Lo these many moons ago, I studied acting. I took some classes at an academy in London for a semester in college, and one of them was called "Modern Physicality". No, I don't know why that was the name - just go with it.
A few weeks into the semester, we did an exercise in that class where we each walked around the room and eventually paired up. Each person had to try to imitate their partner's walk, and in the end we had to perform this by walking around in a circle, while the rest of the class watched. One person would walk normally, and the other would imitate their walk behind them. The class would call out suggestions for improvement, and finally the original person would be pulled aside while their mimic would continue the imitation.
I was paired with a woman who was fairly confident, and walked with a swing in her hips and her head up to face the world. It took me a few tries to get the walk, because I had to fight my natural tendencies, but I got it down eventually. Then it was her turn to imitate me. At the time, I had been fighting with undiagnosed depression. I hadn't been so far away from my family for this long a time before, and this happened to have been right after 9/11 - as in, my first day of classes in this program was September 11, 2001. In other words, I was not in a good place.
I started walked around the circle, with my mimic behind me, and the first thing I heard was someone saying "Awww!" from among my classmates. A second later, my teacher asked, "Is that really your walk, love?" It wasn't until I was pulled back and watched my imitator's walk that I saw what they did. Her head was down, eyes focused on the ground. Her arms hardly swung at her sides, and she continually reached as though she were trying to put her hands in pockets that weren't there. She moved slowly, so slowly, and her back was bowed as though under a great weight. I could hardly believe it - this was what everyone else saw when they watched me walk down the street.
I'm in an airport right now, waiting for my flight home. Remember the lessons from that class, I find myself fascinated by the body language of the people around me. Some are walking slowly, casually, as if they really didn't care if they got to where they needed to be. Several are walking quickly, looking around constantly - they're probably trying to find their connection. There are a few who appear determined to get this over with - sitting upright, a look of boredom on their face as they poke at their phones. And some are giving me the seeds of an idea - a man receiving a phone call and responding, loudly, by saying "No way!" repeatedly, for instance. Watching people watch others is entertaining, too - as this is the closest major airport to GenCon, the convention we just left, there are some folks with different colored hair, funny t-shirts, and (in one case) carrying a stuff sheep waiting for their flights home. Seeing how others react to these blips on the radar tells me a lot about both the observer and the observed.
Me? I'm just trying not to get caught staring at people, and waiting to take the first leg of the journey home.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Monday, August 11, 2014
Quick post on gaming and writing
A bit of a shorter post today, as I have many and many a thing to do before I flee for GenCon. This is the eighth or ninth year I've gone, and I always go as a demonstrator for Asmodee Games. It's a ton of fun, though a touch on the exhausting side, so who knows how much actual writing will get done this week?
I've noticed that over the past ten years or so, while I've become more serious about my writing, I've also spent more time playing games (mostly board games and roleplaying games). Both types of games have definitely influenced my writing, and my writing experience has influenced my game play. I hope to get into this in more detail another week, but I'm curious - of those of you who write, do you also game? Do you feel like there's an impact between one activity and the other?
Have a good week, my friends!
I've noticed that over the past ten years or so, while I've become more serious about my writing, I've also spent more time playing games (mostly board games and roleplaying games). Both types of games have definitely influenced my writing, and my writing experience has influenced my game play. I hope to get into this in more detail another week, but I'm curious - of those of you who write, do you also game? Do you feel like there's an impact between one activity and the other?
Have a good week, my friends!
Monday, August 4, 2014
Plot bunny management
I'm not sure about everyone else, but I have story idea overload on a regular basis. Some image will come to mind, or a phrase, or a plot idea, and I know I need to grab onto it before it disappears back into the wild before I have a chance to do anything with it. These ideas are plot bunnies, and they are hard as anything to wrangle sometimes.
My main storage space is a Google Document (appropriately titled "Plot Bunnies") that I can access online and on my phone. It's one of the easiest ways for me to jot down what I'm thinking of before it vanishes, and it gives me access to those ideas later if I get stuck. Now, because I'm usually writing them down frantically while trying to get enough detail across that I'll know what I was talking about, there's a level of surrealism that pops up. Things like "soul lever" and "honey blood" are just there, with no context whatsoever. Admittedly, a lot of time there is no context to give, but still, it can be confusing.
While I enjoy using the Google Doc, and usually move everything over to that document so it's all in one place, I don't really like writing on my phone. If I'm away from a computer, I'll usually jot the idea down in one of the multitudes of notebooks that surround me. I admit to being a stationery addict, and have more notebooks than I could ever really use. But you never know when you'll need a piece of paper, or you'll have an idea that'll take less time to write out by hand than it would to fight with your phone. Also, as I discovered in college, moving text from the hand-written to the typed gives me an opportunity to do a first run of editing. It can help me smooth out some of the wrinkles that come from just getting it on the page, and it also helps that it becomes legible after I type it up.
Finally, when it comes to images, I've become a believer in Pinterest. One of my coworkers spends a lot of time on Reddit, and frequently sends around photos that she finds interesting. After the second or third email, I created a Pinterest board for the images that seemed like they had a story waiting to be told. I don't update it all the time, but it's nice to have an easy place to stash an image for later inspiration.
So tell me how you organize your plot bunnies. What tools or tricks do you use to keep them under control? How often do you use them to inspire new ideas in something you're working on?
My main storage space is a Google Document (appropriately titled "Plot Bunnies") that I can access online and on my phone. It's one of the easiest ways for me to jot down what I'm thinking of before it vanishes, and it gives me access to those ideas later if I get stuck. Now, because I'm usually writing them down frantically while trying to get enough detail across that I'll know what I was talking about, there's a level of surrealism that pops up. Things like "soul lever" and "honey blood" are just there, with no context whatsoever. Admittedly, a lot of time there is no context to give, but still, it can be confusing.
While I enjoy using the Google Doc, and usually move everything over to that document so it's all in one place, I don't really like writing on my phone. If I'm away from a computer, I'll usually jot the idea down in one of the multitudes of notebooks that surround me. I admit to being a stationery addict, and have more notebooks than I could ever really use. But you never know when you'll need a piece of paper, or you'll have an idea that'll take less time to write out by hand than it would to fight with your phone. Also, as I discovered in college, moving text from the hand-written to the typed gives me an opportunity to do a first run of editing. It can help me smooth out some of the wrinkles that come from just getting it on the page, and it also helps that it becomes legible after I type it up.
Finally, when it comes to images, I've become a believer in Pinterest. One of my coworkers spends a lot of time on Reddit, and frequently sends around photos that she finds interesting. After the second or third email, I created a Pinterest board for the images that seemed like they had a story waiting to be told. I don't update it all the time, but it's nice to have an easy place to stash an image for later inspiration.
So tell me how you organize your plot bunnies. What tools or tricks do you use to keep them under control? How often do you use them to inspire new ideas in something you're working on?
Monday, July 28, 2014
Book review - Help Fund My Robot Army!!!
I thought it might be nice to try something new this week. If you watch my Goodreads profile, you'll see that I tend to read a lot of different kinds of books. Of late, I've become hooked on short story anthologies, as they give me such a broad range of stories and styles in one convenient package. The best anthology I've read recently is John Joseph Adams' Help Fund My Robot Army!!!
The premise of the anthology is that each story is told as though it were a project page on a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter or Indigogo. The format is pretty well restrained, as the author is limited to essentially a sales pitch, different levels for backers, updates, and occasionally some conversation through backer comments.
Even with these restrictions, the authors who wrote the stories that make up this anthology are able to use every little bit to create characters and worlds that feel completely fleshed out. For example, Jake Kerr's story "A Memorial to the Patriots" gives us a United States in which terrorist attacks have led to a severe reduction in any kind of communication (and shows us how futile that can be), while Carmen Maria Machado's story "Help Me Follow My Sister Into the Land of the Dead" manages to give an in-depth view of a family that's falling apart.
There are some silly projects, too, since that makes up a good number of the projects actually available on Kickstarter. Even these, however, have far more depth than I expected in such a small amount of space. As a reader, I'm enchanted by how many different worlds and how many unique voices the authors are able to create. As a writer, I wish to learn exactly how they managed to pull this off.
Overall, five stars, would definitely read again.
The premise of the anthology is that each story is told as though it were a project page on a crowdfunding site such as Kickstarter or Indigogo. The format is pretty well restrained, as the author is limited to essentially a sales pitch, different levels for backers, updates, and occasionally some conversation through backer comments.
Even with these restrictions, the authors who wrote the stories that make up this anthology are able to use every little bit to create characters and worlds that feel completely fleshed out. For example, Jake Kerr's story "A Memorial to the Patriots" gives us a United States in which terrorist attacks have led to a severe reduction in any kind of communication (and shows us how futile that can be), while Carmen Maria Machado's story "Help Me Follow My Sister Into the Land of the Dead" manages to give an in-depth view of a family that's falling apart.
There are some silly projects, too, since that makes up a good number of the projects actually available on Kickstarter. Even these, however, have far more depth than I expected in such a small amount of space. As a reader, I'm enchanted by how many different worlds and how many unique voices the authors are able to create. As a writer, I wish to learn exactly how they managed to pull this off.
Overall, five stars, would definitely read again.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Character building - pain
Something that every person has to deal with at some point is pain. Be it physical or purely emotional, how a person handles pain says a lot about that person, and people can learn a lot about themselves when they have to encounter pain of some sort.
I find that figuring out how a character reacts to pain is a great way to flesh out a character. It's usually just a thought experiment, though occasionally I'll write a brief scene to help me solidify the things I learn about that character. For example, I'll put the character in a situation that would cause the "average person" some sort of emotional pain - the death of a family member. Finding out how the character reacts to that brings up a ton of questions right away:
- How close is the character to the family member in question?
- How does the character react externally, in public?
- How does the character react privately?
- Is there anyone that the character would feel comfortable expressing their pain to?
- What's the first thought that runs through the character's head when hearing the news?
There are stories that can grow out of this information right away - if the character isn't close to the family member who died, why? Was there some sort of estrangement? If the character breaks down in public, how do the people around the character react?
Physical pain is less similar that it would seem on first blush. Speaking from personal experience with chronic pain, I know that I can "push through" pain I'm used to, but will be laid out flat by something unexpected. I have chronic head pain, so I'm used to working around headaches; however, if I throw my back out, the slightest shift in movement will leave me incapacitated. So ask yourself:
- What kinds of pain your character can work through, and what will drop them into the fetal position?
- Does your character react differently if someone witnesses an injury, as opposed to being alone?
- At what point will your character ask for help?
In general, people don't like to think about pain. However, seeing how someone reacts to different kinds of pain can help give a character depth, even if it never comes up explicitly in the text. Try not to torture them too much, though - you don't want them to run off screaming into the night.
Monday, July 14, 2014
World building - important artifacts
One of the nice things about having a lazy Saturday at home is that something random on TV will spark inspiration. This weekend, it was the History Channel (which, every once in a while, remembers that their focus is history), and 101 Objects that Changed the World. The list is basically a bunch of tangible items that represent some major change in the world, or some major event in history. It includes things like the hard hat (which allowed major buildings and bridges to be built safely), the cannon ball shot at Fort Sumter (beginning of the US Civil War - the list is a bit US-centric, shockingly enough), and the Coca-Cola contour bottle (first major company to use uniform packaging).
It made me wonder what objects would be considered "essential" in a world that I'm currently building. There's the big important thing, in this case a golden rope that magically binds the different territories of the land together, but that's not something that the average person would encounter on a daily basis. The clockwork servants, however, are things that are so common that they fade into the background.
To me, an important object for a world is something that helps differentiate the world you're creating from the real world. It can also help you figure out how your setting got to where it is when your story is taking place. A story is a snapshot of time in a greater timeline, and it's helpful to remember that there's a history to the world you're writing in that influences the way your story takes place.
It made me wonder what objects would be considered "essential" in a world that I'm currently building. There's the big important thing, in this case a golden rope that magically binds the different territories of the land together, but that's not something that the average person would encounter on a daily basis. The clockwork servants, however, are things that are so common that they fade into the background.
To me, an important object for a world is something that helps differentiate the world you're creating from the real world. It can also help you figure out how your setting got to where it is when your story is taking place. A story is a snapshot of time in a greater timeline, and it's helpful to remember that there's a history to the world you're writing in that influences the way your story takes place.
Monday, July 7, 2014
World building - holidays
Happy late Fourth of July to those of you who celebrate! I sincerely hope you all still have as many fingers as you started with. Naturally, the recent holiday made me think of how to create and celebrate the holidays in the worlds I'm building, and how they would look to outsiders.
For example: Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, my family and I lived in a Naval station in Spain. We lived "off-base", in a gated community where several houses had been leased by the US military and the rest of the community was made up of local civilians. On the Fourth of July, the only place where anything was really happening was on the base itself, as the day wasn't any kind of holiday to the rest of the country.
My father was never a big fan of crowds, and we knew that the base would be filled to the brim with homesick Americans watching the fireworks and listening to "God Bless America" while hoisting their beers. Instead of going on base to celebrate with everyone else, we decided to make use of the fact that our house had an accessible roof. (The way the houses in our community were built, the roof was the closest thing to a yard any of us had, so everyone used them for clotheslines and some gardening.) I just remember being on the roof with my family, watching the fireworks from the base, and noticing the other Americans on their roofs doing the same. It was a much calmer way of celebrating what can be a very boisterous holiday, and remains my favorite way to celebrate.
In general, societies use holidays to reinforce some kind of unification among their people. It's a great way to take a moment and reflect on what's important, and an excellent way of defining "what's important" to the masses. I feel like a world is incomplete without some kind of celebratory event that happens regularly. Now, I don't mean that every fictional society has to be like Seanan McGuire's wonderful Aeslin mice, in which anything can be a holiday, but it helps to have a few events that are commemorated in some way. In the world I'm working on for Camp NaNo this time, there's a Unification Day, celebrating the day the final treaty was signed and all of the territories fell under one ruler. For some of those territories, this is a day of great celebration; for others, it's a reminder of the freedom they lost when they were conquered.
Not everyone celebrates the same holiday the same way, so it's another good way of getting inside the heads of your characters. How do they celebrate Christmas? What are their favorite and least favorite holidays? You may never actually put it in a book or story, but it's another one of those things that helps flesh out a character and a world.
For example: Between the ages of eleven and fourteen, my family and I lived in a Naval station in Spain. We lived "off-base", in a gated community where several houses had been leased by the US military and the rest of the community was made up of local civilians. On the Fourth of July, the only place where anything was really happening was on the base itself, as the day wasn't any kind of holiday to the rest of the country.
My father was never a big fan of crowds, and we knew that the base would be filled to the brim with homesick Americans watching the fireworks and listening to "God Bless America" while hoisting their beers. Instead of going on base to celebrate with everyone else, we decided to make use of the fact that our house had an accessible roof. (The way the houses in our community were built, the roof was the closest thing to a yard any of us had, so everyone used them for clotheslines and some gardening.) I just remember being on the roof with my family, watching the fireworks from the base, and noticing the other Americans on their roofs doing the same. It was a much calmer way of celebrating what can be a very boisterous holiday, and remains my favorite way to celebrate.
In general, societies use holidays to reinforce some kind of unification among their people. It's a great way to take a moment and reflect on what's important, and an excellent way of defining "what's important" to the masses. I feel like a world is incomplete without some kind of celebratory event that happens regularly. Now, I don't mean that every fictional society has to be like Seanan McGuire's wonderful Aeslin mice, in which anything can be a holiday, but it helps to have a few events that are commemorated in some way. In the world I'm working on for Camp NaNo this time, there's a Unification Day, celebrating the day the final treaty was signed and all of the territories fell under one ruler. For some of those territories, this is a day of great celebration; for others, it's a reminder of the freedom they lost when they were conquered.
Not everyone celebrates the same holiday the same way, so it's another good way of getting inside the heads of your characters. How do they celebrate Christmas? What are their favorite and least favorite holidays? You may never actually put it in a book or story, but it's another one of those things that helps flesh out a character and a world.
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