Emotional Composition

Comedy and Tragedy Masks The exercise today on Romance Divas in their author of the month workshop with USA Today Bestselling Author C. L. Wilson is to take a scene we’ve already written and revise it so that it has a completely different tone. I’ve been thinking about which scene to use and am coming up with a blank, but that’s what inspired the comedy/tragedy masks today. They also fit with the recent emotional ideas and themes I’ve been looking at recently.

You’ll be glad to know I’m finish reading Dunne’s Emotional Structure! However, I’m not quite done thinking about or talking about all the strings and connections that I’m going to need to figure out how to seamlessly manipulate in my writing to move forward with what should be character-driven romance stories.

I realized this morning I’m freaking myself out and making writing those three sentences harder than necessary. I need to cultivate better habits regarding how I come up with and save ideas. I have a bunch of loose notes that are mostly character sketches and my story ideas are even rougher even if they may include several thousand words worth of “notes”.

It’s scary to admit, but it’s true. Mistress of the Storm is nothing but notes really, the same with Beneath His Touch – both are pretty much just opening sketches. What became Revealed started with much fewer notes, but, again, an opening sketch. I liked how Dunne compared the process to an artist’s sketch. You start with gesturals and move to more detailed sketches to make sure you’ve balanced your composition. I’ve done a lot of opening gesturals, but unfortunately, I only focused on one corner and never really took a necessary step back to look at the big picture.

I need to buckle down and work on coming up with complete ideas that go from beginning to middle to ending. I plan to practice this by setting aside time to brainstorm ideas and polishing them to that three-sentence stage. Later, I can take those and work them up to three pages. I want to acquire the habit of thinking bigger than just character sketches or laying groundwork for the conflicts between the main characters.

Magic Number 3

Lane Number Three on Track Have you ever noticed that three is truly a magic number? I’m not talking numerology or anything like that, but the number three keeps coming up in everything I’ve been reading lately. The Classic Three-Act form. A hero must pass 3 tests to get his reward. Three cheers. Make sure you highlight a setting with at least three things that would be noticed by your POV character. Hey, 3rd person. The list just goes on and on and on.

Three is a useful number. It is a symbol of the unity of body, mind and spirit. You can split the difference between two extremes. You can accurately describe a position relative to an initial point – above or below as relative to on. If you can break something down into three parts, you can also likely split those down into three parts each as well.

This last one is the one that strikes me as important today. Reading Dunne’s Emotional Structure is making me think about symbolism and look at the importance of making connections between actions of the plot as they are used to dredge up the protagonist’s emotions from the past. He recommends breaking the Second act into 3 parts — a movie within a movie. Looking at what I have so far, it strikes me that even the set up might be constructed in a similar fashion.

One of Dunne’s exercises is to condense your idea in three sentences and then expand them into three pages. Hmmm. There’s that three again. Writing three sentences sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever attempted. Working from the previous exercise of writing a set-up including the inciting incident, three tests for the protagonist to face, and the climax and resolution, I tried to do this with the story for Revealed. I know I’m going to have to expand the scope of the story – it ain’ta gonna be short when it’s done with me.

I’m going to have to settle in and really think about this one a bit more. I’m finding one of the most difficult requirements is to have thought everything through before I start typing. There’s just too much to juggle in my head to keep it all straight and meaningful. That’s another great quote from Dunne: “Organizing your artistic effort only makes it better.” The other phrase I find myself chanting a lot lately is “That which does not kill us serves to make us stronger.” I can only hope those are both true.

If you’d like to read more about the significance and the prevalence of the number three in American culture, you can visit The Book of Threes. If you’re looking for a wider scope, you can read about The Symbolism and Spiritual Significance of the Number Three which doesn’t limit itself, but explores most of Western culture.

Revealed

As promised, I’ve posted the first of the stories based on the exercise of telling a story in the traditional Three ACT form. Revealed is set in the Regency Period and runs about 2400 words. The idea was pulled from an abandoned novel opening and might work as the opening chapter some day.

If you do read it, please take the time to leave a comment. Thanks!

I’ll go back to being a nervous Nelly now.

Pinning Down Details

I finished the story arc I’ve been talking about recently. I’m not at the point where I can do them quickly, so I may just post them as I finish them and feel they’re readable. Once I finish a few more minor edits, I will post that one on a page here with links to it, hopefully tomorrow.

One of the reasons this one went so easily, after I got past the first obstacle, was that I was more familiar with the characters and had taken the time to draw out a reasonable road map of where exactly I wanted to go. Problems arise when I try to skip the step of pinning down some detail upon which hinges either a major plot point or one that defines a character. My food critic and her chef suffer from this lack of detail currently. I really need to dig into their story, give the world more depth and provide the characters with more dimensions.

One of the Romance Divas (Hi MamaDivine!) asked me if I’m going to participate in NaNoWriMo this November. I hedged with her and said I probably won’t because of how crazy November can be around here. To participate on the official site, you need to be working on something new. I don’t want to scrap 25k and begin again from scratch. I could work on the novel in a less official manner but I know I’m reluctant to go in and add more bulk to my novel in progress just for the sake of increasing the word count by 50k. The prospect of a large-scale goal and deadline are also making me balk. I don’t think I’m quite ready to commit to something that large and looming. I’d like to take a bit more time for planning and practice first.

The best laid plans…

fighting mouse I’m not sure if my plan is going to work. Yesterday, I worked on a story arc for another story idea that’s been around for a while. I spent far longer than 30 minutes on it and I didn’t get beyond than the set up and inciting incident.

I should probably start on one that I don’t already have any part written out. I ended up taking what I’d already written and trimmed it to 250 words and left it at that. My internal editor had a field day and, of course, once I got to the point where I’d previously stopped writing – SPLAT! Crash and burn, baby. Do not pass go; do not collect $200. There was a complete dead standstill in my brain.

I don’t know why I have a problem with that. I’ve run into it several times now. I’ve hit that same point in the Food Critic story as well. I stopped and now there seems to be a brick wall preventing me from moving forward in the story. On one hand, I suspect it has something to do with how thoroughly I’ve thought through a story. On the other, I haven’t made an explicit agreement with myself to come back to finish it. There’s also the likelihood that something shiny grabbed my attention in the meantime.

However, I need to make sure I try this exercise the way I planned and not give up so easily. Writing exercises done only in your head don’t accomplish anything. My friend, Bria of the Purple Hearts, commented on the previous post that she was learning a lot from me on process. I hope it’s not just lessons in what NOT to do. 🙂