No matter how you choose to write one thing you will want to master is setting the stage.
Stage Setup by Many Other Names
The previous post contained a Story Board and this post is meant to pull the Setup out of the group of things to consider.
You, as a writer, need to know where you are as you set fingers to keyboard, most of the time, your reader wants this information as well.
You can present the setting in many ways, directly or through a character’s observation, or you may just blurt it out, tell. Telling has a place. Telling is especially useful when you are simply making a scene sketch.
Keep in mind, these are just notes, a quick sketch, something to pre-load a writer’s mind before she frets and worries over the opening line.
Next Sunday Marks the Ending of North America’s Daylight Savings Time. On 3 November we will use Eastern Time, ET or EST when times are listed for chats.
A scene is a bucket that contains drama. It occupies its own space for a finite amount of time. When time is up, the setup stays while we cut to a new scene. Scenes are great because they talk to you. They'll tell you the highway scene is finished. They'll tell it's time to cut to the empty house.
Robert J Ray
A Scene Sketch May Look Like This...
StoryBoard
Stage Setup:
Temperature/Season:
Time/Place:
Lighting/Sounds/Smells:
Symbols/Images:
Characters/Relationships:
Dialogue
Subjects:
Subtext:
Action
Large:
Supporting:
Point of View:
Climax:
Exit Line:
Join Us for a Wednesday Mini-Topic Chat
8PM EDT
Your Favorite
Character
If we write, we all have a favorite character of all time. Some of us have more than one. You know when you’ve found her.
He will come to you as if in a dream. Or he may arrive fully formed. It will be love at first sight.
How do you go about developing, designing, taming this perfect character? Do you keep notes, physical sketches, does she become a tiny person who sits near your keyboard?
What do you keep in your character notes? Do your characters get their very own files? Do you interview them? How do you keep them alive? How do you come back to your keyboard for the duration of your short story or novel
and keep them fresh and alive and full of surprises?
Wednesday is an open topic night. Bring any writerly questions or ides to the chat room and we will do our best to address them.
I have finally created a new page for the website called A Writer's Bookshelf. I have listed books on writing and linked the items back to Amazon. I am asking for suggestions from all of you. If you have a favorite book on writing or a reference book you return to often, please shoot me an email at Sally@Writerschatroom.com . Include a clear subject line and in the body of the email list the book, author and a link to the book if you have one available. Don't feel limited to a single suggestion, go ahead and send me your list. I will try my best to include them.
We have new visitors at the chat room, they sometimes feel a little lost because of our familiarity, so let's be sure to make them feel at home. Show them to the Potluck Dessert Table at the back of the room.
Discovering New Characters - Continued
Be Prepared to Share Your Favorite How-To Titles and Authors.
Aristotle defined or measured characters as good, appropriate, like and consistent. Forrester compacted these four labels into two. Round and Flat. If a character never surprises the reader it is flat. Burroway suggests we
do away with the starchy labels and “whoever catches your attention may be the beginning of a character.”
Start a character with what you can see. Age, gender, features, gestures and clothing. Find a feeling from the things you observe and then invent a reason this character is wearing these clothes and standing in this place.
Ray suggests adding motives, wants, cast the characters into roles, antagonist, protagonist and helpers, give them snippets of dialog. Write fast and call it a discovery. Don’t fuss over things at the start. Your bad girl
may turn out to be your helper or even your protagonist.
Let your characters develop on the pages of notebooks, sketch pads, character files in e-folders on your desk top computers or your cellphone. Just get it down, somewhere, or you’ll never know your characters well enough to
take you to the end of the story.
Sketch a few characters, then give them back-stories. Let them have dreams, filled with symbolism. Then ask them to show you what they keep in their closets, under their beds. Dress them up. Do anything you want, you are
creating. Round file the flat characters, you’ll know when. Re-cast them in roles, a bad or evil character doesn’t know she is mean and destructive.
Most of the content for this article came from Robert J. Ray.
Join us tonight for a Mini-Topic Chat on Writing New Characters
Be Prepared to Share Your Favorite How-To Titles and Authors.
