Have you signed up for 750words.com yet? Or will you try doing 750 words on paper? I’ve just completed my 20th day of doing 750 words!

Here’s another creative writing prompt for your 750 words, a challenge to write 750 words each day in January to better Think Like a Writer. The next three days of Thinking Like a Writer are all connected and I’ll explain it here, then just remind you of the prompts for the next two days.

A scan is a way to show a crowd scene economically, yet in an interesting way. It involves a series of small zooms: the quarterback’s mother is taping the game with a new video camera that she borrowed money to buy; the coach’s pencil is hovering over two names, trying to decide if he’ll start the injured quarterback or his backup; the head cheerleader is trying to shake off a headache and wondering if that red pill the quarterback gave her would help or not. In a short paragraph, you get the complexities of the crowd!

As always, start with the basic sensory details list, but this time you skip around. You can do full details for the coach, the quarterback’s mother, the quarterback, and the head cheerleader if you want; or you can do partials for each, but focus on getting great “telling details.” If you’re rusty on doing sensory details–and you have to fill out your 750 words anyway–go ahead and do the full sensory details list for each. Then you’ll have a wide selection to choose from as you Think Like a Writer.

And when would you use a Scan?

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Here’s another creative writing prompt for your 750 words, a challenge to write 750 words each day in January to better Think Like a Writer. This is the second day of three days of Thinking Like a Writer about scenes. Here’s the first post to remind you about panoramas, zooms and scans.

Zooms focus in on tiny details. The pencil stub the coach is using to put check marks by player’s names on his clip board, the taped thumb of the quarterback, the aching toe of the head cheerleader. Usually, you’ll need to include sharp sensory details: what the character sees, hears, touches, tastes and feels (not emotions, but temperature and texture). Avoid the cliched details and include interesting and different, but telling details. In the picture here, don’t forget to include a description of the callous, the whorls on the palm and such.

Start with the basic sensory details list and go from there, as you Think Like a Writer!

And the question today is when would you use a Zoom?

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Port Townsend. Photo by Dwight Pattison, c. 2008. Please do not copy. Click to see a larger version.

When you describe a scene of a novel or story, it is important to think about the focal length. Taking a cue from filming, you can think of a couple ways of describing a scene: zoom, pan, scan.

A panorama is the wide-angle view. Think of a football game and you’re sitting on the top of the bleachers with the view of the field and parking lot laid out in front of you. You see the pageantry of the blue and red teams, the yellow school buses, the bustling food stand. It’s an overview, a view from a distance, from overhead.

A zoom, however, focuses in on tiny details. The pencil stub the coach is using to put check marks by player’s names on his clip board, the taped thumb of the quarterback, the aching toe of the head cheerleader. Usually, you’ll need to include sharp sensory details: what the character sees, hears, touches, tastes and feels (not emotions, but temperature and texture). Avoid the cliched details and include interesting and different, but telling details.

A scan is a way to show a crowd scene economically, yet in an interesting way. It involves a series of small zooms: the quarterback’s mother is taping the game with a new video camera that she borrowed money to buy; the coach’s pencil is hovering over two names, trying to decide if he’ll start the injured quarterback or his backup; the head cheerleader is trying to shake off a headache and wondering if that red pill the quarterback gave her would help or not. In a short paragraph, you get the complexities of the crowd!

For the next three days, we’ll focus on one of these ideas. Today, try writing a scene using a Panorama. Tomorrow, write a scene using a Zoom. And on the next day, write a Scan.

While you’re busy Thinking Like a Writer, when would you use each of these techniques? Leave me a suggestion!

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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I am trying to keep up with my friend, Charlie, who has ridden his bike over 25 miles a day for over 3000 consecutive days. I want to write 750 words a day and I’m using 750words.com to keep track of everything. The point of this exercise is to make sure I am Thinking Like a Writer, doing my scales, keeping up the practice needed to be a great writer.

For today’s creative writing prompt, look for an object around your house, something you can pick up and hold. It might be a camera, a needle and thread, a baseball glove, a salt shaker, a frying pan, a hair dryer, a favorite book–anything.

Now, put that object in the hands of your character and write. Be sure to use lots of sensory details, what you see, hear, taste, touch, feel. If you need to, stop and make a list of those details first. Put the character in motion with that object in his/her hand and see what happens.

It might precipitate a flurry of action, perhaps cooking a favorite meal. It might evoke a poignant memory. It might be the grounding for a scene you couldn’t make work before.

Post a comment–what happened when you gave your character a solid object?

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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In today’s installation of Think Like a Writer, we’ll look at creating a certain mood for your story, novel, or picture book.

Writers know that readers want a certain experience and part of that is creating emotion or feeling. In other words, we need to create a setting that has a certain mood.

How to do that? Creating a mood is fairly simple, if you start with the basic idea of sensory details. Now, the writer’s eye kicks in as you select details. Once again, think about your story and what sensory details your character would be experiencing. What do they See, Hear, Touch, Taste, Feel?

But this time, you want to select details that support your mood. For example, if you want a scary beach, the sky is dark, brooding; the waves crash so loudly that you can’t hear the gulls; the cold wind grounds all seabirds and cuts through your flimsy sweater; the wind blasts your face and you can’t get away from the taste of salt; you smell nothing but the wool scarf wrapped around your face.

If you want a happy beach, you choose different details; soft wind ruffles your hair, sunglasses slide down the sweat on your nose, the smell of sunscreen brings back memories of that time on the beach in Jamaica, the mojita tastes perfectly minty, and the sea is a glassy swell.

Writers notice sensory details. Then, they choose the right details to create a mood.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Have you signed up for 750words.com yet? Or will you try doing 750 words on paper? I’ve just completed my 36th day of doing 750 words!

If the first task of Think Like a Writer is to observe the world around you, the task of the fiction writer or the novelist, is to create, then observe the world of the story. The exercise is the same, but this time you draw upon imagination. What does your character see, hear, taste, touch, feel as s/he moves around in his/her world?

As a writer you can create this purely from imagination, or you can draw upon observations about places you’ve visited. For example, I spotted this praying mantis on the Great Wall of China.



Thinking like a writer means to notice the small things like this, because often, it is the smallest details that make a story come to life. Yes, I observed the usual things while climbing the Wall, but the praying mantis is one of the special things I remember.

Details of Your Story’s Setting

Today, think like a writer and create the sensory environment of your story. Like yesterday, write out what the characters See, Hear, Feel, Taste, and Touch. Then write a paragraph using those details; don’t feel like you have to use every detail you wrote, just select the ones that work; add anything else that occurs.

Does the story come alive better now?
What writing exercises or prompts do you use to make a setting fresher and more alive?

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Happy Holidays, Writers!

Here are some simple low-stress projects to keep you going. Just have fun with these!

Show-Don’t-Tell with Sensory

Go sit at a mall, beside a seasonal skating rink, at a holiday concert. Notice the sensory details of the setting, and write a short piece that incorporates your best Show-Don’t-Tell skills.

Dialogue Is NOT the Same as Real Talk

At that office party, neighborhood cook-out, or local basketball game, eavesdrop and focus on the authentic sounds of dialogue. If you can do it without looking creepy, take a notepad with you and jot down the exact words that people are saying. Transcribe it later and turn it into a short scene by studying how to change real speech into dialogue that matters. How can you use dialogue to imply information, emotions and relationships?

Play with Opening Lines

Print out this list of excellent opening lines. Over a several day period, take your Work-in-Progress and mimic each of the 12 types of opening lines. Try to write at least a dozen opening lines, but better, write 100 different opening lines for your story.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Working on a novel revision, I realize that I need to refocus the relationship between two characters. The question is where to start.

Grand Entrance for Your Character

I once heard the late Sid Fleischman talk about the importance of giving a character a Grand Entrance. Think about a stage play, where a character sweeps onto stage commanding the attention of the audience. It’s a first look at the character and sets the tone for everything that follows.

Characters out of focus? Start revising with the Grand Entrance Scene.

Actions. First, I’ll look at the action verbs. A story is almost always contained in the verbs. Too many “to be” verbs (is, are, has, had, am, etc.) and the story is flat, uninteresting. Action verbs characterize and I want to sharpen the characterizations while setting up the relationship differently. It’s not that the ACTION — what the character DO — will change much. But the meaning of the actions will take on a different tone.

Sensory Details. Likewise, the choice of sensory details will be crucial: visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory (taste) and olfactory (smell). For example, if you want to talk about a romantic relationship, you might describe a guy with these details: musky smell, soft curly hair, rough baritone voice, brush of his lips and –well, let’s forget the taste one for now.

On the other hand, a more platonic relationship might be sweaty smell, greasy hair, clear voice, firm handshake and –well, taste just doesn’t work here, either.

I’ll be looking at the actual choice of words carefully. I don’t expect that the scene’s actions will change much, but the reader should get a very different feel for the character relationship.

Tone

Of course, all of this relates to a slightly different tone set up in the relationship. Tone is that underlying attitude that characters have toward something that comes out in the language choices of the writer. I don’t want romance here, but an honest, growing friendship. I’ll use action verbs and sensory details to change that tone in this scene of Grand Entrance. If I can nail it here, it should act as a touchstone as I revise the rest of the novel.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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It’s NOT a Scene if it Doesn’t Have Conflict

30 Days to a Stronger Scene Table of Contents

Now that you know how to write a basic scene, let’s move to the overall task of plotting a novel by using scenes. The first task is to consider what scenes are possible for your story.

Let’s take the case of Cinderella. What are the possible scenes for this story?

• Cinderella’s mother & father meet
• Cinderella’s mother & father fall in love and marry
• Cinderella’s mother & father have a romantic night and she’s conceived
• Cinderella is born and her mother dies
• Father meets a new woman and woos her
• Father marries new woman.
• Stepmother and stepsisters move in.
• Stepmother and stepsisters are cruel.
• King declares a ball.
• Step-family says Cinderella can’t go.
• After they leave for the ball, Cinderella meets her fairy godmother who transforms her.
• Cinderella attends the ball and falls in love with Prince.
• Cinderella flees ball and leaves behind her shoe.
• Prince seeks woman who can wear the shoe.
• Prince finds Cinderella, they get married and live happily ever after.

Notice that I’ve left out many, many possible scenes? Partly that’s because a simple list like this isn’t sufficient; instead, you need to focus the scene list in some way.

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Use Plot Templates to Focus Scene List

Looking at the 29 possible Plot Templates, you could make a case for any of these plots:

• Quest: Cinderella seeks a better place in life and finds that she must set aside appearances to see the inner character of people.
• Rescue: From the Prince’s POV, he must rescue Cinderella from the clutches of her evil step-mother.
• Revenge: How Cinderella takes revenge on her step-family. Not often told, but it’s a possibility.
• Rivalry. Usually the step-sisters are awful and not real competition to the lovely Cinderella. But what if (and great stories are made from what ifs!) one of the step-sisters is a real rival. It’s a new twist on the story.
• Underdog. Of course, this is the classic Cinderella story.
• Love. Or is her story the classic love story?
• Ascension. Cinderella’s rise to power in the kingdom.

Each plot pattern would require a different set of scenes, emotions, motivations. Let’s take the unusual one of Rivalry, just for fun.

Cinderella as a Rivalry Plot

First, recognize the minimum required by your chosen plot template.

• Characters: Cinderella, Prince, Wonderful Step-Sister
• Plot:
  • Girl meets boy.
  • Girl recognizes her rival in her Wonderful Step-Sister (WSS)
  • Girl has series of events in which she competes with WSS; a typical plot would have her fail most of these
  • Girl has a final showdown with WSS for Prince’s attention; some character quality, previously dismissed as unimportant will give her the victory; OR, Girl has final showdown with WSS for Prince’s attention and loses (this would be the tragic version of the story)
  • Girl gets boy

Now is when you need to start deciding on scenes and developing characters. Some of you will concentrate on character, others on events, doesn’t matter. The point is that you know the general outline.

Implications of your plot template. You could stop here and think about optional things implied by your plot template: some back story about Cinderella’s position, a fairy godmother, a step-family (cruelness is optional, as long as you explain the cinders), the presence of the father is optional, a kingdom with a prince – king and queen optional, an event where the Prince meets the girls (traditionally a ball or dance, but that’s optional), etc.

From here, it’s always a messy matter for me to develop the plot because I go back and forth between character and plot and the implied events from the plot template. But it helps to focus first on making a list of possible scenes. Given these characters and basic plot template, what scene could take place. Tomorrow, we’ll look at refining this list.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

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Develop Your Character Inside and Outside

I’m working on a revision of an older story and am finding that my character is flat, lacking emotion.

Here’s what should happen: action, reaction, thought and/or emotion.
Here’s what is happening: action, reaction.

Of course, there’s lots of variation and times when either might be appropriate. But overwhelming, I’m finding that I try to imply the emotion by the reaction, but it’s not always working.

There’s this tension in writing between Telling and Show-don’t-Tell.

Telling

The tendency is to tell: he was upset.
This type storytelling was popular before the invention of the modern novel, when storytellers created as much by their own voice and body language as anything.

The storytelling mode allows you to tell something and leave it at that. Listeners expected little else.

Show-don’t-Tell.

But with the novel, we are able to delve deeply into a characters thoughts, emotions, psyche. That’s why novels will never be replaced by film, because you can’t go deeply inside a character in any other way. Telling may still be used in bits and pieces, to summarize unimportant parts of the story.

But now, we expect thought and emotions to be forefront. Even more than that, though, we expect novels to be full of action and for that action to demonstrate the emotion/thought, so there isn’t so much telling going on.

Novels, then, go deeper into story by delving into the thought and emotions of a character; but also, by demonstrating those thoughts and emotions with concrete actions. It’s the concrete actions that create the Show-don’t-tell parts of storytelling.

Full Zoom: Inside and Outside

One way to think about it is that a scene is where the “narrative camera of words” zooms in. You get the full sensory details of the story situation and full details of character emotions/thoughts. In other words, the inside and outside of the story are in full zoom.

For sensory details, you must fully imagine being the character in this situation and what they would see, hear, smell, touch and taste. For emotions, we should know intimately what s/he is going through.

For me, it’s not Show-don’t-Tell; instead, I like Show-then-tell-some.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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