Your book needs a good description. In fact, it needs several. In this article you’ll learn about the purpose and construction of a scene list, a long synopsis, a short synopsis, a pitch, a tagline, and a formula compare. When you’re done, you’ll be ready to describe your story to anybody, under any condition.
As I read McCarthy’s The Road, I just had to drop my jaw at how the man uses words. McCarthy is a master of vivid detail and excellent characterization in a minimalist style. Talk about stripping your prose — McCarthy even does away with quotation marks and apostrophes, which I’m sure has all you purists out there howling with indignation. (I whimpered a bit at first, myself.) Still–if you’re looking for fiction trimmed of all fat and frills, I doubt you’ll find a leaner example than McCarthy’s bleak post-apocalypse.
All this talk of document structure has me thinking back on some of my older projects. As I said in yesterday’s article, the series I’m working on now is highly structured — every book packed with three acts, five chapters per act, two scenes per chapter.
My older work isn’t really like that, though. My first effort at including any sort of structure in a story was King Jason’s War, and that was my fourth novel. I wonder what I’d find if I looked really closely at Taming Fire, or even The Poet Alexander….
In that thought, I found my answer. The Ghost Targets series isn’t formula, it’s structured. Structure is a good thing. I still needed some comforting, though, so I found myself chasing down that path, thinking of all the creative document types that thrive under intensive structure. I said to myself, “What about haiku? What about sonnets?”
Graphic novels engage parts of my mind that standard novels don’t. Not only am I reading a story, I’m seeing it unfold; in a way, this is counterpart? companion? to watching a movie with subtitles. Not only do I get the pleasure of piece-by-piece revelation, I can take the delightful time to admire the artistry of characters brought to life in color, line, and shading.
This week you’re going to write a sonnet. Some of you just rolled your eyes, because sonnets are child’s play. Some of you just gripped at a failing heart, because sonnets are Shakespeare-level expert stuff. If you’re in either category, you missed the point of yesterday’s post. That’s okay. I’ll say another word or two about it next Tuesday, but for now I want you to humor me.
When I was in third grade (or maybe it was second), I wrote a poem about sunset, and rest. I did it in number 2 pencil on a sheet of wide-ruled paper torn out of a 78-cent spiral notebook. I illustrated the edges, with an angry sun and an optimistic moon, and my best effort at a seagull. I can remember this in such clear detail, because I’ve still got that page. It’s creased with folds, and the pencil’s faded, but I’ve still got it, tucked away somewhere. The meter is awful.
If memory serves (and, sometimes, it does–wearing a get-up not unlike that of a roller-skating carhop), I first came across Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves in a Facebook® ad. Yep, that’s right: I succumbed to a social networking site’s shameless commercial lures. I went with the flow, I yielded to temptation, I clicked a click that click-clicking clickers should refuse to click. Shame on me.
Today’s exercise barely deserves a blog post at all, since I already spilled the beans in yesterday’s article.
Still, in case you didn’t make it to the end, I’ll say it again: Go over to the Creative Copy Challenge blog, and write a short story. Use all the words, format them so we can find them, and then come back here and post a link to your comment (once it gets approved by the moderators).
When I was in fifth grade my teacher gave us an assignment to write a one-page story using at least half of our spelling words for the week. That’s what we call a “writing prompt.” Writer’s Digest offers regular writing prompts, and most creative writing courses are built at least partially around them. The goal is to get you out of your languishing manuscript and just get you writing. They usually do that by creating a scene you haven’t thought about before, forcing you to start fresh, make something happen, and then get on with your work.
