Amanda Palmer's TED Talk: The Art Of Asking

I just watched Amanda Palmer's TED Talk, The Art of Asking (I've embedded it below): Wow!

Amanda Palmer is an exceptional speaker; it was one of the most moving talks I've seen. Although Neil Gaiman, her husband, is biased I loved his reaction:

I am so proud of her. Really: I've never been happier than when I watched her get a standing ovation, and watching this video go viral is an absolute joy.

.  .  .  .

The people who came up and congratulated her over the next few days were people you've heard of, the ones who make the world different.

And when someone came up to me that afternoon and said "You must be Mr Palmer", I said, Yes, I supposed I must be, and I beamed like a madman.

Watch the speech.

Yes, watch the speech if you haven't already. Or even if you have!

The Art of Asking

I need to watch The Art of Asking a few more times; I'd love to read the transcript as well. Asking is something I have trouble with, I hear those shouts of, "Get a job!" too.

Writers kid and say, "If I didn't write I'd have to get a real job!" Perhaps it sometimes doesn't feel like work because we're doing something we love, or because anything you can do in your pajamas can't really be work.

But that's not the way to look at it.

Watch Amanda Palmer's TED talk. She's not just talking about the art of asking she's talking about a new way of thinking about the relationship--and it is a relationship--between artists and patrons.

What did you think of Amanda Palmer's TED Talk? What did you think about Amanda letting anyone download her music and trusting that her patrons will leave a donation?

Other articles you might like:

- Stephen King Board On Jeopardy Tonight (March 5, 2013)
- Cometdocs: A Good Tool For Writers?
- Moby Dick And Amazon One Star Reviews

Photo credit: "Regardless of how silly I look,I adore this photo." by Zawezome under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Stephen King Board On Jeopardy Tonight (March 5, 2013)

This just popped into my mailbox. From Stephen King's official newsletter:

Tonight's episode of Jeopardy will feature a complete board of questions related to Stephen and his body of work. Be sure to tune in, and visit ourMultimedia section later this week.

Clickhere to find your local channel and time

I gave up TV a few months ago, but that's something I wish I could see!

Cometdocs: A Good Tool For Writers?

Ever had to convert one kind of a file into another? If your experience was anything like mine it wasn't painless.

Recently a website that provides free online file conversion and storage, Cometdocs, contacted me about doing a review of their product so I asked C.G. Cameron, writer and techie extraordinaire, to help me out. Here's the bottom line:

The restrictions on the free account aren’t too tight, and the paid accounts show where their funding comes from, which I find reassuring. (I don’t trust places where I can’t see what’s in it for them.) This looks like a usable business model and a useful service.

Sounds good to me! (By the way, neither C.G. Cameron nor myself have any affiliation with Cometdocs. I was provided with access to their service for the purpose of this review but that is the full extent of my involvement with them.)

Here is C.G.'s review:

C.G. Cameron's Review Of Cometdocs

Cometdocs is a place on the web which lets you store and/or convert your files for free (with limitations). Or in tech-speak, it’s a cloud storage service that also offers file conversions.

In their words:

Cometdocs (is) a fully free (no ads) document management web tool which lets users:

1. Convert their files between 30 possible file formats
2. Store files online
3. Share them with friends privately or publicly – with full control over
privacy and sharing settings
4. Transfer large files to others easily and effectively.

If you’ve ever lost the original of a paper and desperately needed to get the sole version you still have on pdf back into an editable format, you know it can be a challenge.

If you don’t set up an account and just use Cometdocs anonymously (aside from giving them an email address), they deliver your conversion via an emailed link, saying “Link will be valid for 24 hours, after which all data will be deleted from our servers.” If you set up an account, you can have it held for longer.

How it works:

Click the + and add your file to the clipboard. Wait while it uploads. Click on the task you want, Convert, Transfer, Store or Host, and drag the file into the box. Then choose the next option (in the case of Convert you have a choice of any Office product, plus TXT, most graphic formats, plus DXF, ODS, etc. Then enter your email address and they send you a link to download the converted file.

So I tested Cometdocs with the most complicated document I had available, written in three languages. The original was created on a friend’s PC in Word. My Mac has the same English and some of the Tibetan fonts installed, but not the Chinese font he uses although it has the default Microsoft Chinese fonts. He sent me the original Word and the pdf he’d created, and I used Cometdocs to convert the pdf back into MS Word and then compared the results.

Original PC Word document on my Mac:

The Chinese came up on my Mac as gibberish, and some of the diacriticals were missing on the Tibetan. Over all I could read the English and some of the Tibetan. The pecha boxing came through a mess, as usual. Word’s page margins don’t move well between Macs and PCs. Definitely it was not adequate for anything except extracting the English from the document.

Cometdocs Word document after converting the pdf

Cometdocs recognized most of the Chinese and displayed it using the installed Windows Chinese font. Cometdocs missed several characters, but showed more than half successfully. Probably if the pdf had used the standard Microsoft font Cometdocs would have recognized more. Cometdocs completely failed to recognize the Tibetan. Not at all surprising. It also didn’t catch all the diacriticals in the English, so a capital U with umlaut came up as < instead, and a capital U with a line across the top came up as U umlaut. But it did catch the italics and the punctuation and mostly got the right font in the English as well. It did a good job on the pecha boxing, better than the straight migrated version.

It was a difficult test and I was impressed with the results.

But that’s not all. There’s also the cloud storage.

Transfer lets you send a file to a friend by storing it on Cometdocs’ servers and they’ll send a link to the friend so they can download it. Handy if you have a home video you want to share.

You can also share your files publicly, somewhat like Flickr does photos, or list them as Shared or Private. It’s cloud storage space but without file type restrictions like Google Docs has.

For someone without easy access to their own web server space, this could be very handy.

What you get with a free account

Free users can do:

- 3 conversions weekly per IP address
- 100 MB worth of daily file transfers per IP
- transfer and host links are valid for 24h

Free registered accounts can do much more including control sharing visibility and store up to 1GB of documents. And you can pay either $9.99 a month for Premium or $19.99 a month for Pro access to convert more files and store more files. The restrictions on the free account aren’t too tight, and the paid accounts show where their funding comes from, which I find reassuring. (I don’t trust places where I can’t see what’s in it for them.) This looks like a usable business model and a useful service.

C.G. Cameron (@jazz2midnight) is a web developer and writer, living in Vancouver, Canada.

Thanks C.G.!

How much of your time is spent trying to get technology to work as opposed to actually writing?

Other articles you might like:

- Moby Dick And Amazon One Star Reviews
- The Writer's Journey: Writer As Hero
- Hugo Gernsback And The Future That Might Have Been

Photo credit: "It's all in your mind" by

Moby Dick And Amazon One Star Reviews

What would I do without The Passive Voice Blog? I shudder to think! Passive Guy (aka David P. Vandagriff) tweets the best, most interesting stories.

Stories such as ...

Did you know Moby Dick--a treasure of world literature--has garnered many one star reviews on Amazon?

The following is from bibliokept: Selections From One-Star Amazon Reviews of Melville's Moby-Dick, thanks to Passive Guy for the link. (By the way, I found the original reviews on Amazon.com and expanded the quotations used for the article.)

One Star Reviews Of Herman Melville's Moby Dick

 
Title: Incredible story. What a lousy writer. Name: A Customer
4 of 22 people found the following review helpful

When I think of anyone being FORCED to read this novel (poor students, whereever you are) I want to fall on a harpoon. Ray Bradbury, who wrote the screenplay for this novel, (a la Gregory Peck) couldn't even finish the damn thing! He too just read bits of it ...  He recognized it's inner greatness, its actual grandeur absolutely mired in prose that makes you want to gnaw your foot off...

Title: Moby Dick: a tiresome book, Name: A Customer
1 of 16 people found the following review helpful

Moby Dick, was a horrible waiste of time. Along with its wordy paragraphs, it also talked about uninteresting issues. It is also to long, and you don't hear of them encountering the whale until the end of the book. Heres a good idea, after you read this book, go buy a vile of arsenic, drink it and you will be much happier. The only monster was the book itself. It leaves you with that, "I hate myself" feeling you get after accidentally destroying a major city with a hydrogen bomb or something, anyways, do not read it!

Title: Have trouble getting to sleep at night? Get this! 
Name: A Customer
9 of 38 people found the following review helpful  

[I]f your looking for a good book, dont read this, you will only become agitated. Such was the case with me. I am quite the fan of stories which involve man eating sea creatures, such as Jaws. Moby Dick is nothing compared to such classics, I fear.

In fact, it is boring with a capital B. What is the whales motivation? You dont know. There is no suspense, and I find the idea of people hunting whales offensive. 

Title:A tired old tale - Save the damn whales already!!!,
Name: Gracie Lou Freebush
2 of 21 people found the following review helpful  

This book is HORRIBLE! Classic, my eye! I would love to know what's so great about this book. I have seen better writing in a Hallmark card! Boring! Give me a good ole copy of Elvis and Me! A true story that really tugs at your heart strings! I sleep with that one under my pillow!

Ray Bradbury's Comments On Moby Dick

Since Moby Dick is undeniably a classic of world literature, these are deeply satisfying reviews for any author who has gotten a one star review on Amazon! Though, I should note, what the anonymous commenter says about Ray Bradbury seems to be true, though Mr. Bradbury's remark may have been due more to pique than honesty. The following is from the Wikipedia on the 1956 film Ray Bradbury collaborated on.

During a meeting to discuss the screenplay, Ray Bradbury informed John Huston that regarding Melville's novel, he had "never been able to read the damned thing". According to the biography The Bradbury Chronicles, there was much tension and anger between the two men during the making of the film, allegedly due to Huston's bullying attitude and attempts to tell Bradbury how to do his job, despite Bradbury being an accomplished writer. (Moby Dick (1956 film))

What Critics Initially Thought Of Moby Dick: Not Much

Initially Moby Dick had a rocky reception in America. It was not love at first sight. Although Melville considered Moby Dick his magnum opus the work received scathing reviews when it was first published.

He [Melville] considered Moby-Dick to be his magnum opus, but he was shocked and bewildered at the scathing reviews it received. Instead of bringing him the literary acclaim which he sought, this masterwork started a slide toward literary obscurity in his lifetime. This was partially because the book was first published in England, and the American literary establishment took note of what the English critics said, especially when these critics were attached to the more prestigious journals. Many critics praised it for its unique style, interesting characters, and poetic language, but others agreed with a critic with the highly regarded London Athenaeum, who described it as:

"[A]n ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact. The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed."

One problem was that publisher Peter Bentley botched the English edition, most significantly in omitting the epilogue. For this reason, many of the critics faulted the book, what little they could grasp of it, on purely formal grounds, e.g., how the tale could have been told if no one survived to tell it. The generally bad reviews from across the ocean made American readers skittish about picking up the tome. (Moby-Dick)

I wanted, for the sake of balance, to include 5 Star reviews of a horrible book but it seems easier to agree on what constitutes great literature than what constitutes drivel.

Any author who has received a one star review on Amazon--and I would hazard to say that practically all published authors have--take heart! You're in excellent company.

Have you ever thrown a book across the room on frustration? What book was the worst book you've ever read? What was the thing you disliked most about it?

Other articles you might like:

- The Writer's Journey: Writer As Hero
- Hugo Gernsback And The Future That Might Have Been
- Writing And The Monomyth, Part Two

Photo credit: "A Storm of Swords" by flossyflotsam under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

The Writer's Journey: Writer As Hero

I'm in the middle of writing a series on the monomyth so I couldn't resist sharing this inspirational series of blogs about the writer as hero by Martina Boone (@MartinaABoone).

The Writer's Journey: Writer As Hero

Martina, rather than writing about the hero's journey per se, talks about the journey writers travel every time we tell a tale. She writes:

[T]he other day while I was on the phone with the brilliant Angela Ackerman ... I had a revelation. The journey the hero takes in our manuscripts is essentially the same journey many of us take as writers. (The Heroic Journey of Every Writer: Part One)

So here it is, a journey where the writer is the hero and his (or her) quest is to write a story. Martina writes:

THE ORDINARY WORLD

Here we are, bumbling through our careers and family lives, vaguely uneasy and unfulfilled but maybe not even aware that there's a void inside us, a gaping wound. Why haven't we written yet? It could be that we tried and failed, or that we had to get on with the business of making a living, or raising kids, or maybe we have a family who has always dismissed writing as a pointless pursuit—something everyone wants to try but only a chosen few achieve. Implying, of course, that we're not good enough. So we shelve our illicit hopes, paint on a smile, and get on with our lives not realizing that something inside is tugging us in a different direction than the path we are still trudging down.

THE CALL TO ADVENTURE

But then . . . Then we have a dream, or read a book, or see a movie, or witness an event that shakes us. Something stirs inside us, an elusive wisp of an idea scented with adventure. It begins to rise and pull us with it, beckoning us to come along, to put our own spin on the wheel of inspiration.

REFUSAL OF THE CALL

Of course we refuse. We're human. We're afraid. We don't have time, we don't have money, we don’t have the knowledge to pursue something as overwhelming as writing an actual book.

Or maybe we don't refuse. Maybe we take those first tentative stops, only to hear someone else, someone who means well, who doesn't want to see us hurt or disillusioned, make the refusal for us. For our own good. Because really, the idea of writing for publication is absurd, and we shouldn't have any expectations.

Martina goes on to recount a writer's trials and tribulations, his or her conflicts, as he or she travels through each stage of the monomyth; above, I've just given you the first three.

Here are the links to Martina Boone's articles (there are two in the series):

The Heroic Journey of Every Writer: Part One
The Heroic Journey of Every Writer: Part Two

Before I end this article, here is a link that's just too good not to pass on (thanks Martina!): Plotting Made Easy--The Complications Worksheet.

By the way, Martina has a wonderfully informative blog (Adventures In YA and Children's Publishing).

Other articles you might like:

- Hugo Gernsback And The Future That Might Have Been
- Writing And The Monomyth, Part Two
- How To Communicate Setting: Establishing Shots

Photo credit: "bridging knowledge to health" by paul bica under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Hugo Gernsback And The Future That Might Have Been

Hugo Gernsback And The Future That Might Have Been

One of my favorite short stories is The Gernsback Continuum, by William Gibson. It's about a future envisioned in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, a future filled with flying cars and robot maids (think: The Jetsons).

That future never materialized, but it's fun to think, "What if ..." What if you had your very own jet pack and could fly to work? (Just imagine that traffic jam). What if we could have robots clean the house, cook our food and manage our social media?

Hugo Gernsback embodied this future that almost was. He published the first science fiction magazine. In fact ...

[Hugo Gernsback's] contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes popularly called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, the annual Science Fiction Achievement awards are named the "Hugos". (Hugo Gernsback)

Today I had wanted to publish the third installment of my monomyth series but life intervened. Thankfully, Arthur sent me an Infographic on predictions about the future. Apparently us writerly types have done fairly well when it came to predicting the future! Take a look.

Future Predictions Timeline

Writing And The Monomyth, Part Two

Writing And The Monomyth Continued

Yesterday I began writing about what Joseph Campbell called the monomyth (see Writing And The Monomyth), although I drew more from Christopher Vogler's version of the myth than Campbell's.

Today I want to pick up where I left off and examine the final seven or so steps. (update: I only made it to the midpoint, so I'll attempt to finish off tomorrow.)

6. Tests, Allies and Enemies

The hero has just crossed the threshold from the ordinary world and has landed, probably with a few bumps and bruises, in the special world. In a screenplay this plot point would also mark the beginning of the second act. 

Blake Snyder in Save The Cat! make the point that the Special World should be as different as possible from the Ordinary World (for instance, The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Miss Congeniality). If the Ordinary World is the thesis then the Special World is the Antithesis.

Something BIG needs to happen to propel the hero (because I'm talking about the monomyth it feels natural to talk about heroes and villains rather than protagonists and antagonists) from the Ordinary World into the Special World.

The hero must enter the Special World of the adventure willingly, he can't be tricked or abducted, it must be an intentional act.

B Story

Blake Snyder makes the point that this is also the place where we start the "B Story", a subplot that, in some way, is the antithesis, the opposite, of the "A Story", the main plot. In Legally Blond this is where Elle Woods (played by Reese Witherspoon) meets Paulette (played by Jennifer Coolidge) in the beauty shop. Paulette--big and showy--stands in stark contrast to Elle's other, more reserved, friends.

The B Story is often a love story, one that echos the theme.

Fun and Games

As our hero meets some of the people in the special world and gains a few allies, makes a few enemies, we can relax a little. We can have a bit of fun as we get to know our new friends and become adapted to the strange new world

If there is a 'feel good' part of the story, it comes out here.

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

We have almost reached the middle of the story. The hero must now become serious and prepare for the ordeal ahead of him. If your hero has a love interest there's time for one last love scene before facing the ordeal awaiting him. This is a good way, too, of making the stakes clear.

In preparation for the ordeal, the hero might try to 'think like the antagonist', to get inside his mind.

However your hero does it, he's going to have to prepare for the ordeal. Even if he is blindsided by the danger he needs to make a conscious decision that he will confront the antagonistic force, whatever it is.

At this point perhaps the hero reorganizes his party, perhaps he makes alliances with his enemies. As he gets closer to the ordeal the pressure builds and the mettle of his traveling companions--as well as his own--will be tested.

As the hero approaches the inmost cave he is beset with obstacles. Common obstacles are illusions--perhaps illusions created by threshold guardians--ominous warnings, impossible tests (I always think of the Kobayashi Maru in this context!), and so forth.

8. The Ordeal

We have reached the middle of the story and are in the midst of Act Two. The hero will confront the antagonistic force working against him and either appear to win big or lose big. Neither of these, though, will be a complete victory/defeat.

Michael Hauge calls this "the point of no return". The hero is now completely committed, there is no going back to the Ordinary World except by finishing the journey.

For instance, in The Firm at the midpoint Mitch McDeere is given a choice: go into witness protection and live in fear of being killed by the mob or spend the rest of his life in prison. Whatever happens his life has been irrevocably changed.

What needs to happen at the midpoint:

- A false peek (it all seems to go right for the hero) or a false collapse (everything seems to go wrong).

- The stakes are raised. The midpoint needs to change the whole dynamic of the story. Fun and games are over, now things become much more serious, much more intense.

The midpoint is a place of transformation, of death and resurrection.  Either here at The Midpoint or, later, on The Road Back, there is often a death, either a literal one--for instance, the hero's mentor dies--or a symbolic one. Someone could tell a story about death or, this is Blake Snyder's suggestion, show a dead flower. But there should be a hint of death, a reminder of the price the hero has had to pay for his victory.

#  #  #

Well! It seems, once again, I've underestimated how many words this would take to explain. I'm going to leave off at the midpoint--it seemed appropriate--and I'll pick up this discussion again tomorrow.

Can you think of a movie, a movie you liked, that does not follow the structure of the monomyth?

Other articles you might like:

- How To Communicate Setting: Establishing Shots
- Exposing The Bestseller: Money Can Buy Fame
- How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings

Photo link: "the army" by linh.ngan under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Communicate Setting: Establishing Shots

C.S. Lakin has written another brilliant post, this time about establishing setting, and she starts off by making an excellent point: 

[A] novel is not a visual experience unless you make it one. ... [W]ith novels, you always want to try and show a scene through the POV character's eyes and colored by her emotions, state of mind, way of thinking.

How do you do this? With the equivalent of an establishing shot.

Create An Establishing Shot

This is from Wikipedia:

An establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects.[1] It is generally a long- or extreme-long shot at the beginning of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place. (Establishing Shot)

C.S. Lakin gives an example from Le Carré's book The Constant Gardener that I include, below, but I'll first give you one from Dean Koontz's What The Night Knows. Yes, I know, that's quite a difference in both authors and genres, but read this paragraph and tell me if you don't think it's a great establishing shot.

Dean Koontz, What The Night Knows

The state hospital stood on a hill, silhouetted against a gray and sodden sky. The September light appeared to strop a razor's edge along each skein of rain.

"... to strop a razor's edge along each skein of rain." I like that, the image of a razor, of a razor in motion, controlled motion, being sharpened, getting ready.  Dean Koontz continues:

A procession of eighty-foot purple beeches separated the inbound and the outbound lanes of the approach road. Their limbs overhung the car and collected the rain to redistribute it in thick drizzles that rapped against the windshield.

The thump of the wipers matched the slow, heavy rhythm of John Calvino's heart. He did not play the radio. The only sounds were the engine, the windshield wipers, the rain, the swish of tires turning on wet pavement, and a memory of the screams of dying women.

I'd say that sets the scene effectively. "Their limbs", "slow, heavy rhythm of John Calvino's heart", "memory of the screams of dying women". Yes, okay, it lacks some of the pure poetry of Le Carré, but, come on, that is Le Carré. He gives writers inferiority complexes.

John Le Carré, The Constant Gardener

Here's the passage C.S. Lakin quoted, and it is truly epic:

The mountain stood black against the darkening sky, and the sky was a mess of racing cloud, perverse island winds and February rain. The snake road was strewn with pebbles and red mud from the sodden hillside. Sometimes it became a tunnel of overhanging pine branches and sometimes it was a precipice with a free fall to the steaming Mediterranean a thousand feet below. He would make a turn and for no reason the sea would rise in a wall in front of him, only to fall back into the abyss as he made another. But no matter how many times he turned, the rain came straight at him, and when it struck the windscreen he felt the jeep wince under him like an old horse no longer fit for heavy pulling.  

Wow. Even just the first sentence makes me want to take a deep breath of the crisp damp air and look for my umbrella.

C.S. Lakin writes:

Look at some of the words he [Le Carré] uses: black, darkening (his quest to find answers is getting that way), perverse (that too), winds, rain, snake, sodden, tunnel, precipice . . . I don’t need to go on—you get the point. The Establishing Shot in this scene was no doubt chosen to work as a metaphor, as the reader has been watching Justin Quayle going through a similar emotional roller coaster, rising and falling into an abyss, turning one way then another, but getting nowhere fast. His task to find answers feels like he’s prodding “an old horse no longer fit for heavy pulling.” And the weight he is carrying is heavy. Powerful, right?

That’s all Le Carré needs to start the scene, and from there we move on to other camera shots revealing important plot points leading to a high moment in his scene. I won’t tell you what that is; you can read it for yourself, and I hope you do. Few writers handle words as masterfully and deliberately as does Le Carré, and he’s a great author to study for cinematic structure.

This week I'm going to do as C.S. Lakin suggests and look at the scenes in my work in progress to see whether I succeed in establishing the scene before I start in with dialogue.

All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from C.S. Lakin's article Establishing Shots That Reveal Character.

Other articles you might like:

- Writing And The Monomyth
- Steven Pressfield Gives Writers A Pep Talk In A "Get Off Your Duff And Start Writing!" Kind Of Way
- A Pep Talk

Photo credit: "A fish's view of NYC skyscrapers" by kevin dooley under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Writing And The Monomyth

Let's get back to talking about writing, the butt-in-chair stuff.

The Monomyth

Just as all philosophy is a footnote to Plato, all plots are variations of the monomyth. Perhaps, in writing circles, the best known version of the myth is the one popularized by Christopher Vogler in his wonderful book, The Writer's Journey.

I believe that every writer has internalized his or her own particular version of the monomyth. This is the structure that organizes our stories.

Each of our individual monoymths is going to be different because each writer is unique. We each have a different perspective on life and the world and this is going to show itself in our work.

What follows is my version of the monomyth. This version is no better than anyone else's (and hopefully no worse!) and I present it here more as an exercise for myself to make my implicit understanding of story structure explicit. If something I write resonates with you then I invite you to use it and if something doesn't then ignore it, it's not for you.

The Stages of the Monomyth

1. The ordinary world

Here we see the hero (the hero can be a male or female) in the ordinary world. This is the life he is used to. For instance, at the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope we see Luke working on his Uncle's farm.

SHOW the hero in the ordinary world. Take this as an opportunity to show what the hero is good at. What is he comfortable with? What is he terrible at? What are his hopes and dreams?

2. Call to adventure

A force crashes into the heroes ordinary world. Something happens, something changes. Perhaps a herald/messenger comes with news that the hero's great uncle has passed away and left him a mansion. Perhaps a malfunctioning droid shows him pictures of a pretty girl pleading for help.

3. Refusal of the call

The hero doesn't always refuse the call to adventure, but at the very least he has to consider what answering the call would mean. What would he have to give up? What might he gain?

4. Meeting the mentor

If the hero refuses the call to adventure the mentor can help spell out the stakes for him and motivate him to explore the strange new world that awaaits those few brave enough to attempt the journey. Even if the hero is eager to be off, the mentor can provide him with advice, or perhaps equipment, or--if it's a fantasy--a magical charm or three.

Often the mentor travels with the hero as a helper. Nearly always the mentor dies or leaves the party before the climax of the story, leaving the hero on his own to meet the final test alone.

Think of Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid or Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: A New Hope. The mentor knows more about the special world where the adventure will take place (e.g., the world beyond Luke's home planet of Tatooine; knowledge of The Force).

5. Entering the special world 

Before the hero leaves the ordinary world he often has to pass a test given by a threshold guardian. He doesn't quite pass the test, or he does but he makes the guardian angry, and is tossed into the belly of a whale, or trash compactor, or otherwise left for dead.

In any case, something happens to the hero such that he is swallowed into the unknown and begins--perhaps grudgingly--to adapt to the ways of the special world.

The special world is the land of adventure. There are different rules here, different social norms, different dangers. What the hero was good at he is no longer and what the hero couldn't do before now becomes possible.

After entering the special world the hero goes through a period of adjustment. Think about Luke when he goes into the Mos Eisley Cantina with Obi Wan Kenobi and the wonderful strangeness of the customers, the setting.

Have you ever used the monomyth to help structure your stories? Is there another structure you use? If so, please share!

Update: The discussion of the monomyth is continued here: Writing And The Monomyth, Part 2.

Other articles you might like:

- Steven Pressfield Gives Writers A Pep Talk In A "Get Off Your Duff And Start Writing!" Kind Of Way
- Pixar: 22 Ways To Tell A Great Story
- Podcasting on the iPad

Photo credit: "let's type" by |vvaldzen| under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Steven Pressfield Gives Writers A Pep Talk In A "Get Off Your Duff And Start Writing!" Kind Of Way

It seems this is the time for pep talks. I shared Kid President's yesterday, so I wasn't sure if I should share another right after it, but the truth is I have to, it's just too good.

Besides, it's not like we can have too many pep talks, right?

How The Eagles Learnt To Write A Song

With seven number-one singles, six Grammys five American Music Awards and six number one albums to their name, it's safe to say the Eagles knew how to write a song, but this wasn't always the case. (Eagles (band), Wikipedia)

Steven Pressfield writes:

Glenn Frey was telling the story. He was talking about the early 70s in L.A., before the Eagles were even a band, or maybe just after they had gotten started. He and Don Henley were playing gigs (they had backed up Linda Ronstadt for a while) but they were not writing their own material. They were covering other musicians’ songs. They knew they had to start writing their own—and they wanted to desperately—but they couldn’t figure out how.

.  .  .  .

It turned out that they were living in a little cheap apartment in Echo Park directly above an even littler, cheaper apartment that was being rented by Jackson Browne. Jackson Browne was at the very start of his career too. He was starving just like Glenn and Don.

Glenn Frey, telling the story, says something like this:

“Every morning we’d wake up and we’d hear Jackson’s piano coming through the floor from the apartment below. He would play one verse, then play it again, and again and again. Twenty times in a row, till he had it exactly the way he wanted.

“Then he’d move to the next verse. Again, twenty times. It went on for hours. I don’t know how many days we listened to this same process before it suddenly hit us: This is how you write a song. This is how it’s done.

“That changed everything for us.”

Steven Pressfield writes:

I love that story. I love the demystification of the process. Yeah, the Muse is present. Yes, inspiration is key. But the ethic is workaday. It’s sit down, shut up, do what you have to.

.  .  .  .

I can relate completely to what Glenn Frey said ... I can hear the notes from that piano coming up through the floorboards. “Jeez Louise, what is that guy doing down there? Stop, man! Take a break!”

Then, slowly maybe, or maybe in a flash, the light dawns. “This is how you do it. This is how you write a song.”

All quotations are from Steven Pressfield's article: Jackson Browne’s Piano coming through the Floor.

Here's the link to Steven Pressfield's blog, it's one of my favorites because I love reading an industry professional write about his experiences.

What do you do to get yourself to sit down, unplug from your social networks, hide the TV remote, and write?

Other articles you might like:

- A Pep Talk
- How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings
- Chuck Wendig Says That Editing Is Writing

Photo credit: "The Entrance" by nattu under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

A Pep Talk

Everyone needs a pep talk, even writers.

Whether it's writing a book or sending off a short story for a contest, or writing for a genre you love but have never written for. Don't just think about it, do it! Stretch yourself.

Find a dream worth pursuing and then never, ever, give up.

Here's a pep talk that's gone viral on YouTube. Enjoy!

Thanks to Larry Brooks at StoryFix.com for posting this link.

Other articles you might like:

- How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings
- 6 Ways To Get Rid Of Infodumps At The Beginning Of A Story
- Write A Novel In A Year, Chuck Wendig's Plan: The Big 350

Photo credit: "little dog in tuscany 2" by francesco sgroi under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Edit: Kill Your Darlings

When I started writing this post I fully intended to discuss Chuck Wendig's distinction between writing and storytelling and how to use this distinction to help diagnose problems in your manuscript. But then I fell down the rabbit hole of layer cakes and editordomes.

That's right. Editordomes.

In a soon-to-be-written post I do fully intend to talk about writing versus storytelling--a distinction I've wanted to talk about for some time--but for now I'm going to talk (or, rather, write) about how to identify darlings and then massacre them.

Kill Your Darlings

What is a darling? It's something that exists in your manuscript only because you love it. Or, to put it another way, if something is in your manuscript, your story, only because you love it then it's a darling and needs to go. (1)

Simply put, a darling "doesn't connect. It doesn't bond with the rest of the manuscript." (1)

A true “darling” is a lone wolf, a ronin ninja, a pretty little unibomber, a delicate snowflake. It does nothing for your work. It dances alone with itself in the corner, and you don’t have the heart to tell it that it needs to join the rest of the crowd or drink a capful of drain cleaner. (1)

Okay, that's how a darling functions, or fails to function, in your manuscript, but what is it? Chuck writes: "Darlings can be anything: a turn-of-phrase, a character, a word, a grammatical crutch (1)".

The test: how to determine if something is a darling

Here's the question you should ask yourself: If you cut out this bit of text does the story loose anything? Chuck writes:

Theatrically kill it. ... You’re just… taking it out of the draft for a little while to see how it reads, how it feels, how it lays. Copy the offending section. Paste it into a blank document. Let it sit there on its own ... Come back after fifteen minutes (or, up to a whole day if you’re able). Now, check out the draft once more. Re-read it. Read it aloud. (Always read aloud. I will jackhammer that into your brain as often as I can.) Do you feel that it lays fine the way it is? Or do you say, “Y’know what? This is missing a little something-something. Needs more salt and pepper.”

If it’s okay without it — and I’ll bet 7 times out of 10 it will be — then the darling you’ve sequestered on its own is no longer on vacation, but now trapped in a Murder Room. Close that open window and let it die a swift death.

If you think it needs more spice, more flavor, put it back in. “Kill your darlings” is not meant to be a surly screed against flavor. Flavor is good, as long as flavor accompanies nutritional value. Again, to go back to the empty calories metaphor: darlings are garnish for the sake of garnish, or sweets just because you want sweets. (1)

Weak Words: An Example Of A Darling That Has To Go

In Strangling My Darlings In A Clawfoot Bathtub (Part Two Of Two) Chuck gives examples of darlings. It's well worth the read, but I want to talk about one of his examples here because this is something I still battle with: the use of weak words or as Chuck writes: "mushy, weak, wobbly words".

Maybe, actually, really, almost, sort of, kind of, very, theoretically, mehh, meeeehhhhhh.

You want your writing to sound conversational.

But you don’t want it to sound like uncertain conversation. You don’t want it weak-in-the-knees. (2)

That doesn't mean weak words always make your prose boring, in fact you might think they lend it flair. Chuck concedes this, to a point.

They’re not terrible in total, and some can lend to a stylistic flair, but it’s often too easy to default to that as your excuse. “My writing doesn’t suck. It’s just my style.”

Well, fine. Then your style involves copious amounts of sucking. (2)

How We Can Drown Darlings Without Drama

Be in the right state of mind

You need to let your manuscript go. Yes, you have invested a lot of yourself in its pages, into the story, but now it's time to let it go, to disassociate yourself from it. It is not you. Keep saying that until you believe it.

I love the way Chuck puts this: "You are not the sum of those pages." (1)

How does one distance oneself from ones litterary offspring? Put your manuscript in a drawer, close the drawer and walk away. Chuck advises taking at least a month off, Stephen King recommends six weeks. Don't even open the drawer. Forget about the manuscript. Wipe it from your mind as much as possible. You want to come back to it with new eyes and edit it as though it were someone else's work. That's the kind of objectivity you'll need.

Read Everything Aloud

I don't do this but I know I should ... and now that I've read Chuck's posts I think I will. He writes:

You do that [read aloud], you will hear all the fits and starts, all the awkward language, all the broken pauses, all the disturbed rhythms. Typing is not like speaking — we have the extra step of having our fingers do their little fingery dance. As such, you need to bridge that gap. (3)

Have you ever read your manuscript aloud? Have you ever had your manuscript read to you?

References:

1. Strangling My Darlings In A Clawfoot Bathtub (Part One Of Two)
2. Strangling My Darlings In A Clawfoot Bathtub (Part Two Of Two)
3. Welcome To Editordome

Other articles you might like:

- Chuck Wendig Says That Editing Is Writing
- Looking At Plot: Urban Myths And What They Teach Us
- Monsignor Ronald Knox's 10 Rules Of Detective Fiction

Photo credit: "A petición de Fran." by www dot jordiarmengol dot net (Xip) under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.