Grip 'em! Grip 'em Good!

I like to think of what happens to characters in good novels and stories as knots --- things keep knotting up. And by the end of the story --- readers see an unknotting of sorts. Not what they expect, not the easy answers you get on T.V., not wash and wear philosophies but a reproduction of believable emotional experiences. ~ Terry McMillan

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This week we’re learning the technique of utilizing conflict in a story. I think the above writer, Terry McMillan, has said it much better. It’s like tying your words in knots and placing the knots in the hands of your readers and letting them slowly do the unraveling of sorts until they walk away with an emotional experience for having read your words.

Conflict in a story? Sure you can call it that, but I like the knot theory much better. Conflict sounds so aggressive and can be. Do we want to write an aggressive scene or a scene that has your stomach in knots as you turn page after page? I’m leaning towards the knots, myself.

For conflict to be effectual, you need the inverted check mark is what I’ve been taught. You need to slowly build up the scene, place a few knots in the rope, or tension, as the scene grows and mounts the highest mountain.

Instead of having your character jump off the other side of the mountain, you need to bring your reader down slowly as if releasing the pressure out of a tire. It doesn’t deflate immediately; it slowly comes to a flat. But wait a second now, you don’t want your ending to be flat, you want vibrant life to be in the ending, so don’t deflate your tire completely. Give your reader an emotional release.

This is why I like the knot theory more than I appreciate the conflict. Sure you can give the reader an enormous amount of conflict but giving them knots is like handing them a fully inflated tire, and releasing the pressure slowly so that your reader is gripping their stomach in anticipation, the knot has been built and you’re slowly releasing them. By not allowing the tire to go completely flat you’re saving room for the completion of the heartache in the tale, the happily ever after, so to speak.

All in all your reader is what counts. If you can tug at THEIR heartstrings, bind them up in knots, and give them a welcomed conclusion by untying the knots, I think you’ve achieved your goal in your story.

Chapter by chapter should have elevated the heart rate so that they continue reading each and every word, dangling by a thread; they are waiting for you, the writer, to make them feel as though their visit to your world of words was worth every thread.

Giving them conflict, you might be giving them aggression. Giving them knots, you’re filling your work with the drama that carries the story. Remember that as you’re building your characters and story. Drama is GOOD; it is a writer’s best friend!

Book Bites:

Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict and Suspense by James Scott Bell

Elements of Fiction Writing - Conflict, Action & Suspense by William Noble

A Bit of Drama

“She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”

~ Edith Wharton

Can you imagine watching a television show that had no drama? Can you imagine reading an entire book that had no drama? Can you imagine going through life without ever having any drama? How about writing? Do you think you can write a best seller, without an ounce of drama?

What makes you so high and mighty that you’re above the world of drama? I hear the whisperings, “I just don’t like all the drama.” Really? So next time a car crashes into a tree down the street, nearly wiping out kids playing in the front yard and the car bursting into flames, you’re going to just sit in your recliner, ignore all the police cars and ambulances outside because you ‘don’t like all the drama’?

Isn’t a homeless man, sign around his neck, sitting on the sidewalk begging for food or a meal too dramatic for you to view? How about a paper bag on the side of the road where you see a puppy’s head sticking out, too dramatic?

Do you think the world was formed in a non-dramatic way? God yawned, seemed bored, formed man and woman. Well that’s a boring way to create the entire universe, I should think. I like to think of it in a more dramatic way. An unleashing of a Big BANG with His breath and constellations and planets formed, Earth full of vapors from his breath was the place He chose for life to be sustained throughout all of time! Well that’ll make scientist mad who have been looking for the dramatics via atoms!

Yes siree, no matter how you say it or write it, explain it or try to debunk things, life is full of drama no matter where you go. Writing, as writers, are no different. When you ask someone, “How are you?” and someone goes into the dramatics of how they really are, are you above getting a real reply and walk away, stating under your breath, “I really didn’t need all that info/drama.”

When I ask someone how they are doing, I WANT all the details, maybe because I’m a caring and compassionate person who really does CARE how they are doing. I watch as people sit at their computer all day on their behinds, barely leaving for a bite to eat. Running around with a façade of caring, but then when someone who is ailing or in dire straits cries out seeking compassion or a friendly ear, they run to the bathroom to get some cotton balls for their ears, only to realize they need blinders on, like the kind that horses wear? They forget that on a computer, cotton balls don’t work in the ears!

In this wide world of internet, it is hard to look straight ahead and ignore the drama going on around you. Instead of falling into your rose colored glasses, instead of wearing the feathered Mardis gras mask, instead of browbeating someone for being dramatic, politely say to yourself, “She/he must be a writer.”

Because no matter how you try to avoid it, a writer’s life is full of drama and we’re only too glad to tell you, or have you read about it, or use it for a character in a novel we’re writing!

Embrace the drama in life. Without it you will certainly become a rotted out piece of cardboard with very little character, which people will NOT respect!

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”

~ Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

Drama Writing ~ Ray Bradbury

Here you have it, the secret to all good writing, and that is drama! “I’m leaving, it’s personal.” That’s a statement trying to drum up drama but not being skilled, the person loses their mark. When drama happens it is important to show, and that means details. Telling someone something is not drama. You can tell someone you’re leaving but without the details of showing, you just come off as a whiney drama king or queen. Your character musters no sympathy when they TELL, your reader wants details and showing them is the only way.


Yesterday we lost a great writer, Mr. Ray Bradbury; he was 91 years old. This man knew the art of drama and if anyone is a reader of good works, you’ve read at least (at least) one of his books. They called him an iconic Science- fiction writer, but really, can you put a name on art like that? He was an artist who knew the written word, period! With such titles as “The Martian Chronicles”, “Fahrenheit 451” and “Something Wicked this way Comes”, he showed writers the edge of humanity and took them on a ride through wondrous worlds.

The writing world is in mourning for this artist that taught us a little about the way the written word is to be received. When I read a book, so many times I’m dissecting the way it is written; the plot, theme, the drama of it all; I lose pertinent elements of the story. Mr. Bradbury had a way to make me forget that I’m a writer and made me a reader of his words. I’d dive in, become entranced by the story, and by the end of the book I was sighing thinking, “Why did it have to end?” So I’d begin reading it again as a writer, dissecting sentences, fishing for structure, and finding all the points that made this a wonderful read.

My point here being, that Ray Bradbury had a way with words. We as writers would do him justice if we learned from him and anything he wrote. Sure he was pegged a sci-fi author, but he was so much more, just as Stephen King is more than a horror story master. They are masterful writers of drama! Any way you read it, the drama is spilling out of the pages, and it is with that, you finish reading with a sigh.

Drama can mean a play or screenwriting, but today’s blog topic is more about intense, in your face drama that a reader connects with. It might be considered conflict, but that is more physical action in your writing. Drama is the intense feeling you get as a reader of what will happen next. It’s the ability to bring home a page-turner for the reader, like Ray Bradbury had the knack of doing for us.

So when you want to be a drama queen, don’t just tell people, “I’m leaving, it’s personal.” Give the reader something to be intently involved with. “I’m leaving this place because Burt has abused me for the last time! Bruises and hospital visits are over, and so are we!” NOW you want to know…the rest of the story.

Rest in Peace Mr. Bradbury! Long live your words!

The Drama of it all...part II

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury
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As if one drama post wasn’t enough...I had to go and write two? Well you know...I have a tendency to over dramatize. If they had a crown for drama queens I think I would win the crown hands down. But know that my dramatics are usually my truth in a situation as to the way *I* see it unfold.
 

I can not take anything lightly by no means. If I see a picture, I want to write. I dramatically unfold the scene for you, word by word. You yourself climb into the picture and become one with the world in which is presented to you. When I stop writing I jump into my reality, which is no picture postcard let me tell you. And you wake up out of the daydream saying, wow!
 

If I see a kitty, run across the road, I scream out, “Did you see that mountain lion?”My son will laugh and say, “Mom that was a very fat tabby cat.” “But it was huge!” I go on and then I come home and tell anyone within earshot that this huge fat cat almost made me swerve and hit a tree, so as to avoid splattering all his innards over the road. Again, over dramatizing a mere avoidance of hitting a cat.
 

I can take a molehill (I have them out in my backyard so I do know what they look like) and turn it into... have you ever seen a molehill? Well I ventured out in my backyard and the silky sand mound was splat right in my face, it had grown overnight. I put on my hiking shoes and as I started to climb, I slid all the way down because this molehill was made out of sand, not rock like I normally expect to see.
 

There it was...the molehill that turned into a mountain! Now do you see what I mean? I can make a mountain out of a molehill. This is what needs to come alive in your stories. You need to give your character that thorn that will prick her/his finger and draw blood.
When you have a character that is bland, your story that you’ve built around her/him will surely be bland. You have to set a mountain on fire and have your character strive to walk through the fire!
 

If he is blind, have him fight for his sight! If he was born with no arms, have him go for the Guinness Book of World Records for archery. If it is a fish with no fin, have a character create a prosthetic tail. The world is limitless. Don’t just sit there and see the world through one window, grab hold of it and build yourself a house with MANY windows. Windows that look out onto mountains, or fields or a lake or stream.
 

Remember YOU are the writer. You are the creator. Your power with words is what is going to make or break you. The ones who fall, are the ones who cling to the old. The ones who soar, are the ones who decide to move on and FLY....

The Drama of it all...

“A true spiritual aspirant will never be frightened by any circumstances, hence, move on, angel, move on!” ~BJG

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Oh the drama of it all. I think you’ve gathered by now that I, as a writer, can take a broken nail and spin it into a web of a story. I’m like that. I was at my m-i-l’s the other day, and all she did was ask, “How’s it going out on the farm?” I began my tale with my old treadle sewing machine, placed in some thread and began weaving a delightful tale.

Instead of the simple answer, “Great, life is great.” I began, “Well the potato harvesting began roaring onto the fields with machines I’ve never seen in my life. I loved the way they swept the field and one by one an army-full of semi trucks carried away the plump juicy potatoes. And we have an Elk, living in the woods, whom I named Eli thinking it was a male last year, but when I heard the baby by it’s side I realized, Eli, was Eliza, still named Eli for short.

I went on as I always do. “You wouldn’t believe the images out there, wild turkeys walking up the road, Black-eyed Susan’s galloping over every open space, and the turkeys being grown for their shipment into slaughter. Yes siree, life out there on that farm is pretty awesome.”

I add drama to every thing in my life and as my followers more than likely can tell, I speak truth, I just have a tendency to color my world. It is like my brain is a living thesaurus, and believe you me if I can’t think of the right word, I’ll dig to find it.

That is what writing is all about. You weave a colorful story, embellish the truth a bit, not too much so it is a very believable story, but paint it just so the reader becomes a part of the fabric. He/she becomes so engrossed in the flow of every word, the stroke of every key, a part of the very scene, that they jump into the fantasy that you’ve created for them.

Rose Madder by Stephen King was like that. It started off, an abused woman who lived in fear, and one day she just woke up and walked away, fearing for her life, but she did it! She made a new life for herself too, but wouldn’t you know it, her hubby found her, as all abusive husbands do and what happened is... you’ll have to read it and find out. 

She bought a picture and somehow Mr. King painted many levels of the canvas for us, the reader. A story in a story if you will. That is what I strive to do in my life. I try to paint a picture of myself, a portrait for you to glance at. Then I embellish it by wearing jeans, fixing my hair all nice and applying makeup, but never really hiding the true me underneath.

In my words you may find the drama, but underneath it all, you will see the true me shining through. And know that deep down, the true me is a writer, through and through.

Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864

Dramatizing Events

Psalms 30:3 O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.
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The life of a writer is always full of drama. While other people have days where things go wrong, we writers have days of drama and we just have to spill the words onto the page to let everyone else in on our drama through what else, dramatizing.

Saturday started off like any other Saturday, except here in Nebraska it was unusually hot. ‘Another lazy hazy crazy day of Summer’ I thought. And so it began. I sat at the computer to write. I like writing my poems on Saturday to get them ready for Poetry Sunday, and maybe even pop out a post for Monday too. But that wasn’t going to happen on this day.

Adam decided he was going to mow the long grass! It’s long because every time we try to mow, the wet grass clogs up the blade and the poor mower poops out at mid shave! As was the way it went Saturday, except it started smoking. Trails of smoke lifted in the air, lingering for what seemed forever, but finally it stopped and so did Adam. “Call it a day.” I said. Oh he was more than happy to. ;)

I came in the house and tried sitting here to write, AGAIN. Beau decided to take ALL the books off the bookshelf; dust it, pull it out, and vacuum behind it. Good idea right? Wrong!!! The book shelf sits behind me at a towering 6 foot. It holds a whole lot of books! All the books on the floor, the shelf moved out, vacuuming begins. Watching as beau vacuumed, (he don’t like help, remember, he is blind yet independent!) I hear a HIGH pitch from the vacuum, recognizable as being something stuck, and sure enough, a piece of wood was stuck, shattering the belt and letting off a foul odor only to be inhaled at a community dump.

*SNAP* went his watch band. His brand new talking watch (the other ones battery died and was impossible to replace) So a new one arrived last week and *SNAP*, the band broke. “Well this day is a bust!” I said. “Let’s just call it a day.” It was about 3:30 by that time and nothing had gone right, I got no writing done, no mowing again, but the shelf was clean and shiny!

So we decided to find a new pin for the watch band, take the staple gun back to the basement and make something good come of this day. We go down the steps, beau in front, me in the back and *SNAP* My ankle snapped, I went down the last two steps hard and a scream came from me that went all the way to the heavens I’m sure.  I thought it was Fourth of July all over again, because I saw fireworks going off in my head as I sat there in pain! Tears flowed like a streaming river and had it not been for beaus strength in getting me up the steps, I’d still be lying there in pain.

Instant black and blue. Blood seeping from the scratched skin. I was on the sofa and did not move except to get to the bathroom. I had a golf club for a cane, and two guys waiting on me hand and foot. Oh the luxury of it all.

Sunday was spent with an ice pack, and another long sofa visit. I could put more weight on my foot, but then it took on the look of a Hobbits foot with no hair! Big, puffy and colorful as a storm cloud. Speaking of which, Sunday evening brought in a storm that left limbs strewn all over the place. One large one is impeding my walk down the back steps, narrowly missing the roof, for which it surely would have done roof damage!

The weekend is finally over, and I’m sitting here dramatizing the events. We’re all okay, and that is all that matters. You hear it all the time when people realize that life is really all that matters. My Hobbit foot is mending, the watch band is fixed, and I have hope that the vacuum and mower will be fine also. I just keep remembering...they are just material objects! We’re ALIVE! *Big Happy Face*

Longer than a 500 word post, but it was well worth it! Thanks for reading!

The Drama of it All...

1 Sam. 2:3 Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.
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What’s in a word? Okay jokesters, besides letters!

Words can hurt, heal, make you smile and even garner a chuckle. This weekend was full of words for me. I posted my quotations on Saturday, words that linger in my soul even after I’ve read them. Then I posted my poem yesterday that was an expression of how my heart felt after releasing my son into this big bad world, trusting in God to carry him.

I thought I’d pop over into my class and see what was going on with the students, who are in their sixth week and ready to post their last lesson. I was shocked, to say the least that someone was degrading me, again.

Last session someone came down hard on me for not being ‘more specific’ in my lesson tips. They went on and asked about my qualifications and other mean and hurtful things. So when this post was on my board yesterday after the long hard week of separation from Adam, I was stunned.

I’ve had such a good run at f2k this session. I’ve stayed out of many discussions, left the bad seeds to their own fruition, in hopes someone else would stand up and say, “Hey, wait a minute.”

Ron did not agree with my answer to a question back in the beginning of f2k. He chose NOW to berate, belittle and to me, come down pretty hard on me and he even dragged another person into his rant, speaking FOR that person mind you. The person in question quickly stated that they would not be a part of his crappola, and that I, joni, and benning were nothing but helpful to them.

I couldn’t believe it. Not again is all that I could think of. Granted I’m a dramatic person, I’m a writer and drama is an effortless release for me. I decided to go to the main board and turn in my resignation. Sure it is a volunteer position, but I just wanted Bob to know how sorry I was for bringing this to f2k. I would bow out quietly and be on my way.

Well hold your horses! The response was heartfelt pleas of, “Don’t go!” Bob wrote:

“You've been an integral part of F2K's success over the years. I'd also like to remind everyone that F2K Mentors volunteer their time to help aspiring and experienced writers. Though there will always be differences of opinion, no good can come from escalating it to a personal level. WVU's 15 year history is built on a foundation of common interests, tolerance, respect and more importantly, empathy toward our fellow writers; as we move into the new social format, other challenges will emerge, but they will strengthen rather than change these values.”

In other words. You’re STAYING! I don’t need to defend my opinion of a sentence. We all see things differently and feel things differently. I can disagree with you and you me, but don’t degrade me, I am too good a person for that kind of treatment.

Respect me, and I’ll respect you. Disrespect me...and I’ll still respect you!

Thought-filled Thursday

Rev. 12: 11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
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Drama! Drama! drama! I attract drama like a bee to honey, like a bird to a flower, like rain to the ground. It follows me, catches up to me, and splatters all over my face.

Yesterday, my room got a visit by the ‘principal’ at f2k. You see, the drama was so loud, it made the principal come down and reprimand us. I lowered my head in shame because I have higher standards than being relinquished to bitterness, and the drama brought out emotions I just as soon forget were ever brewed inside of me.

Anna assumed no one was watching. She peeked around the corner and like a child in a movie, she slung mud, throwing it at whoever walked by. She had said in one of her responses, “Oh, I’m evil today.” And sure enough, that is the only place that the dark crap of life can come from, you know who, the Dark One.

F2K is normally a quiet, writer filled, peace-has-washed-over me site. We never have drama, but occasionally we get a person who can not handle rules, feels left out, throws spitballs at the teacher, stomps her feet loud enough for everyone to hear, bullies a few people on her way OUT the door. And yes the principal will throw out anyone who disrupts the course of the smooth running waters.

I was hurt in the crossfire mind you, of  all the drama. How can you not get your sleeve ripped off when someone says, “You show poor leadership.” When anyone who knows me, knows otherwise. How can your jeans manage not to shred, when someone says, “You can’t spell, what kind of leader is that?” OUCH! Now I KNOW that one is not true because I am one of the BEST spellers I know. A typo is not bad spelling, it’s poor editing. :)

Then there was the appearance of the principal, standing in the doorway. His silhouette made him appear ten feet tall, and the shadow, the long sinuous shadow creeped along the floor like moss. I shivered, shuddered, blinked then gulped. He arrived.

That was the drama in the virtual world. There was drama in my reality too but I don’t have time for that. I have to move on, raise my chin, walk away proud knowing not one curse word left my mouth. My bitterness is only a taste that will dissipate, nothing more, nothing less. I go on...