Month: May 2011

Inspiration Monday XIV

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Happy Memorial Day, whether or not you are American – and thanks to all the folks who risk (and give up) their lives so that we can post whatever the heck we want on blogs and stuff. It’s a heavy price, and I hope I don’t have to remind the Rewriters not to waste this opportunity to speak their minds in the very best way they know how.

In other news, with my three-day weekend, I made some excellent progress with the Super Secret Project!

And all the InMon submissions continue to impress me. There are a few new faces this week; please be sure to welcome them!

pianolover1114

Patti

Bayley

Marantha

Mike and two

Billie Jo

Jinx

Scribbla

Kay

Chessie

Hugmore

Carl

Char

Mike per Char

***EDIT: So, apparently it’s week 14. Not week 19. I could make the excuse that the V and the X are so close to each other on the keyboard, or that I preferred the symmetry of XIX, but I’d be lying. I’ve changed the post title, but the URL/link is permanently XIX, so be sure to link correctly. Thanks for the heads up, Patti!

****EDIT: please also welcome Lady Nimue and check out Barb’s piece

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The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

OR

No really; I need rules!

Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before6 pm CSTon the Monday following this post.

The Prompts:

The crime of forgetting *

Wait for my signal

Sideways in time

Broken heart. Bloody hammer.

Overexposed

Want to share your Inspiration Monday piece? Post it on your blog and link back to today’s post; I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post. No blog? Email your piece to me at stephanie (at) balcomagency (dot) com.

Plus, get the InMon badge for your site here.

Happy writing!

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*Today’s first prompt brought to you by Jinx. Thanks, girl!

A Defense of Happy Endings

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Let’s get down to it. What’s better: a happy ending or a sad one – and why?

First, let’s define “happy” and “sad” endings. It’s not as simple as whether or not the hero survives; Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Lewis’s The Last Battle both end with everyone dying, but one leaves you in despair and the other brings you incredible joy.

I think it’s more accurately measured by the presence of two things: meaning and victory. Compare Sydney Carton’s death in A Tale of Two Cities to any Nicholas Sparks book. Everything that happens in Two Cities leads up to, even contributes to, Carton’s death, and he dies nobly (meaningfully), to save a friend (victory). Whereas Sparks’s M.O. is for two people to find love, only to lose it again (defeat) when one of them unexpectedly (senselessly) dies in a car wreck, in a shipwreck, or of Leukemia. We cry an awful lot at Sparks (at least the movies; I never deemed the books worthy of my time) as well as at Dickens, but one leaves us sad and the other, satisfied. Dickens’s ending is meaningful; Sparks’s is a parlor trick.

Sparksstirs up emotion, sure – but tears are cheap. It’s easy to get our characters into scrapes, to beat them bloody, to take away everything they care about; it’s harder to get them out of trouble, heal them, and give them their hearts’ desires while making it meaningful and believable instead of nauseatingly cheesy. But the fact is – and Dickens proves it – it can be done.

Happy endings sometimes seem cheesy because they are unrealistically glossy – like nothing bad ever happened again. These are either simplified to reinforce the style of the story (perhaps for younger readers), or are just badly written. But some people lump all happy endings into the same “Unrealistic” category. They call themselves realists, preferring books that speak the “hard truth.” They scorn stories that end with weddings, saying the marriage would never last in real life. But that’s not realism. Realism is acknowledging that some marriages end in divorce; cynicism is assuming they all do.

And the funny thing about cynicism? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. How much of what’s wrong in real life, failed marriages included, is that way just because people have given up fighting? If you write about a “realistic” failed marriage, what good is it? You’re not revealing anything your readers haven’t seen already. You’re only reinforcing hopelessness. Why not write about a struggling couple that fights to save their marriage? You can empower your readers to hope and to fight without being cheesy or unrealistic.

Don’t be silly, you might say; everyone knows it’s just a story. Readers don’t take it to heart.

That’s a lie. Even the cynical marketing world I work in acknowledges that the story is one of the most powerful forces on earth. A well-crafted story doesn’t just claim that a bad situation can turn out well—it shows how a bad situation can turn out well. Stories can make people see new possibilities. Stories can change people’s minds. Stories can inspire or discourage.

What will your stories do?

Inspiration Monday XIII

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Gorgeous work as usual this…last…this past week (I never quite know how to say that). The most popular prompt was “paper towns,” so I thought I’d introduce you all to the author (I don’t know him personally, but I like to pretend). You can watch him read a part of the book here. And don’t forget to read your fellow Rewriters!

Kay

Drew

Billie Jo

Scribbla

Mike

Char

Carl

Bayley and two

Jinx (guest post)

Barb

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EDIT: Mark was late but his piece is brilliant, and I had to add it.

The Rules

There are none. Read the prompts, get inspired, write something. No word count minimum or maximum. You don’t have to include the exact prompt in your piece, and you can interpret the prompt(s) any way you like.

OR

No really; I need rules!

Okay; write 200-500 words on the prompt of your choice. You may either use the prompt as the title of your piece or work it into the body of your piece. You must complete it before6 pm CSTon the Monday following this post.

The Prompts:

I used to have dreams*

The stink of clean*

Disposable men*

I never breathed

How to make a mask

 

If you want to share your Inspiration Monday piece, post it on your blog and link back to today’s post; I’ll include a link to your piece in the next Inspiration Monday post. No blog? Email your piece to me at stephanie (at) balcomagency (dot) com.

Happy writing! And DFTBA.

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Today’s prompts brought to you by Rewriter Jinx, contributor TragicPete, and the band Chevelle, respectively.

Are writers sadists?

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“Every book I’ve ever written ends with someone dying; every one. Really nice people too. Like the book about Helen, the school teacher. I killed her the day before summer vacation. How cruel is that?”

–         Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction

“I’d really like to see him,” he added. “Dustfinger, I mean. Naturally I’m sorry now that I thought up such an unhappy ending for the poor fellow, but it somehow seemed right for him.”

–         Fenoglio in Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

Admit it. You love writing in the sad bits, the death scenes, the broken hearts. I know, because I do, too. But why? Why do we so enjoy torturing characters we’ve come to love? I mean, we wouldn’t do that in real life. We’re all pretty good people, right?

But if the author is good, how come bad things happen to good characters?

Because that’s the Way Things Are. It wouldn’t be realistic if I wrote it otherwise.

Then why are you writing it, doofus? Save yourself the trouble of making up sad stories and just stick with true ones.

Maybe I just like the control. We all like to play God.

Baloney sandwiches. You know perfectly well that after you have created your characters, you lose control of them completely.

Fine. Then I guess because…it’s beautiful, somehow.

Beautiful? What kind of a sick person are you? You think it’s beautiful for a person to have their heart ripped in two?

I don’t know. Something about it is.

My theory is this. We sense beauty in these situations and misinterpret it, thinking darkness is beautiful. But really, pain is beautiful only because it is evidence of something good. We love to write about the grieving widower because it illustrates how much he loved his wife. We love writing about the child dying of cancer because it illustrates how precious life is. It’s that love, that preciousness, that is beautiful. We have trouble seeing goodness if all is well, but when we take something away from a character, or threaten to take it, we prove the worth of that thing by the character’s reaction.

Say you have the chance to meet your protagonist (as did the authors in the quotes above) – to enter your story at its darkest moment. You kneel beside your hero as he coughs up blood, look into his slightly glassy eyes, and tell him everything is going to be okay. You wouldn’t give him any details, of course – that he’ll overcome the villain at the last moment – that would ruin the ending. You wouldn’t even want him to believe the part about everything being okay, not really. You’d just want to give him the tiniest glimmer of hope. Not enough to banish his fear, not enough to lift the deepening despair; just enough to keep him fighting. To push himself off the floor and pick up his sword.

And even if you prefer sad endings, and he does die, the point remains – that he picked up his sword. He didn’t give up, because there was something worth fighting for.

And that is beautiful.

Go Ahead, pull your Finger

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Musicians do it, so should we.

Snap, crackle, pop. It is important to properly maintain your tools regularly. Whether one writes with a pen(cil) or a keyboard, we must all take care of our hands. Some people think popping knuckles is bad for you, some are just uncomfortable doing it.

Do it anyway.

Chiropractors pop necks, backs, elbows, ankles, and all other joints, and you pay them for it. Writing for hours can be a big strain on the hands and fingers. Once my fingers got stuck in the pencil-grip position for several minutes after. It could happen to you. 

Pop your knuckles

Stretch your fingers

Bend them behind the hand

Pull them gently out from your hand to extend them all the way from your wrist

Bend your wrists back

Bend your thumbs back

Extend your fingers in a wide stretch then bend them like claws, repeat that a lot.

Play with chinese medacine balls (they’re the little metal ones that jingle); this is for dexterity.

Put a rubber band around your fingers and thumb and move them in and out repeatedly to create and release tension in the band; this is for strength and stretching.

Massage your hands

Do the Mr. Miagi rub together for warming up.

Do these before/during/after long writing sessions and your hands and fingers with be happy and crampless.

Don’t let your hands get like this.

That is all.