Hugo

I went to see Hugo this Thanksgiving weekend. I liked it a lot, but it was not exactly what I expected. The trailers made it look like a fantasy film about a boy and his robot. The harshest piece of criticism I have for the film is that when the story actually started to unfold, it felt like a bait and switch. It all pays off in the end because I really enjoyed the perspective the director found in telling a little bit about the true story of french film innovator George  Méliès.

The story lands in the historical fiction genre, and even though it's more historical than fiction, it is a great steampunk fix if you're craving it.

Checking In

The writing I got in this weekend was very limited. We got our first few inches of snowfall so driveways and sidewalks needed shoveling, plus other odds and ends around the house needed taking care of. Since I've started writing every day now, I've noticed that the words are coming easier. Usually I take a sentence and mull it over for a while and then finally tap it out on to the computer. Now I can do that with paragraphs. Just like going to the gym, you have to do it every day to build up that muscle!

I need a new title for my short story. When I first gave it a working title of "The Machine That Knew Everything" I had a different idea in mind. But I find that with each paragraph, the story writes itself. This is incredibly frustrating for me because I like to plan out the smallest details and have yet to come up with an outline of where this story is going. This story will be finished by the end of Thanksgiving weekend and I will post it here.

Also, I am reading Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Fantastic! I even purchased the audiobook so I could listen to it while at the gym.

A Journey of a Thousand Steps

It can be a bit overwhelming when thinking about writing a first whole novel. That is eventually my goal, but before I start with Chapter 1 there is a lot of work to be done. Character/setting development, grammar to learn, plot outlines, and liquor to stock up on. I have a lot of hard questions to tackle like "why do people want to read my stories?"

When you have as many novels and as much experience as an author like Stephen King, you can sit down and just start writing. I've heard this is called "by the seat of your pants" style. As much as I wish I could do that, I'm not any good at it. I'm a planner - to such a degree that I don't even walk in to a grocery store without a list. I stumbled across advancedfictionwriting.com where the author of that website, Randy Ingermanson has what he calls "The Snowflake" method. It's a great way to organize a novel and I've tried it a couple of times. I find the first steps very helpful to get the ball rolling.

So now that I have a whole hand full of one liners from last week, I can develop them in to full plots. That is what I'll be doing next.

Scary Stories to Read in the Dark

I was going to post my final installment of the one liners yesterday, but I got distracted by a very creepy story that kept me up for the rest of the night.

The author sets the story up like he is recalling memories from his childhood that now make sense to him as a man (I'm assuming that this story is fiction based on the style of the narrative, but I don't know that for a fact). Amidst the high range of emotions and events, the story's lesson comes in to focus: "The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man." It's well written lines like this that lead me to believe the author isn't merely recalling childhood memories, but a writer well experienced in his craft. ...Or maybe I just desperately hope that these events couldn't possibly be anything more than a work of fiction.

It doesn't matter if the events actually happened because it is true in the minds of the readers, since everyone can relate to strange or scary memories from their childhood.

With all that said, here is today's final one liner:
Something sinister from the woods follows 13 year old Jake Tanner home after an overnight camping trip.

Next week I will be picking one of these five one-liners to expand into a whole paragraph (per Randy Ingermanson's "Snowflake Method"). I highly recommend checking out his website. It has a lot of fantastic resources for writers.

Thursday One Liner

Regrettably, I can't post much this morning because a good friend of mine called me out to breakfast before work. He always has good stories about love and relationships gone bad, so I'll make today's post a quickie.

Here is the one-liner for the day, just to remain on schedule.

"A machinist composes a love song using the tools and sounds from his shop, and it is mistakenly suspected of  secret code being passed on to foreign enemies by the government."


Meh, too wordy.

Setting and Story

Is there anything Steampunkish about a paranormal investigator? Not inherently. So how do I make the setting important to the story? Those are questions I'll have to answer if I'm going to continue working down that path. Should Acacia have ghosts? Magic? Also, is it better to build a very detailed world drawn out and then start writing stories for it? All of these are questions I can't answer yet, but are keeping in mind.

Today's one liner: A gunslinging gambler from foreign lands finds himself in the middle of an anarchist's plot to blow up the capital of Acacia.

Steampunk

As I make today's one liner, I thought I'd chat about Steampunk and why I've chosen to write in that setting. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the history of Victorian England or the 1880s, but when it comes to speculating about early technology, the combination of art and science, and discovering mysteries of the universe, it's like a playground for the imagination. (Also, as cliche as it may be, goggles are a guilty pleasure of mine.)

Sure, I often dream about breaking the chains of working for corporate, but my ultimate goal is to write for teens and young adults, even if it means keeping the day job. Reading is one of the most important things you can do as a youngster, no matter what your background is. And Steampunk is a new genre that is ripe for building a world in.

To learn as much as I can about Steampunk, I'm reading everything I can get my hands on. If you, the reader of this silly blog, have any personal favorites that embody the Steampunk universe, feel free to leave them as a comment!

Today's one liner:

An unlucky train steward joins airship pirates to liberate his country from a corrupt government official.

Sometimes you have to fall on your face.

 Disney has a movie called "Meet the Robinsons" that makes a fantastic statement about making mistakes and not giving up. It's a little embarrassing that so early into my blog I have fallen to writer's block and frozen up. If something can be learned about this, then all is not lost.

Since the purpose of this blog is to improve and polish up my craft, let's examine what happened. Day 1 of the Three Minute challenge was great. I finished the story by deadline and was itching to write the next one. On Day 2 I drew from a story that happened in my past so I thought it would be easy and short, right? It was actually a frustrating experience because I struggled to include all the details. Day 3's story is listed below, and I really liked the premise, but again, I struggled to keep it 600 words or less. Also, by now, the goal of writing a three minute story has become more stressful than fun, so I start to avoid writing the same way I avoided homework when I was in college.

Lesson #1: Don't stress about the details. I could let the reader do all that for me. If I get bogged up in the details, which I have, then describing a story becomes overwhelming and tedious. The challenge in the three minute story is that there are no words to spare - and a writer should only put a word on the page if it's necessary and adds to the story.

 Lesson #2: Make more reasonable goals. A three minute story was too much too fast, and a goal should be a mile marker that encourages further accomplishments.

 So this week I will set forth a new goal that will embody those two lessons. Every day this week (Monday - Friday) I will come up with one line that describes a story premise. Examples can be found here at the New York Times best sellers list.

Today's one liner: A con woman posing as a paranormal investigator faces a real ghost.




Three Minute Fiction #3
Confessions of Caera Spencer

As an investigator of the Paranormal, I've seen some pretty strange things. How did I get in to a profession like this? Pour me another whiskey sour and I'll tell you. Although, you're better off tending bar. You're better off not hearing this at all.

When you're Ma and Pa don't have coin to send you off to school, you either join the work force as soon as you are able, or you set to the streets. Pickin' pockies weren't much my thing, but if you're going to make any way on the streets you do strange and terrible things to survive, but that's a different story.

I taught myself to read by going to church during the days. If I pretended to be interested in the words of the lord, Shepard Kieren would give me a bowl of soup and read passages of the holy scriptures to me. That's where I met the Countess Rosemary Blanche at her darkest hour. She was hopeless, desperate, but also rich.

The nice thing about looking poor, is that you're invisible to the rich. So the Countess didn't notice me listening in to all the spooky details of her plight. The ghost of her ex-husband was haunting her. So I plucked me a fancy jacket and show up at her house the next day.

Three Minute Fiction #2

For today's post, I'm going to deviate from my usual steam flavored  fare. The setting for this one is modern day, near Chicago, and is based off of a true story. 

"Oh, I wish the police would finally do something about these vagrants. It's getting worse, you know. You can't even pull up to a stop light any more without having some bum staring at you, asking for money. Disgusting." Jeff walked with his wife down a busy street in there home town of Evanston, a small city near Chicago. "Next time let's drive to dinner. I don't care how close we live, I just want to bypass all this garbage."

"Honey, we're almost there. Let's talk about something else, please," said the woman accompanying the grumbling man. Patricia didn't want to have to think about other people's misfortunes while she was dressed nicely and on her way to their favorite restaurant. 

"I mean, really, it's getting as bad as down town Chicago, here. What do homeless people want to do in a suburb anyway?" The couple approached a street corner and an old toothless man stood there asking for a quarter to get on the bus. Patricia avoided eye contact and looked away, dreading how her husband was going to react. Luckily, he passed the man without acknowledgement. 

"Excuse me! Excuse me!" Patricia's attention was caught and she stopped. A teenager was flagging them down. She was dressed in boy's clothes, sported blue uncombed hair, and was holding a binder. "Excuse me! I'm a volunteer with Development Aid from People to People and I'm looking for small donations of around $1.00 to help with our projects in Africa."

Patricia was about to waive her off. "Oh really, YOUR projects in Africa? Do you even know where it is?"

"Well, of course I do! In January I'll be leaving for Zambia. I'll be leading youth groups there and teaching them about how to prevent HIV/AIDs. We're fundraising so we can fund..."

"Listen dearie. You want this dollar?" Jeff pulled a dollar from his money clip and waived in her face. "Go GET A JOB and quit embarrassing your parents!" he shouted. "You're not going to Africa! Not with THAT hair!" 

The girl just stood there, looking stupid, mouth agape. "We're late, honey," said Patricia.

The next day Patricia and Jeff were at home when their doorbell rang. It was the same girl. Now even Patricia was angry. Did she follow us to our home? As soon as Jeff opened the door he bellowed at her. "I told you yesterday! I'm not interested!!"

Again, the girl looked shocked. Maybe it was an accident. Patricia watched the girl run across to where her partner was ringing doorbells on the other side of the street. Jeff fumed as he picked up the phone and dialed the police. He kept watching out the window, but saw nothing after the pair walked away. 

About six months later, during a cold March afternoon, Patricia went to the end of their driveway to pick up the mail. Usually they didn't get much except bills and weekly advertisements, but on this day a post card was sitting on top of the pile. The postcard was smudged with dirt around the edges and smelled like a campfire. It showed a photograph of a girl surrounded by a bunch of smiling African children and it read "I DID make it to Africa. Even with this hair."