The Exquisite Corpse at the ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop

It’s officially fall, the kids are back in school, summer and ArmadilloCon are quickly receding on the horizon as we zoom toward the winter solstice. I meant to blog about the Writing Workshop looong before this, but life, as usual, got in the way. I have so many thoughts about the con and Writing Workshop, which I will get to in later posts. The first order of business is to talk about the writing exercise.

The morning of the workshop consists of two panels covering broad topics in writing and publishing broken up by a writing exercise. The panels, while informative, require a lot of sitting and focused attention, so my goal for the exercise was not only to get people writing and thinking about the creative process, but to also get us all out of our chairs and moving around a bit. What I came up with a classic exquisite corpse exercise paired with some guided freewriting.

People really enjoyed this exercise, so for any of you who might be in a writing group and interested in doing it, read on for instructions. I’ve also posted a sampling of the results. I think this would work for almost any size group, just be sure to build in time for all the moving around and passing pages!

• First, create exquisite corpse drawings. I confess I was a studio art major for a couple years before switching to English, so the idea of doing a quick sketch was appealing to me. That said, I know even the thought of drawing can make people nervous. The great thing about this exercise’s roots in surrealism is that there is really no such thing as a bad drawing – nothing can be too weird for the purposes of this exercise. 
• Have everyone fold their paper into thirds. Start by drawing the top of something on the top portion. Instruct people to extend their “top” drawings just a bit below the folded line so that the next person has something to connect their drawing up to. After a few minutes (I used a timer set to 3 minutes) have everyone fold the paper in a way that hides their portion of the drawing and have them pass it on to someone else, who will draw the middle without looking at the previous drawing (again extending the bottom of their drawing just a bit past the last fold).
• Repeat for the bottom of the drawing.
• The complete drawings are passed one more time to someone new. During any of these stages (drawing or writing), it doesn’t matter who they pass their drawings to, though I encouraged everyone to try to pass whatever they had to someone new.

Now that everyone has a delightfully weird character in hand it’s time to write. I kept exquisite corpse structure for this part too. I used 5x8 index cards for the writing in order to encourage everyone to keep things concise. 

• Card #1 (write 1 in the top corner of the card). Look at your drawing this is your main character. In just two or three sentences write the opening of a story. A little bit about the world, a bit about the character and that character’s desire. (as Vonnegut says, your character should want something, even if it’s a glass of water). Think “Once upon a time.” This is the Regular World of the story. (I gave people 5 minutes to write each section.)
• Hand card #1 off to someone new (along with the drawing) – this time it’s not a secret. Read what you get. Write #2 on a new card. Time to write Act Two. Think, “And then…” This is the character, in pursuit of their desire, leaves the normal world and/or encounters a new element. It could be negative, i.e. the wolf shows up on Red Riding Hood’s trail, or positive, i.e. Charlie Bucket getting one of Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets.
• Hand both cards and the drawing off to someone new, read over what you have so far. Write #3 on the last card. Time to write the ending. Think, “Until one day.” This isn’t easy but we’re just having fun here. It’s time for the character to commit to a course of action. The character can be forced to change or the character’s perception of the world can change. The world can be not what it seems (the character’s realization and/or the reader’s realization)

After everyone finished with their last card, I invited people to read what they had. Unfortunately, we didn’t have nearly enough time for this part. With the getting up and trading drawings and cards around. If I repeat this exercise, I will definitely block out more time for people to simply enjoy checking out the drawings and for everyone to get up, move around, and get resettled in between each stage.

All this mixing and matching isn’t meant to create a beautiful story, but to illustrate how considering at wildly different scenarios, images, ideas can lead to innovative narrative solutions. Also, I hope that it can give some confidence in our ability to come up with fun narrative solutions on the fly. 

Another thing that I really liked about this exercise is that since everyone is encouraged to pass want they’ve got to someone new at each stage, everyone gets to mingle just a bit without it being super awkward. Since the afternoon is spent in small group critique with people that workshoppers have often only just met, this exercise serves as a bit of an icebreaker. 

I don’t know if I can top this exercise next year, but I am going to try. 

After the workshop, lots of students wanted to see more of the collective stories and drawings. In hindsight I would have created a better way for everyone to share the results of this collective exercise. I did manage to collect some of the results from students over the weekend. Scroll down to see them.*

If you were at the workshop and would like your exercise posted, ping me in the comments and I’ll add it to the roll.

* Apologies if the resolution isn't great. I'm no expert in the finer points of web formatting.

Fantastical Fictions Bookclub: The Door to Lost Pages by Claude Lalumière

It seems fitting that we’ll be meeting at one of Austin’s most unusual bookshops, Malvern Books, to discuss lovely mosaic novella centered around an idiosyncratic bookstore. Although, Malvern has 100% less dogs than the bookstore featured in Claude Lalumière’s The Door to Lost Pages, it has some of the magic.

But don’t take my word for it, swing by the store to pick up a copy of this lovely little book, and then come back on Wednesday, July 12 at 7:00 p.m. to discuss The Door toLost Pages.

"Lost Pages wasn’t the only bookshop I frequented, but the books I found on its shelves were… unique. I never saw any of these books anywhere else. Bizarre Bestiaries. Dictionaries of dead, obscure languages. Maps to lands that may never have been. Essays on religions with unfamiliar names. Obscure mythologies. Accounts of wars no history teacher had ever mentioned. Such were the wares of the bookshop that fed my teenage dreams."

More magical realism than straight up fantasy, this book combines elements of urban fantasy with lonely childhoods and difficult family relationships that are rendered with gritty realism. There are also winged skeleton creatures, dark gods, tentacles  and a shifting pack of friendly dogs. It’s a homey multiverse of myth, folktale, dreams and nightmares. Be warned, the erotic and sexual elements that are often latent in fairy tales are more overt here as the characters wrestle with desires and both visceral and ethereal.

In the true Austin tradition, this is an author that knows how to keep it weird. If you enjoy The Door to Lost Pages, Claude Lalumière will be in Austin for the ArmadilloConConvention on August 4 – 6, and back at Malvern Books to read from his latest book Venera Dreams on August 9 at 7:00 p.m.

ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop T-Minus 36 Hours: Letting Go

The aphorism, “A good conversation never ends, it’s only interrupted” comes to mind. I feel the same about the stories I write. Creators, artists, and writers are always striving to improve their craft. Reaching for perfection, always falling a few inches short. This is why it can be hard to determine when to call a piece you’ve struggled over finished. For me, it’s more about knowing when to let it go.

Creating something is its own reward and its own punishment. Every story starts with some nugget of inspiration, a character, a mood I want to capture, a moment I want to bring to life. It’s this vision that compels me to create the first draft. Invariably, after writing it out, and working through however many revisions, what I end up with is NEVER what I originally imagined. I won’t say it’s better or worse, but it is different. Even when I am happy with the final result, there is always a tiny nagging feeling of missing the mark.  

If you keep writing and working to improve, you will look back at old stories, even the ones that are published and see ways that they might be improved. I remind myself that that was the best story I could produce last week or last year or three years ago. M. Rickert says her old stories are like snapshots of the writer she was at the time she wrote them.

It’s important to strive for excellence, at the same time once you feel you’ve made a story the best you can – let it go. It may be flawed, have some element that you wish you could manage more astutely, but if it’s viable (i.e. has a plot with a beginning middle and end, a character who changes or comes to a realization, etc.), then it’s time to let it go (today, that might mean sending it to the ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop). Submit somewhere for publication and move on to the next story with the goal to make that one better.

Whether I see you at the ArmadilloCon Writers Workshop or not – I hope you go forth and write story after story. I look forward to reading all of them out in the wild! 

ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop Boot Camp Week 6: Time for a Spit Shine

We’re two weeks from the June 11 deadline to submit a short story or the first chapter of a novel and sign up for the ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop. Believe it or not, two weeks is plenty of time to create a brand spanking new piece for a writing workshop. If you’re diving in from scratch, clear some time in your schedule, buy some extra coffee beans, and peruse the earlier boot camp posts in this series. Take what you need and write like the wind!

Regardless of when you start writing, we’re not talking about a shining piece of perfection here. What you want to bring is something in decent shape that will give the pros and your fellow critique partners an idea of where you are as a writer. In my opinion perfection is overrated. Strive for it, sure. We all do, and we’re all destined to fall just short – welcome to the creative life. I know it’s scary to turn in something that you can see is flawed or has some issue you just can’t resolve, but the worst that will happen is that your critique partners will point it out. If you’re lucky, you will also receive useful solutions for your story in particular and gain new skills for your writing in general.

If you’ve been following along with my (patented) boot camp schedule you should have a middle revision of a story that, while it still might have some rough edges, has all the necessary parts and culminates in some kind of climactic moment. Either your protagonist DOES something or s/he DECIDES something, and this action or decision carries an actual and/or emotional consequence – preferably both.

Honestly, with two weeks to go there is plenty of time to cycle through middle revision territory a couple more times until you are really happy with the shape and emotional impact of your story or chapter, but I know how good it can be to finish ahead of schedule so let’s talk about the final proofing and polishing.

A few words about grammar.

Grammar isn’t really a final revision task as your grasp of grammar affects every stage of the writing process, but this read though is a good time to really attend to word choice and sentence structure.

Don’t feel bad if you find grammar intimidating. I did for years. Really, if I can get a working mastery of grammar, anyone can! I didn’t get great grammar instruction in middle school, and after that I was on my own. Only after returning to writing as an adult did I take my grammar education into my OWN hands. Now grammar is no longer a nebulous topic where I worry that I’m going to somehow screw up every sentence I write. Once I got a toehold, I have found grammar to be an enduring source of fascination. Like clay to the sculptor, exotic musical keys to the pianist, words and sentences are a writer’s medium.

That said, if you think you know everything there is to know about grammar – check yourself. The English language is constantly evolving – including grammar. Being completely prescriptive about grammatical rules (current or past) will limit your writing, too.

There are many wonderful sources for learning grammar out there, and Strunk & White isn’t one of them. For me its twee style, brevity, confusing advice, and contradictory examples were just more of the same ineffective instruction that got me so deep in the hole during my school years. Here’s a far more eloquent and thorough take down of S&W.

"The book's toxic mix of purism, atavism, and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by a proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules. They can't help it, because they don't know how to identify what they condemn.... They know a few terms, like "subject" and "verb" and "phrase," but they do not control them well enough to monitor and analyze the structure of what they write."

If you feel you need a grammar refresher, here are some resources. Start small, commit to spending 10 or 15 minutes a day, and focus on one element at a time.

For specific questions, check out the Perdue Owl grammar site, 

Put the Grammar App or the Grammar Up app on your phone,

Listen to The Grammar Girl or the the BBC's 6 Minute Grammar podcasts.

As you go over your writing, just remember it’s all about Clarity: 

• Think about the essential meaning of each sentence.
• In description, use specific, telling details.
• Focus on precision of language.
• Check the usage of any tricky words and make sure you’re using them correctly.
• For style, try to replace linking and helping verbs with action verbs. 

Look for common errors like their/there/they’re or it's/its. I read my draft aloud again, “un-contracting” every contraction, and I almost always find one or two slip-ups.

There. All polished up and ready to go. Right? Next week I’ll talk about knowing when a piece is finished. Seems a simple enough question, but when your trying to become a better writer, it can be hard to know when to stop trying to improve a piece and let it go.

ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop Boot Camp Week 5: Give it a Rest!

Noon: Rest from Work by Vincent van Gogh

Three weeks to go before the June 11 deadline to submit work and sign up for the AmradilloCon Writing Workshop. There is still time to go through the entire boot camp program from the first post and create a short story or novel chapter in order to participate. Consider blocking off a few chunks in your schedule if you can, take a vacation day from work, or bargain with your family for some “away” time and create your own mini writer’s retreat.

If you’ve been following along with the program so far you’ll have a rough draft in hand that has the essential elements of characterization, plot, and worldbuilding in place. Now it’s time to give it a rest. I firmly believe revising my own work effectively depends on my ability to see it with new eyes. One of the best ways to do this is to put it aside for a while. If no deadlines are involved, I find a week or two to be ideal, but even putting something down for 24 hours can be immensely helpful.

In this post, I’m going to talk about both resting and your next revision. Because, as I mentioned before, there’s no rule against submitting your work early!

For me looking away from my current writing project is just as important as the time I spend focused on it. If, like me, you have a few pieces in various stages of completion resting one piece means that you can turn your attention to a different one for a while. If you don’t have anything else on deck, then spend a day or two with your reading. If you’re working on a short story, pull up some short stories online (see the fiction links in my sidebar for a start). If you’re working on a novel chapter, read the first chapters of the novels in your bookcase or at your local library or go to Amazon and preview a bunch of first chapters.

Resting, in this case is, more like what happens when bread dough “rests.” After activating the yeast and kneading the dough a baker covers it and lets it rest. But a lot is happening under that kitchen towel. While the baker is attending to other things, the yeast ferments, the dough expands and the final loaf’s signature flavor and texture are formed. When the baker returns to the dough, it is something different. For writing the transformation takes place in your head. Your subconscious is always percolating themes and ideas and this process doesn’t stop during revision. Time away from your piece can give you space to solidify what is important about this story and what elements might need to be enhanced or minimized in order to refine it.

After you’ve given your piece a rest, read through it again. If you feel that everything is roughly in place then it’s time to start refining your piece with a more granular revision. (If, on your read through you find a logic problem or plot hole, go ahead and excise or plaster in some words or a scene before you go on to the next step – all of these revision stages can be repeated as needed.) If you’re ready to refine what you have, here are some things to focus on:

Transitions

These are the breaks between scenes, changes in location, point of view, or gaps in time in the story. An extra space, a short line of asterisks, or a transitional sentence can mark these changes. Generally, I find that too many transitional separators are often a sign that the story (especially one limited to 5,000 words) is perhaps trying to paint on too large of a canvas. If you have a lot of disjointed scenes, consider scaling your story down, e.g. by narrowing the amount of time it covers or number of characters. When I write a first draft, I can be pretty lazy about writing transitions between scenes, this draft is where I write those sentences that link adjacent scenes together. If you are looking to write a story that is more conceptual or is set in a vast time scale you can use alternative forms. For example, when I wanted to write about all of the different ways we think about time, I did it as a list story.

Paragraphs

Once you’re happy with the way your story flows from one scene to another, turn your attention to your paragraphs. A good paragraph, like a good story, will have a beginning, middle, and end. It should progress to a tiny resolution of it’s own. At times, for impact, you might want to have a one sentence or one word paragraph.

Dialogue

Is tricky, because in fiction dialogue is not the same as natural speech, which is often rambling and circular. Dialogue has to accomplish something while looking like it isn’t, to be intentional without appearing intentional. Dialogue often moves the plot, but it really shines by revealing character. Employing dialect can work, but it is often more effective to think in terms of individual habits of speech. Actors often do this when creating character, think of how Lumbergh in Office Space almost always starts off with a long, irritating “Yeah.” Try to give your main characters unique speech patterns and check that all the dialogue is accomplishing something, either moving the plot forward or revealing character (preferably a little of both).

As you’re refining your piece the ultimate goal is to focus it both structurally and for emotional impact. You’ll be surprised how much you can dial up the conflict and drama of by making small adjustments at this point.

Next week we’ll talk about the final polish, and working at the sentence level for clarity and grace. There’ll be a bit about dun DUN dun! Grammar.

If you have any questions, put them in the comments and I’ll address those too!

NOTICE: Diverse writers welcomed here!

Diversity is vital to speculative fiction. A genre centered on exploration and encountering the Other must include voices and visions from writers, readers and thinkers of all kinds.

This year the Armadillocon Writing Workshop has sponsored seats for writers of color! Visit the workshop page for more information and to fill out the sponsorship request form!

ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop Boot Camp Week 4: What have you got?

We’re About a month out from the June 11 deadline to turn in your work and sign up for the Armadillocon Writing Workshop (of course you can turn in your piece early – hahaha! No, seriously, the door’s open). If you’ve been following this boot camp program you should have a messy zero draft in hand. (If you just found this, it’s not too late to catch up. Scroll back to boot camps one and two for gathering and developing ideas, and week three for writing your zero draft.)

NOTICE: Diverse writers welcomed here!

Diversity is vital to speculative fiction. A genre centered on exploration and encountering the Other must include voices and visions from writers, readers and thinkers of all kinds.

This year the Armadillocon Writing Workshop has sponsored seats for writers of color! Visit the workshop page for more information and to fill out the sponsorship request form!

This week it’s time to set aside your writer’s hat and start revising. But when it comes to revising you’ll need more than one hat. I’ll call this first hat the big picture hat. This is where you need to assess just what exactly you’ve got.

Sometimes our stories are buried beneath our conscious thought. If you wrote your first draft free and fast, new story elements or characters may have emerged or changed direction on you. Instead of forcing things back into your original plan, this is an opportunity to see what this draft has to say to you.

This is big picture editing. Start by simply reading through the mess and listen for the piece’s beating heart. What are the things your characters believe in? Fight for? What is won or lost? Try not to be distracted by scene details or sloppy sentences. Resist the urge to do any housekeeping at this point. Try to get a bead on the essence of the story, the thing that will guide your revisions.

Now that you’ve read your draft for you, it’s time to pick up your pen (or put your document into revision mode) and read through it with your readers in mind. Is your story coherent or are there places where you might lose your reader logically or emotionally? This first revision is where it’s easiest to make big structural changes. Move the furniture around, write new material, change a character’s motivation, age, gender if you need to, try different dialogue.

Oscar Wilde's handwritten manuscript 

page of The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mostly, I’m drawing with my red pen here, circling text to be moved, crossing out chunks, writing brief notes for new scenes or dialogue. Here are some things to think about:

Plot:

Is there a beginning, middle and end to the story? Does the protagonist change in some way? Do they succeed or fail at something? Do they have a goal or desire? Did the characters get side tracked? If so and if the story lost its focus you can either redirect the characters to your original idea or explore the alternate story that the sidetrack suggests. It can be helpful to write a brief reverse outline here. Make a list of each thing that happens to see if you have cause-and-effect chain of events running through your story.

Pacing:

May be wonky at this point. Frankly, pacing can be tricky in shorter forms. Five thousand words can go by in a flash, so check for long stretches of description or rambling characterizations. Try to keep things concise and make sure events are progressing in a way that increases the tension (i.e. keep tightening the thumb screws on the protagonist).

Clarity:

Are there logic holes or missing steps in the chain of events that will confuse the reader? Are there places where you can adjust the description or characterization that will make the ending resonate more powerfully? In theater, early rehearsals are devoted to blocking out the actors’ stage movements. Think in terms of blocking. Make sure it’s clear to your reader where your character is in the room/woods/spaceship/etc., and in relation to other characters.

With scribbled up draft in hand or on screen, you are ready for your first big rewrite. You’re not shooting for perfection here, just improvement. Try to improve the overall shape of the story, dial up the conflict if you need to, refine the characters and their desires. You can rinse and repeat this process throughout the week. Hell, if the zero draft isn’t cooperating, you have time to start over from scratch. Maybe there’s some moment within your first try at a story that branches off, intrigues you, go ahead and see where that one leads you. Your goal is to come out of the week with something rough but cohesive, something with all the moving parts in the right places.

All of this advice holds for an older piece that you want to refurbish. Except that what you have may be more polished, and it might be harder for you to scrap big sections, rearrange or take the story in a new direction. If so, this is the week you kill your darlings. No matter how beautiful your sentences, how shapely your paragraphs, if the story isn’t working it’s going to have to change and probably change into something very different than your original idea. Sometimes I feel better if I keep the stuff I amputate in a folder with the idea of using these scraps in something new someday.

Next week will be a rest/catch up week. I will also talk about revising for style and grace (that other editor’s hat) for writers who may want to fast track and get their story in early.