The cool humanities activities I took in this week…and the reasons I’ve been ridin’ the struggle bus
I ask myself this a lot…so this makes me feel better?
"Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium."
Henri Matisse
Trendir | Photos by Roland Halbe.
Cool! Freshman year of college I wrote a poem about death and memory—one of the main devices was a nautilus chamber/staircase like this. Two years later a kid who was my freshman poetry class ran up to me and said, “Hey, I still remember your poem! The nautilus chambers! It was really cool and I’ve still remembered it to this day!” and then he ran off
That was my braggy “cool-story-bro” of the day
One thing that worries me about the next several years is that I will no longer be studying writing, and it will be a lot more awkward sending my work to my old teachers from college. Most of those teachers probably have me pegged as the “sentimental Asian-American fic” girl. And in some of my classes, the professors actually discouraged us from writing fantasy. The whole “write what you know” thing was something I heard often, and if you want your humanities classmates to snort at you from behind their moleskin notebooks and organic soy lattes (ok this is a mean stereotype but this was actually a majority at my school), there is no better way than to submit a fantasy for workshop.
Magical realism? That’s cool. Dystopian science fiction. You’re cutting it close. But fantasy? Go back to playing with Lord of the Rings action figures in your parents’ basement, you comic-con reject, and never come back. We are serious writers, here.
I wish I had a sort of writing-Obi-Wan-Kenobi, a guide and teacher to encourage me and to give me helpful feedback…Oh man if only he was Tolkien or McCarthy…
But with all that being said, I will continue to write Vietnamese-American fiction…
Aaaaand this is marginally related, but just before graduation someone told me that after 4 years of knowing me, she still thought of me as a writing major or at least some other humanities major, and definitely not a bio major pre-med. Is it weird that I’m actually very proud of that?
Free Advice: Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling
Free Advice: Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling
It’s funny—just yesterday I was thinking about looking for writing related material to post, since it’s an extremely important beginning step to animation, and just now my friend tagged me in a post on Facebook linking to this!
- #1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
- #2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
- #3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
- #4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
- #5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
- #6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
- #7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
- #8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
- #9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
- #10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
- #11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
- #12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
- #13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
- #14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
- #15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
- #16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
- #17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
- #18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
- #19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
- #20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
- #21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
- #22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
I need to work on all of these (except for maybe #7), and most of them have to do with just getting your story out on paper before you do anything else. I have a bad habit of stopping in the middle, then getting hung up on revisions, then getting frustrated and starting over. Not good storytelling. I need more discipline and patience…
When ideas come out of the blue
It’s such a good feeling. Whether they are good or bad ideas, new ideas are always exciting. I was just driving home when suddenly I had two big breakthroughs for my Story. This is pretty much how all the plot changes/developments for my Stories come about…which explains why I work so slowly.
(I’ve decided from now on to refer to my three big fantasy fiction projects as Stories. “Novels”, “writing” and “projects” just all seem too obnoxious. I like “Stories” because everyone has stories to tell!)
Forgot to publish!!
I worked on this from about 10AM to 2PM straight on a Tuesday, no breaks, back hunched over desk and soundtrack music playing on my laptop, referring to my old story drafts and a crude map I drew in high school. The flags are for areas still foggy in my mind. I definitely had to do some translation for a few new place names and checking of basic geography (can rainforests be coastal? Do deserts always have to be formed by rain shadow?) but I then decided it’s a fantasy story and it’s ok to have a plain next to an desert. I mean, there’s a floating island…
It’s incomplete but for some reason I am so proud of this thing! Definitely have to give credit to Tolkien and Paolini (even though I’m not a fan of the latter), who are famous writers/artists/fantasy-land-mapmakers! Doing this definitely got me pumped about getting back to my story…and it was also strangely relaxing.
BTW
I am fully aware that this probably qualifies me as one of the weirdest people some people have ever met
Thinking a lot about my fantasy “novels” lately. The deeper into logistics I get (and the more great books I read), the more overwhelmed I become—but I’m still pushing forward!
