Chapterella 2 and the Barnes

So today I went to the Barnes Foundation. Last night I slept only five hours. My mind is not in a state to write anything. However, Chapterella 2 is up. So perhaps I'll talk more about it. Perhaps this is all I get. But I never promised you a post a day anyways so I don't know why I should feel bad. Or should I...

Either way, enjoy chapter 2.

Character Through Movement

Quick, what were we talking about yesterday?

I'm sorry, the correct answer was my excuse for why I don't have chapter two up today. Well it will be coming tomorrow. I promise. And I would never tell a lie.

Now in writing, you can't see the cue that would tell you whether that's the truth or not. You'll have to rely on my verbiosity which is a word I just made up. But the point is, as much as I enjoy talking about dialogue as if it exists in a vacuum, it doesn't. We all, whether we like to admit it or not, have tells about ourselves and who we are. Let's analyze.

I am presently sitting here with my leg bobbing up and down. I am chewing on my cheek because I've developed the habit to substitute a different habit I formerly had which was playing with my tongue ring. These two aspects tell you something about me as a character. The first is that I have a problem sitting still. The second, is that I am substituting for something I clearly didn't want to do. The first probably seems obvious, but how can you tell the second?

Well for one I told you that I was substituting one habit for another. The fact that I still have the habit shows you that it wasn't something I did because I had no use for it. It shows you that I am actively adjusting to a situation that involves some bit of discomfort. But beyond just a reason to talk about myself, what am I getting at here?

When we talk about characters we often leave out what makes them physically who they are and I'm not talking about whether they have muscles or are fat. I'm talking about the little physical things we do that makes us who we are. How much someone talks with their hands or how much they talk with their eyes. How someone compensates for their fears by being aggressively close. The list could go on, but what I'm talking about is the subtle body language that we exhibit.

I'm also cutting this post short because I'm focused more on my leg than I am on writing. What I'm getting at for your writers advice of the day is don't ignore body language.

I will let you know that teaching today went very well, and not only that I picked up some tricks for the future. If you want to know more then I'm happy to answer some questions but I'm pooped and this is just turning into me droning on and on and on and on and

Character Through Dialogue

Good morning everyone. Today I'm going to prep for a lecture I'm going to be giving tomorrow to a class taught by a friend of mine. Long sentences aside, today I'm going to talk about writing characters.

It doesn't matter what you write within the context of fiction or non-fiction work, you're going to have some sort of character. Even if the character is yourself. Note that there's probably some sort of experimental works which have found a way to get away from having character and if you want to debate me on everything having characters feel free to start it in the comments. But for the sake of this discussion everything has characters.

It doesn't matter if you're writing characters who are going to exist only in writing, or if you're transferring them to the stage or the screen. There are some huge issue which can arise when writing characters. Some of those issues are easily avoidable and some are not. Let's start with the simple and work our way up. And the best way to do that is with a writing prompt.

I want you to take a minute or five, depending on how long you want to spend on this prompt, and come up with a character. Don't concern yourself too much on things like an exact age as you'll generally find you have a little wiggle room with age, especially as you increase your characters age. Appearances also only matter if they impact the character, so unless your female cheerleader is struggling to cope with the fact she's not getting the respect she thought she'd get after having plastic surgery, leave it out. What we wants it at least two sentences and up to a paragraph which tells us who a character does. I'm going to do it alongside you, so here we go.

Got something good? I hope so. Here's the character I came up with. He's a recent college graduate interviewing for his first job. He majored in philosophy after switching from English and the Classics, he's still in love with the girl who broke up with him during graduation, and he doesn't speak to his parents who want him to go to law school.

Quick, easy, and a few details which are within his control and some which aren't. You'll notice I also included the scene he's going to be participating in, because for me at least it helps to know where I'm sending a character when I come up with his backstory. For some people, they prefer to come up with a character and then a scene and that is just as useful but when starting out making characters it can often be easier to already have the scene in mind.

Now then, we've got our character. We're going to use some dialogue to show the details which I just gave you. In this context we're going to have a second character to feed our main character lines, but our main concern is with bringing the character we created to life. Now then, what are some things to watch out for?

Well if you read my post from Monday, you know that a major issue can be inserting your own voice into the character. So for my lines, I'm going to be making sure that my character sounds like a philosophy major, not my jovial old self. I also want to make sure he's consistent. An easy way to do this without cheating and giving him an accent is to have him use one word excessively. I won't reveal to you which it is, you'll just have to read to find out. Another huge issue to watch out for is that my character doesn't sound like who he's talking to. If your characters blur together this can be a good way to see if your character is fleshed out enough. If the voices blur together, then there's a problem. All right, so here's my dialogue. The character I created will be named Jon, and his interviewer is Chris.

Chris-"Good morning Jon, how are you doing today?"
Jon-"I'm doing great, and let me just say once again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to interview with you today."
Chris-"Well we were excited to bring you in after looking over your resume. It says here that you have four years of experience working with contracts?"
Jon-"Yes, my father owns his own book agency, so he had me intern with him through high school."
Chris-"And how did you enjoy working with book contracts?"
Jon-"Well it was a lot of reading, which I enjoyed, and it was a great opportunity to learn the machinations of the publishing industry. Plus I didn't have to deal with him all that much so all in all it was a great job."
Chris-"Good, good. Now, we wanted to ask about your lack of a work record while you were in college. Were you too busy with classes or is there some sort of a scholarship that you failed to mention?"
Jon-"I'd been working, by the time I got to college, pretty much most of my life, either payed by my folks or just helping people in my neighborhood out. By the time I got to college I decided I wanted to take it easy for a while and my parents gave me a small stipend so I was able to focus on my studies rather than try to balance studying alongside a nine to five."
Chris-"Did you find your studies difficult?"
Jon-"No more difficult than deciphering legal documents at forteen."
Both chuckle, neither sure who initiated the laugh.
Jon-"But I don't want to say it was difficult, so much as I worked hard with my studies. There was a lot of reading involved, and with that reading came a large amount of studying the various sources surrounding the texts. I must have spent close to a year trying to complete my thesis but was it difficult? I don't think things that are difficult are supposed to be so much fun."
Chris-"That's great Jon. Now let me ask you this, working in this job is going to require a lot of face to face interactions with people. Do you think you can manage that and still keep this sunny disposition that I am seeing today?"
Jon-"Have you ever had to smile while your philosophy professor tells you you've misinterpreted Plato and have spent the past two years throwing black paint at a shadowed wall?"
Chris-"Uh..."
Jon-"What I'm trying to say is, for the most part I can get along with anyone."
Chris-"That's great Jon. Can I take that to mean you will accept the position?"
Jon-"It's always been a dream to work at Wibly's sir."
Chris-"That's great Jon. Can you come in tomorrow for your orientation?"

Phew, that was fun. Now, looking over my dialogue exercise (mostly unedited) I can already see some patterns developing. Firstly, I had to stop myself right at the beginning from using "Well" to begin Jon's sentences. One thing you want to be careful of when creating voice is to not get stuck in it. If you think of a character like Bug's Bunny, he may use "What's up doc," in every episode, but there is enough variation in its placement that he isn't saying it every sentence, to every character, all the time. Establishing a trend early on is great, and if I were to continue writing this character I'd want to mmake sure to use that "Well" beginning again, but not at the moment.

Another thing I'm noticing is that part of my character's backstory had no impact whatsoever on my story. The fact that I have his parents essentially disowning him isn't evidenced at all in my dialogue, which raises the question of whether it will be important for the scene or not.

Now as far as characterizing Jon, I feel I do a good job of using the occasional word like stipend or machinations, or deciphering. This is actually something I edited in after a close reading, having realized that I did enough of a job differentiating Jon and Chris, but not enough characterization in Jon's word choices.

That being said, Jon feels like he's a character but he's certainly not leaping off the page. Often it can take pages of writing dialogue to fully get a sense of a characters voice, which can get frustrating if you're a non-editor like myself. My encouragement would be, if you find yourself getting a good handle on a characters voice, don't stress too much about it. Write your character and then come back and edit and you'll often find a way to work the distinct voice you've crafted back into your old dialogue.

Now then, I was going to write a second entry on characterization through action, but I actually think that I'm going to work that into a post tomorrow. So instead I'm going to sign off by doing what I love to do, which is leave a video post. This one is going to be a fantastic example of character through dialogue, so I highly recommend checking it out. Plus, you know, Winter is Coming after all.

Now then, I don't want to spend too long dissecting things I love, but I want to just point out not only how you can see who these characters by what they say (even if ignoring how they say it.) But what I really love about this clip is that through what is being said you can see how Tyrion views each character! It's a great clip, watch it a few more times through and hopefully you'll see what I see. What Tyrion says to each character, or in the case of the second dialogue with his sister what he says at each moment, shows us who Tyrion is as a character so that by the end we know more about who he is despite the fact that really, all he's done is arrive and tell people what's up.

That's a good place to stop. Adios.

Oh, if you want a good post on how Game of Thrones draws inspiration from history (and I suppose then, how you too might do so) a great article can be read in the guardian.

Adrift and Why it Had to Happen

Today I'm going to spend my time talking about myself. Not because I egotistically feel like doing so, but because I want to discuss one of my works, Adrift.

The link above will take you to the poem/story itself, which I recommend you follow as I'm particularly proud of the piece. The link then leads to other links which will take you to the places it has already been published. Now this isn't me standing here shouting to the heavens, "look at me, I've been published," just me wanting to talk about a piece of writing about space.

Firstly, I'd like to talk inspiration. This piece was written while I was on a 10 day writers retreat in Italy. For the sake of some more links, information on it can be found here. You can also see the ridiculous hair style I was sporting if you decide to check out the slide show of fantastic photographs. Now if you only read the piece you might wonder why I would write so sad a piece of writing if I was in such a beautiful place. Was I miserable the whole time?

Let me assure you, I was not.

However, in the chaos of an Italian vacation, amidst so many personalities all clashing, and I'm not going to lie, in an environment where wine was served with lunch, the mind goes to some strange places. This piece arose out of a writing prompt, which I encourage you to try out if you're an aspiring writer, which was to create an interesting lore piece. The lore of Adrift is, not surprisingly, space. How I managed to find so quiet a place within myself in the Umbrian foothills I'll probably never know, but let me now discuss how a piece on lore became a strange sort of love story.

For those of you keeping tabs, you'll also notice that for today I've adopted a different voice for this discussion. This is intentional.

When I got the idea to use my space lore for a story I didn't set out to write a story. I just sat down to write something that involved space. Dealing with a story that had no characters I realized I was going to have to make some. So I chose a galaxy. And from there the story wrote itself. I knew I was bound by the laws of the scene I was writing (space) and so there were very few stories that could actually be written using it. I chose to deal with galaxies colliding, and I honed in on what a difference in the vast emptiness of existence a galaxy would occupy collision would be.

Phew, hopefully that sentence made sense. It was a doozy.

Now I'm not giving you all of these details because I don't think you understand the piece, in fact quite the opposite. I never write to confuse my reader, and I do my best to trust that they get it. But I want to focus on the fact that all of that story in the piece is incidental. It's what had to happen when I set out to write a story about a galaxy in space.

You'll notice that the piece straddles the line between poem and prose. Also intentional and also something which couldn't have happened any other way. Similarly if I might turn back to talking about Hypothetically Speaking, it is a story which has to happen (for the most part) how it is happening and later in the story it is a topic which will be discussed while it is happening! That story gets more complicated by the second.

But I've gotten off topic which shows that I'm at a good place to finish. The point I set out in talking about here is that sometimes in writing things happen and they could happen no other way. Which is what makes truly great writing, to finish by actually utilizing something I learned at the workshop. A great story is a story which, at the end, you step back and think it could have happened no other way. Because of course, when writing, things can go any way! And with that contradiction I will jet off to my next adventure. Enjoy the story!

Voice and the Next Chapter

Greetings and Salutations. Firstly, regarding the next chapter of Hypothetically Speaking. I will be posting the next chapter on Thursday. Look for it then, but don't stop coming back for further updates, poems, stories, etc.

A bit of pushing for myself, I have posted a link for one of my side projects The Jovial Brittanians as its own page, and would like to encourage you to check it out. It was a project I attempted a while back, to have a serial format story, where the audience could determine where the action went (kind of like those old/new choose your own adventure books.) I would love to get the project restarted, but as with all things, it depends on readers, and that one I will not resume until I get at least 10 votes on where the story should go.

Now then, on to a discussion on voice. Let's start with a visual example. Well, audio but also visual.

This, for those who don't know, is the song Hurt by Nine Inch Nails. I'd like to encourage you to listen to it if you've never listened to the song, or if you have, then listen to it again. Cause it's a good song.

Now then, a comparison.

 

The second version is by Johnny Cash, and is generally regarded as the better of the two. So much so that Trent Reznor himself has admitted that he now acknowledges Hurt as Johnny Cash's song. But this isn't a discussion on who does a better version of Hurt. It's a discussion on voice.

When listening to the two songs, notice how the song takes on a different meaning when sung by the two musicians? If you really pay attention, you might have noticed that Johnny changes one of the lyrics to "Crown of Thorns," as opposed to the NIN "Crown of Shit." Notice how just the difference in the tonality of their voice changes things?

What I'm trying to say and demonstrate with a fairly obvious example, is that voice in art is huge. And it's not just important in music. It is huge with regards to writing.

Voice is one of the hardest things to do well, because it requires consistency, it requires practice, it requires editing, and it requires actually being able to shift your voice around. There's a reason this blog sounds like it's me speaking, and it's not just because I type out the first thing that comes to mind. It has to do with a long history of developing my "blog" voice (which is different from my letter writing voice, or my poet voice or...) and figuring out how to manipulate the physical placement of my words to create that voice. I'll shift my voice in writing now just to demonstrate how this could be completely different.

Dear Reader,

It is a pleasure to find you considering the nature of my words as opposed to simply passing over them contemptuously for the latest blog relating to Justin Bieber or a Metal band with an unpronounceable name. It is not simply for the pleasure of spreading the words which I write that I maintain this literary space, but a true enjoyment of attempting to have discussions with others over a digital space that I...

You get the idea.

The above was written in my letter writing voice, which you can see is very cordial, sophisticated, and a little snobby. But it's what I do when I write letters because I want a different voice than in here. You can also see my different voices in my writing which I'm going to once again urge you to read. My poet voice is very different from the narrator in Hypothetically Speaking. Or the characters, which you'll hear more of in Chapterella 2. And that narrator is different than the one I maintain in The Jovial Brittanians.

And with all of this discussion on voice, I'd love to hear your voices as well. Comments on my voice discussion? Concerns about my self promotion? Just want to talk about talking? Leave some comments and let's get a discussion going. Cause you can't have a discussion without voices. And I'm out.

Spring Break

For many schools today begins the awesomeness that is Spring Break. Who couldn't celebrate? This guy. But that's a completely different point which revolves around work and payment. So for the sake of arguing, we're all happy it's Spring Break.

As everyone prepares to launch into vacations to every corner of the world, I thought I might throw in another recommendation for you. Read a book!

With all of the travel time, surely there can be a few moments where phones get put down, game boys put away, and a great book might just hit whatever spot needs hitting. You can even listen to music while you do it and no one can complain! Unless you listen to your music as loud as I do...

I'm not saying read the library out of every book but I do have to encourage at least some reading. Cause hey...it's my job. Now here's some music to set off the break. It always reminds me of the Great Gatsby.

An Adventure In...

Greetings and Salutations. As the first blog post of what can only be called an experiment, I'm just going to be quick and establishing. Like a good opening scene.

This is not my first blog, nor my last. The days of a blog being pretty much just a diary open to discussion with the world are long past, though I'm sure things like Livejournal and the like are still out there. But blogging now is more about networking and like any good network, wasting time on the writing end isn't wise at this stage.

What can you expect from me? Monday's and Thursday's I'm going to talk about something. What is a mystery, though I'm sure themes will develop. It will mainly be literary or education in it's orientation, though never about any institutions I might work for. For today, having set up the blog, and set the first chapter of my novel to be judged by the world, I will simply be short and sweet. Coming this Monday, I'll open with an extended theme, but you'll have to wait until then to find out what it is. If you find yourself reading this, either by chance or on purpose, let me just welcome you and say: Enjoy.

And if you find yourself bored, why not check this out?