Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Category: Art & Craft (Page 6 of 17)

Fun with Writing

Last year at the SCBWI Carolinas fall conference one of our presenters was Daniel Nayeri.  If you don’t know Daniel, find out about him. His most recent publication is, well, it’s a box.  How To Tell A Story. [Workman Press] It is about writing creatively. Probably more for a *kid* audience than an adult one, it is a ‘restart your brain’ sort of box. A way to test your own ability to write as well as letting you *see* the way a story unfolds.

This year my critique group–soup–has decided to use HTTAS as writing exercises. At a group meeting we roll the blocks. For our first exercise–not sure where we started–here’s what we had to work with   Continue reading

Growth

I’ve been watching the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries series. I’ve enjoyed them. It’s been fun. There’s daring do. The clothes. The sets. The cars. There’s romance. But the bottom line is I won’t rally for a season four now that she’s kissed Jack as she goes flying off with her Father to England to return him to Mother.

Why not? After season 1, I continued to watch, but not with my whole brain. Phryne, charming and outré as can be, just is. She is a woman of mid-forties. She is a force of nature, with money and skills that come from a free-wheeling and colorful life, sometimes because of the wealth, sometime because it was scrabble. It’s interesting, but Phryne is not about to change. Continue reading

Adapting

When I read I am not very critical, never was. I am the proverbial sponge. I take in. I soak. I immerse. If I can’t do that in a story, if I can put a story down without a fight, then for me, it’s not that good a story. If I have to fight myself to put down a story at midnight, make a bargain about what I will get done so I can get back to the story, then I know some part of that story will show up in my dreams. I dream all the time. I can not remember a time I did not, have not dreamed. Even when I wake up from being given an anesthetic, I feel like I dream.

It is very loud in my head. Always. I feel a little Walter Mitty. Always. So where am I going with this? Continue reading

Processing Time

It is the takeaways that count. Yes, the atmosphere, the complextion of the group, the fealty to the idea of craft and craft at a high level definitely count. But it is what you can takeaway—apply, use, incorporate into your own writing that makes a retreat, a conference, a writing event more than a good one, but a great one.

Falling Leaves in upstate NY run by the regional team of Nancy Castaldo, Lois   Huey and Kyra Teis, falls into the great category. In part because I was not distracted by running the program, I was there to sit and to learn. I did.

It was also because the presentations which covered voice, character, tension, emotion and suspense came complete with writing exercises to draw more from the presenation than just notes, but  practice.

I’m a plotter. Before I even know the character I know the basic plot. Like: MC finds out that _____ is able to ____  and yet  saves the ____. I have a problem, some action and a solution. What I need is what Lisa Yoskowitz [Executive Editor, Little Brown Books for Young Readers] brought—Raising The Stakes–the conflict, the pacing and the suspense of getting to the solution. She talked about the ‘three sentence story‘ as a way to understand the problem, conflict and solution, i.e., Baby shoes. For Sale. Never Worn. The middle sentence sets up the suspense. Also being able to write this three sentence story is great for a pitch.

This complimented Ben Rosenthal’s [Senior Editor, Katherine Tegan Books] Revise with In-Tension, adding friction to the dialogue. Not ‘he opened the doors and walked in’,  but better ‘the door blew open as he rushed in’.  Ah. Adverbs and adjectives!

Cheryl Klein’s [Executive Editor, Arthur A. Levine Books] presentation Connecting With a Character was full of nuggets too numerous to mention. Her definition of the difference between MG and YA which revolves around home is of value. For a middle grade book–the ideal is to find family, friends and return home. For young adult–everything except home is what they want, to fight in a wider world.

Anne Heltzel’s  [Editor, Amulet Books] Let’s Talk About Voice, Baby was for me [I’m the plotter, remember] what comes later, I have to know the story– establish plot, tension, character, then to the actual voice. We know voice compels agents and editors to read on. I know voice is the character. But it is more. Voice equals style, consistency and authenticity, meaning that the character MUST have a distintive emotional arc changing from beginning to end.

Oh, and that emotional arc. You can have the voice, but if you don’t have the emotion to go with it, the character is not compeling. Jill Santopolo [Executive Editor, Philomel Books] brought the retreat to a close with The Emotional Connection. Jill was on the faculty of our 2014 spring retreat and presented on voice and it was a wonderful discussion of using word choices to discover what the character sounded like, that consistency and authenticity that Anne Heltzel talked about. In this talk she paired that idea with action rather than attribution in dialogue. ‘In story, every action has an emotion behind it. Some more obvious than others.’ We all get what it means when a kid rolls their eyes, or stands twirling a strand of hair.

It was hard to say where one talk began and the others ended, because it takes all these–and more–to make a good story. For me, the talkaways were not of my own writing, although we each received a critique of 20 pages of a mss by one of the editors. For me, like anything I do, I don’t want to be told where and when to change my story. It’s my story. I want the skills I can take to my character to discuss and develop a more complete, satisfying story with a protaganist I would have related to as a kid, with the tension to keep me up at 2 am reading, with a voice that would resonate in my head for a long time after I finished reading.

Transition Time

I was raised in southern California. Driving was compulsory. Driving was reality. I really really like to drive. So a lot of the time when I have a place to go, even if flying might be an option, I drive. So this week, Tom and I are driving to Lake George New York for the Falling Leaves Retreat. Seriously, you ask?  That’s four extra days out of your week. Two up, two back.

Why yes. Yes it is. And that’s a good thing.

The first couple of years Meghan was at Loyola of Maryland, she flew home. But then one trip home she came home by train. Yes, it was a longer trip for her. But you know what? She had a chance on the train to leave behind college and when she got off the train she was ready to be home.

That time on the train was time to make the transition from college life to home life.

For me, this drive to Lake George is transition time. I packed yesterday–yes, too much stuff–after all, the car does not check the weight of my suitcase. It was the beginning of my transition time, I had to concentrate on what would be happening this coming weekend, not thinking of what was going on at home, with my writing, with the puppies, with SCBWI Carolinas. Time to turn off email, Facebook, twitter–not that I’m huge on tweeting.

I love to multitask, although I think that I have lost a little of that edge from not doing it as  consistently and constantly as when we were raising the girls. But this isn’t about multitasking or about IS GOOGLE MAKING US STUPID?  When we multitask we don’t have the opportunity to go deep. That is like googling an answer and then thinking we are smart. But we aren’t. The article suggests that by such a cursory view of so much material we are changing the synapsis in our brains.

Personally, I like my brain, and I liked the way I could spend hours in the library researching my senior english essay for Shakespeare’s 400th birthday, or my high school senior thesis on World War II spies, or  my graduate thesis on Jacob Burckhardt  [and yes, lol, I’m linking to wikipedia]. I liked that level of concentration on a research subject. I liked that ability to synthesize information. And it’s hard to do with all the electronic and non-elecontronic bombarding us every minute.

This transition time, these two days each way, gives my brain a chance to reconnect, to think, to be ready to accept five presentations, a critique and a group critique at this retreat.

I like this transition time!

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