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NaNoWriMo: Theme, Character and Plot Development Preparation

Carolyn — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 04:56:18 +0000

I’m about to confess to a horrible crime (at least in some people’s minds), but first let me say I’m doing a bit of a Dance of Joy because while driving to pick up bird and wildlife food, the theme of my NaNoWriMo project finally came to me today .

For me, theme is like my destination in a cross-country trip. If I don’t know my theme, I don’t know where I’m going. Now I know some of you are saying, “Carolyn, you ignorant slug! (to paraphrase SNL) You’re climax is where you’re going.”

Sure, my climax is my ultimate destination, but if I don’t know my theme, I don’t know my route. I don’t know How I’m going to get to my climax because I don’t know Why I’m taking this trip.

I’ve been to the Grand Canyon several times, alone and with different people. The Grand Canyon is the destination, but how we get there depends upon the reason for going. Is it a must-see stop on the way to a tech conference in Vegas? Or is it the first vacation getaway in 5 years? In the first situation, I’m plotting the fastest, shortest route that leaves as much of my limited time as possible to explore the Grand Canyon before heading on to the conference. In the second event, I’ve got time to meander through some of the other great side trips in the area.

Some folks like to make a beeline to the destination, others like to meander and explore options. I’ve tried both methods of novel plot development — and failed

I’ve come to realize after 3 NaNoWriMo efforts and several other novels-in-progress that if I don’t know my theme, I tend to get lost in the plot and wind up at a dead end. Or worse, I force the plot and wind up fighting dead characters until I accept that no Code Blue plot shock will revive them.

Which brings me to the other thing I need in my novel writing journey — character motivation. Character motivation is my guide to all the sights and side trips I will take.

Don’t you hate it when a character does something totally out of character just to advance the plot? If I’m not clear on my theme, my characters seem to mumble, “But, like, what’s my motivation in this scene?” The dialogue and action may be fine, but it just lies there with all the appeal of a celebutant’s acting debut.

Without understanding my theme, my character development is just a bunch of quirks and tricks that aren’t convincing. Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow worked perfectly in the first Pirates of the Caribbean because his character motivation was entirely clear — he’s wants his ship, the Black Pearl, back! But he’s not a total blackguard, so he tries to get it back without cold-bloodedly killing everyone who got in his way. Compare this to Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh character in No Country for Old Men. Both Sparrow and Chigurh are motivated by a single-minded pursuit of their goal, but the character development is entirely different because the theme of each story is entirely different.

My character development and motivation comes from knowing my theme.

Here’s Where I Confess My Crime

While conservative participants consider it a NaNoWriMo crime (if not a mortal sin) to write anything before November 1st, I’ve got about 16,000 words of dialogue & first draft on some scenes that I’ve been using to get a handle on my character development and plot. This year I’ve come to realize that I do this pre-NaNoWriMo writing to uncover the true theme to my story so I can establish stronger character development and motivation and build a stronger plot based on how each character will act — and react — in various situations.

Will I be using these 16,000 words when I start my NaNoWriMo project on Nov. 1?

Parts of it will definitely be worked into the project, especially some of the dialogue. Some folks can simply think about their NaNoWriMo project and work everything out in their heads. Others can talk it out with friends or family. I envy them. I, however, work it out on the page.

But I’m also determined to have the complete first draft of my novel done which will be more than 50,000 words and I know that I’ll be re-writing from scratch on Nov. 1. This time, however, I’ll know my destination, my fully-developed characters and their motivations and well-structured plot development because I know my purpose.

Throughout November, I will be posting how things are going, and I’ll be sharing some resources, exercises and tools I’m trying out this year.

The first one I’ve used is my Traditional Plot Development Storyboard which can be downloaded here.

I’d also like to bring your attention to a Kickstarter project that sounds like a wonderful investment for writers facing Writer’s Block here.

Good-luck everyone!

And if you find any of this useful (or entertaining), please Comment below, Like it, Tweet it, share it — especially the downloads.

NaNoWriMo Prep: Plot Development and Profile Worksheets, Visualizing Collage, and More

Carolyn — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:54:23 +0000

Autumn leaves mean NaNoWriMo plot and character development time!

While everyone else is carving pumpkins and hunting for a black turtle neck and New Balance sneakers, in between desperately trying to finish my house repairs before freezing temperatures arrive, I’m preparing for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).In the Seattle area, the NaNoWriMo fans filled not one, but two plot development workshops in a few short hours of registration. So I thought I’d put up some NaNoWriMo Preparation Tips and ideas for those of us who didn’t get to attend.

Plot Development Worksheets

Amazon.com Widgets

First, let me provide some novel plot and chapter development storyboard worksheets. Click on the title below to download:

Novel Storyboard Worksheet : An open storyboard for making notes about events and characters by chapter

Traditional Plot Storyboard Worksheet : The traditional fiction arc broken down into the standard 20-chapters used by mass market paperbacks for decades.

Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! Storyboard Worksheet : Screenwriter and teacher Blake Snyder’s technique condensed into a storyboard format for plotting today’s high-concept fiction.

Chapter Storyboard Worksheet : Good for breaking a chapter down by scene; especially useful if you use multiple locations and character point of views to keep events in a clear sequence

Character Development and Profiling

Heroes and heroines, even just protagonists and antagonists, can often get fuzzy in the heat of trying to write a novel in a month. So I started using the Target Audience Profile worksheet that I give my marketing students to help them keep their potential customer or client in focus. Try completing the Target Audience Profile Worksheet and writing a profile of your main characters to keep on hand. It helps when trying to answer that magical, musical question “What would this character do now?”

Target Audience Profile Worksheet

Once I have a basic demographic profile of a character, I add things like family background, any key incidence in the characters life like bullying at school or winning a competition that had an impact. I find a lot of times if I’m stuck or blocked in a project, it’s because I haven’t really defined a character (or any of them) well enough to clearly know how he or she would react or respond to the situation.

Visual Techniques for Developing Plot and Characters

A number of writers I’ve met use collage to prepare for their writing projects. Bestselling romantic comedy author Jennifer Crusie has a collection of them now and here (Wild Ride Collage) and here (this one is more about the process).Basically it’s similar to doing a visualization collage.

Begin by focusing on the title or theme of your story. Next collect images and words from magazines or other media while focusing on your theme or title. You can even collect found objects that seem to fit (I met one author who actually creates sculptures for his writing projects). Once you feel you’ve collected enough stuff to start, grab a large sheet of paper — or a box if you want to go 3-D — and start assembling your images, words, objects as it moves you. Jennifer Crusie and others talk about leaving placeholders for characters or story elements when they feel something is missing and tracking it down later.

Writeoncon.com has a video by author Tera Lynn Childs demonstrating how she makes a character collage here.

I’ve also met authors who draw or paint a scene from their story. I met several who actually create the book covers to inspire them throughout the whole process and keep the mood and another (a screenwriter) who created the movie poster.

My absolute favorite was a writing friend who persuaded a B. Dalton’s employee to give her one of their old bestseller list cards; carefully replaced the number position with her book title and name; and then hung it up in front of her workspace to keep her writing daily. She also created book covers to place in front of her workspace and individual character collages. She didn’t reach #1 before she died, but she did make it on the list.

There’s no right or wrong way to do any of this. There’s just your way. These are all simply a way for authors to use a different part of their brain in solving plot and character development. Give it a try. If nothing else, you’ll have a conversation piece.

The goal is to get to know our characters, get a feel for their story arcs, and inspire us to keep our backsides in our chairs and our fingers on our keyboards until we have our book (or at least 50,000 words and the basic spine of our book).

So NaNoWriMoers, let’s start our engines!

And feel free to share this post with your NaNoWriMo community!

Type, Text, Fonts, iPhones, Irony and RIP Steve Jobs

Carolyn — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:32:44 +0000

Even when the message isn't very clear, clear type has a voice of authority

As a writer I consider words and reading important. But I was also trained in the visual and graphic arts and have longed been attuned to the type and fonts that create the words and make them legible — or not, that can enhance the meaning of the text — or undermine it, that can influence whether we even read a single word — or all of them. I’ve also been keenly aware for some time that we are moving from text to verbal and visual communication. Oral traditions and pictographs gave way to literacy which will eventually give way to voices (mostly computer generated) and images.

So what does this all have to do with Steve Jobs and the iPhone?

On Tuesday, October 4, the new CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, introduced the iPhone 4S. Many Apple fanatics, and less astute reporters, were disappointed that the phone lacked significant physical design changes. They missed the significance of a little feature named Siri. Bascially, Siri acts something like an artificial intelligence interface. You say something natural to your iPhone like “I have a meeting with John Doe on Wednesday at 3 o’clock” and the phone adds the meeting to your calendar and will even remind you that the meeting is approaching. You can ask it something like “Where’s the nearest sushi restaurant?” and Siri will note your present location and return a listing of sushi restaurants sorted by proximity (and provide more information on each). It can do a lot more and you don’t. have. to. speak. slow—ly. and. careful—ly. like you did for earlier voice-activated interfaces.

Just in case you aren’t certain, This (Siri) Is Big.

Steve Jobs and the Mac made us aware of how fonts and type affect what we read

It’s like going from a manual typewriter to a wordprocessor big. Or like going from hand-copied books to the printing press big. It’s game-changer, life-changer, society-changer big. It’s 1984 all over again. Trust me on this. In a society where less than 2% of the population has ever entered a bookstore, this is going to make epubs eventually seem like the invention of White-Out or the auto-correcting Selectric typewriter. Apple really doesn’t care if Microsoft Windows copies touch-screen technology or Amazon creates a Kindle iPad. The folks over at Joy of Tech got it right — Apple has developed “fusion.”

Tuesday night I started reading the book (in hardcover) Just My Type by Simon Garfield. It’s a book about fonts and their impact on what and how we read. The introduction begins with an excerpt from Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford University in 2005 where he discusses how he came to take calligraphy classes and the lasting impact of what most considered a useless liberal arts waste of time and money had on him and his business decisions throughout his life not the least of which was the decision to introduce the MacIntosh computer with a selection of carefully crafted, for their day, set of font choices. The book later discusses how the MacIntosh introduced the world to the concept of fonts and font selection, to the idea that how the words looked affected the tone and perception of the message often as much as the words.

Which is one of the reasons I find it ironic that Apple restricts font selection on its epubs.

So I went to sleep with my head swimming with the implications of Siri and a greater respect for yet another way in which Steve Jobs dedication to fine design and detail radically affected my life.

The morning, I awoke to the news that Steve Jobs had died. I wasn’t especially surprised. We all knew he was dying and after a half a year spent dealing with a family members pancreatitis, I knew a great deal more than I ever wanted about the pancreas and pancreatic cancer.

What struck me was the irony of his death the day after the introduction of the Siri interface and the eeriness of my having read about his contribution to text and type and visual literacy just the night before. Obviously, Mr. Jobs knew about Siri and I’m certain he knew of its implications to future of reading and writing and the communication of stories and information.

May Steve Jobs rest in peace. His legacy will live on.

In the near future, because of oral interfaces, the stories that live on will be the ones that sound good with words chosen for their cadence, well-defined characters with distinctive voices and plots that make us ask “What happens next?” These are the stories that live on now, in printed text, that we read again and again and pass along to our children whether it’s Winnie the Pooh or Pride and Prejudice.

Next week (Oct. 14-16) my town is host to the Forest Storytelling Festival. Each year the storytelling festival holds workshops in the not-quite-extinct art of telling stories: folks tales, new tales, native peoples stories and all the other oral storytelling traditions. There is always some sort of workshop focused on cadence or rhythm. In the past I’ve only caught a few of the public performances, but this year I may just have to register for the whole weekend and brush up on my oral storytelling skills.

R.I.P. Mass-Market Fiction Paperback

Carolyn — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:30:27 +0000

Perhaps the problem is with the value, not just the price of paperback fiction.

The New York Times has an interesting article on the decline in sales and marketing of the mass-market paperback. The industry experts in the article attribute the largest cause to the recession and e-readers and the release of hardcover titles as reduced price e-books faster than the release of the paperback. They also implicate the discounting of hardcover titles by chain, and now independent, booksellers.

All of these are certainly contributing factors, not the least of which is the recession and the increasing loss of the middle-class and its discretionary income. Add to this the decline in readership period and its clear that the mass-market paperback is becoming less profitable and therefore less viable.

But I think the article misses two key factors:

the price of mass-market paperbacks and
the quality of popular fiction today

First, let’s talk price. We have thousands of paperbacks in our personal library at my house. My husband has an entire shelf of the old Ace Doubles which offered not one, but two novels for 60¢ (the one I randomly grabbed included Star Quest by Dean R. Koontz). Granted they’re from the 60′s and early 70′s, but the point is that the price was affordable for a quick impulse purchase.

Today, it’s hard to find a mass-market paperback novel for under US$7.00 and many come in at US$9.00 with the occasional US$9.99. In this economy, paperbacks are no longer impulse purchases — particularly when you consider the quality of recent releases by even bestselling authors.

If I’m asked to pay US$7-9.00 for a paperback, I expect at least some basic editing and something that doesn’t appear to be first draft. Forget the recent release by a bestselling author who spent the entire first chapter connecting the central character’s love of chocolate to the title of the novel and then never mentioned chocolate (or the title theme) again in complete violation of Chekov’s dictum (“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.”). How about the bestselling, award-winning mystery writer who had the lead character explain the same information four times in the first 30 pages, not because it was important to the story but because she hadn’t bothered to fix her manuscript so it wasn’t necessary?

I stopped reading that book when the author had a character begin two out of the three sentences with “now” in the same dialog — and no one caught it before publication! No one caught the name change of a character either. Not the author, not the editor, not even the first reader. As far as I could tell this manuscript went straight from typing to print with no one reading it.

The connection between price and quality is the part that everyone is missing in the discussion.

I no longer try new authors at full price. I use my library and the used bookstores. These days I often check out bestselling authors and award-winners at the library before purchasing a hardcover. I used to regularly collect the hardcover editions of authors I enjoyed, but I can no longer rely on many of them to continue to produce quality work. And I’m not even talking about the ones who have become hack shops hiring less successful or new writers to write the manuscripts based on a story the bestselling author supposedly developed.

I’m not the only reader that is buying her mass-market paperbacks used because she feels the quality doesn’t match the price. The same story is being told in discussions with readers and booksellers online and in person.

And this reluctance to pay more than US$5.00 for even “proven” authors extends to e-books. For one thing, I know the production costs are considerably lower and for another, the quality is still uncertain. This is why so many successful self-published authors, like Amanda Hocking, price their first titles so low; it encourages impulse buying to try the author. As consulting editor, Alan Rinzler, pointed out in a panel discussion in February, 2011, Hocking “…had the quality. She knew her audience and she knew to write well for them.”

Will readers pay for good writing? Absolutely! Subterranean Press charges premium prices for their limited edition, hardcover releases and often sell out of popular, dependably excellent work by authors like Connie Willis. I still purchase anything new by Alan Lightman or Mark Salzman or Terry Pratchett or Connie Willis or any number of dependably fine authors in whatever format and price. The thing these authors have in common is that every book is the best they can make it. The books may not all be perfect, but I never have to worry that I’ll feel I’m reading a first draft or that they lack respect for their readers.

As writers we should take our cue not from publishers who knock out titles like so many boxes of breakfast cereal or bottles of energy drinks, but from authors who take the time to edit and revise until the story is the best it can be.

Now that I’ll buy!

So what’s your opinion? Are you still buying mass market paperbacks as impulse purchases? Do you have a story about an egregious example of sloppy writing that made it into print? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

What’s Your Biggest Fears and Top Questions About Online Marketing and Promotion?

Carolyn — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:22:48 +0000

Until August 31, 2010, Heidi Berthiaume is running a short, 3-question survey for authors to find out what we really, really want and need to know about marketing and promoting our work. She’ll be using our answers to develop some free videos on online marketing and promotion for writers and you know we all like free help and information. So race on over and fill out the survey Now!

50 Great Websites for Writers – Both Fiction and Non-Fiction

Carolyn — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:29:19 +0000

Here's a hidden gem of a site for fiction, nonfiction and fan writers

Strangely enough I was first introduced to this site from an internet marketing blog. I’m not certain why I haven’t found it before from either a fiction, nonfiction or fan writing website or one of the education and training websites I frequent. But this site has a huge list of resources, some of which I hadn’t found before, for writers of all kinds. It’s worth a look.

http://educhoices.org/articles/50_of_the_Best_Websites_for_Writers.html

Marketing for Writers is really phishing for suckers

Carolyn — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:17:16 +0000

While I’ve learned to recognize the come-ons by snake oil sales people on the Internet, I sometimes give one a chance to prove me wrong. (I’m actually planning a post on how to recognize at a class an obvious bottom-feeder.) So far, none of them have.

A disappointment this morning was Marketing for Writers (marketingforwriters.com; and it’s not a link for a reason). They come up first in Google if you search on the term, however, don’t waste your time and certainly don’t waste your money there.

The URL takes you to a landing page optimized for Google with Yahoo text ads at the top, a bit of out-of-date copy on the absolute basics (and hardest way to promote your writing) and on the right side promotion for her own e-books and materials including a sign-up for a “Free E-course: How to Earn a 6 Figure Income from Your Writing”. So I signed up (Not with my real email address; this is what email forwarders are for and many blessings on my hosting service for allowing me unlimited forwarders. I make a custom forwarding address for almost everything I sign-up for that might sell my address).

I’m then taken to a funneling page that pitches an incredibly overpriced collection of “web marketing tools and tips” — which are actually free or another MLM/Affiliate scheme — that happens to be on sale right now for a limtied time only (and if you believe that one, I have some lovely beach-front property to sell you in Nebraska). But if you want your “free gifts” scroll to the bottom of the page.Yep, there’s a link for free stuff, but…

When you click on the link you are redirected to another pitch page for “Internet marketing for free” at another URL that informs all of the free gifts have been consolidated on this one page (obviously a more recent WordPress based page), so just scroll down and click below. I had a couple of more minutes before the library opened, so I scrolled down to find the link “marketing for writers” and clicked…

And found myself back at the original pitch page with the same article, the same Yahoo ads, the same product pitch and sign-up box. I had come full-circle.

I can assure you that the primary way this person is earning a six-figure income from writing is getting suckers to pay big money for, at best, a repackaged collection of old, freely-available-online-or-at-your-local-library tips, affiliate sales, ad sales and reselling your email address (among other things there’s absolutely no privacy policy or terms and conditions statement for any of the sign-up forms). She’s not interested in selling your book; she’s interested in selling her “books” to you!

So don’t waste your time or risk your email box.

I hope to have up very soon (finally, getting through my classes and consulting gigs) a resource page of legitimate and recommended guides to marketing for writers. In the meantime, read Ariel Gore’s How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lightsand Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networkingfor starters (and yes, they’re an Amazon Affiliate Link, but to titles I highly recommend and a lot cheaper than a scammer’s self-pubbed drivel).

Beware Freelance Home Writers Scam

Carolyn — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:28:40 +0000

You! Yes, YOU! Can make thousands of dollars a week writing articles, blog posts and the occasional short story from the comfort of your home! Thousands of smart people like you are doing it!

And if you believe that I’ve got some desert property in South Louisiana to sell you.

About once a week I check my Junk mail file to make certain there isn’t something worthwhile that was mislabeled (just before I erase everything). This week I came across one with the subject “Can we pay you to write something?” and a header Freelance Job Opportunity. Now it so happens I occasionally apply for a gig through a legitimate freelance jobs board, so I decided to open this one. Here’s how the email started:

Hello,

We would like to know if you would be interested in working from home in your spare time writing short articles for us. You will be paid $25.00 – $45.00 per hour writing these articles.

We will also pay you $12.00 – $50.00 per hour for posing in blogs, and up to $450 for each fiction or non fiction story we ask you to write.

Not exactly personal, but I was curious so I checked the link beneath this come-on, found no attempts to add anything to my system and clicked it. I was taken to what in the hard-sell (read scam) online marketing business is called a “Squeeze” page — a page that requires you to give an email address before continuing. This site (Freelance Home Writers Network) calls theirs the “Create Log-in” page. Now I knew it was a scam, but was curious about exactly what kind of scam. Fortunately, I make good use of the unlimited email forwarders and created a new one just for this site and then entered it into the squeeze page.

Instantly I was taken to the come-on page (which they amusingly call the “Job Description” page). This is the big pitch page that all of these scammers use (these are often referred to as “micro-sites” now). It’s the standard “Earn Big Money In Your Spare Time From Home” pitch for would-be writers. Here’s the start of this one:

Congratulations!

You’re just minutes away from making great, easy money from the comfort of your home, just from writing simple articles, easy blog posts, or (if you want the really BIG bucks) by writing short fiction and non-fiction stories…

Thousands of smart people just like you are are already brining in an easy $1,000, $2,000…even as much as $5,000 every single week just by doing this easy writing in their spare time…and now it’s your turn!

How Is This Possible?

If all of this sounds too good to be true, let me put your mind at ease by showing you the reason why this is all possible:

The #1 thing all online businesses need in order to survive is more people visiting and buying from their websites. Think about it…the more people who go to their site, the more sales they can make…simple enough right?

Now here’s where you come in:

Since 90% website visitors come from the major search engines (Google and Yahoo)…the more content pages a business has, the more times one of it’s pages (articles) will show up in the search results when a potential customer does a search…

Which is why…

These businesses are starving to put up
as many content pages as possible!

They know that the more content pages they have on their site, the more people they will get to click over to their site, and the more money they will make.

And because these business are too busy doing other things, they will gladly pay YOU top-dollar for writing simple articles, blog posts, and even fiction and non-fiction short stories…for them!

How Much Can You Make?

Don’t let the easy nature of this opportunity fool you, because even though the work is dead-simple, the pay is amazing!

They’re absolutely right, the pay IS amazing — amazingly small!

(BTW, I took out all the H1 and H2 headers used throughout the come-on — I mean “Job Description”.)

You’re assured “It’s a never-ending supply of high-paying, simple and easy writing jobs that come to YOU…”

Uhm, I guess some folks would consider it “high-paying” if you live in a hovel in a war-torn wasteland. If you read carefully when they start calculating how much you can “easily” earn, you discover you’re being paid $10 per article. Now at 500 words per article that comes out to .02¢ per word. Even at a mere 250 words per article (and exactly how much content would that be for a web site), it comes out to .04¢ per word. These are the wages Depression Era pulp writers earned! but wait, a bit of hunting on my part unearths that many of these “assignments” are for 1-2,000 word articles — which comes to .01-.005¢ per word!

Anyone who’s tried the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) competition knows how hard it is to knock out 2,000 words a day without worrying about writing well. So how in the world can you possibly write enough relevant and quality content for all these web sites who are going to be hiring you through this “network?” And how do they know you’re good enough?

Oh, relax. As the pitch page — er, Job Description puts it:

And if you’re worried that you might not be the best writer, or that you never attended any college or higher-learning institute…it does NOT matter one bit!

Because…

These Companies Don’t Care Who You Are, Where You Live, Or Your Level Of Education

The writing tasks you’ll be doing will be so easy an 8-year-old child could do them…

You just follow the simple instructions that come with each job…and everything you need to complete the job will be right there for you!

If you do any research on these kinds of come-ons, you discover that what you are actually getting “hired” to do is copy-and-paste content from other web sites or copy from books and magazines (if you’re slow and don’t want to make as much $$). Then you change a couple of words here and there, maybe move a paragraph around and — voila! — instant content.

Oh course, it’s immoral, unethical and illegal, but hey, it’s easy money “writing” so come-on, click the “Complete Registration” button.

Don't fall for these writing job scams!

Now I’ve read enough of these scam-artist programs to know that I wasn’t going to get the “opportunity” to work for slave wages for free, so I wasn’t surprised when clicking on the “Complete Registration” brought me to a page where I needed to give them a credit card.

I was receiving a once-in-life-time, limited-time offer (you knew it was a limited-time offer because there’s a little box in red counting down the seconds). Instead of paying the “normal” $69.95″ Per Month (!!) for Unlimited Access Membership to the Freelance Home Writers Network, I could sign up in the next 1,400 seconds for a low rate of $2.95 for 7 days followed by a mere $47 per month fee.

Let me get this straight. I pay these jokers $50 for the privilege of seeing a list of unethical thieves who are offering me $10 per article so they can scam Google by appearing to have relevant content on their sites to improve their Page Ranking? Wow! What a deal!

And this is assuming these guys actually pay me after I do the work. But since I know none of the people involved in this operation are ethical, how likely are they to be honest.

The truly sad part of all of this, is that I’ve read pieces by writers of no integrity who would do this sort of thing. At least the ones who write term papers get paid a half-way decent rate.

When I think of all the people I know who actually care about their work and writing and all the desperate souls who lose good money to these sleaze balls, I just want to go Nietzsche on these festering maggots.

But wait there’s more!

As you attempt to leave the site you’re get a pop-up javascript alert offering you a chance for a “Work From Home Success Kit” where you can “Make Money Working at Home With Google!“

Clicking on the link takes you to another come-on micro-site promising me I can earn $100-1,000 per month “fast, free, profitably” with my “free Google Automated Income Kit”. Of course to get my “Free” kit, I get a 14-day free trial BlogToolKit.com web site. And after 14-days I will be billed $39.95 a month. For a blog page. The kind I could get for free from Blogger or WordPress.com or LiveJournal or a dozen other sources.

Oh, and if you want to unsubscribe from all of these spammers and scammers? Well, you’re suppose write a snail mail to this address in Florida to request being removed from the list, however, the business is owned by someone in Juneau, Alaska. Is there some kind of residency requirement in Alaska that one out of three residents must be embarrassing examples of knuckle-dragging, selfish, greedy creatures on the cusp of evolving into homo sapien?

Grrrrr! She says, Grrrr!

Nature Writing: the value of journaling for writers

Carolyn — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:43:55 +0000

Use specific sense-based words & avoid abstract words like "beautiful" in your descriptions

Now this is irony (unlike the song “Ironic” by Morissette)! My first post-lunch (a vast hoard of potluck foods and beverages from the Richard Hugo House volunteers and Costco) workshop was canceled, however, the workshop I wanted to attend at the start of the day replaced it. It’s enough to make me believe in being medieval (see the earlier post about Medieval in P.A.).

The Nature Writing workshop was presented by Susan Zwinger, a second generation naturalist, nature writer and avid nature journalist. Her journals are works of art by themselves with not only her lovely handwriting, but sketches, paintings and collage.

She emphasized that nature journals are useful to all types of writers, fiction and non-fiction. The point of a nature journal is a) learning to see deeply, with all the senses and b) collecting observations and details about our natural world that can add texture to our writing.

Here are some of Susan Swinger’s tips for keeping a nature journal:

Even if you aren’t an artists, stop and draw in your book. “Once you draw something, you know it intimately.” The secret is to keep your journal with you and take notes everywhere, even where you don’t expect to keep them like traffic jams.

Identify species, this means learning to use guide books. You can get out of the cliches like “the bird sang in the shrub”. Recommends Pojar for PNW plants.

Avoid meaningless, abstract word (e.g., beautiful).

Stay there for 30-45 minutes and look and use all of your senses including kenesthetics (for example slot canyons, how to move through them for people who have never seen the area can understand it).

Sense of smell is one of the most ancient so it skips cognition and goes straight to our emotional response. Get smell and taste descriptions.

air temperature, pressure, humidity, sense of direction, taste, balance, texture, — in the field you want to get all those senses down, all the details; you can edit your choices later; you may need different details for different works

Indexing your journals as you go along makes it easy to find material at a later date — including notes you forgot you made

Other organization idea: outline journal content with different highlighters or markers (e.g., green material about ecology, orange for people notes/description) Your color code would specific to your needs.

Use guided imagery to bring back memories that may not be recorded in a journal

Zwinger recommends at University Bookstores and Art Supply specialist for journals, art and notebooks, especially in bulk, to cut the costs.

The class ended with a wonderful discussion of memory and triggering memories.

Exercise: Avoiding meaningless abstracts by uses the senses.

Pick a location and then bring it to life by picking a sense and using it to describe the environment. For example, the way Indian cities smell of mingled spices, the “fat”, nearly tactile, warm, humid air of Houston, Texas.

Ordinary People: a writing exercise to capture characterization

Carolyn — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 05:37:32 +0000

Try writing Flash Fiction vignettes from different viewpoints and moments in the character's life

Writer and teach Margot Case offered a brilliant workshop at he Richard Hugo House Write-O-Rama workshop entitled Ordinary People. We read excerpts from “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” by Donald Bartheleme, Sixty Stories.

I’d tried The Dead Father by Bartheleme, but found it at the wrong time and had never tried Donald Bartheleme again. What a mistake! I’m hot footing it to the book store to find more of his short stories.

Essentially, “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” is written as a series of vignettes supposedly from Robert Kennedy’s life by various people’s viewpoints. It’s similar to a collection of Flash Fiction.

What happens when we put these disjointed things out there and let the reader’s mind create the meaning and the organization. “The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line.” The story presents the concept of “surprising” the reader by capturing the moment creatively.

Not only does it surprise the reader, but it gave me interesting ideas on creating characterization by viewing my characters through the eyes of others.

Exercise: Snapshots of a Character

Create a series of vignettes, moments or Flash Fiction pieces about a single character; basically snapshots from moments in a person’s life from different perspectives. A exercise in exploring characterization that would be great for non-fiction as well as fiction writers.

For the first part of the exercise, we made a list of the times we really see people:

– offering a last bite
– in the voting booth
– @ church/temple
– watching CNN/the news/football
– home for the holidays
– unexpected generosity/kindness
– in conversation with mother
– with telemarketers
– new introduction
– on safari/tracking
– treating the cashier
– company picnic
– crying child
– fixing things/ broken things
– when someone asks for forgiveness
– reacting to something broken
– lost while driving
–reaction to success
– asking forgiveness
– eating
– performing
– stuck in traffic/driving
– response to someone’s misfortune
– being lost
– walking into the water at the ocean
– moments when they don’t know they are being observed
– what others might say

Part 2 of the exercise

Next we selected one of the photos of people scattered around the table and wrote our own Flash Fiction snapshots.

This was an interesting exercise and I think very useful to any writer wanting to find a fresh way to portray a character. Alas, the guys in the workshop were so predictable. The first one wrote about hookers and doing drugs with Putin. The second guy talked about Daniel Craig “screwing” his girlfriend and later his wife. The 3rd man did a long piece about a black singer sensuously caressing guitar. Thank goodness none of them broke out the cigars!

Here’s my efforts working with a black and white photo of an intelligent looking woman looking outside the frame as if paused in her rush to somewhere, something else:

An Unplanned Conference in the Hall
She gets stopped in the hall by a a group of co-workers. There’s a problem. Nothing major, but they can’t decide what to do. She stares at them intently. She understands the entire situation in 2 sentences, 5 seconds. Her face is still but you can tell she’s impatient. She knows the answer and is just waiting for the rest of them to catch up. One of the men finally, tentatively suggests the right solution. He surreptiously glances towards her. She says, “Yes. That’s right.” Then she walks on.

*****

Her Aunt’s Observations
“Oh, she was always good at school, but she got into trouble a lot because she was too impatient. She wasn’t very pretty when she was young. All angles and gawky and kind of klutzy. They all knew her in the emergency room because she was always getting stitched up or dislocated her shoulder or broke a bone. And when you’d ask her what happened, she’d be all wide-eyed with surprise and say she was walking along thinking about something and just fell into a ditch, or drove her bike into a parking meter or some such nonsense. And when you asked her what she was thinking she’d say something like she was thinking about some show she saw about the Conquistadors or wondering why Arthur didn’t just give Lancelot a quest that would take him fair away from Quinevere for several years and crazy things like that. It’s just too bad she doesn’t dress up more and do a little something with her hair. She could be really attractive if she just made a little effort.

*******
Ordering Coffee
“A decaf venti, triple shot, hazlenut, low-fat latte. Please.” She pauses. “And this CD. Thank you.” She pays and puts $1 and the change in the tip jar.
###

I’m definitely putting this in my writing arsenal. And giving Batheleme another go.