Tag: craft

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Practice Being

Day 478

Several months ago I purchased the Mouse Guard Roleplaying book. I’ve been reading the Mouse Guard comics for some time now and have generally collected anything David Petersen has written regarding mice. I’m becoming less enthusiastic as he’s not been as prolific as I’d like, but when he’s doing, he’s doing it well.

This past weekend I finally started reading the book. It’s different than I’d expected. Meatier. Not typical. It’s not a roleplaying experience I’m familiar with. I’m not familiar with many.

I’ve not finished reading the manual—I’m only a couple chapters beyond the intro—but I’m impressed with the heavy emphasis on plot driven play. I don’t know how well that works in actual play, but it sure stirs the writing guy in me. Give’s me more ways to think of the things I’ve been thinking but not writing recently. I’m starting to believe that placing a target in front of a character and a time limit for her to obtain that goal may just be a plot. That the random conflicts the author throws up develop meaning through mere presence in the story.

I don’t believe and I’m not saying here that just doing these things makes a story great or even just good, but the do make a story. I still need to practice being, before I can practice being good.

224 words

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Archiving Serendipty

Day 475

I should keep better track of the things I read. I suppose thats what Delicious and Evernote are for, but I don’t always have the time to archive serendipity. I should keep better track because when I everntually write about the things I read I’d like to link back to them for your reference. Suffice to say I did read several somethings along the lines of what I’ll write about now. I did not make this up.

That I did not ake this up should be evident in how clever it is. What I’m writing about not my writing.

A reader should be able to pick up a book, start reading at any point, and within a few paragraphs know the characters’ goals. That, for me says quite a bit. I need go no further, but will anyway.

I don’t think the authors I’ve aggregated that statement from meant that a character’s whole plot goal should be immediately apparant, though I suspect they think it should appear soon. I believe they mean a character’s scene goal; their current driving need. Worse, they expect clarity for the antagonist’s goal too; the bad guy can’t just poke your heroine in the eye he needs a reason to poke her in the eye.

These are the writing lessons I love to find. And consequently love to avoid incorporating in my writing.

Last week a wrote with this in mind, but neglected to have a goal for my antagonist. My antagonist merely through up half-hurdles for my protagonist to overcome. Looking back on the piece I didn’t like where the bad guy’s flimsey efforts were leading. Ultimately he’d have become a throwaway character and the scene would have played for no other useful reason than to introduce the protagonist by name in a clever-like way; that could have been done elsewhere and better.

OK, so. Bad guy needs a deeper life I decide. This story is not outlined at this point so I can do anything I want. Suddenly I’ve decided that our minor functionary is now the client who hired our protagonist to off the wife of his boss. Now I’ve got something I didn’t have before.

368 words

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Dripping Red Strands

Day 460

I have this title that came to me from somewhere some time ago. I associate it with a scene from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator movie in which the gladiators walk through dripping red strands of cloth. The scene is handled ambiguously enough that I’ve never been sure if I should recognize this event as some traditional blessing of the gladiators or just a bit of scenery dipicting life in Rome not having anything to do with the arena—just a shortcut passageway to the fight. Maybe I should know. I don’t though. I’ve not bothered to research it as I’d rather not know.

Why this scene and this title are linked in my thoughts escapes me. The one overt linkage between the two is the most tenuous. That connection is the spark but not the flame. Ambiguity fires my title.

My title is not ambiguous. My title is susinct and specific. My title is the kind which immediately tells you all about the story. Except it hasn’t told me all about the story. The story is the part I can’t figure out.

In an expansive 100-character high fantasy trilogy this story would be the subplot not incorporated. It’s the novella or short story collected posthumously in a poorly sold compendium—if it were written at all. Lately I’m wanting to write the commoner’s story: not the princess, not the foundling, not the dragon killer. I want to know how the nobody baker, the unattractive barmaid, or the sallow footman contribute to the dismisal of the ultimate evil. And not in the heroic caught up in the whirlwind of important people way, but in the quiet unspoken almost uninteresting way.

This Dyemaker’s Conjecture.