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Lost Story Followup

Lost Story Followup

A follow-up from yesterday’s post: Long Lost Stories.

Yes I did go looking for my notebook when I got home last night. And yes, I did find it.

What? You’re wondering, perhaps, if I opened it up and took a peak? If so, was it any good.

You know what, I have to say it wasn’t too bad. There are some parts I would change, but it was supposed to be a first draft anyway. You know what, how about I just open up the bad boy and show you what I found.

Excerpt from the long lost moleskine reporter’s journal that has gathered dust in my bedside table since 2006 (as much as it kills me, I’m writing as-is, not cleaning anything up):

Luke awoke from his dream with a single thought in his head: I have to visit Mom and Dad and find my Dinosaur Encyclopedia.

Already the details of his dream were fading like an ice cream headache; what just a moment prior felt so urgent was now just a memory. What remained was a desire to hold the favorite book of his childhood once more.

Luke contemplated calling his parents at that moment and asking them if they knew of the whereabouts of his book. He quickly changed his mind once he realized it was 3:23 AM and a call at that time would probably kill his mother. Luke had once called his parents at 12:30 AM on New Year’s Eve to be met by his father’s voice frantic that his mother had seen Luke’s phone number on caller-id and had fainted, thinking something horrible must have happened to him.

Luke turned off his nightlight and fell back to sleep, this time dreaming he had won the World Series, only he wasn’t one of the players but was instead the baseball and had felt extremely lucky the opposing team consisted of tiny infants who were up way past their bedtime. Luke remembered none of this upon waking the following morning though he did wonder why he was suddenly so cross with his baseball bat.

Okay, I lied. I did clean up some of the more egregious writing. Not all, but some.

If my counting was correct, this notebook contains roughly 14,000 words. I don’t know for sure why I abandoned the story, but most likely it was because I hit a wall. Maybe if I read through it now, after all these years I can make something of it. It’s worth a shot, I suppose.

Long Lost Stories

Long Lost Stories

This is gonna be really meta, but I promise I’ll bring it back around.

So I still have my old site, strugglingwriter.wordpress.com, which still maddeningly garners 60 to 100 pageviews a day (sorry, I said I was gonna get meta). I say maddeningly because this is the site I’m most focused on right now, and I get 10 pageviews here on a good day.

Anyway, I saw a huge spike yesterday and today on the old site and after investigation I discovered that a post I had written in 2006(!) had been linked on a tumblr post about writing help. The somewhat odd part was that the post of mine that was linked, Plot Help, was actually me asking for help with my plot, not me offering any kind of writing tips.

Now, I went back and read that post. There’s not really anything exciting about it on the surface and in fact it’s kind’ve blah. However, there is this:

I am at a point in my novel that is key to the whole plot of the work. If I screw this up, there is no going back. 48,000 words will be wasted.

My plot involves a 23 something guy who visits his parents looking for one of his favorite books of his childhood. He doesn’t find the one he is looking for, but does find one that looks interesting that he didn’t remember. As he opens the front cover he sees something written inside. It is a note to himself he wrote when he was eight years old urging him to do or remember something.

Well, I’m sorry to say that the novel did fail. I have almost no recollection of it at all, other than I think that’s the one I wrote in a Moleskine notebook. Sure enough, that is the one. I even have a post where I say I’ve given up on the story and another where I’ve posted pictures of my handwriting.

What gets me most, other than I have a LOT of content over on the old blog, is how foreign all of that stuff feels to me. It’s like it was written by another person. Bizarre.

I wonder where that notebook and story are? I’m hoping, but not positive, that they are still in my nightstand where I left them. I really hope they are, actually. That is my homework to myself today. To find that notebook and see what it contains.

Outlining Sucks But…

Outlining Sucks But…

A bit of inspiration hit me the other day, reading Sarah Hinna’s recap of her Thirty Days of Poetry.  Particularly when reading this, and in particular the part in bold:

 I’d fallen out of love with writing. It had become another pressure, instead of a happy wandering. I’ve been wrangling with the same novel for three years, and I thought it had beaten me. I didn’t even care that it had beaten me, particularly, but I did care that I didn’t seem to care.

Hmm. I thought. I could do this. Not with poetry, of course. My mind just doesn’t work that way. Or more to the point, I’m not that deep. But I could do this with flash fiction. 30 Days of Flash Fiction sounds nice.

Then I thought about my novel. What if I wrote 30 flash fiction pieces set in the universe of my novel? That would certainly get my creative juices flowing. In fact, if I did this right, I’d almost be *gasp* plotting my novel, only writing 30 pieces of flash fiction seem much less icky than writing an outline.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Only, don’t hold me to it. Or do. It’s up to you really. Once I have a few of these things written I’ll post them here. This could be really exciting. Or not. Who knows?

Dead Trees Can Move (Flash Fiction)

Dead Trees Can Move (Flash Fiction)

Here’s some more flash fiction for you. I have to say I’m enjoying posting these and I hope you enjoy reading them. Of course, I need to create new things too.

This one was in reply to a Flash fiction contest. Entries were required to be 100 words or less and about “a first day in high school”. Anyway, here is a link to my entry titled Dead Trees Can Move.

Dead Trees Can Move

Mr. Larson had an earring and he talked kinda funny and on the first day of school he asked me what books I liked to read. I said nothing. I had nothing. Everybody laughed, but not Mr. Larson.

I worked my butt off after that to prove to him, to them, to me, I wasn’t stupid.

I wasn’t sure if he noticed, until the last day of school. There was a book on my desk. Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. “Read this”, said the note on the cover. I did.

Mr. Larson talked kinda funny, but he opened my eyes

From a Writer’s Point Of View: The Problem With Star Wars Prequels

From a Writer’s Point Of View: The Problem With Star Wars Prequels

This will be about writing, I promise. Just bear with me for a moment.

I was born the month and year Star Wars (now called A New Hope) was released. So, I’ll always know how old the movie is. I saw all three movies in the theater, my parents tell me. I remember watching Jedi (and remember is originally being called Revenge of the Jedi instead of Return of the Jedi) and smiling at the end. I remember watching Empire and thinking WTF as Boba Fett’s ship Slave I flew off with Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

I remember that period in the late 80s, early 90s, when it wasn’t cool to still like Star Wars. I still did anyhow. I still have all of my old toys. I remember how excited we were to watch the Special Editions of the movies re-released in the theater. I remember the tears in my eyes when John Williams theme played over the opening credits. I was in college.

I remember the anticipation for Episode I. The excellent Weird Al song about it. I remember walking out of the theater with my friends, trying to convince ourselves that what we had seen wasn’t so bad.

It was so bad. And it wasn’t Jar-Jar Binks fault.

We imagined the Clone Wars. We all had a version in our head of how Anakin became Darth Vader. In my mind, Anakin was this great pilot (he was late 20s, early 30s in my mind), great Jedi, a good man, who had somehow been irreparably injured in a crash and in his weakened state, succumbed to the dark side.

I’ve had a hard time really expressing why the prequels stunk so much. My official reason for a while has been that the writers just didn’t make me care about the characters. I feel like I should have wept when Anakin turned to the dark side. But to be honest, by the middle of the second movie I was fine with it.

Then yesterday, I came across this really great article from TheScriptLab that really gets into what went wrong and how to avoid it in our own writing. What does Anakin want?

Why do we love the first three Star Wars, and by first three, I mean 4,5,and 6, but loathe the second trifecta? Does it feel that forced? (Yes.) Are midichlorians really that dumb of an idea? (Yes.) Is Hayden Christensen’s acting really that bad? (Unfortunately.) True Star Wars fans can probably give me a hundred reasons, but the main, I believe, is the Hero’s Spine. Whereas A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedifocus on Luke’s story, and his ultimate quest to become a Jedi, the other three focus on… what, exactly?

For argument’s sake, let’s just say that the second trilogy (1, 2, and 3) focus on Anakin’s journey to becoming Vader. But here’s the problem with that. Anakin has no ultimate objective to become the Lord of the Dark Side. He has no objective to be the ultimate baddy. He simply just falls into it with some stupid decisions and some juvenile thinking. The three films’ only character objectives come from the Federation’s desire to do away with evil. But the Federation is a group of about 12 characters, some of which have only a few one-liners in a sit-down meeting. In comparison to Tolkien’sRings, Lucas gives us the Fellowship, but without the Frodo. Without the character who has the ultimate desire, and has to make the ultimate sacrifice. And without that, what’s the point?

This is something I’m not sure I know about the protagonist in my wip novel. What does he really want? To be honest, I’m not sure. Seven chapters in, and I’m not sure. I’ll tell you what, though, I plan on finding out before I move forward much further.

The article at TheScriptLab is actually a three-parter. Part 2 deals with Opposition (to the protagonist). Part 3 is about forming a connection with the audience.

Even if you don’t care about the Star Wars stuff, I really do recommend you check out the articles I’ve linked. They are quite good and might just help you avoid creating another Anakin. Because really, we don’t need another one of those in this galaxy or one far far away.