Growing your story

With all the advice out there on how to organize plot lines, structure outlines, and revise first drafts, I have found very little that talks about how to think about your story.

Every advice I've ever read or received on how to outline or organize story material assumes I already have material stored up in my mind. It assumes I already have a mess that needs to be organized. But too often I skip the step that no one has ever told me to do: think.

Someone asked me recently if I had any ideas on how to move bare conceptions and single scenes forward into something like a story. I have a lot of what I call snippets or stubs of stories. A scene, a conversation, a witty and elegant description, or an idea for a unique character. These are all little tiny seeds of a story.

I find I need to plant those seeds by writing down what I have. But I have to let them grow on their own by just walking away from the keyboard. A snippet might remain a snippet for weeks or even months before it's grown enough in my mind. But during that time, my thoughts will return to it while I'm driving or waiting in line, and while I think about it, it just grows.

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, once described being a writer as someone who sits around in their underwear and gets paid a dollar for doing so. Well, I don't sit around in my underwear, but I do take an awful lot of time to just think about my story. Do outlines and structures and arches and character profiles help? Yes. But not so much as to carry the entire burden of story-growing on their shoulders.

To rephrase the extended metaphor:

Plant the seed of a story by putting it on paper. Your mind is the soil. Let its roots grow deep and long before it pokes out over the surface., unprotected where anything might happen to it.

When it grows, encourage it to come up out of the dirt and reach for the sunlight. Add branch by branch, leaf by leaf, letting every aspect of it grow inside your mind until its ready to be put to paper.

Of course, even before all of this you must ask yourself what kind of tree do you want to plant? Is the purpose of your story to block wind? Farmers often use trees to shelter their crops from the wind. Are you writing your story to shelter other ideas from getting blown away?

Or perhaps you want to plant a tree for shade: Simple, relaxing, easy to take care of. Something that doesn't require a lot of effort to enjoy. Something that can be read easily. (Commercial or Mainstream fiction)

You could plant a tree for its fruit. Something that will directly feed the masses, or even just your own appetite. Something that is almost literally food for thought. (Literary works, etc.)

The story might need to be planted for use later on as lumber. I mean, wouldn't you love an author who wrote a book so rich and accessible that you could just go up to it with an ax and carry away solid ideas to use in your own life? (Self-help)

Or maybe you just want something aesthetically pleasing to make that everyday landscape perfect. (Slice of Life)

Do you want a tall tree or a short tree? A wide one, or a thin one? Do you have space restrictions like power lines, word count maximums, or even minimum word counts? Do you want a tree for its flowers, something thats beautiful for the season you are in right now, or that your readers are in, or that the country is in? (Political, current issues, etc.)

Or maybe you're planting an exotic tree, and hoping your green thumb will nurture it in an environment where it's not really meant to grow. Something that's completely outside its normal sphere. (Sci-Fi and Fantasy)

Or maybe you want to plant an Evergreen, something that won't change with the seasons, will always be a predictable height and shape, and has a pleasant smell. (? Ideas for what this would be?)

I could go on and on.

And yes, sometimes our stories do contract dutch elm disease and have to be cut down and killed. Sometimes they get struck by lightning and the entire growth structure of one limb of plot gets cut off and it changes the story forever. Sometimes they catch fire. Sometimes our entire forest of stories might catch fire. (This is very sad when it happens. I think it's called writer's block.)

Or maybe you're just not sure what your tree is because it changes from day to day. Maybe it looks more like its just going to be a bush or a weed.

In any case, I think the most important step in getting a story from conception to fruition is thought. Pure, long, hard and deep thought. It's okay to sit around in your house, (in your underwear if you must,) and just think as a part of the process.

I'm tempted to go into what happens during the different seasons to our forest of novel ideas, but I'll leave that up to you.

Metaphor of the Month Assignment: (Finally!)

Describe your current WIP (work in progress) in a metaphor like it's a tree. What are its aspects? Why are you growing it? In what stage of growth is it in?

Example:

My WIP is a willow tree. I'm not exactly sure why I'm growing it. It's really big, and its plot lines hang way down low to the ground so the reader can see how beautiful and magnificent it is. It drapes everywhere, offering accessibility to the very edge of its growth, the tips of the branches, where new things are always coming out. They're not way up high and hard to reach like other trees. I want my readers to be able to duck inside its canopy of branches for a little while and just enjoy its complexity, but not be alienated by it. I guess perhaps I'm growing it for aesthetic purposes. It's a beautiful tree, and it's unusual enough to be noticed in a front yard, but not so unusual as to be called exotic. I like it that way. It will draw attention to itself without making the reader feel like they are encountering something completely foreign.

IT'S HERE!!!1

NaNoWriMo has started!!!!

I will post more once I have a significant word count.

What are you doing reading this blog? Get to writing!!!

Or, just use the Metaphor of the Day Assignment to help your writing along:

MDA:

Come up with a metaphor for a procrastinator. Yeah, I know. Not an original prompt here, but hey, I've gotta get to writing.

Writer's Block

I sat down to write today and realized there are parts in my plot I want so badly to make sense. But they don't. I want them to happen. But it's not logical that they should.

I need some strong plot devices to motivate my characters and move them to do what I want.

What are your favorite plot devices? How do you get your characters to do what you want them to?

Also, it's been awhile so here's a new Metaphor of the Day Assignment:

Write a metaphor that describes either a pleasant or unpleasant aspect of your main character.

Example: (Highlight the text below if you need inspiration)

(Note: these are about two different characters)

She was as thin as a sickly piece of grass. Even her complexion looked green and tender.

or

The herbalist was a flower herself: she bloomed where she planted and looked after her own.

NaNoWriMo is around the bend! And so is Cake. No lie.

I'm officially registered for NaNoWriMo this year which happens in November. My name is leolewis if anyone wants to add me as a buddy.

What is NaNoWriMo? Check out the link. It's a challenge where many writers across the globe attempt to write a book in an entire month. (A book being defined as 50,000 words. In reality, that's a pretty short book, but hey, we're doing it in a month.)

I feel I am more prepared now than last year (which was my first try). In 2008 I made it to 30,000 words, 10,000 of those being written on the last day in November over a period of 9 hours straight. My butt was pretty sore after that.

But this year I've already started outlining, using a method called Phrase Drafting. I'm combining it a little bit with the Snowflake method. We'll see how it works.

Does anyone have experience with either of these methods? Do they work for you? Don't work? What does work for you?

Ok, now it's off to bed to dream about my wonderful characters while I can. I'm sure by the time November blows over I'll be sick of them.

MDA:

What's a metaphor for NaNoWriMo?

Highlight the text to see my example if you need inspiration:

Example: NaNoWriMo is a piece of cake.

It sits there at the end of the dinner table just waiting to be eaten. It promises me it will be easy to eat. But I have to get through my vegetables in a hurry before I can even take a bite. As I shovel peas into my mouth, I gag. As I look at the steamy bowl of characters before me, knowing my mother will make me eat some of those too, I get a little queasy. Then I remember the cake, and I make myself be more patient. Soon my mother is putting really tough and dry plot meat onto my plate. It's tough to chew. I try to wash it down with some setting, but it doesn't help. Finally, after three hours of arguing with my mother about how many vegetables I have to eat, and asking if I really have to clean my plate, I get to bite into that delicious piece of raspberry-I-finished-neener-neener-inner-critic-cheese cake.

Metaphor of the Day Assignment

It's been awhile since I did one of these, so here it is.

Two things are upon us: school and fall. Both are rich fodder for metaphors. Every calendar you see will either have trees turning read, or back to school motifs.

Find a calendar and look at the picture for September. Use a metaphor to describe the picture. (This can be a helpful exercise later when you're picturing a scene in your head for a story.)

Oh, and try to not use the word 'like'. I've resisted for sometime now because it was so comfortable and easy to define metaphors as 'A is like B'. But that's technically a simile. For it to be a metaphor, if you're a purest, it's a little more 'A is B'.

Example: (Highlight the text if you need inspiration.)

Metaphor: As the hungry beast of color ravaged the forest, making it bleed with reds and oranges, the sad trees who were old were devoured early, the best of oncoming winter leaving their white bones to shimmer in the fall sunset.

Simile: Fall was like a hungry beast, ravaging the forest and leaving blood red leaves in its wake.

MDA

Metaphor of the Day Assignment:

Create a humorous metaphor:

One of the metaphor's most useful aspects is its ability to convey humor. Choose an aspect of your story or your character that would be most likely to be exaggerated into a caricature. Write a metaphor about it in a funny fashion.

Example: (Only highlight the text to read if you need to be inspired.)

I have a character who is very proud and snobbish, so I want to make those traits into a caricature.

She was as graceful and elegant in her movement as she was proud and snobbish in her speech: When she talked, her voice was the sound of a trumpet: it sounded like it could have been lovely if the player knew how to play Taps instead of blatting out Mary had a Little Lamb.

Sorry I've been away for awhile, but I was able to get a ton done on my actual writing.

Ok, so on with the post.

What effect do metaphors have on writing?

I can think of a few things.

1. When used for description, it adds flavor. Kind of like the salt in cookies. If you make cookies without salt, they taste horrible. But with the salt, they taste great, but your mind never registers a salty taste. I think metaphors do the same for literature. They add a special something, but no one notices it was the metaphors that added it. (Except I don't think descriptions without metaphors taste horrible.)

2. Metaphors lend themselves well to humor. If you want to make your readers laugh or at least be amused, you could use a hilarious comparison. The funnier metaphors I've heard read like jokes.

3. Metaphors can draw the reader into deeper thought about a particular subject. This is very important to me because I hate writing allegories. If the concept I'm trying to get across to a reader requires allegorical writing, instead I try to use a simple metaphor to clue the reader in that there is more going on than what's on the surface. I've always liked the beginning of the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. He talks about a turtle moving slowly on the road for quite a while. Then a truck comes and spins the turtle off the road. You might think this was boring, but he does it in a way that makes the turtle an obvious metaphor for one of the characters in the story. (He also described the turtle so magnificently it reminded me of a T-Rex!) Metaphors as foreshadowing is lots of fun.

4. Bad metaphors can show off a character's ineptness. If you want to create a character that gets on everyone's nerves, including the reader, just have him or her use cliche metaphors a lot and in all the wrong places, or even mixed metaphors and dead metaphors.

Any other thoughts on how metaphors are used? I know I've only scratched the surface here. Please comment!

MDA:

I've changed things a little. In order to see the example, you'll have to highlight the text. That way you won't be spoiled with the example before your creative genius has a chance to think for itself. Unless of course you want to see it. Then you can just highlight.

Use these two things in a metaphor:

A ring

Eating American Chinese foood

Plants can have feelings too

Ok, that last post was a little long. Sorry if I lost you in the reading.

A friend of mine also pointed out that I know nothing of IP addresses and they were right. But hopefully the point of the post got through despite that minor mistake. Actually, the point was to be amusing so if it made you smile, great.

MDA:

Come up with a metaphor for a feeling using a kind of plant.

Example:

Her loneliness curled in on her like she was a mimosa plant in a crowded room.

Note: Mimosa plants curl in on themselves when they are touched. They're pretty cool.

Parties get lame after about 5 years

People started using MySpace. Then it got clogged with spammers and add-happy users who wanted to increase their friend count. People who truly wanted to social network online moved to facebook. Then facebook got adds, and while there is little commercially induced spam, the constant self-promotion has forced those who are truly reaching out for synergy to move to yet another social networking site: twitter. Twenty years from now, I wonder if the same people will just keep drifting from one social networking site to the next as each becomes corrupted. This will mean connections must be made anew and it kind of resets the hierarchy every time we move. There will, of course, always be change ups with those who remain stuck on a slowly diminishing website and those who jump fresh into social networking online for the first time using the current site.

There should be a name for this phenomenon. I predict once there's a name for it, articles will start to be written about it. Then Apple will come up with a brilliant app to transfer connections between networking sites. Then networking sites will get even more creative and beat the app so you can't do that. Then a new job field will spring up calling for creators of social networking sites which will hire a ton of people to create a bunch of sites, and then lay a bunch of them off because they only need a few people to maintain the massive sites that have grown.

We are the true networkers. We travel from site to site, seeking connection and productivity first and entertainment second. We find havens here and there for half a decade before moving on. The advertising paparazzi follows us around, always conveniently 5 years behind.

In a sense, we are destroying the sites that we love with nuclear fall outs of spam and ads. Once the PR people find it because they want to reach out to us, it will be tainted forever. But the good news is we can constantly create new worlds, resetting the social hierarchies every 5 years. This means if I get rejected by an agent over twitter now, 5 years from now I might get accepted by that same agent on the future networking site, but neither of us will know this happened because we will both have different screen names and probably different IP addresses (unless we both use Macs, of course).

So here's to all my twitter friends, who I talk with regularly, who I used to talk with on facebook, who I used to see on myspace. Once these electronic sidewalks get crowded and we move to other places where we can bump into people, I will see you again in 5 years and I look forward to meeting you at the new alpha site again for the first time. Sorry if you don't make it. I would really have liked to see that other screen name of yours. You know, the one you only bring out once you realize you only have to live with it for 5 years. I personally am going to have my next half-decade identity be PrincessoftheAmazon. I think I can live with all the hits I get from misdirected jungle dwellers and book buyers for half a decade, especially if they're nice and have lived former lives on twitter alongside me.

All social networking sites have a half life, my friends. Don't get stuck as a worm next time around! Build up your karma personality and typing skills and for goodness' sake, weed out all the stuff that makes you sound like a moron. The force of the internet does not look kindly on rebirthing people who will kill the new network with their stupidity more quickly than an add for genital wart cures appearing next to posts about rainbows and puppies.

Drift on, true connectors. Drift on.

Side note: If two people who God made to be together are lucky enough to find each other, what happens if one of them gets stuck on myspace while the other one moves to twitter?

Other side note: I laugh when I see movies and tv shows trying to act current and cool by talking about social networking sites or incorporating them into a crime somehow. It's so obvious they're not trying to bring us entertainment by being relevant to our lives. They're desperately trying to fool us into thinking they are up with the times. It's so cheesy, it works. Every time the chief of whatever-law-enforcement-guild strolls onto the screen shooting personality out his butt and asks, "What's a blog?" (actually, they will probably name a social networking site from three cycles ago that no one uses anymore) and its supposed to be funny that the old guy isn't up with the times, I am entertained by it. I clap and say "Excellent metaphor for yourself, tv show. I'm surprised you're that self-aware." Of course, this is mean of me. I don't really want them to be up with the times because then networking sites would only last one to two years instead of five. But I still enjoy laughing at them because they are not.

And the metaphor that got me started on all this:

Using the word 'post' to describe new information that appears on a website. Kind of interesting to think that long ago, it meant to actually tack a piece of paper to a hitching post or the post of a saloon, etc. Using already existing objects that have a purpose to convey information. Fascinating to think of that as a metaphor for our electronic posts today.

MDA: I used several metaphors in this post without even trying (well, I sort of tried. I like metaphors). Pick your favorite and turn it into an extended metaphor.

Note: an extended metaphor is a metaphor that is not contained or explained in one sentence, but more like a paragraph or two. They're usually used to slow the reader down and make them focus on the metaphor to get it through their thick skulls that the tenure and vehicle are really, REALLY alike.

Or just write an extended metaphor on your own. You don't have to use mine.

Working hard and hardly working

Hey.

Been busy writing so haven't had much time to post here. After the JuJu challenge I'd like to say I'll have more time to post but to be honest, I kind of hope this writing grove stays with me.

JuJu is a personal challenge inspired by some bloggers and writers I know. My goal, abstractly is to write a significant amount during June and July. More concretely, I'd like to at least write 42,000 by the end of this two month span. 60,000 would be better and I would be satisfied at that. I would be ecstatically happy if I could reach 100,000, meaning 50,000 in each month, just like NaNoWriMo, but I'm going to take it one day at a time, and shoot for 1,000 words per day.

MDA:

I've been listening to a podcast novel lately by J.C. Hutchins titled "Seventh Son" (you can find it on www.podiobooks.com) and he uses a lot of metaphors to add to his descriptions. The whole book is like listening to poetry. At times it's a little heavy, and other times it draws me right in.

When you write, do you use metaphors a lot? What do you use them for? Do you think they can be used too much?

The assignment today is to come up with a metaphor and use it in your writing, then tell me how you used it. And if you want to, why you used it.

For example, this is one I used this past week as a description which also indicates to the reader the character's attitude toward the place:

[The psychiatric hospital's] long corridors stood with open doors looking like mouths or catacombs. He couldn’t decide which.

Dead Metaphors

Ok, I really like that I get to call them dead metaphors. It just sounds cool.

There are two aspects to a dead metaphor:

1. A dead metaphor can be a metaphor in which the speaker and probably most of the listeners/readers no longer know its meaning.

Example: He dialed her phone number.

This is not a true example, since most of us know what it used to mean to dial a phone. Even though we no longer use dials to call someone, the phrase occassional still pops up. In order for this example to become a dead metaphor, it would take, say, a couple generations down the road when all but a few odd people have forgotten where the phrase comes from.

2. Another type of dead metaphor is a metaphor in which there never was a link from the tenure to the vehicle to begin with. I am reminded of a few lines from the movie Chicken Run.

"Like a fish" doesn't have any obvious connection to being all quiet like. It's a dead metaphor.

MDA:

Choices! Yay!

1. Find a dead metaphor used in every day life.

OR

2. Come up with a metaphor replacement for the rodents' dead metaphor.

So:
We were quiet as......
or
..........like a fish.

(Hey, that's another choice. Cool.)

Example: We were quiet as the calm before a storm.
We slipped in and out of there like a fish.

Implicit Metaphors

An Implicit Metaphor is where the likeness of the two objects is implied but not stated. Basically, it's a metaphor without an explanation.

I usually like to put explanations on my metaphors because it's a great tool for delivering an extra punch or to make a conceit metaphor understandable.

But there are every day expressions that use implicit metaphors. I find I use implicit metaphors without even thinking about it and they are usually made up on the spot without really thinking. This leads me to believe that implicit metaphors are also the more natural metaphors: the tenure and vehicle are very closely related and our minds naturally link them together in certain ways.

If I say "Zip your fly" it is an implicit metaphor because I have not specified what the vehicle "fly" stands for, and yet you will (hopefully) be able to figure it out with no further explanation.

MDA:

Find examples of everyday usages of implicit metaphors or make one up.

Example:
The Bank has many branches.

Big happenings

This weekend I got engaged!

So, for the MDA, maybe a metaphor about love, romance, or couples?

It seems when love is involved in writing, the author usually either treats it with epic-sounding words and fantastic situations, endowing on it the height of human happiness, or he/she treats it like a joke, uses it for humor, etc. Sometimes they do both.

I found this site contains hillarious metaphors written by high school students about love. Though there is some discussion about whether these are actually metaphors or similes, they still made me smile and gave me a little inspiration for writing.

MDA:

Write a metaphor about romance or love. It can either be epic or humorous, or both, or anything in between.

Example:
The two lovers were determined to stick with each other like white on rice.

Btw, thanks to JP and Aranel and an annonymous off-site comment poster (my younger brother) for the comments.

I get to go to a Twin's game tonight with my fiance. Yay!

Metaphor Basics

The Tenure of a metaphor is the object you start with and are trying to describe.

The Vehicle of a metaphor is the object you are comparing the tenure with.


Metaphor of the Day Assignment (MDA):

Use these tenures and vehicles to make a metaphor.

Tenure: Clouds
Vehicle: Bread Crumbs

Example: The clouds were like bread crumbs.

This is rather simplistic, as it does not explain why the clouds are like bread crumbs or what particular aspect of clouds resemble bread crumbs.

There is sometimes a third part to metaphors: the explanation (or the tie). This part comes after the tenure and vehicle and explains how the vehicle is like the tenure. This becomes more important with advanced forms of the metaphor but I’ll post that later.
Example: The clouds were like bread crumbs soaking up the last rays of gravy from the sun.