The Marketplace of Technique: Open to All

I just finished reading it :) This taught me some things about mister Tumnus which I did know clearly know before. What exactly is the new technique, though, may I ask? I wouldn't really knw...but...I'd like to:D
 
What defines the sestina, as I have been taught by Orange and Primsong, is the use and re-use of a set of words as line-ending words in six "big" stanzas and a final small one. You saw that every line in my poem ENDED with one of the six words Aslan, Lucy, Wardrobe, love, sword and cordial; and in the short stanza each line held TWO of the six words. This method makes rhyming nearly impossible, but the word-repetition itself helps create the poetic "feel."

Farah, if you care to pick six not-too-impossible words, I will try to write a second sestina based on them. As long as the word "vampire" is not among the keywords.
 
Iambic pentameter, the rhythm pattern required in sonnets, is not as widely used in our time as in Shakespeare's--though many lines of lyrics in recent songs, if you break them down by syllables, turn out to be in iambic pentameter. Anyway, it isn't hard to get used to iambic pentameter with a little practice. Accordingly, I here present, not strictly a poem, but a random series of unrelated sentences off the top of my head, all of them in iambic pentameter.


On Christmas Day, I'll be in Illinois.

Can Lucy the Marshwiggle be for real?

Hey, help me find my other tennis shoe!

The Colorado climate's rather dry.

I need to buy more toilet paper soon.

The oatmeal's cooking in the microwave.

What he calls "change" is just the same old thing.

She has a flat tire on her bicycle.

This laptop takes forever booting up.

George Washington was wiser than some think.

I'm really tired of sexy-vampire stuff.

Will you come to the picnic Saturday?

Check out my Russian language lessons, please.

I seldom kill, but I'll swat any fly.

In Toulon, France, I took a pleasant hike.

Does popcorn still taste good without the salt?

My Jan loved hearing me read books aloud.

My Mary gave that cancer a good fight.

They're both in Aslan's Country, safe and well.
 
If you write stories, you need to be able to give characters a different "voice" from yourself. Here is an example. My roleplay character Alipang Havens is working on a poem about the light of his life, Kim Tisdale; but he isn't supposed to be _quite_ so practiced a poet as I am. In fact, not being a native English speaker, Alipang gets mixed up sometimes when _writing_ in English. This is the first draft of his intended poem:


Kims face has wwnderfol epxresions.
Her body gose in all the riht direktions.
I watn her so bad pleese help me Jesus,
And spesially dont ever let her se this!
 
Well, while we talk about technique, since I've read a few of the threads, let me detail mine.

My technique starts with figuring out what I want to write. If I want to write a short story, I write out a sentence detailing what is going to happen over the story. Beginning, middle, and end.

I then outline each section by building upon the beginning, middle, and end. I literally treat this as your typical three act play.

Then, I write each segment out, and there you go.

For novel length stuff, I use the Snowflake method. That's detailed here:

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

I've used a few other plotting tools, and bounce around them relatively frequently.

And then I write the story, at a rate of 2000 words a day.

So at this point, whether I have a short story, or a novel, I have a first draft. That goes into a file and stays there for a week. I then work on something new.

After that week, I pull it out, and do a first read. I just read it. All the way through, once. I make notes afterwards, and then begin editing in force.

The goal for editing to me is to remove anything that doesn't belong.. anything that doesn't add to the story goes. Anything that sounds contrived, or odd, goes.

The third read is a general read through for grammar and spelling. I do that last, since it's at this point that I have fewer things to edit.

After that, I send it to someone else to look over, and then do another two readthroughs/and edits.. and then I publish it.

So that's my technique. That's how I do things. I've fallen off the wagon a bit.. but will get back into the swing of things soon.
 
In an odd sort of way, I channel my characters. Little odd details like which side of Character A is approached by Character B are perfectly clear to me. In Byron on Wells when approaching the Bell Tower, the Moon and Hare Inn is on the right fronting Canal Street, the Wells River is on your left. Cutshaw Hall is behind you. Buckthorn Badger lives midway between Cutshaw Hall and the Moon and Hare Inn. At the Inn, Room 22 where Thorny lives, the room is on the lee side, and from the window you can see Crown Hill. Very few of these details appear in my stories, but they are vivid and sharp to me. If you want to find the Beaverlees, you have to leave the inn, turning left onto Canal Street, left again on Main, then head out past Cutshaw Hall. Follow the river till you get to the mouth of Silver Creek. Turn left again. You can't miss the lodge.

I'm not kidding. I see it that clearly in my head. This makes writing the stories a lot easier.
 
Yeah... when you have the world / setting down that pat, it does make things a lot easier.

And that's a good suggestion for people writing in Narnia. Grab a piece of uncharted territory (There are plenty), and chart it out. Make it your own.

It'll add legitimacy to your writing. You don't have to worry about getting the right coat of paint on Cair Paravel or knowing the precise number of steps it takes to get from the light post to the wardrobe that initially let the children in. You can make it all up, if it's all in your control.
 
Thank you, Pardine, for the "Snowflake" explanation. I have done that without knowing what it was called. And yes, I have "made a new place my own" in the Narnian world--chronologically as well as geographically. My tiger novel did both.
 
Copperfox said:
Thank you, Pardine, for the "Snowflake" explanation. I have done that without knowing what it was called. And yes, I have "made a new place my own" in the Narnian world--chronologically as well as geographically. My tiger novel did both.
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Oh goodness.. that reminds me, I need to add both your works (John's and yours) to my reading list..
 
I'm honored, Pardine. If you can find it, you should read as much as was completed of "The Lion's Share" by Timbalionguy. If you read that first, even though unfinished, THEN read my tiger story, you will see that they make one unified narrative.
 
The old-time sci-fi and horror critic Robert Bloch (who was also the screenwriter for the classic suspense film "Psycho")
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He wrote the book the movi was based on actually.
The screenplay was written by Joseph Stefano.

Just sayin'....

Little things like this bug me. Being a Hitchcock fan and stuff...
 
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IDIOLECTS

Unlike dialects that are spoken by groups of people, idiolects are spoken by individual people. Unique phrases and emphases.

I give my characters unique ways of expressing themselves. For instance:

BRAMBLEWOOD: "Thanks much", "owie-wowie", "I'll be off in a wink", "alrighty right now", "It's a lot of rot!", "Garn, she's jumped off the path..."

NICKABY: "I haven't found my fortune nor lost my shirt," "what were you thinking??", "All services strictly for cash," "Fetch it along right smartly."

THORNY: "Right as rain," "Give us a kiss," "It's all in a muddle," "Coming right up."

LORD CUTSHAW: "Good show!", "I suppose I showed them!", "That reminds me of a story..."

By giving them distinctive expressions while being careful not to overuse them, I tag their speech with distinctiveness and they come across as different beings with unique life experiences.
 
I have a question. I'm kind of new to the forum so I was wondering:
What if I'm not really writing a story but one day randomly feel like writing, can I post my writing here or does the story posted have to have a defintie conclusion and end or even development for that matter.
 
{auh}burn said:
What if I'm not really writing a story but one day randomly feel like writing, can I post my writing here or does the story posted have to have a defintie conclusion and end or even development for that matter.
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As long as it is not obscene, racist or threatening--and is not about sexy vampires--I am sure the Mods will allow you to write practically anything. I know that at least a little non-fiction has been done here.
 
There was a Billy Crystal movie in which Billy portrayed a creative-writing teacher teaching a night class to adults. One woman student was attempting to write a story about submarine sailors. Billy was seen wincing when he saw that the lady had not made ANY attempt to find out HOW submarines actually work. She had written a line saying simply, "So the man who makes the submarine dive pressed the button to make the submarine dive."

The general reading public WILL NOT accept writing like that, which ignores points the author could and should have looked up. Now that we have the internet, there is very little excuse for anyone to write a story which involves a special area of knowledge and NEGLECT getting information in that area.

Someone who is very sweet, and of whom I am very very fond, needs to understand this.
 
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