Structure in my Writing

Structure in my writing.  I tried to write an outline for one of my stories once.  I used the Hero’s Journey by the late great Joseph Campbell.  I then shuffled a Tarot deck and drew cards to help me structure the plot.  But I didn’t WANT to outline.  What I wanted to do was write the story.  I’ve read a slew of books about writing, and the basic premise is to ask two questions:  What does my character want?  What or who is keeping hir from getting it?  So I guess my books grow organically from this premise.  I have it in mind when I start and it’s the overarching story, and all the other characters have goals they want to reach, but something or someone is keeping those characters from attaining it.  In a trilogy of novels which is coming out sometime, one of the characters, Master Sergeant Gorsuch wants his men to reach their enemies’ nest and destroy it, but there are many obstacles they must overcome.  The Empress wants the people of her realm to be prosperous and happy.  What will she have to do in order to attain her goal?  

Another structural element I use is the chapter.  I use it because very often the story I’m writing is for either NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) or one of the Camp NaNoWriMos, I use the division of the chapter to help me keep track of my word count, which is very important when you are trying for a word goal for the day.  My word goal is usually 2000.  It’s easier for me to count if I round up.   This enables me to almost have a little short story within the novel.This time though, I got too stressed out, so had to drop out of Camp NaNo.   I readied several manuscripts for submission, then returned to writing my WIP with renewed vigor.  Now that I was no longer writing it for the competition, I could relax and write until the words for that way ran out.  I have a tee shirt that reads:”The voices are back.  Excellent.”  That’s how I write.  A voice in my head tells me what to write.  Actually, I dictate, because I have a Dragon, which is voice recognition software.  I’d been dreaming of it for decades, so when the opportunity came along to nab one, I took it.  It cuts my actual typing time down by at least a half.  It doesn’t eliminate it completely, because I must have a strange accent or something, because it renders a lot of my speech as gobbledygook.  I was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is one of the centers for broadcast journalism, because we have no regional accent.  We speak perfect American Standard English, and this is how I was taught to speak my native language.  

Some of the words I must type are exotic, either because they are terms of art, or I made them up out of whole cloth because they are the names of aliens.  But back to structure.  We have the basic premise, which is what does the character want and what will keep hir from getting it, and the story within a story.  

Rita

The Divide between Reason and Emotion

The divide between reason and emotion, and how it has impacted my creativity, that is, my writing.  I write speculative fiction. My SciFi tends to be more science fantasy than Science fiction because I’m always trying to skirt around certain laws of space and time that in today’s science are inescapable.  Here is where the divide between reason (scientific facts) and emotion (my trying to skirt about the laws of astrophysics) comes in. From being a regular viewer of the Science Channel’s How the Universe Works every Monday evening to collecting a year’s worth of Scientific American, I have garnered a little scientific knowledge, and you know what they say about a little knowledge.  How can I bend those laws without breaking them? One way I do it is to either set my story thousands of years in the future, or have a civilization so advanced that they’ve found ways around those seemingly unbreakable laws of physics.  There are some ways, for example, of breaking the universal speed law, i.e. the speed of light. There is a particle that goes faster than the speed of light. They discovered that in the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland. Now to harness that and build an engine around it.   

Next there are the mechanics of writing (reason), and expressing my characters' emotions in any given scene.  I use the mechanics of putting one word in front of another, plus what I know about psychology (reason) to express my characters’ feelings.  Sometimes, and especially if I want to spice things up with some drama, I can get them into a real dust up. What fun! If you haven’t guessed by now, I am what used to be called a pantster, but which I prefer to be called a discovery writer, that is, I discover the story as I go along writing.  I’ve tried to outline, honestly I have, but it just makes me want to dig in and write the story.  

That’s another way in which the divide between reason (or as Spock would say, “logic”) and emotion has impacted my writing.  The Reason or Logic part of my mind says “Outline. Plot everything out. Know what your character is going to do before s/he does it.”  But the Emotion or passionate part of my mind says “Write it! Never mind the outline or those other silly sheets of paper! Tell the story!  Get it all down before you forget it!”  

What I know about brain science is that my emotions are chemical reactions, combined with 1.5 volts of electrical charge, come together to form an idea.  I am left-handed, so the halves of my brain are reversed, so that the logical, language-based, sequential side of my brain is the right side, while the creative holistic part of my brain is the left side, where most people’s logic centers are.    Truly is it said that we southpaws are the only ones in our right minds. The right side likes to get everything, all my thoughts organized in some logical rational way. The left side, highly influenced by my emotions, just wants to go for it.

What I’m waiting on now are the edits to Takuhi’s Nightmare and Takuhi’s Daydream so we can get the trilogy released soon.  Be looking for it on your favorite platform.  Whatever news I have on it you will be the next to know.  See you next week!  

Rita 

Is It Despair or Excitement Which Drives Me to Write in Today's World?

That’s an excellent question.  Those of you who have been following this blog know that I am a writer of speculative fiction.  This includes: Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror, Science Fiction and Science Fantasy. There may be some other subgenres which should be included, but I couldn’t remember them.  I write for the same reason I read; to escape. So I guess part of my answer to that question would have to be at least partially that I write out of despair.  

But instead of writing some dreary sort of claptrap like Franz Kafka’s in which the main character is turned into a disgusting pest that is almost impossible to be finally and fully rid of, I prefer to create a reality in which the bad guys are vanquished by a very idealized version of myself in a world (or space) where such things as getting rid of the bad guys are not only possible, but downright probable and plausible.  Here is where the excitement comes in. It is not a world of universe of black and white or even shades of gray, but a brightly colored landscape full of flowers and birds and other fantastical creatures. Having grown up at a time when most of the movies I saw were in blazing Technicolor, and the fact that when I dream, I dream in color. I’m always very conscious of the color something or someone is. The characters in my stories are often the brighter shades of the rainbow, going beyond black, brown brick red, golden, olive or pinkish-beige to blue, green, teal, cherry red, purple, or orange.  These are my alien characters, who have names I create with my Scrabble tiles. I once met a woman who really had blue skin. It was an after effect of a medication she had been given as a young girl to correct some physical condition she had had back then. She was Evangeline Walton, the author of four books I have in my library to this day, and we had a most interesting talk. I was working security to pay my way into a fantasy convention, and it was my job to keep her from being mobbed by her fans. She was charming and affable, and very easy to get along with. She was also very much an introvert, as I suppose most of us writers are, to a greater or lesser degree.  Writing fantasy or Scifi is by and large a solitary activity, and one must be comfortable staying by oneself for long periods of time. But the payoff is no one is teasing you, or tormenting you. No one is playing keep away with your property, as happened to many of us when we were young. We grew to value our own company, and the worlds and characters we created, because that made us gods and goddesses.  

So there is the despair and  the excitement.  The despair comes from realizing there are such cruel people in the world, many of whom either run the world or manipulate the world in order to subjugate and torment those whom they deem as lesser than they.  The excitement comes from realizing that the imagination is as big as the universe, and within it, one has divine powers to create, and like Shiva, to destroy whatever and whomever one Wills to.