Tag Archives for 2015

Where we are in the 2015 Journey

Last Friday was our third Shakespeare Reader’s Theatre event of this spring (thanks to the Naperville Public Library for providing us with rooms for two of the events). What is Shakespeare Reader’s Theatre? It’s an opportunity for writers/participants to stretch themselves out of their comfort zones, experience the words of the Bard first hand, and read/act out a Shakespeare play. Last Friday we did Romeo and Juliet, which featured some exciting fight scenes, romantic exchanges and humor amidst the drama. Here we have Brian as Romeo dueling with Barry’s Tybalt while Katherine relaxes in the background since Juliet is not in this particular scene ;-).

We are almost into May; the Journey’s activities primarily are concentrated in January through June and then in September. This has been a fairly active year for the Journey, with the following Paths in addition to three Shakespeare Reader’s Theatre events that Catherine and I organized:

  • Katherine’s Editing Path to help the novelists edit their novels
  • Ed’s Japanesey™ and Asian Paths, which have involved meals at great restaurants as well as exposure to cultural elements in the Chicago area (such as Japanese bakeries and markets). Ed has regaled attendees with entertaining stories and interesting facts on each outing.
  • Sarah’s monthly MiniWriMo challenges, offering little glow in the dark dinosaurs as prizes for writing 10K words in one week
  • The Horror Anthology of short stories, flash fiction and poems, which is currently in progress
  • Steven and Catherine’s Writing Excuses Path, which follows the terrific free Master Class by the Writing Excuses podcasters
  • Dan’s Path for freelance writers (this is new and just beginning)
  • my music Jam Path (also new and just beginning)

We’ve had two workshops at each of our monthly meetings, covering editing (Katherine Lato), critiquing, the Writing Excuses Path with exercises (Catherine Brennan and Steve White), some Story Walls, and Marketing for authors (Willow Sanders), POV/Perspective (Stephanie White).

Missing thus far from previous years are Paths such as the Accountability Path, the Spirit Path, and the Archery Path (though that may yet occur this summer).

Story Worlds

CharlevoixBeach

Pondering the possibilities

You get better at writing by taking a good, hard, look at what you don’t do well, right? I found something I want to get better at.

During the novel-revision process I’ve discovered that I can dive into a story and have people (interesting people, I hope) do thing (interesting things, I hope) and discover that everything is happening in a white room…or maybe out in some kind of unspecified outdoor spot. For me, the problem is the same whether I’m writing about real world settings or imaginary ones.

I may always have to go back and flesh out the setting; there are many writers that work that way. However, as long as I continue to do some pre-writing and outlining–which I prefer, especially for novels–I  might as well get a jump on setting. So I started to ask myself some questions. There’s a lot of help out there on the interwebs and elsewhere with research and world-building. Almost too much. To keep it manageable, I decided to start from scratch with my own way to approach world-building and research. Once I can handle these relatively simple questions, I might be able to move on and sample some of the wisdom that’s out there.

My questions began like this: What do I absolutely need to figure out before I start writing?

  1. Where do people live? How many of them live in one place, and what are their houses like, from richest to poorest (if they have such distinctions, or any notion of some folks being more elite or worthy than others)?
  2. What do people wear? How do climate, social mores, occupations, religious beliefs, and class distinctions lead to variations in dress?
  3. What do people eat? Is there a particular culinary tradition associated with their culture, and if they are aware of other cultures, how would they characterize the differences? What is their special (holiday, for example) food like, compared to everyday food?
  4. What local resources—animal, vegetable, and mineral, magical—help determine answers to questions about shelter, clothing, and food?
  5. How is society organized? Are people in tribes, city-states, nations? How are people’s settlements arranged? Who is in charge? How are disputes arbitrated, both within the community and with other communities?
  6. How do people acquire things? What kind of trade occurs, both within the community and with other communities?
  7. What common occupations exist? What kinds of things will my main characters do, and are their occupations typical, or unusual?

Okay, that just might be enough to start with. Going forward, these are questions I plan to address early on. It’s got to be better than plunging into my next story world only to discover someone forgot to fill the pool!

Writing horror short stories

So a quick confession. I’ve read some stories that qualify as horror (by Harlan Ellison, Orson Scott Card, Stephen King, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Robert Holdstock and others), but it’s not a genre I really enjoy. I mean, I read as an escape or to broaden my horizons–horror, to me, provides a thrill but it’s not as much of an escape. Still, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy stories like I have no mouth but I must scream. It’s just that a little horror goes a long way, kind of like really spicy dishes.

Anyway, the Journey is doing its sixth short story anthology in 2015: a horror anthology with a theme of masks, disguises or things that are hidden. Ana Koulouris, Kevin C. Swier, Brian Cable, Dan Hoger and Taylor Anhalt are the editing team that will make this happen. We currently have about twelve authors of stories and poems. If anyone reading this article is interested in joining the fun, please submit your story (flash fiction of at least 350 words, short stories of up to 5000 words) or poem first draft by March 14th (one week from now).

Since I haven’t really written any horror stories before, I googled how to do it and came up with the following:

The first reference (from writers digest) talks about avoiding clichés, for instance of evil:

Take the theme of evil, as the horror story often does. Writing about evil is a moral act, and it won’t do to recycle definitions of evil—to take them on trust. Horror fiction frequently presents the idea of evil in such a shorthand form as to be essentially meaningless—something vague out there that causes folk to commit terrible acts, something other than ourselves, nothing to do with us. That sounds to me more like an excuse than a definition, and I hope it’s had its day. If we’re going to write about evil, then let’s define it and how it relates to ourselves.

From what I’ve seen of the stories the Journey members have planned for the anthology, there will be some very interesting takes on what horror is and how to invoke that emotion in the reader.