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David Farland
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Written by David Farland
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Friday, 27 August 2010 21:34 |
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In keeping with my theme of "Using writing exercises to get you going," I’d like to talk today about "Doubling." This is a term that I use when you as an author want to hit a very strong emotional beat in a book or screenplay, and so you use the same incident in order to serve double duty. This technique should not be used too frequently. Save it for a climax in a story, a point where a protagonist is approaching his or her primary goal in the story. The idea is rather simple: write the same scene twice, once as the protagonist imagines that it might happen, and then once as it does happen. 1: Write the imagined scene. For example, your protagonist is preparing for a date with Jim, and as she selects her naughtiest red underwear after taking a shower, she imagines a nice romantic evening. Got it? Your romance readers will of course take interest immediately, but by describing the evening as she hopes it will go in detail, you hit the desired emotional beat. Of course the same could be done with any important action. Your character might imagine how well it will feel to get revenge on the drill sergeant that who has been making life miserable for the past month, or a detective might imagine with horror of what it will be like when a killer leaves the remains of his next victim, or a child might simply imagine what it will be like to get her Christmas present under a tree. In other words, we set up any hoped-for or dreaded action by writing the scene. As we write the scene as the protagonist imagines it, you don’t have to work too hard. Most people don’t have great imaginations. You can leave holes in the scene—a lack of smells for instance. The important thing here is to make the audience believe that this character really wants this. In fact, you can do this more than once, if you like. For example, you might have a woman imagining all of the painful ways that she is going to kill her husband. "That jerk," she might think, "someday I’ll just duct tape him to the chair during a football game, and then when he yells, ‘Mona, get me a beer,’ I’ll get him a beer all right! I’ll water-board him with beer! She can then think of other comical ways to kill him throughout the story—until she finally snaps and decides to do it. 2) Write a transition. Between your imagined scene and your real scene, you’ll need to write little transition—to cover the time from the imagined incident to the realization of the incident. Now, please remember that you can have imagined scenes long before the "real" scene. For example, you might start a novel with a slave imagining what it would be like to be free, but perhaps he doesn’t gain his freedom until the end of the novel. In that case, perhaps you won’t need to write much of a transition. 3) Now write the "real" scene. The real scene will be much longer, more complex, and more involved than the imagined scene. In other words, it should feel life-like. If it’s a hoped-for scene and you want to exceed your protagonist’s expectations, you’ll have to work hard to create the desired effect. For example, let’s go back to the romance. You might describe a date that the protagonist had hoped would end with a romantic good-night kiss. But instead, you describe a date that defies all expectations, and ends with an engagement ring on her finger, or a romantic interlude at her apartment, or maybe both! Of course, in real life, nothing goes quite as expected. Your scene should vary from the imagined experience. Let’s take Mona. She decides to duct-tape her husband to his easy chair when he falls asleep after a Thanksgiving Day football game. But as she’s duct-taping him, he wakes up and puts up a fight. Who knew that a fat old truck driver could be so strong? So she hits him over the head with a wine bottle and gets him duct-taped. She imagines that when he comes to, he’ll cuss at her and threaten, but as she’s forcing a Coors down his throat, he gasps for breath, looks at her with genuine love in his eye, and says, "Damn, Mona, who knew you could be so hot?" So maybe there are some twists that occur between the hoped-for result and what really happens. Remember the old movie 9 to 5? Three women imagine what it would be like to get revenge on their chauvinistic boss, but when they try it, nothing goes as expected. The whole movie pretty much arises as they try to deal with the complications of an imagined action. But there’s another possible ending to the experience, of course, and that’s the "negative ending," where things go far worse than hoped for. In our romance story, for example, our young woman might go out with Jim, hoping for a romantic evening, and discover that he’s a real jerk—which of course forces her to realize that she doesn’t love Jim at all, but his twin brother John! In a revenge story, we might have our young soldier humiliate his drill sergeant, and find through various circumstances that revenge can easily go too far, that he’s destroyed the career of a man who was just trying to do his job the best way that he knew how, and so on. In a horror story, a police detective might try to explain to a rookie just how bad a murder scene can look, only to find that when they reach this particular crime scene, nothing in the detective’s 20-year experience could have prepared him for what he sees. So as you "double" your scene, it’s usually more work to write the second half of the set. The "real" version of the incident will be longer, more complex, and should be far more powerful and difficult to write than that first scene. Yet curiously enough, I find that in writing the imagined scene, all sorts of good ideas come to me for that "real" scene. So pay close attention to your subconscious. Keep notes on stray thoughts that come your way, and make sure that your payoff scene is the strongest scene that you’re capable of writing. ### Boston Seminar Coming for NaNoWriMo—in mid-November I will be holding a Write that Novel Seminar in Boston. In honor of NaNoWriMo, we have deeply discounted the price of the seminar, but I’m going to add a couple of new features for this one. First, for those who would like the opening of a novel or a short story critiqued, I have put an add-on to the seminar. (This offer is only for those attending the seminar.) Also, I’m reserving a slot for breakfast, lunch, or dinner for the first five people who register. To get your slot, sign up for the seminar at www.davidfarland.com, and then email me at
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LifeWriting Articles
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Written by Steven Barnes
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Sunday, 22 August 2010 20:35 |
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What is the minimum amount of exercise a writer needs for health and fitness? While it depends on the person, lifestyle, and goals, the general wisdom is that 20-60 minutes per day of cardio pumping, iron lifting, or muscle stretching is necessary. While no one could deny that these numbers produce optimal results, it is possible to accomplish great things in a shorter time. The truth is that most badly out-of-shape or sedentary people have lost a crucial "body-mind" link, a connection that helps them to feel the physical hunger for healthy movement. They hate sweating, don’t like walking, and often confuse thirst or emotional pain for hunger. For those of us who have to ease our way back into an exercise routine, even five minutes a day can be a life saving door into a healthier world. Here are the rules: 1) In order to get the most out of this routine, it should be spread out over the day. We’re suggesting sixty seconds of work at 9 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, 6 pm, and 9 pm. This approach is called "Greasing the Groove" and has an exceptionally powerful effect. 2) Concentrate on the abdominal muscles. They are the most important group of voluntary muscles in the body, aiding posture, digestion, and sexual function. Critical to athletic performance, they transfer power from the lower to the upper body. When it comes to appearance, the abdominals are called "the window of health"—we are judged more often by our belt-lines than any other single physical factor. 3) It is virtually impossible to tone the abdominals without benefiting other muscle groups. What exercises are best? I would suggest a tri-pronged approach: a "killer" exercise, a light exercise, and one that can be done in public—while walking or driving, or while sitting at your desk. 1) A roller wheel. These are available in any sporting goods store for about five dollars, and are the only ab exercise devise worth your money. Beginners roll out from their knees, more experienced exercisers from their toes. 2) Hip lifts. Lay on your back, brace your hands at your sides, cross your feet, lifting feet and knees from the floor. Now contract the abdominal muscles and lift the hips from the floor. Relax and repeat the hip lift for sixty seconds. 3) Power breathing. Contract your abdominal muscles HARD as you walk or drive. Combined with proper breathing techniques, this can actually be the perfect ab exercise. There are many yoga, Tai Chi and martial arts teachers who can teach you proper breathing technique—if you haven’t had training or studied this, don’t assume you already know how—seek out a teacher! While the "Grease the Groove" technique is powerful (and can be used to develop strength, flexibility, or coordination) it is not intended to substitute for your longer cardiovascular workouts. It is offered as an addition, or for those days when you just can’t exercise, or as a way for the non-exerciser to begin. Consider it a doorway to a fitter, healthier world. ### Check out the "Five Minute Miracle" exercise technique, available at www.lifewrite.com Dark Dream 906 Ashworth Pl Glendora, CA 91741 US |
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David Farland
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Written by David Farland
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Friday, 20 August 2010 07:17 |
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I find that sometimes, a good way to get writing in the morning is to perform an exercise—one that is intimately tied to the work at hand. For example, I’ve said in the past that creating a good, solid, well-grounded world is one of the most important aspects of your story. Yet I find that many new writers have very thin settings—particularly if they come from a theater background. That’s because if you’re writing a screenplay or a play, you’re trained to mention the setting at the front of the scene "Interior, tavern—night," and then go into dialog. You let the setting designers, directors, and costumers worry about filling in the details. But if you’re writing a novel, you can’t do that. It’s your job to bring the setting to life, and there are several ways to do that. So here’s the exercise: read through a scene that’s weak in setting or just okay, and then do the following: 1) Have your characters interact with the setting. For example, if I have three characters in the "tavern" mentioned above, perhaps I’ll have one of them at a spit, turning a handle as a boar slowly roasts, while another cleans the tables, and a third sits in a dark corner sharpening and ax. In fact, giving the character a task to complete during a scene does more than just fill out the scene, it suggests to the reader that you as an author will have a satisfying conclusion to the novel itself. 2) Look for surprising things to throw into your setting. Ask yourself how you can bring the world to life. Start in the distance—what’s outside. What’s the weather like that night? Let’s say that it’s bitter cold, and when someone opens the door, wind blows autumn leaves along the floor. But don’t make it static. The weather can change. Perhaps at the beginning of the scene, it’s blustery, but by the end of the scene, a driving rain begins to fall. Let’s stick with what’s going on outside for a moment, though our characters might be inside, the outside world will intrude. They might hear sounds outside—the clopping of hooves from a running horse—that causes our character to fall silent and expectant. Could it be one of the Fell Lord’s spies? Smells might intrude from outside, too, as a door opens, or flashes of light might blast through the shutters as lightning breaks on the scene. Let’s take our tavern. Have you ever been in an ancient tavern, one that has been around for a few hundred years? The very floorboards reek of stale drink. So begin inserting details that the casual reader wouldn’t think of himself. Perhaps in this tavern, a young wench works who has a fondness for flowers. So she puts fresh daisies and pennyroyal in little mugs at the tables where she works —something that sends our gruff axe-sharpener to sneezing. Next you populate the tavern—with various patrons and an owner. It’s not enough to have generic people in the tavern. You need to invent a little past for some of them. For example, one of the patrons might be a lawman disguised as a traveler, hunting for an outlaw who is known to haunt the area. An old woman might be the town drunk, a shameless gossip (because people fill her mug if she tells good stories), and the wisest person in town. Each of these people will need to be dressed (Molly was wearing a bright-blue blouse today, one that she hadn’t donned since last winter), and you might invent a little history as to what they did during the day. Don’t just populate your room with people. There are other creatures that live in a tavern —a spider that builds cobwebs in the window, a "damned mouse" that sometimes hops onto tables and grabs a snack when patrons aren’t looking, and of course the bedbugs upstairs. 3) Now look for interesting ways to give us information. Provide apt metaphors for sights and sounds and smells. Here’s a chance to show off. 4) All right, now that you’ve brainstormed your setting, you’re ready to make it intrude into your story. You’ll want to start by giving us some bare bones up at the front of the setting. Your job is to provide characters, conflicts, and the setting within the first two pages. So you might describe the tavern, the storm blowing in, and your three adventurers feeling leery about trying to wait it out. Then you move into dialog. As your characters talk, there are natural lulls in a conversation—places where people fall silent, or simply take a breath as they think. These are excellent places to do two things: one is to let your setting intrude into the conversation. For example, your character might notice the enticing smell of the chicken pies as the innkeeper’s wife pulls them from an oven out back and sets them on the bar to cool. One trick to use is to keep the description just short enough so that it works as a pause in the conversation. For example, let’s say that our characters are talking in a fairly standard medieval fantasy scene: "I don’t like it here," Thorvald said, as he worked his sharpening stone along the blade of the ax. "Cursed weather like this will drive all kinds in from the woods." Of course, he didn’t want to be found. None of them did. But Altair still hadn’t healed from his wounds, and Jenks had argued that "staying out in the cold storm is more likely to kill him than a Skain’s dire-blade." As Thorvald waited for Jenks to voice his argument, the sound of thudding hooves reverberated from outside—at least four horses racing along the dirt road. All three men looked toward the door in dread, and Thorvald gripped his ax. It could be nothing, he thought. It could be simple farmers rushing home to beat the storm. But his gut whispered that the coming storm would drive trouble before it. . . . These "dead spots" in a conversation are also good places to get into deep penetration, to expose what your viewpoint character is thinking, as I did in the last part of the paragraph. 5) Last of all, look for places where the setting itself can intrude into the scene. In these instances, the purpose of the action might simply be to help bring the world to life. For example, I might spend a moment as Thorvald is talking to describe a mouse "shooting from a hole in the wall. It rushes expertly up the leg of a stool, launches itself onto the table, leaps over Throvald’s mug, and grabs a crust of rye bread from the plate in front of him—all to leave Thorvald cursing and sputtering as it races to safety. That’s all you have to do, except for one last thing: Have fun with it! Creating a lively, interesting setting shouldn’t be a chore for you, but a joy.
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