…
[Whoops! Laughter]
[Brandon] Yes, but you can tell we love this topic. We will be back to talk about it again in a few weeks. I'm going to give you some homework, though. When we were talking earlier, one of the things we realized is we love ensemble stories that aren't always just the obvious heists. But we do love the heists, obviously, as well. We want you to go look at some different professions, particularly ones that have some sort of front person leading the charge, and, like a chef, maybe on a show like that. We want you to identify all the rules that happen behind the scenes to make that person succeed. We want you to try to design a story that doesn't use the front person at all, and uses all of these different roles supporting them behind the scenes. Do that for a couple different jobs. See what you come up with. We want to give a special thank you to Michael Damian Thomas.
[Michael] Thank you for having me.
[Brandon] We want to thank the Writing Excuses cruise members.
[Yay! Applause]
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses 5.18: Offending Your Readers

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2011/01/02/writing-excuses-5-18-offending-your-readers/

Key Points: Eschew the egregious offense of over-explaining. Don't talk down to readers. Be careful of racial and gender demographics, BUT don't make your characters stereotypes, either. Be inclusive, but mostly, make your characters people. Burn the strawmen, dynamite Potemkin villages, and don't stack the deck. Don't moralize or preach, trust your readers. Let them read the story, learn who the characters are and what's happening, and draw their own lessons from it. Theme and realizations are one thing, soapbox orations are another. Finally, beware broken promises, especially when it is a shortcut that defaults on what could have been. But we'll come back to broken promises another time. That's a promise.
( The best offenses are good defenses? )
[Brandon] I'm going to break it and say you have to... your writing prompt is to write... what was it, a vampire romance? No, a werewolf romance that does not appear it at first... that does not break any promises.
[Dan] Looks like it's going to be hard science fiction.
[Howard] Start with space opera... er, not space opera. Yeah. Start with hard science fiction, move into werewolf romance... in three paragraphs?
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, and you're stupid.
[Dan] You're out of excuses and nobody likes you.
[Brandon] Sorry, I couldn't help it. Don't be offended.
[Howard] You're out of excuses, and Brandon has no self-control.

Writing Excuses 5.11: Micro-Casting Number Two

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/11/14/writing-excuses-5-11-micropocasting-2/

Key points:
-- How do you do bad things to your hero character without feeling bad about it?
I do feel their pain.
-- How far into writing a novel should you begin letting others read it for feedback?
When you are finished with the story. Beware of story hijacking.
-- Do the bad things you do to your characters always have to suit the story?
They need to be motivated and properly set up.
-- How do you design frightening monsters?
Take away the eyebrows. Let them do mundane, real things. Keep them in the shadows.
-- How far into the outlining process do you actually start writing?
When I am excited and want to start writing. When I have a good sense of where the story is going, where it needs to end, and more or less how it needs to get there. When it's done.
( And lots more words... )
[Brandon] All right. Well. Let's go ahead and go with our writing prompt. I'm going to say Howard, give it to us.
[Howard] You, in an extremely, extremely spur-of-the-moment sort of living-in-the-moment thing have decided that instead of fight club, it's zoo club. And you have just punched an elephant. Hard. What happens next?
[Dan] You get arrested.
[Brandon] All right. This has been Writing Excuses, you're out of excuses...
[Howard] Now go to jail.

Writing Excuses 5.2: Character Quirks

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/09/12/we-5-2-character-quirks/

Key points: Character quirks make character different and memorable. Beware going to far with quirks. Incongruity helps - profession, religion, whatever - square pegs in round holes!
( Not Captain Quirk? )
[Brandon] All right. I'm going to force Howard to give us our writing prompt this week.
[Howard] Okay. I'm going to ponder this for just long enough to determine that the quirk for your writing prompt is a physical attribute that in some way influences this character's religion.
[Brandon] Okay. They have some sort of physical attribute that makes up their religion, influences their religion. That's a great one! This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

Writing Excuses Season Five Episode One: Third Person Limited

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/09/07/we-5-1-third-person-limited/

Key points: third person limited let you have multiple viewpoints. Also, you can portray characters sympathetically because you can show the reader their thoughts and their view of the world. Third limited is less biased than first-person narration. Avoid having too many characters too early. Be careful about withholding information from the reader -- third person limited is expected to be honest. Watch for point of view errors! Keep it limited to what the main character knows and feels. Realize the strengths -- third person limited lets you show different perspectives. Think about which viewpoint to use -- who has the most pain, who has to make the biggest decision, who's got the most at stake, or who can show us what is happening best?
( vampires, werewolves, parasols, and bodice rippers? )
[Brandon] All right. We are out of time. I'm going to go ahead and give us our writing prompt this week. I want you to write a scene where Howard and Dan and me and then Producer Jordo do all walk through a room, and it's in our perspectives, and we are all going to think differently. You have to write this just knowing, having listened and knowing...
[Howard] You just ask people to write HowardTayler fan fiction
[Brandon] Yes, I did. I do it every time. It is accepted practice before I go to bed.
[Dan] Nice. Yeah. We do it anyhow.
[Howard] Jordo. Stop recording, quickly.
[Brandon] So, I want you to do this, and see how the four of us see the world differently. This has been Writing Excuses.
[Dan] What are the bets that my perspective is soaked in blood?
[Howard] My blood!
 

Writing Excuses Season Four Episode 24: Random storytelling with James and Julie

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/06/20/writing-excuses-4-24-random-storytelling/

Key points: Worldbuilding, but also characters and conflicts. Change and conflict go together. Empathy for a character comes from something bad that you understand and want to see alleviated. Who will the readers want to root for?
( random tails? )
[Brandon] OK. Well, excellent. We are out of time. I would like to thank our guest stars. Thank you very much.
[James] You're welcome.
[Julie] Any time.
[Brandon] This is been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 22: Idea to Story

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/10/25/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-22-idea-to-story/

Key Points: To turn an idea into a story: Look for the points of conflict. Look for the boundaries -- what kind of story is this? Consider plot, setting, characters. What is the ending? How will you resolve the story? Look for characters who are in pain. Check old ideas that didn't get used yet. Brainstorm interesting ideas -- set pieces, events, twists, interesting stuff.
( the nuts and bolts )
[Brandon] We're out of time. But let's go ahead and give you the writing prompt which is the same idea that we used at the beginning.
[Howard] Insects have in some way evolved defenses against all of the poisons that we use to kill them and many of the chemicals that would work to just kill anything because they have somehow developed magic.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/09/29/writing-excuses-episode-34-what-the-dark-knight-did-right/

I'm Brandon, I'm Dan, I'm Howard . . . and I'm Batman
( here there be spoilers? )
Writing prompt

Brandon: take an old piece of writing, one that you've been working on in the last year, and take a dialogue scene. Then take each line of dialogue up by half a notch -- make it a little more unexpected, evoke a little more of the character -- but it should mean the same thing.
Howard: crank it all up, but have the dialogue end up in the same place as before.

Writing Excuses Episode 32: Talking Exposition with Patrick Rothfuss

from http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/09/15/writing-excuses-episodes-32-talking-exposition-with-patrick-rothfuss/

Key points: don't start with info dumps. Avoid essays, police artist sketches, thesis statements, repeating. Use three good details, and characters in action. Toss readers into the world, and move the story and the characters forward. Arguments are good. Make every sentence do more than one thing. Give your readers a little tease, then wait. Make the exposition a payoff instead of an entry price.
( to da dump, to da dump, to da dump, dump, dump )
Take one thing that's unimportant and explain the heck out of it. Take something else that is very important and don't explain it all.

Here in Japan, there was a TV special on about Tasha Tudor. She's the author of children's books (Corgiville Fair?) about 90 when the show was made, and lived in the Vermont mountains somewhere. Lots of fun bits about her life, but when they were complimenting her about her habit of carrying flower seed and scattering it, showing a field that she had planted over the years, she protested that she had learned that from Alexander Graham Bell. When the narrator asked what she meant, she smiled and said that Alexander Graham Bell always had a pocket full of Lupin seeds and planted it everywhere he went. And as a close friend of his daughter, she learned to do the same, although she uses other flowers.

Alexander Graham Bell as a "Johnny Appleseed" of flowers. I wonder if that made the official biographies. Fun!