Patrice Sarath's Blog, page 25

TV and storytelling; you could learn a few things

Connie Britton. Mrs. Coach gets a new gig as Rayna James, country star.

Downton Abbey. Once Upon a Time. Nashville. These three shows are taking storytelling to some pretty grand heights. Granted, Downton has been shoddy this season, which is a shame, because the spectacular first season was so well done, it has been hard to watch how far it has come down in the world. The thing is, the reason Downton is faltering is the same reason Once Upon a Time and Nashville are consistently delivering the goods. That is, it has stopped doing what OUAT and Nashville are doing so well.

I am convinced that before a single page was written for OUAT and Nashville, the characters were fully fleshed out, including their complex relationships with one another. In Nashville, you could see the diagramming that goes on. To take just one example, Deacon is the alcoholic ex of superstar Rayna James, father of one of her daughters, first love, and tortured musical genius. He becomes the lead guitarist, lover, and mentor/father figure of up-and-coming Juliette Barnes, the predatory yet vulnerable country superstar…

In OUAT, there was the fun of figuring out each fairytale character and their analog in the real world. The story lines have been puzzles that the reader gets to deconstruct and solve. Half the fun is figuring out who is who in each world. It’s gotten a little wonky here and there, but the overall mechanism works, because the writers all know the back story they are doling out in delicious bites throughout the season. Every fan has a moment when they realize — OMG, that’s X from that fairy tale! (My favorite were the fairies — you just know in the writers room someone blurted out that the fairies are the nuns and everyone cackled with glee.)

Where Downton Abbey falls short is that the first season was clearly a fit of genius from one mind — and then the production crew didn’t know what to do with these people. They didn’t know anything about them, so the storylines became more and more preposterous. The best example of this is Lady Edith — poor girl doesn’t know from moment to moment if she is a backstabbing witch, a wholly competent nurse, a willing adulteress, an independent woman, a lovesick girl…and now she’s a suffragette and political thinker, as if the cause of suffrage is only taken up by wealthy spinsters who have nothing better to do.

I’ve always been a pantser, but after seeing the meticulous character and plot work that has gone into these shows I’ve started to reconsider. Yes, outlining is hard, but after seeing what these shows can do, when it’s clear that nothing was written until the characters and setting were developed, makes me think the writing will go a lot more smoothly. One of the things that has always made me hesitant about outlining is that I worry that it won’t leave room for serendipity. Now I’m beginning to think that there’s still an opening for the epiphany — it just comes in the proposal or the outline.

None of these shows are perfect. They are, however, stellar examples of some wonderful storytelling. And that’s what it’s all about, no matter the medium.

 

 

The post TV and storytelling; you could learn a few things appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Upcoming appearances — Austin, Pflugerville, Houston

I will be at the Pflugerville Community Library in Pflugerville this weekend for the Romance Readers Social. I will be joining authors Julie Kenner and April Kihlstrom for a celebration of all things romance. Please join us!

Romance Readers Social February 9

On Saturday, February 9 love is in the air with a Romance Readers Social at the Pflugerville Public Library, 1008 W Pfluger Street from 2 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Join other romance novel enthusiasts for readings, paperback swap and photo booth fun. Confirmed authors include April Kilstrom, Julie Kenner, and Patrice Sarath. Planned games include Match the Romance Novel Cover to the Title and Create Your Own Romance Novel Title. By filling out an “author passport” guests can enter their name for drawings for gift cards, gift baskets, and Longhorns basketball tickets. For the paperback swap, people can bring their own books to swap with others at the event and the library will also have a few boxes of romance book donations to give out!

And then for April 5-6 I will be at the Houston Writers Guild Annual Conference, doing a class on worldbuilding.

I’m also conducting a worldbuilding workshop for the Writers League of Texas on February 23. For more information, please check out the the Writers League.

 

 

 

 

 

The post Upcoming appearances — Austin, Pflugerville, Houston appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Review – Memories of Gravity

A Smart Bitches Trashy Books review of “Memories of Gravity,” which appeared in The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance. As always, they are tough graders, but they liked my story, yay!

I feel conflicted though, because the reviewer reeaally didn’t like the rest of the anthology except for a handful of stories. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

I didn’t think any of these stories rose above a “B” grade, but the standouts included the two stories by Linnea Sinclair, the ghost story “Memories of Gravity”, by Patrice Sarath, “Fade Away and Radiate”, by Michele Lang, and “In The Interest of Security” by Regan Black.  I also found that “Red Dawn”, by Delilah Devlin, sort of stuck in my head.  It ends abruptly but I liked the characters and they stayed with me long after I read the story.

In the meantime (there’s always a meantime) I am just over 59,000 words on Bandit Girls. The game’s afoot, there’s plotting, counterplotting, double-crossing, cross-dressing, mistaken identity, and pistols at dawn. This is going to be fun.

 

 

The post Review – Memories of Gravity appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Pride & Prejudice 200th anniversary

“IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

One of the finest novel openings in the English language, Pride & Prejudice charms from the very first page. Thank you, Miss Austen, for your fine work in illustrating your life and times. When I first started reading Austen, it was for the romance. I stayed for how she depicts her society and culture in a way that goes beneath the trappings of the early 19th century English middle-class society and makes it universal. (Although it can be argued that what she was really doing was describing what it was like to be in middle school, 200 years before it was invented).

Note: for fans of the movies, these are costumes from the BBC miniseries Emma, which were on display at Chawton House a few years ago when I visited in 2010.

The post Pride & Prejudice 200th anniversary appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

A bit of childhood — finding Robb White

I was at Epoch for a writing sprint with Rebecca Schwarz, and afterwards I went over to Blue Velvet to window shop because they weren’t open yet, the slackers. In the window artfully arrayed were three books. One was Flash, about a mustang, which yes, I had read. There was a vintage Harlequin too, and then off to the right, the treasure, the grand prize, the book for which the heavens opened and the angels cried hosanna! Robb White’s Secret Sea.

Naturally I came back later when they opened and plunked down 50 cents for a piece of my childhood.

I read this very same edition. It’s a Scholastic. I devoured Robb White‘s books as a kid. He’s the Heinlein of the sea. (Both were Navy; appear to be contemporaries; does anyone know if they knew of one another?) When I write short, declarative sentences like this, and throw in random observations, it is obvious how excited I am about this.

Finding this book makes today a good day, and that’s even after the 1,000 words today and the 2,000 yesterday.

The post A bit of childhood — finding Robb White appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

How to get the most out of a writers weekend

How do solitary writers function at writers retreats?

The first time I went to the Hepcats Writers Retreat I didn’t get a lot accomplished. There were plenty of distractions — friends I hadn’t seen in ages because we live in different towns and only get together at conventions; new friends; and a new environment to check out. I also was beginning a new project, and starting is always a barrier to progress. In fact, none of what I did last year will likely make it into a new book, although nothing is ever wasted. It’s just backstory.

I was determined not to let that happen this year and I was largely successful.

This year, I went in with a plan. I had a project that I’ve been working on quite steadily, and I knew what I wanted to accomplish in terms of getting scenes down.

I knew I would have limited time; I only have one full day of writing, as the drive up to Oklahoma is roughly six hours. So I made sure that I would start writing on Friday night, after the socializing was done (and before the drinking got well underway). I didn’t want to rack up word count that first night, but it was crucial in establishing what I was here for. In this case, editing the previous day’s work is usually a good way to get me into the right mindframe for a productive writing session.

I set an intention. This is something I’ve learned from my yoga practice. Mindfully establish what you want to accomplish from that day’s yoga session, and work toward that. In yoga, it may be setting one’s mood for the day or something as pragmatic as working on loosening up a sore joint. My writing intention was to get down at least 2,600 words and ideally 4,000. I ended up with close to 4,000 although I didn’t count exactly; I did a lot of editing to seed in some foreshadowing.

I didn’t make it a death march, but I went outside my comfort zone in making myself keep my writing commitment. There were a few times when I wanted to stop and take a break, but I knew if I did I would probably not get back into the work. So I kept going, promising myself that dinner would be my reward (and not to make you jealous, but OMG, dinner was HELL YES A REWARD!).

I knew there was one thing I wanted to do outside of writing that weekend, and that was visiting the museum on campus. At first that was going to be my reward for being disciplined but I changed my mind and went for a couple of hours first thing after arriving and checking in. It was the right decision. Since this was part of my goal for the weekend — visit the museum, get inspiration from the collection, and visit dinosaurs and inspect arrowheads — I accomplished one of the objectives of the weekend. Nothing succeeds like success.

Similarly, although it was not exactly one of my goals, I made time for a walk around campus. Walking, decompressing, just plain moving, is important to me. It lets me clear my head, get the lungs and the heart and the muscles going, and it gives me a bit of an endorphin fix. The University of Oklahoma campus is rather stately in a Midwestern university kind of way; manicured lawns, brick (lots of brick) buildings, pragmatic architecture, and well-kept sidewalks with lovely streetlamps. It was freezing unfortunately, but I thought ahead and brought my wool coat and was comfortable. But man. Freezing.

A writers weekend can be a tremendous boost, because writers are such solitary creatures. There’s lots of socializing and writerly talk and commiseration, and yes, plenty of drinking (although I’m pretty much a lightweight). As I found out, it can be very distracting, and it can be easy to get off track if you aren’t careful. This year, just by going in with a plan and a set of intentions — this is what I’m working on and this is what I want to accomplish — I made a great deal of progress compared to last year.

So how do you plan for your writers weekends?

 

The post How to get the most out of a writers weekend appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Hepcats Writers Retreat

The 2013 Hepcats Writers Retreat. There may have been some alcohol involved.

This weekend was the Hepcats Writers Retreat run by the Heroic Fantasy Quarterly editorial staff. This year I managed to write nearly 4,000 words over the weekend, making it entirely successful for that reason alone. Retreat attendees all had different goals — in some cases, outlining a new work, a husband-and-wife collaboration that bore some great fruit, plenty of editing, and lots of words.

Also, marvelous food, excellent conversation, much laughter, and overall some good times.

After a six-hour drive and checking in to the bungalows, I decided to treat myself to an afternoon at the natural history museum on the OU campus. For five bucks I got dinosaurs, arrowheads, and Oklahoma history. Seriously awesome. They have this gigantic dinosaur head (a Triceratops -type dinosaur) that had been stored under the OU stadium for years and now is on display. Also, now I know the difference between Clovis points and Folsom point arrowheads.

Then it was time to workshop. The first night I got about 300 words down on Bandit Girls, mostly backfilling what I needed to do.

Then Saturday, I hunkered down and wrote. A cold front blew in, so any outside temptations were vanquished immediately, and I just stayed head down and wrote. At dinner, we all gathered to eat some amazing food (coq au vin, white beans and rosemary, scalloped potatoes, you know, the usual poor writer fare), drink, tell tales, and read from our work.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend with plenty of progress. I’m now at about 46,000 words, which puts me at roughly the half-way mark.

Go, Hepcats!

The post Hepcats Writers Retreat appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Sequence a Science Fiction Writer

They’ve met the original goal — now help them meet their stretch goals, because the extra funds will help Jay meet medical expenses.

Herewith the details:

 

Sequence a Science Fiction Writer

Organizer:

Beneficiary: Jay Lake

The Overview

Jay Lake is an award-winning American author of ten science fiction novels and over 300 short stories. He is also one of more than a million Americans who have colon cancer. Diagnosed in April, 2008, Jay’s cancer has progressed from a single tumor to metastatic disease affecting the lung and liver, recurring after multiple surgeries and chemotherapy courses, and multiplying from single tumor presentations to multiple tumors presentations. Jay is now in his fourth round of chemotherapy, but it’s not clear that it’s working, and his doctors have little to go on in terms of advising further courses of treatment for him. In short, things are not looking good for Jay. Not at all.

However, a new technology is becoming available—one that may offer his doctors a better option for treating the cancer. We’re trying to raise funds to allow Jay to have whole genome sequencing.There is a small possibility that the results of such a test, which is more comprehensive than conventional genetic testing of tumors, may suggest a treatment path that Jay’s doctor’s may not have considered, and that could be life saving. It’s a really small chance, and Jay knows that.

 

The post Sequence a Science Fiction Writer appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

Jay Lake documentary on Kickstarter

If you read this blog and you are coming from the science fiction and fantasy side of things, you probably already know that Jay Lake, a well-known science fiction author, has been battling cancer for several years. Donnie Reynolds of Waterloo Productions has been filming a documentary on Jay’s struggle, and has just launched a Kickstarter to raise funds to finish the project.

Jay’s story is not an easy one. He’s been forthright about his cancer, which has been robbing him of time and energy and health for years. Waterloo takes an unflinching look at his life and the lives of his family, especially his daughter, Bronwyn. This film is almost as much about her as it is about Jay.

Here’s more information.

Lakeside by Waterloo Productions

The post Jay Lake documentary on Kickstarter appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.

My 2013 schedule

I’ve updated my schedule for 2013. I am going to be busy this year, with classes, conventions, and workshops. In particular, the Writers’ League of Texas is holding a “No Excuses” writing panel on January 17 at BookPeople. It’s free and open to the public. Join me and several other writers for encouragement and advice.

“No Excuses: How to Write No Matter What!”

Think you don’t have enough time, aren’t prepared, or don’t have the tools to start (or finish) your writing project? Think again. Come ready to share your reasons for not writing and let our panel of experts help you find solutions.

Thursday, January 17, 7 PM

BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd., third floor

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

 

The post My 2013 schedule appeared first on Author Patrice Sarath.