Session 2: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in time for Session 3.

Bearing in mind the things we learned about plot and theme:

• Describe the main dramatic action AND the theme/s (‘what does it mean?’) in 5 of your favourite works of film/book. You can use the worksheet, if you like.
• Write an Elevator Pitch for your project/story in a few sentences, bearing in mind the distinction between action and theme.

Session 2: Wrap-up

Getting Started & Story Mechanics

Short Feedback about last session's writing exercise

We noted that the 'write a paragraph without the letter 'e'' exercise was frustrating and slow, which was in part due to the lack of words available for use, and partly because writing in a second language can be challenging.

Doing these kinds of exercises are good because they help with distracting yourself from the fear of starting. At least you’re annoyed and not apprehensive!

1. Getting started

Ways to hack into your story, post-freewriting (or in place of freewriting)

• Write your character backstory. This could be anything from picking a year in their life—age 10, say—and profiling what their favorite things were, what they looked like, where they lived, pets, how they got along with their siblings, or doing a broader comprehensive profile (pretend you’re writing their match.com bio…) or something a little less flashy, like writing their CV

• Day in the life of your MC. What’s a Saturday like? Or Monday? How do they celebrate a particular holiday, or what would they do on their birthday?

• Write the weather report for your primary location/setting and/or a news report about something happening locally

• Dialogue practice. (write a conversation between your MC and... Dentist/boss/daughter/lover)

• The what-if game. What if your MC got fired/adopted a stray/won the lottery. What if your setting (the city/planet/etc) flooded/got bombed/hosted the Olympics?

• Pick a headline from the newspaper that corresponds to your setting and timeline and write a scene about your MC’s interaction with or reaction to it.

• Draw a storyboard or draw characters or scenes.

For nonfiction, particularly, it can be effective to write where you’re starting the chapter or essay and where you need to end up, and then listing all the things you want to include between those two points.

Chronology

In finding your way into the story, you’ll start to figure out whether you prefer to 

• write in order, from the start to finish of your work, or 
• jump around to the scenes or sections that are working for you, and then piece it all together later

Scope

You may also notice your limitations, i.e., how much you can write, or the length of story that feels comfortable for you.

Some writers feel 1,500 words (a short story) is their length. Some novelists feel they can't hold more than 65K words in their heads, whereas others will easily work with 120K words.

You may also become aware of how much time you think the story ‘deserves’ because—don't forget—this is about how much time the reader is willing to give to the writer!

2. Story Mechanics

Theme vs. Plot, Idea vs. Action 

In fiction and narrative nonfiction alike, there’s what happens to the characters, and what the characters do in their world (the action), and then there are the subjects or the ideas that the action represents or evokes (the theme). The theme gives meaning to the action.

We started by looking at a worksheet which allows us to break these threads down.

We looked specifically at Star Wars Episode 4 (fiction), and Into Thin Air (nonfiction).

Action or Idea Worksheet can be downloaded from Libby's website here.

We also talked about part of a chapter of The Lighthouse (literary fiction by Virginia Woolf), and discovered that in 3 pages of text, there were many ideas around the THEME of marriage, but the only pieces of ACTION were: 1. Mrs Ramsay looks at her husband; and 2. Mr Ramsay walks past his wife. (Yeah, not really in the action genre!)

Example: Man vs. nature

One common example across both genres is man vs. nature. (In fiction, think Jaws or Moby Dick.)

How it works in nonfiction:

Wild, A Walk in the Woods, Into Thin Air are three movies about hiking or mountaineering in which the characters set a challenge for themselves and set out to tackle it. Thus, the subject and theme are very similar.

Versus a different manifestation of man vs. nature in which the human character is confronted by nature imposing itself and he must rise above to survive. The Perfect Storm is a nonfiction example but this is also very popular in fiction (Jaws, Moby Dick), and Hollywood (natural disaster movies). Notably though, every title mentioned here has been adapted to film, and I like to think it is because the narrative ad thematic structures are so strong.

We talked about how the theme and subject matter of these hiking books were all similar; where it gets interesting, to me at least is what differentiates the. The characters and their motivations vary dramatically (a woman/former addict/divorcee hikes the PCT in search of healing (Wild) an aging writer and his friend attempt to complete the AT in defiance of their age and in search of natural beauty (Walk in the Woods) a writer accompanies an expedition to summit Everest with catastrophic results (Into Thin Air).

So not only are we in search of the representative idea of 'what happens,' but also who is performing this action, and why?

Session 2: Outline

Session 2

Getting Started & Story Mechanics

In this session we're going to look at how we can get started and shift gears from freestyle to focus, and we'll take a first look at some story mechanics, or how stories work. This will be especially useful for editing your own and others' work.

We will also look at another piece of writing from the group, and give some awesome, helpful feedback. :)

Specifically, we'll look at:

1. Getting started

• Writing prompts feedback: how did it work for you? What did you discover/observe?
• How to segue from freestyle to focused writing: finding your way into the project; character; chronology.

2. Story Mechanics

• Theme vs. Plot, Idea vs. Action
• The Central Dramatic Question

Session 1: Wrap-up

Writing: What and How?

1. We kicked off by talking about:

• What are your obsessions? (Put this away as a metric check for later.) 
• Why did you start writing? And/or why are you here? to start or continue writing? 

2. The in-class exercise was on Writing and Self-Awareness.

• Write a paragraph about a moment that you were surprised, or about some event/occurrence that surprised you. 
• Look at what you wrote and observe the way you wrote it: the words, the rhythms, the description, the topic, the emotions. 
• With your Editor's Hat on: does your writing remind you of a specific Genre of writing? Or even a particular writer? (This is an exercise in positioning, and also it will be helpful when you come to looking at what might be missing in your work, according to the genre norms.) 

This was a rich discussion, and we talked about:

• the challenges of setting an entire context for a surprise
• the expectation of a pay-off for the reader adds a layer of pressure to the writing
• do we think about the reader when we are writing?
• do we set the scene for the surprise with a long, detailed lead-up, or start with the surprise itself?
• do we really write what we mean as we strive to bridge the gap between what is in our heads and what comes out on the page?
• a style of writing can emerge that's not your usual style (e.g. using contractions, which doesn't fit with the preferred genre of historical fiction; some also noticed the blandness of their words and even the lack of words, when they first started)

The exercise becomes about not only what the reader finds out, but how they find it out, and when …

Across all genres, surprise is important, but it must also fit within the story. There is a tension between providing surprises to pique the readers’ interest and keep them engaged while making sure those surprises authentic.

We discussed whether people first write what they are going to write about, or whether they just begin writing (plotting versus pantsing). Even those who start with an outline can find that the outline itself is a daunting expectation to follow through on, or that they veer pretty quickly from the path they laid out.

What other tools, other than outlining, help reduce the pressure of the bank page?

3. We talked about giving feedback, with reference to our chosen guidelines, and there was mutual agreement that the guidelines serve as a great starting point for how we'd like to conduct our feedback.

4. We read a submitted piece and there was robust and respectful feedback given. We also observed that if you as 10 people ... you'll get 10 different responses! Good to bear in mind when you're getting feedback on your own work, because it's all about not taking it personally!

Quote of the week:

“The everything for you is the nothing for other people, and our job is to make it something for others.”  Thanh-Nu Leroy

Session 1: Exercise

Here is an exercise for you to complete in preparation for Session 2.

Freewriting prompts

• Sit down and write whatever comes to mind
• Write as much as you can without the letter ‘e’.
• Generate a first sentence from this website: http://writingexercises.co.uk/firstlinegenerator.php ... and then write!

Session 1: Outline

Session 1

Writing: What and How?

In this first session, we take a broad brush and look at the what and the how of our own writing, in order to build self-awareness.

Self-awareness is very useful because, when we have it, we are far more likely to be able to step back from our work, jam on the editor's hat, and look objectively at what we've been writing.

What do we like to write? What are our obsessions?

These questions will not only be clarifying for us personally, but they also give us clues about possible genres for our stories. As we always need to be thinking of the reader when we're putting our story into an earthly Story Container, knowing the genre is a useful first step that can help us with the form of the story later.

How do we write?

This question will lead us to look at: the words we choose, phrasing, rhythm, topic, theme. And this is a good way to start to look critically at the mechanics of what makes up a piece of writing. (More on this in Week 3.)

Specifically, this week, we also look at how to give the right kind of feedback.

*
We will look at:

• What are your obsessions? (Put this away as a metric check for later.)
• Why did you start writing? And/or why are you here to start or continue writing?
• Exercise: Writing and Self Awareness
• How to give feedback, with a live feedback session.

Welcome!

This week marks the first of our 12-month Odyssey into the World of Writing.

As a starting point, we have a quick exercise that we're going to revisit periodically over the course of the year.

Exercise:

Write a paragraph (or page) about your obsessions.

Not only will this eventually give us some fun metrics (what did I think? how have I grown? how have my ideas clarified?) but it helps us start to become aware of ourselves and what drives us — as a person and, by extension, as a writer.