Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Check Mate

Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.
Rhys Alexander
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Since blogger won't upload my pics, I'll resort to what I know and love the most, writing quotes! They keep us all motivated.
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So you were anticipating the blog about the correlation between writing and chess? Well let me tell you, I can give a really good analogy of a chess/ life scenario but I’ve really got to work on the writing/chess.

Okay where do I begin? I’ll start with the white side. This is the team I always go for in playing chess. It reminds me of purity and all that that entails. Strength,wisdom, knowledge,etc.

In writing, the white team can be visualized as the protagonist, or the good guy. The dudley-do-right, the main character of the story. Then we have the black team and they are the antagonist, the bad guys, the dark force, the one or ones that will be causing all kinds of trouble in the story.

We have pawns on both sides, correct? The same powerful pieces standing behind the pawns on both sides too. The pawns can be seen as the disposable characters, if you will. Now you have all of these characters standing behind you vying for a place so lets give them a place.

The rook will be the homestead or foundation of your story, the dark side has an ominous looking castle which probably houses Count Dracula or some other dark figure.

The knight will be the character in your story that does all the fighting for you. The dark fights for the light, the light normally wins IN THE END, hopefully, with fingers crossed the Light will win. (emphasis on WILL win)

Then we have the bishops. They can be your moral compass. The good seed buried in all of us that sometimes we call a conscious. Now the dark bishop is who in your story? Well it’s the dark force or the bad seed that will not and can not take root because you’ve given him/it no fertile soil in which to grow.

Ah, now we have the king and queen. This will be the strong lead characters in your story who eventually are left standing with the dark side (king and queen) all alone on that big checkered board, or white page.

What do we do in this position? We do what any good writer would do and that is knock the pants off of the Dark Force and we have our main characters all full of light left standing in a triumphant glow of completion. Check Mate!

Hey I think this sounds better than the football analogy. Have either of these two posts made any sense?

Good...now lets see if I can see what gardening and writing have in common. Okay, I’m kidding!

Now we know what makes a story so what are you waiting for? Why are you sitting here reading, shouldn’t you be writing?

1 comment:

Steven said...

Hey what about the pawns? Or as I called them when I was a kid, the ponds!