The Fairytale of Writing

Once Upon a Time… no, this isn’t about writing fairytales. As a child I loved fairytales, so by natural extension when Once Upon a Time aired, I was right in front of my TV, popcorn in hand.

In a recent episode (The Miller’s Daughter) one of the main characters, Mary Margaret, aka Snow White, was handed a life-altering decision. That got me to wondering whether, my black moments are truly as dark as they should be. Am I putting enough at stake? Maybe not.

All her life, Snow has battled against dark magic by doing the right thing. She holds tight to goodness. That’s what her mother taught her. That’s her core.

Her defeats teach her that good doesn’t always triumph. As a child, she had the opportunity to save her mother’s life, but to do so she’d have to choose someone else to die in her mother’s place. She couldn’t do it and her mother died.

Now the black moment. Snow is forced to make a decision that goes completely against her being. In “The Miller’s Daughter,” Snow’s choices are to either give Regina and Cora (the truly bad guys) Rumplestiltskin’s dagger, thus giving them complete magic power and saving her childhood nurse, Johanna. Or she can retain the dagger, let Rumplestiltskin die (who has turned into sort of a good guy, and she’s just found out he’s the other grandfather of Snow’s grandson), which will keep the people of Storybrook safe.

Snow ends up giving Regina and Cora the dagger in exchange for Johanna. Their reunion is short-lived when Regina murders Johanna anyway.

Each time Snow has done the right and good thing, it has cost her dearly. With the death of her childhood nurse, she tells Prince Charming she doesn’t care about justice anymore. Wow! This is our hero, Snow White.

If you don’t watch “Once Upon a Time,” it’s well worth the hour. It is so valuable that I’m thinking of counting that time as a writing class and taking my cable bill off my taxes. Um, maybe not.

Here’s the trick (and it sounds easier than it is):

• Root the current crisis in with the hero’s past.

Thus making the crisis more personal and more rooted in their core.

• Give the character two choices, neither of which is good.

The consequences of the two choices need to be really bad and worse.

• Then force your character to pick one.

They have to make the choice or something even worse will happen.

In stories, as in life it’s all in the choices. You have to make your characters—all of them—the products of their choices. It’s more work, but your stories will shine for it and be memorable. The Miller’s Daughter is one I’m going to use as a template. If you’d like to read the whole synopsis, go to http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/once-upon-a-time/episode-guide/once-upon-a-time-episode-216-the-millers-daughter

How do you make your characters memorable?

How do you make your black moments dark enough?

 

No Easy Lesson

Recently, Benjamin Carson has been in the news. The poem his mother had him read when he was feeling put upon hit home with me. Ben Carson had all the odds stacked against him. He was born to a mother who was married at thirteen and had only a third grade education. But as all good mothers do, she wanted a better life for her two boys. The boys were going down an all-too familiar path. Bad grades in school, bad influences on the street, bad habits at home. To make matters worse, Ben was convinced he was dumb.

His mother knew better. She turned off the TV, handed the boys books, and told them that they had to read the book and write a report for her. At first, he hated reading. It was a waste of time. But his mother was stronger willed, and he kept reading. When the boys gave the reports to their mother, she’d go over them, making little check marks, and highlighting areas. What the boys didn’t know was that their mother couldn’t read.

It didn’t take him long to realize that he could go anywhere, be anyone, and experience wonderful adventures all through the pages of books.

She also taught them self-reliance. When they’d complain that this wasn’t right or that person wasn’t fair, she’d have them read the following poem.

You Have Yourself To Blame

by Mayme White Miller

You Have Yourself To Blame

for disgracing your own name.

Thinking it’s laborious

meaning it’ll be victorious.

Always pretending to be cool,

so that you’ll be popular in school.

Never caring about others

and trying to be tough to your brothers.

Being in so much fame,

never knew something that came.

I’m looking at you now,

wondering why and how.

Now you’re on your own,

with no one to show.

You’re alone in the dark,

left there in the park.

I hope you now know or conjecture

what you should’ve a long time ago that

You Have Yourself To Blame.

And what became of this boy? He attended Yale and University of Michigan Medical School. He’s a Professor of Neurosurgery, Oncology, Plastic Surgery, and Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. He is the only Neurosurgeon ever to part twins who were conjoined at the head. And as if that doesn’t keep him busy enough, he has written four best sellers, Gifted Hands (an autobiography), The Big Picture, Take the Risk, and Think Big.

When I think the publishing business isn’t fair, I look at the poem on my wall. After all, it’s up to me. I hope Dr. Ben Carson’s story and the poem are as cathartic for you as they were for me.

 

Discoveries

I love finding things that make writing easier. It’s all about the details. And if you don’t get them right, you throw off the story. Readers do check. I’m in the middle of a story set in the fall. My problem? Sunrise and sunset. I can’t have my characters strolling around in the sun at 7:30 when the sun set at 6:53. Bad form. I found a great website that takes care of all those nasty sun details. It’s especially great because you can set it for any place in the world. Not only that but it goes back in time. I got tired of clicking the back button to 1940.

It also tells you what phase the moon is in. It might be very picky to know what phase the moon is in, but it’s one more thing you don’t have to worry about. If your day is October 16, 1940 (no I’m not going to click forward to 2013), we find out that the sun rose at 6:51, set at 17:53 (or 5:53 civilian time), but that the moon rose at 6:17 and set at 7:06, and it was full. If you like you can use UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time.)

Where can you find all this wonderful information? At http://sunrisesunsetmap.com. And to make things even better, you can print off your year of choice. Having a hard copy right in front of me is so handy. I can mark it up or change the day so it works for what I need.

Another great resource is to search the native plants for the area you’re writing about. It will give you pictures of the plants and that, in turn, will give you all you need to put the right plants in the right area.

I know none of this is new information, but it is something we need to remember to use. It’s so tempting just to rely on memory and keep writing, but don’t give in. The more realism you can sift into your work, the more the reader will subconsciously buy the premise. And, after all, isn’t that the goal? Keep the reader grounded in the story.

Keep the research close at hand and use it.

I love nothing more than to have a bunch of relevant websites bookmarked.

What are your go-to websites?

 

An Exercise in Waiting

I was so good this morning, I took my laptop with me to the car place so I could write while I waited. But what I found was a waiting area full of life. Two men were watching the Today show. I’ve always thought of it as the precursor to our modern 24-7 news networks. But my brain wanders. Both the guys watching TV were under 40. Two other guys (must be the day for men to bring in their cars,) both over 60, were reading, one a book, the other his iPad. Must be a generational thing. Another guy who looked to be somewhere in his mid-to-late 40’s is, like me, working on his computer (note to businesses who make people wait: put plug-ins in your waiting areas.) He kept getting up, leaving, then returning with papers. I’m guessing he’s a rep. of some kind who’s taking up the plugin I want.

I’m not the only woman here. Since I’ve been here (about ½ an hour), there’s been four women come and go. One was waiting for a ride to get back to work. The other had her mom come and get her. I know because she told her son that Nana was coming.

My point is they’re all normal people doing what normal people do. No one stands out, no one is acting strangely It’s a scene that would never make it into a book.

Now, there have been times when the people around me do make it into my prose. I wrote about one not long ago. But no one today had turned into a character.

We can’t take slices of life and just plop them directly into our book, no matter how real they are. At least not ones from a Toyota dealership on a Monday morning, in Boise, Idaho. We have to do a little inventing, a little embellishment. We take the people we see, their actions, dress, and looks in to account, then let our imaginations run. That’s what’s what makes writing fun.

That guy working on his computer—the one who keeps getting up and returning with papers—suddenly becomes an computer hacker posing as a representative from a vender who is trying to catch a salesman with his company who is stealing from them.

How about the old guy with his iPad? He turns into an FBI agent tracking an employee who has been making threats against government officials. He is coordinating the agents who are about to move in for the arrest. And on it goes. A story for everyone.

Watch the people around you when you’re out. Take each one and give them a story. You may never use the saga you invent for them, or it may spark something interesting. It’s all about exercising your skills.

How do you exercise your creative muscles?

 

The End of the World and 2013

If you’re reading this the good news is the world didn’t end on 12-21-12. When I heard about the Mayan calendar ending this year, I wondered how many times in the history of the world prophets have foretold of its end. I began watching a series about the apocalypse. After a few minutes of viewing, I turned it off. We won’t go into the questionable science they used; because I remember in the seventy’s when we were headed for an ice age. By the ninety’s, we were all going to burn up with global warming. Then there was the time when all the planets lined up and we were supposed to go crashing into the center of the galaxy. Seriously?

My channel changing is also linked to the reason I don’t enjoy movies that portray the future in tones of gray.

Pessimism.

I can’t believe that things will turn to garbage and we will all live in a dark colorless world.

Yes, yes I confess…I’m a trekkie. I have higher hopes for our future. There are new frontiers out there to be explored. New things to be invented and discoveries to be made. I hold out hope for peace (no one prays harder for peace more than a soldier’s mother). I just know there will come a point when sanity will take root and people will figure out peace is a much better idea.

So here are my New Year’s Resolutions. None of which will bring about world peace, or scientific breakthroughs. But they will—hopefully—make me more productive.

1. I’m going to make time to take time. I timed it and it takes an average of ten minutes to read a blog and comment. I want to support my fellow bloggers and learn what I can from them.
2. I’m going to start writing every single day no matter what. And no, I’m not going to grocery lists this year.
3. I’m going to keep track on my trusty calendar of how many pages I write, revise, and otherwise put to computer.
4. I’m going to send out my stuff. I’m going to do my best to find an agent this year. Which will probably lead to some mental health issues. But that comes with writing.
5. I’m going to broaden my horizons. I’ve discovered a new love of science, math, and history.

I would have come up with eight more resolutions to keep pace with the year, but there’s no possible way I could keep track of all thirteen. So I’m going to concentrate on these five.

What are your plans for 2013?