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How I write

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 1 Apr 2015, 19:11

I've abandoned the computer screen and QWERTY keyboard for writing; I think better pen to paper - in my case ink pen to refill pad.

I am using notes from Kurt Vonnegut on story shape, from Susannah Waters on scene building tips and cheats and from the zoologist and anthropologist Desmond Morris who wrote 'Man Watching'.

Between them I've been standing back from my efforts of the last few months to try to see the wood from the jungle; to give it some order, like a closely managed English deciduous copse rather than a wild and vast forest.

There is masses online to feed you with tips, hints and cheats.

And through things like the BBC Writers' Room and a regional arts organisation, such as New Writing South, in my case, ample opportunities to have a go at being published or produced.

Meanwhile, despite the number of variations I've had on 'The Form Photo' I feel there is a shape worth cutting from the growth I have laid down.

From Kurt Vonnegut I take and overlap two story shapes - am I allowed to do that? Robbie, follows the 'man in the whole' pattern - unable to thrive in the rarified wealth of her 'sinks' with some relief into a few more modest years living with his maternal grandparents. While Kizzy, is a Cinderella story shape - it has to be as she comes from some a deprived background: on the round, illiterate, abused and poor. She makes a few bids at escape and is then rescued through adoption. Any of this make sense? It does to me. Simplified it is a 'Boy meets Girl story' where Kizzy and Robbie meet and become fond of each other as kids ... then meet again in the later teens but she says she wants nothing to do with him unless he proves himself in various ways for her.

I'm posting all draft of my current writing in 'Start Writing Fiction.' 

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The shape of stories

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 30 Mar 2015, 11:13
From Writing

Kurt Vonnegut's wanted to write an MA thesis on the common shapes of stories: he was told it was too simple. He can be found in various interviews and presentations waxing lyrical about the shape stories take.

His are: 1) Cinderella: needs no elaboration. Applies to implemental steps of progress, radical failure then absolute glory.

2) Boy Meets Girl similar: we know it. Applies to any story of desire for something, its loss, then recovery. Also romcom territory. 

3) Man in a Whole: things go bad, then you get out of your whole. Shawshank Redemtion. Martian. Haruki Murakami wrote a novel in which the protagonist was really down a well much of the time. I feel I'm most inclined to relate to and to write this one.

4) New Testament: like Cinderella–gifted things, which are then taken away before being returned with interest.

5) Old Testament: gifted things that are taken away forever.

6) Creation Stories: God made Earth in seven days ...

7) From Bad to Worse: And it never gets better. Says it all. Fallen.

8) Which Way Is Up: That ambiguity in life where we don't know what is good or bad from actions and events. Probably the hardest to sustain. Hamlet. 

What you get if you use a plot generator smile

 Have a go with Plot Generator

Of far better use is TV Tropes, which is a cross-media analysis of story types, with examples and links to the authors. 

 

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Writers on writing

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 21 Nov 2012, 05:36

Writers on writing

uhttp://www.nsrider.com/quotes/writing.htm

 

Kurt Vonnegut: 8 Basics of Creative Writing

 

http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/538


Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut created some of the most outrageously memorable novels of our time, such as Cat’s CradleBreakfast Of Champions, and Slaughterhouse Five. His work is a mesh of contradictions: both science fiction and literary, dark and funny, classic and counter-culture, warm-blooded and very cool. And it’s all completely unique.

 

With his customary wisdom and wit, Vonnegut put forth 8 basics of what he calls Creative Writing 101: *

 

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

 

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.

 

* From the preface to Vonnegut’s short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box

Writing Tips from the Masters

http://www.writingclasses.com/InformationPages/index.php/PageID/269

REFERENCE

Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.


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