Taven Moore's Blog, page 20

Outlining Tips 3 – Plotcritical vs Plotconvenient

Perry (I believe) coined the phrase “plotconvenient” and I liked it so much I gave it a sibling. “Plotcritical”.

Plotconvenient

Plotconvenience is epitomized by the phrase, “Well, isn’t that CONVEEEEENIENT.” Often said with a scoff, rolled eyes, and possibly a sneer. (Only experienced snarkers should attempt all of these indicators of disdain at the same time. You have been warned. Perry is the only person skilled enough to encompass all of them with a single two-hands-in-the-air gesture.)

Some of my favorite stories have some AWFULLY plotconvenient moments in them. There is such a thing as happy coincidence or fate or luck.

Honestly, if you think about it hard enough, EVERY mystery solved is very plotconvenient. Much like “Mary Sue” or a dozen other literary no-no’s, this one’s more of a scale than it is a lightswitch.

As such, it becomes dratted difficult to determine when you’re writing something that’s a little TOO plotconvenient.

*Some general rules: *

* Never ever break worldbuilding to make things convenient for your story.

* Avoid plot points that HAPPEN TO your character. Instead, make plot points CAUSED BY your character.

* Limit the number of events that happen because of luck. A single chance meeting with a key secondary character is one thing, but more than that starts stretching your audience’s belief

* Deus ex Machina are, by their very nature, plot convenient. Any previously-unheard-of solution to a problem is plotconvenience at its worst.

Some recent plotconvenience I’ve rolled my eyes at:

* A god delivering key equipment to a hero to help them win the final battle

* An unexplained ability to tinker with people’s memories

* An off switch on the side of a bomb (tension-killer, much?)

* (I tried to find a non spoilery way to say this and failed. X-Men Days of Future Past is CHOCK FULL of plotconvenience)

* EVERY GORRAM TIME TRAVEL STORY IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. (not that I’m bitter. or biased.)

NOTE: It’s not plot convenience if it’s introduced as part of the ruleset!

Is it CONVEEEEENIENT that Charlotte can write words in her web? Heck yes it is. But it’s introduced to us as a special ability she can do early in the story. It’s part of the entire PREMISE of the book, and thus it neatly circumvents plotconvenience.

Plotcritical

Plotcritical events, on the other hand, are things REQUIRED for the plot to move forward and make sense. Most of the stuff we talked about in the last blog post (the one about SECRETS) are going to be plotcritical events.

You have a story about a boy who steals a dragon egg and secretly trains it to fight? Then the stealing of the egg, the events of the training, and the final fight are all plotcritical events. (That’d be the plot of Dragon’s Blood, by the way)

Your plotcritical events should be both IMPORTANT and SURPRISING.

That’s right. You need to surprise your characters. Shock them. Keep them guessing and moving (and hopefully keep the reader guessing right along with them).

Even adventures need to be surprising. You can’t have the boy warrior train to defeat the evil wizard warlord … and he trains, and then he fights and he wins. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Add some twists and turns in there for pity’s sake!

You have to look at each chapter and know, absolutely KNOW, that you couldn’t possibly cut it because something super important happened in it. Something without which your story doesn’t work.

You may have to rewrite or put that plot point somewhere else, but at least you know your chapter MATTERED. And NOT just for character development.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IS NEVER PLOTCRITICAL.

It’s CHARACTER critical, and very important, but if the ONLY reason you have a chapter is for character development, you’re missing the PLOT.

Believe it or not, you can develop characters alongside plot development. Too many writers focus on character at the expense of plot.

Using These For Scenes

Every. Single. Scene. must be plotcritical.

Avoid plotconvenience like the plague it is, and EMBRACE plotcritical thinking.

If you’ve got two major plot events in your outline that are separated by three whole chapters in which you’ve got nothing planned?

Add some plotcritical events in there! Doesn’t matter if they’re B-story plotcritical or primary plot — the important thing is that you don’t have your character sitting pensively on a balcony, mulling over her day or something equally boring which doesn’t have any impact on the overall storyline.

Sound difficult? Maybe a little exhausting?

If you’re writing for the masses, you’ve got to amp it up a bit. This is the best lesson I learned while reading the first Dresden Files book.

You can slow down, but you can NEVER stop. Every chapter amps to the ending.

Question for You

What are some examples you can think of for plotconvenient stuff you’ve seen in movies, tv, or books?

Related posts:

Outlining Tips 2 – Secrets
Outlining Tips 1 – Beat Sheet
Outlining Woes

[Perry] Effective Breaks from Routine

Routine is an interesting thing.

It has a strength and gravity that you almost never realize…until you take a sudden break from the routine and the impact of that break makes you realize just how much the routine had been influencing you.

I see your eyes glazing over already so let’s showcase some more concrete examples.

Let’s say that you buy a cup of coffee, every morning without fail. You drink down this tall, dark cuppa joe within an hour of waking up.

Rain or shine, weekday or weekend, you always start your day with a large cup of coffee.

Then? One day? You don’t get to has that coffee. You go COFFEE-LESS.

Some of you are sitting there going “so what?”

But? I can hear Tami’s GASP of shock and OUTRAGE from all the way up here in Canadia.

See, a routine has…a gravity.

You get sucked into it. You just go along with it and you stop thinking about it after a while because it’s something that happens all the time.

That is…you go along with it until you BREAK the routine.

And once a routine has been broken? That’s when you realize just how ingrained that routine had become. You realize how much a routine means to you by the impact that’s gained by breaking it.

Literary Applications

There are ways that you can use this in your writing and creative endeavors.

See, I’ve been watching a show called Castle recently.

In it, the main characters, Richard Castle and Kate Beckett solve crimes together.

The routine?

They almost always call each other by their last names.

I’m not entirely sure where or why that began, maybe it was in the way they were introduced.

But wherever they go, whatever they’re doing, he always calls her Beckett (as does most of the cast), and she always calls him Castle.

This built up and settled in my bones.

He was Castle. She was Beckett.

Oh, occasionally, to some other characters (Castle’s mother, Kate’s boyfriend), they were referred to by their first names. But as most of the show revolved around the interactions between Castle and Beckett, that’s how I identified the characters in my head, as Castle and Beckett.

This is the routine. This is how it always is and soon, you stop thinking about it.

…Until they BREAK the routine.

In one of the episodes, well into the third season, Castle and Beckett are caught in a life-threatening situation together. Not immediate danger, but they’re slowly dying sort of thing.

There’s a slow, quiet conversation. There’s a lot of emotion behind the words. Some heartfelt feelings coming through…and he calls her by her first name.

I was FLOORED.

There was a lot of weight behind the use of her name. It’s just a name…and it’s been used by many other characters, but almost NEVER by him.

And then he does.

And the breaking of the routine, the use of her first name served as a magnifying glass to all of the things he was trying to tell her.

It had all of the impact of a lightning bolt, heightened by the way the episode ends on a cliffhanger.

And more routine breaking? The next episode starts with the title screen of the show…but this time? The title of the show is in white letters instead of the customary red. And where there’s normally a little musical sting with the title, it’s absent. Nothing but silence.

STRIKING!

IMPACT!

All from breaking a long-standing routine, just a tiny bit, at a critical moment.

Takeaway

Think of any routine that you build up in your works like a dam. It blocks up the water behind it.

You don’t always have to break that routine. As a matter of fact, a lot of the time, you really want to keep that dam in place.

But now and then? When you really need to do it, you could take that dam down, break the routine, and have all of that pent up emotional water lend their weight to a scene.

You need to be careful, ever so careful, with this decision.

Too many of these moments and you rob ALL of them of their impact.

No, you need to save them up. Hoard them like a dragon with its gold and let it loose only, ONLY when the situation is dire. When you want your audience to bleed with your characters instead of simply crying for them.

Pick just the right moment and the right routine to break? And you can bring all of that emotion crashing down on your reader’s head like Maxwell’s silver hammer.

And that? Can be a lovely thing indeed.

 

Related posts:

[Perry] You Are the Man!
[Perry] The Delicate Art of Fanfiction
[Perry] A Tale of Two Movies

[Anne] 100 Words Throwdown

She had felt alone and lost for a long time. Abandoned and alone. She spent most of her days quietly thinking. Lonely and cold.

The gentleman was preparing her tea, as she marveled at the picture she held in her hands. Placing the tea in front of her, she turned and woefully said, “That is a very lucky woman to have married such a strong, handsome man.”

“He looks very in love with her, doesn’t he, Dorothy?”

She wondered when she had told him her name and never noticed when he placed the wedding picture between all the family photographs.

Related posts:

[Anne] The Words We Use Are Powerful
[Anne] Spring Break
[Anne] Equestrian Sports

What is Best in Life?

Conan’s answer is well known, but I leave it out here because I guarantee there are folks in the audience who want to add it in a comment. You know you do. Don’t fight it. ^_^

What is best in life for YOU?

Stop and think about it. REALLY think about it.

We all know the things that we’re supposed to say are best in life. The things we’re expected to say. Family, church, work, etc.

But that’s not always the full, complete truth, is it?

We may have a great many things which bring joy and meaning and purpose and fulfillment to our lives. What I’m talking about is different. I’m talking about something that rings clear as a bell, which sings through your very soul and makes you glad to be alive just so you can experience that one thing.

My Best-In-Life trumps reading and writing and roller coasters and ice cream and fresh cookies warm out of the oven. My Best-In-Life are moments of such crystal perfection that it seems impossible that others may live their entire lives without this light in them.

What is best is life for YOU, dear readers? No need to reply with your best in life in the comments — often they are very private moments that retain magic by staying secret.

I want you to know it, though. Know it and hold that thought to your heart because sometimes even the smallest, simplest things in your life can pull you through dark times.

Related posts:

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More To Life Than Writing
When Life Hands You A Steampunk Convention …

Outlining Tips 2 – Secrets

Infodumps are Bad

An infodump can be as obvious as a 30 page dissertation on the history of your world, to as subtle (yet still boring) as a character beginning a lecture with, “As you know, Bob –”

The difficult thing about infodumps isn’t necessarily spotting them? It’s finding a way to break that mountain down into pebbles and feed the information to the reader ever-so-slowly.

This is true not just of worldbuilding things (history and culture) but also of your plot.

You don’t want to be 3/4 of the way through the story without introducing the villain or giving the characters significant plot information. That’s how you end up having your characters learn all of their significant plot information out of a book or from a single conversation with someone.

It’s boring.

What’s FUN is when the reader reaches that 3/4 mark and they think they know what’s going on, only for you to turn everything on its head and make them go “AH! I should have known!”

Try reading Steelheart for a wonderful example of a story that trickles plot information to you ever-so-slowly while still holding a full hand of cards to its chest. Fun, fun book.

The way you do this is by knowing your secrets.

Secrets are Good

Let’s say you’re writing a murder mystery. You’ve got a pretty obvious big secret there — whodunit.

But you’ve also got secrets about WHY they dunit.

Let’s start with the secret and just start brainstorming here.

SECRET: I shot the Sheriff

- but I did not shoot the deputy

- why did I shoot the sheriff?

- why didn’t I shoot the deputy?

- why did I think I’d get away with it?

I shot the sheriff because she slept with my brother, thus causing the breakup of his marriage.
I didn’t shoot the deputy because he was my brother.
I thought I’d get away with it because nobody else knew of my motive, and because I was “camping” at the time — I’ve got boat rental receipts to prove it.

How do I get found out?

The sheriff let me in, so they must have known who I was and trusted me

I made it look like a robbery, but I didn’t steal the petty cash box — I just took money from her wallet
I’m not a very good aim, so I had to shoot the sheriff multiple times to get the job done. The deputy would have heard the ruckus, but somehow “missed the whole thing”
I was wearing high heels at the time, and slipped in the blood

etc, ad nauseum

Why am I not immediately captured?

plenty of folks with better motive than me. Heck, Sheriff got a death-threat from the McCoy’s, pissed that she’d brought in their son on a rape charge. Ruined his chance at football.

My brother helped plant evidence and lied about what happened
etc, etc

Random, I know, but you see this trail of facts and red herrings all laid out nice and neat-like.

Next thing you do? SMASH IT WITH A HAMMAH.

cough

I mean, you break it into little pieces and sprinkle evidence throughout your chapters.

This works for less obvious mystery-like stories as well. Say you’ve got a pair of archaeologists who discover a forgotten tomb in South America. That tomb has secrets.

Secret: Tomb of Doom(b)

- Tomb is hidden

- why is tomb hidden? HOW is tomb hidden?

- Tomb kills people with … um … giant spiders.

- Spider queen in the center of the tomb has been feeding on magical artifacts

we have to establish hints that the tomb was hidden for a reason — deliberate rocks over the cave mouth or something
scattered skeletons establish that people die here, violently and with no signs of weapons
Maybe heiroglyphs
spiders everywhere. A couple redshirts die unexpectedly in the middle of the night, or disappear while off investigating.

You get the idea. You can break your secrets into clues and red herrings, and shove interesting stuff into every chapter.

If your character needs to learn a fact, figure out HOW they learn it and make that a plot point. (And. Um. Try to make them ACTION plot points. Learning everything from books or flashbacks is boring and infodumpy)

See? Your outline is already starting to look better!

Related posts:

Outlining Tips 1 – Beat Sheet
Outlining Woes
NaNo2010 > Outlining Kit

[Perry] What Jogging Taught Me

Alternative title: The Terrifying Things About Running Nobody Told Me

So I started jogging regularly recently, about a month and a half ago.

This sudden burst of fitness was spurred by a catastrophic event.

The Origin Story

So I was sitting at my desk one night a while ago when I realized that there was a strange pressure against my waist.

So naturally, I looked down, right?

Big mistake.

I discovered, to my absolute horror, that for the very first time in my life? My tummy was protruding juuuuust slightly over my belt buckle.

I know, I know. Just a tiny bit too graphic a horror for so early in the morning, right?

I fully agree, but I need you to be shocked so that you can really understand the mental transformation that followed.

I was always that skinny guy that people hated, you know? The guy who can eat, and eat, and eat whatever the hell he wants and never gain any weight. I never exercised regularly, and to be honest, most of my activities were fairly sedentary.

But it had never been a problem before…till now.

I just had this sudden mental image of me at forty with a pot belly, you know? And it was awful. I couldn’t let that happen. No way, no how.

I realize now that it was pretty much just vapors and megrims. The Incident (yes, it totally deserves to be capitalized) likely was just a combination of being right after dinner and the horrible way I was slouched down in my seat, but still. The spur had been set and I was on my way to discovering the many hazards of jogging.

Preparation

I picked up a couple pairs of nice and comfy running shorts that were on sale.

I was initially just going to go at it (remember, I was horrified at the time) in whatever pairs of shorts I had around the house (mainly of the cargo shorts variety), but my cousin convinced me otherwise.

Hence, running shorts.

My current running shoes weren’t exactly perfect for the role, but they weren’t all that bad either, so not much prep needed there.

Oh, and I also picked up a little stopwatch.

My cousin told me to just use my phone and save the money, but the idea of just carrying around a heavy smartphone for use as a stopwatch while I ran? Not of the good.

Also, I was ready to just run, willy nilly until I threw up or collapsed, but wiser heads prevailed and pressed upon me a running plan to follow for people who’d been sedentary all their lives, like me.

Initial Impressions

So when I started with the first exercise?

Piece of cake, right?

60 seconds of jogging and then 90 seconds of walking to recover? Alternate that? No sweat. No problem.

Yeah…I’m a little ashamed to admit that it was hard at first.

Yes, I was THAT out of shape.

There was this article I’d glanced over just a little before this, about how ‘skinny fat’ people were more at risk of health related troubles than ‘fat fat’ people. Primarily, it was because ‘skinny fat’ people were building up clogged arteries and other similar concerns without the obvious physical signs. So they think they’re okay and healthy…but they’re not. They’re not healthy at all.

They’re just skinny.

That was me.

And boy howdy, did that first week of trying to follow the exercises ever prove that point to me HARD.

But I persevered through that first week. Despite some negative encouragement from people I thought would be happy I was making some kind of effort, despite some joint pains, and despite some other hazards, I kept at it.

Here is some wisdom I’d like to impart to you.

Unexpected Running Hazards

Exhibit A – Geese

Have you ever run in an area populated by these motherfuckers?

Because my preferred path takes me behind a tennis court and around a soccer and baseball field. From there, I cross down into this forested area, complete with a couple bridges over small rivers and other idyllic crap along those lines.

But geese.

Geese everywhere.

When I first started, I never saw the geese themselves, just the green tubes of their poop littered around here and there.

Not too much concern, right? I mean, I take off my glasses when I go for my runs and I don’t wear contacts so my vision’s a bit blurry, but it’s good enough to avoid the goose poo.

Recently?

Geese have been wandering around the trail when I go for my runs some mornings and man…are they ever mean.

The adults will fucking hiss at you and flap their wings a bit and chase you a few steps if you go anywhere near their little kiddies.

The urge to kick that silly goose’s head clean off was overpowering.

Who the hell did it think it was dealing with here?!

But?

Wisdom prevailed. I was suddenly struck by a flash of memory from my days playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past where if you harass a chicken too many times, MANY chickens will converge on you and peck you to death for the insult you’ve provided them.

So I avoided the geese, often taking a little curvy detour onto the grassy areas next to the path.

Let it never be said that video games hadn’t taught me valuable, life-saving lessons as I grew up.

Exhibit B – Gnats

…Or are they called midges? Some sort of small, teeny tiny sort of fly. They hover and swirl around in little groups in the air and they seem to be drawn to the smell of sweat because they’re gorramn everywhere when I go running.

And?

They taste awful.

It’s hard not to breathe through your mouth when jogging, especially if you get as out of breath as I do and those things just swoop in like an airplane coming in for a landing, leading to an extended sequence of hacking and spitting to make sure the little bastard doesn’t go down your gullet.

This?

This is a hazard, let no one tell you otherwise.

Exhibit C – Saliva

I have accidentally inhaled saliva down the wrong way on no less than four occasions since I started this horrendous idea of regular jogging.

Saliva is dangerous, even in its natural environment in your mouth.

Be alert. Arrive alive.

Exhibit D – Old Chinese Men Playing Music

This is not exactly a hazard, but it’s worth mentioning.

There’s a little viewing/seating area on my running path that circles around a large pond.

When I go for my Sunday runs, generally speaking, I tend to go pretty early in the morning, between 6:30-8AM.

When I go early? There’s this old chinese man who sits at that area and practices various instruments.

One morning, it was those old time-y panpipe kind of things and he was playing something that sounded like it belonged in a period piece asian drama in the country side by the empire or whatever.

Another time? Flute.

Another morning? One of them single stringed instrument thingies.

It was pretty interesting and I was more than half tempted to stop for a while and take a rest to enjoy the music.

One Serious Warning

If your body isn’t conditioned or ready for this type of exercise, there’s a very real chance you’ll inflict some serious injury to yourself.

I was having a problem where after the first three weeks, my right knee was starting to feel a bit tweaked.

At first I thought it was normal aches and pains of a body protesting the sudden exercise, but when it persisted, I grew concerned enough to ask a couple friends, one or two that also jogged regularly, and one who worked as a physiotherapist.

They recommended that I change the way my feet impact the ground, to spread out the point of impact a little bit and place less pressure on one specific spot.

I followed their instructions and after about a week, the twinge in my right knee faded away and I felt much more comfortable after that.

Just keep in mind that joint pains can be very dangerous and lead to long term problems down the line, so don’t brush them off!

But…I am actually enjoying the regular running. Getting out a little more, taking in some fresh air, even if it is at the cost of burning muscles and exhaustion.

Any other runners out there? Or prospective runners? Any thoughts to share or questions you were curious about?

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[Perry] The Benefits of Limitation

UX – The Dreaded Hamburger Icon

Hamburger Hotdog Whatnow?

The “Hamburger” Icon, as it has semi-affectionately been nicknamed by the design community, will be well-known to some of you and completely foreign to others.

The hamburger, dear readers, looks like this.

“How, pray tell, does that look like a hamburger?”, you might be asking.

Here. Imagine you start with a hamburger, then simplify it, then simplify it even more.

Bam. Hamburger icon.

Show of Hands

How many people know what they can expect to happen if they click on the hamburger icon in an app or website?

No shame if you don’t know what it means — it’s a relatively new introduction to the User Interface world.

For those who don’t know (or are unsure), the Hamburger icon is typically used to indicate that a MENU of options will appear when you click it. You’ll definitely notice it more often in mobile-friendly sites than you will normal web browsing, but even as I type this, I can see it in the upper-right corner of my screen. Just a little gray hamburger. If I click it, I get document options — including things normally found in a web toolbar.

Does seem awfully tiny to cause as much trouble as it does.

That is the Question

To Hamburger or Not To Hamburger, that is the question. (You’re welcome for my not including the rest of my half-baked web design revamp of Hamlet’s Soliloquy) (get it? Half baked? Hamburger? I am HILARIOUS)

The NICE thing about the Hamburger is that it allows us to hide navigation in favor of content when we know that users are on a very small screen and neither have room for a giant menu nor have the time to scroll past it on EVERY page. It allows our primary content to take center stage, so to speak, while allowing the user to call up the menu at the click of a simple button.

A way, to be flippant, for the user to say “accio navigation!” when they need it, instead of us shoving unwanted choices at them from every angle.

The BAD thing about the Hamburger is that it’s not common knowledge yet. I’ve got a pretty tech-savvy readership here, but the general public doesn’t yet know what that little three-line icon means. It’s nowhere near as recognizeable as the envelope for email or the handset for phone or even the gearwheel for settings.

If the user doesn’t know what it means, they don’t click it. And THAT means they can’t find the content they’re ACTUALLY looking for when they need it. Often, landing pages for websites are our best guess as to what the user is looking for. (Or, in the case of for-profit websites, it’s often what we want to make sure the user is looking at.)

We can’t possibly get this right for every user, which is where navigation comes in. When we hide navigation behind some arcane symbol, we’re doing what I’ve commonly heard referred to as “Mystery Meat Navigation” which is a HUGE no-no. A user should know why they want to click on a button/icon/link before they even move their mouse to it.

Skirting The Issue

Some sites work around this issue by using the hamburger ONLY on mobile versions of their sites. Recognition of the hamburger is MUCH higher among mobile-heavy users. Even the gmail application on my iPhone uses the hamburger.

Still, the number of new mobile users is increasing by the minute. Hoping that we only get users who already understand the hamburger is kind of pathetic.

Some sites add helpful text below their hamburger. “MENU” or something along those lines.

Personally, I like this particular choice, but there’s still the issue of people SEEING the tiny hamburger button and reading the text, which … let’s be honest, is still kind of a crap-shoot.

So some sites add a little popover window to point to the hamburger, letting you know that it’s where your menu is hiding.

This can be disruptive to the user’s flow … and from a pure UX standpoint? You want to build an interface that needs no explanation. Something that feels comfortable and intuitive from the getgo.

… If you need not only an icon, but also text and ALSO a popover … one could argue you’ve lost inuitiveness a long time ago.

The Great Hamburger Wars

The internet’s full of vicious arguments both for and against using the hamburger icon.

“If your navigation is that complicated,” argues one side, “then your NAVIGATION is what’s flawed!”

… Okay, well. MOST websites do not have a maximum of five top-level navigation points, and no user wants to dive through level upon level of sub-navigation to find something that really ought not to be buried.

“Simplify, simplify, simplify! Reduce the number of choices a user needs to make and hide unnecessary elements!” argues the other.

… Okay, well. How do we hide unnecessary elements, but make them super-easy for folks to find on demand?

The End Result

Mostly, this results in a lot of blog posts like this one, talking about the issue without really nailing down a solution.

I think the hamburger isn’t going away. Instead, I think it’s going to be used more and more often, and we’ll pass that crucial tipping point where ENOUGH web users can find and correctly use the Hamburger.

And then it’ll be everywhere and we’ll all look back and laugh at how fervently we argued about whether or not to use the Hamburger.

Someday.

Discussion

Have you noticed the Hamburger in your browsing? Do you like it or hate it?

If you hate it, can you think of other ways to accomplish the same goals?

Related posts:

UI vs UX and Why You Should Care
UX – Screen Size Breakpoints
Buffalo Chicken Pizza Taco Burger

Outlining Tips 1 – Beat Sheet

Been a while since I talked about writing … mostly because it’s been a while since I’ve really done any writing. Now that I’m reworking the plot for Zonduth 1, however, I’m starting to remember just why I always felt itchy to blog about writing tips.

I’m at the outlining stage (which is happening concurrently with the worldbuilding stage, because worldbuilding never ends) which means today starts a whole round of outlining tips.

1. Start With a Good Beat Sheet

A beat sheet is NOT the act of clubbing your bedclothes into submission.

Stories tend to follow a particular pattern – a baseline of events which drive the story forward and maintain tension through the book (or movie, as the case may be).

One of the reasons so many stories have a “saggy middle” is because the author doesn’t have a good beat sheet to keep them on task.

A good beat sheet reminds you to insert conflict based on your villain and to sprinkle in fun stuff in the middle. Have a B-story. Make things worse before you make them better.

That kind of stuff.

Everything from “the main character makes a decision which changes their lives” to “all hope is lost, and it seems our main character will fail” is covered by a beat sheet. Pick a couple of your favorite stories and you’ll find that many of them share these storytelling elements. Bilbo Baggins leaving his comfortable home to be a burglar. Frodo refusing to throw the ring into Mount Doom. Luke Skywalker choosing to become a Jedi. Fern saving the life of a runty piglet. The baby bird in Are You My Mother deciding to leave the nest to figure out who its mother is.

These may seem like obvious things … but when you’re planning 100,000 words of adventure, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. Especially when your brain is crammed full of teensy details about character behaviors and verb tenses and the correct way to use an ellipses.

I developed a rough beat sheet many moons ago, but then I read Save the Cat by Blake Synder and some blog posts by Jami Gold and have begun expanding and refining the beat sheet I work with.

You can find my current Beat Sheet here.

The beat sheet isn’t a full map, though. It’s more like a series of guide-posts, and it’s up to you (the author) to fill in the intervening gaps with interesting, useful chapters.

Every time I begin planning a story, I start with my beat sheet and build outward from there.

Related posts:

NaNo2010 > Outlining Kit
Outlining Woes
Outlining

[Perry] The Benefits of Limitation

Have you ever been in a situation where you had something you needed to do, but you were offered just too many damned ways to do it, so you froze up?

It’s not always a good thing to have complete freedom over something, and often? It’s the limitations that turns junk into diamonds.

In Movies

Take a look at a movie like District 9. Pretty stunning work, right? The movie was made on a budget of around 30 million dollars…which sounds like an awful lot until you look at the budgets of other sci fi movies that came out that year. The reboot of Star Trek? 140 million. Surrogates? 80 Million. Hell, even the movie Gamer needed 50 million to put together.

But let’s go back to that first example. Let’s look at District 9 again.

Arguably, it was the director, Neil Blomkamp’s, first big break. He’d done a few shorts before, but District 9 was his first big hit and boy, did it ever wow audiences at the time.

Given the success of the movie, news at the time reported that he was working on another movie. This time, he was granted a much larger budget, as well as being able to hire some A-listers for his next endeavor.

Elysium came out a few years later, and it was a pretty huge disappointment to a lot of people who were eagerly awaiting Blomkamp’s next sci-fi endeavor.

So what happened?

If you ask me, it was a problem of limitations.

More specifically, a problem of not having them.

Stay with me now.

I think when it comes to most creative endeavors, having limitations in place forces you to be MORE creative, not less. As you can’t just throw resources at a problem until it goes away. With some hard limitations in place, you’re forced to think about how to disguise those limitations creatively.

Blomkamp worked with a pretty small budget for a big blockbuster sci-fi movie and made magic happen with a striking tale of a group of illegal alien immigrants (literally alien in this case), and humanity’s reaction to their presence.

There was a lot of cinematic trickery going on to make thinks feel more epic and expansive than it really was and what CGI was present was used pretty sparingly, to serve as punctuation.

Elysium had a larger budget and it showed. There were more visual effects present, and as a result? A lot of the human elements seemed to lack the impact it should have had.

Sometimes…sometimes, I think it’s when people are being squeezed that brilliance can emerge.

Look at the early Star Wars movies compared to the more recent ones (though, arguably, that one may just be a matter of not having enough hands in the pot for the latter ones).

Look at the brilliant impact that short stories can have compared to their larger counterparts.

Hells, even take a look at those super short stories. You know, those 6-10 word endeavors that can hit you and so fire up the imagination in ways that a thousand page novel can’t dream of touching.

I think that sometimes, it really is best to impose certain limits upon yourself, as an experiment. Just to see what you can do when you can’t do just about anything.

I used to write daily 100 word stories with a few friends. Just for fun. And the act of restructuring words and the story itself to end on that 100th word was a fun mental exercise, and some of those stories had some impact that I wasn’t expecting from such a short piece.

I think these types of exercises are good to undertake now and again. To get your creative mind thinking in different directions. To stretch a little and hopefully, with that stretch, bring that new muscle back into your regular work to see what results from its inclusion.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can write me a 100 word story…

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[Anne] Equestrian Sports

My father grew up in Chicago, under the leadership of Mayor Daley the expectation of “Vote Early and Vote Often.” My grandparents ran a candy shop, where the family of seven lived in the back room. I would like to call it an apartment, but by all accounts, it was a room. There are endless entertaining stories, not limited to the story of my dad and uncle leaving for school one morning and finding Mr. Wojnowski dead on the stoop and yelling, “Hey, Ma! We gotta get to school. Come get old man Wojnowski.”

By my father’s rendition, every barbershop was a bookie joint. My grandfather liked the horses and everyone in my family knows how to read the racing forms. I learned the summer I spent about a week with my grandparents in their small apartment. We drank coffee, played cards, my grandparents smoked, and Grandpa taught me the racing forms. For my grandparents’ anniversary one year, the family went to a track and one of the races was held in their honor. The picture is hilarious because the jockey looks of normal height and my cousin Joey looks like a giant. Really, if you were spending time with my grandparents, you had to play cards and at least talk about the races. Also, you had to be a Cubs fan.

My dad has recently decided to pass this family interest down to Youngest Child. The two of them have spent hours looking at forms, discussing the statistics, the odds, what is important to consider, the whole shebang.

Husband, who has no interest in gambling or races OR THE WORLD CUP, recently went with his brother to the tracks for his brother’s 50th birthday. At the track, Husband and a friend decided to place two bets together. Husband bought the first bet, for $12.00, and then he picked two of the three horses, while his friend picked the third. Husband chose his horses based on how pretty they were and how they shook their manes. His friend chose his horse in an equally spurious manner.

They won $1,500.00.

My dad’s response to this news, after the excitement, was “Well, he never found a dead guy on his stoop.” And that maybe Young Child’s father should teach her how to bet on horses instead of her old grandpa.

Tami, Tami, Tami. You are missing so much color in your life by disregarding equestrian sports.

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