Starting a story with an idea-- The Thought-driven Story

Starting with Idea: The Thought-driven Story

 Let's talk today about “idea” as a way to start a story. Some stories, especially those classified as “speculative fiction,” start not with anything concrete like character or setting, but with an idea to be explored.

As science fiction writer Orson Scott Card explains, “Idea stories are about the process of seeking and discovering new information through the eyes of characters who are driven to make the discoveries.”

That’s really the appeal of an idea story. No matter what it turns out to be, it starts as an intellectual puzzle. In the spirit of that sort of intellectual mission, let’s consider some ways an idea can start a story.

Questions. For example, many mysteries start with a scene that presents a question, one of the oldest questions of all, “Whodunnit?” But most authors add some additional complication, like, what could kill a man alone in a locked room? (Edgar Allan Poe’s seminal detective story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was perhaps the authorfirst to pose that question.)

The point of these “idea-mysteries” is to challenge the intellect of the sleuth (and author and reader) to go beyond the expected and familiar to speculate, innovate, and interrelate clues to come up with possible though unlikely solutions.

What-ifs. This is a specialized question that truly is speculative, as it seeks to imagine something that hasn’t happened (and probably won’t). This is more of an experiment than an exploration. A good recent example is The Martian, which poses the question, “What if an astronaut was left behind on Mars?” A great classic example is Oedipus the King, which asks, “What if the detective learns he’s actually the murderer?”

There’s also a what-if variety that experiments with the past. Alternative histories like Harry Turtledove’s The Great War inspire the author and reader to consider how the present might be changed if an important past event were changed. These alternative histories have a point beyond the mere alteration, however. Philip K. Dick’s “Man in the High Castle” takes the question “What if the Nazis had taken over the United States?” to pose the deeper question, “Would Americans resist?”

Themes. A theme is a message, a “moral to the story,” that can usually be stated in a sentence, but is better developed through story events. The film Chinatown, for example, uses the “water wars” of southern California to explore the theme of “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The difficult task in theme-based stories is to avoid being preachy. I’d suggest having the theme in mind and creating characters who have to discover that truth, but only at the END of the story. That way, the theme evolution will be a more organic process.

Perspective. A perspective-based story requires, you guessed it, an alteration of perspective, demonstrating that what you see is dictated partly by where you’re seeing from. Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities juxtaposes the experience of the French Revolution in Paris with that of London, that of a victim with that of an observer.

A variation of this perspective-test is the “fish out of water” plot, where our world is viewed through the eyes of an alien or stranger.

In my opinion, this is one of the most socially important genres, as it forces our notoriously solipsistic species to examine ourselves objectively—something more and more essential in a diverse culture.

Concepts. A concept is the simplest and yet most profound of ideas, often expressed in a single word— Freedom. Dispossession. Exile. The speculative aspect of this comes from recognizing that simple concepts are actually the opposite of simple and that only a story and a character can truly portray the complexities. For example, the film Casablanca explores the concept of “neutrality” through the cynical and detached character of Rick, a symbol of the isolationist United States trying to stay isolated in those dark months before Pearl Harbor.

Starting with the concept but developing it through the complications of a 3-D person within a culture is a good way to avoid the sort of closed system that readers of speculative fiction loathe.

Twists. This story takes something conventional and twists it to produce something both familiar and exotic. You’ll often see this in novels aimed at teens and pre-teens, as connecting the normal with the unusual trains them in the important mental skill of skepticism and imagination.

The trick here is to make the base story perfectly plausible (Harry Potter really is going to boarding school and taking courses, but they’re about incantations and potions), so that the twist is more fun, making the familiar unfamiliar.

All of these idea types pose the risk of becoming just tricks. To avoid that risk, consider that each of these should lead to a deeper question, and that is in the end what we want to explore in the story.

When I read Ender’s Game, for example, the "twist" is clear-- (spoiler warning) the children thought they were training on a videogame to stop an alien invasion, but in the end, it turns out the game was real and they'd just stopped the invasion. But I found the deeper question to be, “Why do we sacrifice our children for war?” That deeper question leads to the plot development that the adults deceive the children that war is just a game.

Another way to make an idea into a full-fledged story is to embody the idea inside a character’s journey. Ask yourself who needs to learn this theme or experience this twist? Oedipus, for example, is an arrogant man who will not accept the power of the gods over him. So he has to be forcibly confronted with the fact that they control his fate.

The most successful idea stories start with an idea… but they don’t end there. The idea is more than just a statement or speculation, but rather a process whereby the reader and characters experience the idea and come to understand what it really means.

Complicated questions for sophisticated writers: Short Stories- how do you make them SHORT!

Complicated questions for sophisticated writers: Short Stories- how do you make them SHORT!

Complicated questions for sophisticated writers: Short Stories- how do you make them SHORT!

I just did a “Plot Finish Fest” day (6 very intense hours!) with a group of plotters. This is a bonus available to writers who enroll in my Plot Blueprint Course.  For each story, we worked through the three acts and then the nine turning points of the plot-- just in time to start drafting the scenes in NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month).

When writers with different types of stories interact, we often have to adjust our brainstorming for “medium”— whether a novel or a short story or a TV script or whatever new form will rise up next. In the last month, I’ve worked with writers working on projects as varied as a 1-act play (a musical!) and a novel that could be adapted for a Netflix series.

Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” And that was before the Internet, where the medium has become the message, the messenger, and the messaged all at the same time. Well, when it comes to plots, I don’t think the medium IS the message necessarily, but it certainly AFFECTS the message.

One of the plotters, Vikk, was discussing an old standard medium—the short story.  How does a “natural novelist”—used to plotting in three acts for 300 pages or so—compress the plot down to 15-50 pages? Or do you instead compress the message—chart just a segment of a character journey, explore a smaller conflict? Or do you focus  on deeply describing a moment, a slice of life, rather than a sequence of events?

I had a few thoughts—fairly random—about one way to make stories short.

I think a short story will not just be compressed plotwise. In some cases, the plot might have to be smaller, less complex-- a shorter journey from beginning to end. I think of an episode of a TV show rather than a season-- it's complete in itself, but just has one main incident or problem that can be dealt with more quickly.

But I’m more drawn right now to the conflict or problem that can be experienced and resolved in just a day or two.  An example is the Roddy Doyle short story Life without Children, about a man travelling on business during the quarantine. This gave me a good sense of compressing the "problem" in a short story. His protagonist starts out by answering "no" when he's asked if he has children. In fact, he does have children, and a wife too. And he's not sure why he lied, but it makes him feel liberated. And pretty soon he's deciding he's going to quit his life-- throw away his phone, disappear, be free!

He  starts planning his escape, and he does throw away his phone. And then in the end, after flirting with the idea, he gets a new flight and texts his wife from his tablet and decides to go home.

That is, the problem is that he feels trapped and old and disheartened, and just entertaining the idea that he could escape lets him feel relieved, and he can resume his life. The problem is resolved in a way that doesn't need a lot of events—just the set up of the problem, and then the decisive event, and the aftermath.

In this case, the “shortening” comes in a shorter distance between problem and resolution.

 This was of immediate interest to me, because during NaNo month, I want to experiment with writing interrelated short stories. They’d all be set in the same place and (I hope) combine to create the story of a town under the shadow of a curse. Each would involve a different character, and perhaps only peripherally involve the curse and only marginally advance the big plot. I’m hoping the ‘scatter-stories’ will create almost a collage, but one with a narrative thrust. And I think probably they might not all be “short” in the same way. Maybe one will be just a compressed novella, and another will be a slice-of-life, and another will just follow as the character comes to a realization…. Well, we’ll see! But I’m excited at the prospect of narrowing my focus and plunging in every day to something new—a new story each day.
What do you think? If you write short fiction, how do you get it all done in so few pages?

Would anyone be interested in mutual support for NaNoWrimo? Here’s a Facebook group where a few of us will be doing writing sprints and sharing encouragement. We’ll have fun!
 
Alicia

Who Needs a McGuffin? (That's an object of desire that can motivate your characters.)

I hope everyone had a great holiday season. Now we can get back to writing!
Be sure and ask if you’d like me to write up an article about some subject you’re interested in. https://www.plotblueprint.com/
 
 A Story Term Defined:  McGuffin

 
In a plot-oriented story, the protagonist has ample reason for action. The story is ABOUT the reason for action, about attaining the goal—they have to solve this murder or disarm that bomb or win that election or renovate that house. When your protagonist has a strong, concrete goal, it’s easy to create plot action—just give the protagonist the goal and present obstacles to overcome.

But in character-oriented stories, super-big important goals like saving the world or restoring justice can distract from the REAL purpose, which is usually to get the protagonist to learn something and change somehow. Trouble is, we don’t want the protagonist just to wander around and worry about some internal conflict, or go to therapy and talk about it… we still want action—the character moving through the story and trying to get something done.
 
In that case, we should consider “a McGuffin” as an external goal—something that is important enough to get the character to act, but isn’t the purpose of the story. 

So writers sometimes install a "McGuffin" into their plots to instigate action.  The term was probably invented by film director Alfred Hitchcock, who used it to identify the wine bottle full of powder that Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergmann risk death for in Notorious.  "What is that?" says Bergmann, staring as he pours the powder into his hand. "Some ore, I presume," Cary responds-- that is, "I don't have a clue, but it's IMPORTANT!"

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergmann in Notorious, holding the McGuffin.

 
A McGuffin is just the object of desire. The character's goal might be "I'm going to get that McGuffin!"  But it's usually desired by others too, people who want to take it away.  Therefore, "I want to get a Aston-Martin" hasn't got a McGuffin, because the desire isn't in contest. He can get a Aston-Martin, and so can others, if they have enough money. 
 
But only one person can get the Holy Grail.  And everyone wants it.
 
McGuffin is all about uniqueness and desirability.  It’s not just any chalice, but the one Jesus drank from at the Last Supper (the Holy Grail—yes, that’s what it’s supposed to be).
 
It’s not just any Aston-Martin, but the Aston-Martin driven by Sean Connery in that fourth James Bond film, the car that Connery loved so much he bought it after the film and sold only when he found out it was driving with his windows down that made him go bald, the very special sports car that all the other classic car collectors are vying for... then it's a McGuffin.
 
A McGuffin is usually an object, a prop, not a concept like "freedom" or an attainment like "getting my marketing degree".  It's something concrete that represents something presumably important-- but we might only get a hint about what that Something Important is.  We just have to agree to believe that the McGuffin is desired for some reason.
 
In fact, a McGuffin is important mostly because it's desired, not for any quality within itself.  It's not world peace; it's a Ming vase.  Or it's the demon head in a funny episode on the old TV show Angel.  Angel and Spike were sent to Rome to get this demon head so that... well, who knows? There's some sort of reason, but mostly they know that they have to get this demon head.  And then someone steals it from them, and they have to run around Italy to get it back. 
 
The head isn't important to the viewer/reader... it's only a prop that means that Angel and Spike have to go to Rome and try to find Buffy (their mutual ex) and argue with each other and ride a Vespa together.  Their real goal is to find Buffy and win her away from the other. (They both lose.) The real purpose of the scene is to get them both "moving on" from their obsession with Buffy, so that they can cooperate and not fight from now on.  But they'll never get to Italy and this big emotional transition unless they are chasing the demon head. So the writers put in that demon head as the ‘McGuffin’ that gets them together in Italy.
 
The McGuffin helps advance the scene, but it's just a prop. What's interesting isn't the prop, but why the character wants it so bad.  Does he want this McGuffin because it means he's defeating the other guy if he wins? Or is a means of revenge, or of winning the fair lady's approval?  The motivation is what counts -- "I'm going to Rome to get this demon head, see, and if I should happen to track Buffy down while I’m there and win her back, well...."
 
McGuffins are helpful when they get the character moving, but also to reveal the underlying motivation.
 
So if you're going to use a McGuffin, remember:

• Make it concrete. In the Notorious film, the McGuffin powder was in a glass bottle, hidden in the wine cellar of the bad guy’s lair. It’s an actual physical object that can be handled and stolen. In the Angel episode, the McGuffin was an actual demon head, hacked off a demon. These McGuffins are physical objects.

• Make it unique. In the Notorious film, the powder is something only the bad guys have, and it’s the only sample of it anywhere. In Angel, this demon head is the only demon head that will work to solve the problem.

• Make it represent something important, like collaboration with the Nazis in Notorious. But you don't have to make a big deal about the reason for a McGuffin… it REPRESENTS something important, but might not be important in itself. In the Angel episode, the demon head was the key to peace between two warring tribes, which is presumably important, but not to the two guys—they only mention that  feud a couple times.

• Make other people desire it enough to fight for it. In Notorious, the Nazis want this ore really badly and are willing to kill for it.

• Have the characters talk about the McGuffin, and show the actual physical object when you can. 

• Use the McGuffin to inspire action (chasing after it, finding it, fighting for it, losing it, bringing it home).

• Make sure the McGuffin inspires the protagonist to do something that really IS important (like “save Ingrid Bergman from her Nazi husband” or "get over Buffy and learn to get along with each other").

• Make sure the protagonist actually succeeds or fails at getting the McGuffin-- don't just forget about it.

 (In the Angel episode, they lose the demon head about the same time they realize Buffy's involvement with another man from their joint past means that she's moved on and isn't going to end up with either of them.  So they give up, surrender the demon head, and go heartbrokenly together back home to Los Angeles, only to find the head has been delivered to their office by Buffy's new, powerful beau-- just to show them up.)
 
Our protagonists need motivation to get out of their ruts and off their duffs and DO SOMETHING.  We know that they have an internal motivation (Cary Grant to save the woman he hates/loves; Angel and Spike to get over Buffy). But if they don’t take action, and they won’t take action, something external might be needed to give them the push to do whatever they need to do.  For motivation, bring on the McGuffin!
 If you’d like to explore the use of a McGuffin in your own story, let me know! As you can tell, it’s a delicate dynamic—to make it concrete enough and important enough to inspire action without being so big it distracts from the all-important character journey. 
--

 

Now in the public domain! Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods! Finally!

The wonderful Robert Frost poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is finally in the public domain! That means I can quote it right here with no copyright infringement.

I’ve been waiting for years and years— well, since I was 10 years old and my class at St. Aidan’s School in Boston memorized this poem and set it to music. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is one of Frost’s most beautiful verses, and also a great example of how deceptively simple his poetry could be.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/first-time-20-years-copyrighted-works-enter-public-domain-180971016/

Beverly Cleary turns 103 By SARAH JAFFE

We should all be still thinking about story when we’re her age.

Beverly Cleary Turns 103

Beverly Cleary’s childhood memoir, A Girl From Yamhill, opens with her earliest memory: a day that her mother dragged her by the hand through the streets while church bells rang, telling then-2-year-old Beverly that she must “never, never forget this day.” Vanishingly few people on earth still remember the day that World War I ended, but Cleary, who turns 103 on Friday, is one of them. She is famous for her children’s books, and probably most famous for the protagonist of many of them, Ramona Quimby, an irrepressible little girl who hates arbitrary rules and condescension from grown-ups. 

Beverly Cleary and her famous heroine

Do Your Characters Need a Flaw? Try the opposite of their strength.

I was asked, “I know I can’t have perfect characters. So how do I give my character a flaw?”

I’d suggest starting with the character strength and reverse-engineer. That way the “flaw” is important to this person and can’t be easily overcome. If, for example, her great strength is “determination,” she won’t want to give that up. She won’t want to suddenly become wishy-washy!

But “determination,” like all strengths, comes with problems. If you’re determined, you probably are also stubborn. You might bull-doze people who aren’t as strong-minded as you are. You might unwittingly alienate friends. You might stick with a course even when it’s getting clear it’s not likely to work. You might get chosen for tasks you’re not good at, simply because you’re always determined to do a good job. So you might constantly be getting in over your head, but be unwilling to admit failure.

Making the flaw the obverse of the strength is what Aristotle meant: “That which makes him great brings him down.”

Just as medicine become poison in a different dose, so do strengths become flaws. It’s pretty elegant, and I think it’s true to our human nature. We get in more trouble with our strengths than our weaknesses!

I have an article about this on my website. It’s called “The Heroic Flaw.”

Family Motto: Another Characterization Question

Let's try a thought experiment: Family motto!

We probably all have one: The family motto.  By this I mean the secret or open aphorism that expresses the family's attitude towards the world, the family worldview.

I'll give you some examples. My family's motto (secret) was "You can't trust anyone but family." No, we are not members of the Mafia, but you aren't wrong to think we would fit right into those Godfather movies (except for all the crime stuff).
 

My husband's family motto: You can never be too careful.  One of my preoccupations is the permutations of class, and that is the "middle-middle class" family motto. Stay safe. Don't lose what we've attained. You're just one firing or accident away from losing our security. You can never be too careful!
Others I've gathered:

(From a working-class family): Don't get above yourself.

An immigrant family: Where there's a will, there's a way... so if you fail, it's your own lack of will.

A rich friend: You owe it to the family name. ("It" being whatever she didn't want to do-- marry her father's choice, work in the family firm, ride horses rather than snowboard.)

A friend from a family with many secrets: Can you keep a secret? 

Sam, whose family was successful and competitive: You have to fight for what you want.

Emily, whose parents were hippies: Live and let live.

The friend who discovered as an adult that his father had another secret family: What you don't know can't hurt you. 

The glamorous friend whose mother was so elegant: Don't wear white after Labor Day.

--

Okay! So if you have/had a family motto, or one of your characters does-- what is it?  

What effect might that have on how and what you write? Just remind yourself of your own motto, your family's motto-- whether or not you believe in it, it shaped you, and might be very different from your character's. You might create characters in reaction to your own family's motto-- that is, if you were raised with "don't hang out the family's dirty linen," you might create a character whose motto is "let it all hang out," but in both, there would be a preoccupation with "discretion vs. honesty" that would be something important in your life.

Your characters are not, of course, you, but their "family motto" will be there in who they are and what they value-- and what they rebel against-- what causes conflict.

So what's your family motto, and what was your character's family motto? And what can you do with it?

Example of "motto effect."  I was just reading a book that I thought illustrated something about how the "motto" helps create conflict and keep the character and plot together-- coherence.

The Tenth Justice is a legal thriller by Brad Meltzer, who is pretty successful (but not like John Grisham). His stories aren't amazingly plotted, and his prose is no more than it needs to be, but I read everything he writes. Why? I think one reason is because his work is so "coherent". Everything works together to reflect what I'm getting is his sort of central belief, which has to do with, well, disillusionment. "Things are never what you expect." Or—Expect the unexpected. This motto runs through all of his work that I've read, but it's especially clear in this book, and it's reflected in all aspects. The first line is: "Ben Addison was sweating like a pig, and it wasn't supposed to be this way." Right from the start, the book reflects that idea that our illusions-- "what is supposed to be"-- will always prove to be less (less good, less bad) than the reality.

So the brilliant young men come to DC to conquer the world... and they find that the world doesn't care. They have to settle for low-level jobs that don't recognize their abilities.  The one young man, Ben, who gets the fancy job (Supreme Court justice law clerk), quickly exposes another illusion vs. reality. We all think of course that the decisions of the court come from the wise, experienced old justices... but Ben learns what he didn't expect-- that the clerks-- kids just out of law school-- have way too much influence on which side wins.

The theme of "illusion v. reality" is carried through in the characters. Ben is fooled by someone pretending to be his friend... but that's possible because Ben is pretending to be experienced and knowledgeable when he's new at his job and knows nothing.  

Meltzer is a smart author. He sees the value in exploiting the juxtaposition in his motto: illusion vs. reality. By identifying and embracing that, he's setting up a great pace, because there is always a twist coming up-- whatever is expected... well, that won't happen.  (Notice that this is a different motto/theme than "Things aren't what they SEEM." Things aren't what you expect gets YOU in there, the creator of the futile illusion.)

His "voice," then, embraces that preoccupation with "disillusion" which is so much a part of his worldview. (Yeah, it's kind of pessimistic... but he also, I think, understands that as a necessary part of growing up.) So he has paragraphs where he sets up what he expected (say, that the judges are wise and powerful), and then undercuts the expectation with the reality (that the silly young law clerks actually are the ones who make and justify decisions).

The "reality bites" meme influences everything from story choice (a legal thriller is all about the disillusioning effect of getting close to the justice system :) to word choice-- often I notice he chooses an unexpected word or image. He likes to play with that unattractive and unwanted "sweat" (from the first line), especially in this opening.

Just an example. As you read books by an author, and they seem remarkably unified, see if you can identify the author's or character's motto as a controlling concept. Any examples?   

"The family that swims together... stays together."

There's a power in saying it: "I'm a writer."

According to JK Rowling: 

"I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged.
"I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

Of course, now she can say, "I'm the first billionaire writer!" 

or

"I'm the most popular writer in the world."

She's pretty humble, though, so maybe she'd just say, "I'm a writer."​

Quoting a Song? Here are some rules-

Have you ever wanted to quote song lyrics in your story? Here are a couple posts at Bookbaby:

1. Overview of legalities of using song lyrics.

2. Answers to questions about using song lyrics.

If a music artist wants to record someone else’s song, there is a set fee for that use, but rights and fees are entirely up to the publisher when it comes to printing lyrics in books. If you don’t want to violate US Copyright Code, read on.

Personification-- a good article for writers: Medium

Personification Can Make Your Writing Come Alive – Jim LaBate – Medium

When our two daughters were younger, one of our favorite books for nighttime reading was The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. This book…

“girl reading book sitting on sofa” by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

There is a crack in everything....

Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That’s how the light gets in. 

Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Alternating books!

Does anyone write more than one book at a time? Rachel Caine does, and explains how she juggles several projects at once.

So, real talk. I write four books a year — more or less — plus half a dozen short stories and pitches for new projects. That’s not counting travel, events, and promoting new releases. Up until 8 years ago, I held on to a full-time, high-pressure day job, too. Sounds overwhelming, right? (It does to me, when I put it that way.) But the fact is, with a plan and a solid writing process, it’s achievable.

So how can you juggle such a massive workload? I’ll break down how I schedule writing and revising multiple books in progress. Perhaps you can adopt some of these writing process tips in your own life and work… but remember the cardinal rule of writing: You need to find your own path that works for your life and your particular process. (Also, there are no rules — just guidelines.)

My initial challenge was a common struggle authors face: finding the time. But you don’t find time. You make time. So let’s start there.

Quick Journey to Plot Exercise: Your Turn!

My books are character-driven, so I might say, "Oh, I never plot." But in fact, I've learned to do basic plotting by using a character journey as the big structural apparatus really helps. That is, very basically, what is my character's journey through the story? Like:

Independence to affiliation

or

Distrust to trust

or

Innocence to corruption

or

Shame to self-acceptance

or where the character starts emotionally/psychologically and where she/he ends up. Let’s try “independence to affiliation.” Chart the main steps involved:

Act 1. Beginning: She is devoted to her independence in the first act, and I show that (how will the reader know this). She should probably be given the choice to accept help but refuse it.

End of act 1 (maybe around ch. 2): Something (what) happens that makes her independence more of a problem than a solution. (What happens and how does she react)

Act 2: Things heat up on the external plane and make her independence or self-reliance a REAL problem, and she gradually has to change in response to 3-4 events in the external plot. Some group or person should probably be giving her help, or trying to, or trying to get her to affiliate.

End of Act 2: In the crisis/dark moment, her need to be independent really complicates the external conflict, and she's in huge trouble (or she's about to lose her goal or lose something essential). In the dark moment, she has to choose to change and ask for help or something that compromises her independence but allows her to receive help from being affiliated with someone or some group.

Act 3: In the climactic scene, where the external plot resolves, her newfound willingness to accept help allows her to conquer whatever the main conflict in the outer plot is.

End of Act 3: Because she has now chosen to affiliate, she is more happy and safe, but also might keep her independence a bit by becoming not just a follower but a leader.

That is, you're going to have certain things happen in the external plot.  If you have a sense of what the main character needs to learn and accomplish-- the journey's start and destination-- you can make each of those plot events push the character down that journey road.

As I start a story, I try to have a really good sense of where my character starts out, and how she'll react to each plot event given that starting point, and usually, of course, the basic endpoint is fairly obvious once I know how she's limited or damaged at the start.

I like to analyze plots, but my own... I'll get bored if I outline too deeply ahead of time. What I'd love to be wild and yet disciplined enough to do is to write wildly and freely in the first draft, and then use journey, outlining, and structure to revise it in a second draft.

 Alicia

The Character Interview: Lots of Questions

      The Character Interview:

Lotsa Questions

Copyright 2018 by Alicia Rasley

www.plotblueprint.com

 Here are some questions that will help you discover your character from the inside-out, or from the outside-in... anyway, all the way through.  I address the questions to "you" to avoid the gender-specific pronoun; I am, of course, referring to the character, not the writer. 

Don’t feel you have to answer all of them! Just choose a question or five that sound interesting, and free-write the answer IN THE CHARACTER'S FIRST-PERSON (I) VOICE.  Free-writing means no stopping and no editing- follow the diversions where they lead, because that's where the intriguing stuff is!

REQUIREMENTS-- YOU IN THE PLOT:

1. What does the plot require you to be? (i.e., six years old, an archaeologist, a New Yorker) How does this requirement limit you?

2.  What physical attributes does the plot require of you?  (i.e., tree-climbing ability, a birthmarked thigh, an expressive face)

3.  What talent or skill will you need to have to survive this plot? (an incisive mind, sharpshooting, charm, auto mechanics)  How did you acquire this?  How do you use it?

4.  What is your quest?  What do you hope to accomplish, find, or become during the course of this book?  Why?  What outside obstacle might prevent this?  What inside yourself will get in the way?  What will have to happen for you to overcome these obstacles?  What will happen if you can't?

PERCEPTION-- YOU IN YOUR MIND:

5.  How do you learn best?  Observation?  Participation?  Trial and error?  Rumination and cogitation?  Consulting experts?  Writing?

6.  How open are you to new ideas and information?  Do you change your mind frequently, based on what people have told you?  Are you a traditionalist, deciding on the basis of "what's always been"?  If someone is arguing with you, are you more likely to change your mind or dig in your heels?  What if the arguer is right? 

7.  When you walk into a party, what do you notice first?  The mood?  The people?  The decorating?  The things needing to be fixed?  The background music?  The food on the buffet table?  Whether you fit in?

8.  Is one sense more highly developed than another?  For instance, do you tend to take in the world primarily through vision?  "I'll believe that when I see it!"  Or are you more audial?  Do you determine if a person is lying by the tone of voice?  Do you love to talk on the phone?  Don't forget the sixth sense-- intuition.  (This aspect can give you all sorts of plot leads-- a visual person might need to learn that appearances can be deceiving; an audial person might learn about a murder because she's been eavesdropping.  Remember also that an artist's narration of a scene will use very different terms than a musician's will.) 

9.  Do you usually notice problems around you?  What is your response?  Do you write an angry letter to the editor?  shrug and move on?  analyze what's wrong and how to fix it?  take it as evidence that the world is falling apart?  What about problems within yourself?

10.  Would you say you were an optimist or a pessimist?  Would your friends agree?  How would you react if your life suddenly took a turn for the worse?  Are you prepared for that?  Do you notice when your life is going well?  Does that make you happy?

11.  Are you more interested in the past or the future, or do you live in the now?  Are you one to keep holiday traditions?  Do you reminisce about days gone by?  Are you sentimental about objects, like your mother's handmirror or your first baseball glove?  How hard would it be to move from your present home?  How long would you keep in touch with your friends back in the old town?  How long would it take you to make new friends?

12.  How do you decide if you can trust someone?  Experience with others?  with this person?  First impressions?  Intuition?  Do you test the person somehow?  Or are you just generally disposed to trust or not to trust?

SELF-CONCEPT-- YOU IN YOURSELF:

13.  A casual acquaintance describes your personality.  How would the description be wrong?  Why?  What if your mother was doing the describing?  Your spouse?

14.  How well do you know yourself?  How well do you want to know yourself?  Do you like to analyze yourself?  Do you usually know what motivates you to do things?  What do you do that you consider "out of character" for you?  When you do that, what do you think of yourself?

15.  In what situation is your self-esteem most at risk?  When is it most enhanced?  For example, does asking for help make you feel like a beggar?  Does giving help make you feel like an angel?  When someone insults you, what do you do?

16.  In what situation are you most afraid?  Most brave?  When are you likely to behave in a way you would describe as cowardly?  How would you deal with thinking yourself a coward?  In what situation would you behave with reckless dissegard for your own safety?

17.  What are you keeping secret?  Who is it secret from?  Yourself?  How long has it been a secret?  What do you think will happen if it becomes known?  What really will happen if it becomes known? 

18.  What are you lying about, if only to yourself?  Are you good at deception?  How about self-deception?  Why are you lying?  Who doesn't fall for it?  What will happen if the truth gets out? 

19.  What is your special power?  It doesn't have to be supernatural. What ability/skill/talent/sensitivity/value/belief sets you apart from everyone else?  What do you do with this power?  How does it get you into trouble?  How does it get you out of trouble?

CONJUNCTIONS-- YOU IN THE WORLD:

20.  Do you live in the right world?  I mean, are you at home in your  boarding school/big city/16th C Italian village?  If you fit in, what would you do if something happened to make you leave, or to make you unfit?  If you don't fit in, why do you stay?  Is there a right world for you, or do you think you will always be an outsider?  How necessary are you to your world?  What would you do if you couldn't leave?  What would you have to change, in the world or in yourself, to fit?

21.  Is this the right time for you?  Or were you born too late or too soon?  Can you keep up with the pace of the time you live in?  Are the things valued in this time of value to you?  Are you satisfied with your world's level of technology and knowledge?  Do you read history or science fiction?  If a time-travel journey was offered to you, would you take it?  Where/when? 

22.  What is your role in this setting?

 Native? Alien?  Saint? Loser? Secret rebel?  Mover and shaker?  Nobody? 

Do you want your role to change?  Is it easy to change roles in this world? What happens then?

23.  What characteristic action or attitude always gets you in trouble?  Why do you keep doing it then?  What do you do to get out of trouble?

24.  What personal value is at odds with the society's values?  Are you open about it?  (For example, an Amish person wears the plain clothes.)  How does that get you in trouble?  If you keep it hidden, does your conscience bother you?  How much longer can you hide it?  What will you do if you must choose between this value and your life in this society?

CONNECTIONS-- YOU IN OTHERS:

25. Are you easy to get to know? Do you want to be? Do others think you're easy to know? Are you likely to let people get to know you?  Are you easy to understand?

26. What's your initial reaction to a stranger?  Potential friend? Potential enemy? Rival? Someone to charm? To deceive?

27. How are you different when you're with your family?  What role do you play in the family?  Does it still fit? What would happen if you stopped?

28. Did you have a happy childhood?  How has that affected your adulthood?

29. Were you anyone's favorite when you were a child?  Why or why not? What happened because of this?

30. Did you turn out the way you expected?  The way your parents predicted?

31.  Do you love easily?  Why or why not? How does that mess up your life?  Do you fall in love, or is it a gradual process?  Do you notice it's happening?  Do you try to stop it?

32.  Are you easy to love?  Why or why not?  How does that mess up your life?  When someone falls in love with you, what do you do?

33. What's your blind spot?  What person, idea, institution, do you delude yourself about?  How does this endanger you?

34.  Do you trust most people?  Or do you reserve judgment until they pass some test?  When were you wrong about whether someone was trustworthy?

35. Whom have you betrayed lately?  Did you mean to?  What happened?  Did you try to make amends?

36. Who has betrayed you lately?  Did you expect it? What did it do to you? 

Is anyone likely to betray you in the future? What will you prevent it?

Either/or== Must we choose between proper mechanics and creativity?

I'm asking this because this is a question that comes up a lot: "So someone submits a perfectly clean manuscript, every comma in the right place, but it's boring. And someone submits a manuscript with a lot of grammar mistakes, but it's a great story. Which would you take?"

Hmm. That's a toughie. It's especially tough because in my experience, good creativity and good mechanics are NOT mutually exclusive. Far from it. Language is the way we present our stories, and the presentation is important for getting the story right.

To tell you the truth, I seldom see a "great story with terrible mechanics." (I have seen a few perfect manuscripts with boring stories, a few fairly good stories with terrible mechanics... mostly I've see okay stories with okay mechanics, alas.)

First, I guess I'd like to say-- no editor is looking for a perfect manuscript. Editors assume that there will be a few typos, a few infelicitous phrasings, some small format problems. No editor starts hyperventilating at the prospect of working with a writer who is a little less than perfect on every page. Got to justify existence, don't we? Perfect writers don't need editors!

So never worry that the editor is going to read 200 pages and on page 201 discover that misspelling and decide to reject. That won't happen. But what if there are four misspellings on the first page? What should the editor do then? (When encountering a lot of mechanical problems right away, I started sending back the submission without reading further, and saying, politely I hope, "I know you would like another chance to edit so that this is easier for me to consider." Generally, the writers have all thanked me for the chance, though who knows what they're really thinking. :)

One thing I do have to point out is that there really isn't an either/or here. Creativity might be messy at the creation stage, but I know very well there is no need for a good story to be messy at the submission stage. Most good stories go along with at least adequate mechanics, because the writer cares enough about presentation and narration to work hard at things like sentences and paragraphing. Most good writers don't assume that "story" is just "idea," but understand that ideas are developed in scenes which are made up of causally linked passages which are made up of paragraphs and sentences.

A mechanically inept manuscript is, in my experience, more correlated to inept development of the central idea or plot. I might see, in a mess of a manuscript, a good plot idea, or a glimmer of brilliant characterization. But that's usually all there is-- an idea, a glimmer. The execution and development aren't done well, particularly at the scene level. Why, well, interestingly, I think, there is "story grammar" and "scene syntax." Just as in a sentence or paragraph, stories and scenes have relationships that are shown in the structure or design. If the writer doesn't get that this pair of sentences shows a causal relationship:

He lurched forward, his mouth open.

I got out of the way.

Then probably the same writer isn't going to design a scene developing the cause/effect relationship between bigger events, although those events might be terrific.

Got Great Story Bad Grammar? Hire a Typist!

Have I ever seen a great story with lousy mechanics? Yes, but mostly with my college students. If they come from a storytelling family or culture, often they get the story grammar talent with mother's milk. They've been surrounded by great stories all their lives. But usually this is oral storytelling, and often their ability to write it down is limited. We see this a whole lot with non-native speakers, especially those who left their home culture before high school, so that they aren't "writingly fluent" in their native language either.

We also see this in native speakers who didn't have adequate educational experiences (or who weren't paying attention... the class clown comes to mind-- usually he's a great storyteller.) The issues are usually spelling and punctuation, not sentences-- that is, it's really the -writing- stuff, the letters and punctuation marks which aren't clear in spoken English that cause the problem. Sometimes word choice is lacking too, especially in non-native speakers-- they just don't yet have the vocabulary. But they do have the ability to describe setting and people, to design scenes for maximum drama, to select the telling detail.

I had two students like this in one semester. They both would have gotten an A if I taught speech. As it was, one got an A, the woman who wrote very affectingly about her grandmother being diagnosed with Alzheimers the same week the writer found out she was pregnant, and how that baby ended up helping the grandmother keep her speech long into the illness. She worked closely with me and a tutor to find the mechanical problems that got in the way of the story presentation.

The other was a young man who wrote (this was a kind of emotionally wrenching semester) about getting to the hospital just a few moments after his mother died, so he couldn't say goodbye. The urgency of the journey across town -- wow. Beautifully structured with great suspense. But he didn't have the time to transform this great story into a great paper, and didn't get as good a grade (though I made sure he knew that he had all the right stuff and just needed to go this additional step, and I hope he did in the future).

So I know it's possible to have great story/bad mechanics-- but I have to point out that these were students in freshman composition, each coming out of an oral tradition that rewarded great story design and impressive vocal performance (which they had-- as I said, they both would have gotten As in a speech class). Transferring that to written language is a separate process.

But if you're submitting a written manuscript to a book publisher, well, it's expected that you are as adept at the tools of the craft. Those students might not know so much about punctuation and other elements of written language, but they did know how to use vocal expression and pauses and body language as they told their story. (They weren't so great at first at transferring that to writing, but they really did have the vocal tools for storytelling.) If you choose to write this story, it's kind of expected that you would use the written-language tools adequately.

Now, as I said, minor errors are not the issue here, and I think writers who get upset when I say I want a mechanically adept manuscript might think I mean no typos. But what I mean is-- well, truth is, most of you would be shocked to see a story with dialogue like this:

He said "Joni Im sorry about your cat's.

She said don't worry about it. There probably hiding in the garage"

That's not actually the sort of "messiness" that goes with creativity and great ideas. But that is what we see a lot. And that sort of leaden presentation means the voice is usually leaden too. Voice isn't just about word choice-- it's developed through sentencing and punctuating too.

So... let's say you are like my students, trained by tradition and upbringing and talent to be a great storyteller but not a great practitioner of the written discourse? You know what I'd suggest you do? I'd suggest you dictate your story into your phone recorder, and hire a good secretary or transcriber to type it. (If anyone knows of a speech-to-text app which does a good job, let me know. My "twalking" -- talk-walking- recordings always end up as gibberish as text.)

Many transcribers have been, uh, quietly editing their clients' prose for years, and know how to turn your dictation into an fairly adequate manuscript. (When I worked at the late lamented Grammar Hotline, most of our callers were secretaries who were interested in getting the grammar right, or in proving to their boss they were right, and they usually were.:) If the problem is getting it from oral language to written language, it's probably easier and cheaper to hire someone to make the transfer yourself. Be sure to tell the transcriber you’d appreciate the fixing! (Maybe pay a bonus too.)

Now that I think of it, the corollary -- the perfect manuscript and boring story-- happens more often. That's because you can hire someone to turn oral language into written language -- same words, after all, and it will still be YOUR story, not the transcriber's. But if you hire someone to design your scenes, deepen the characterization, create a suspenseful tone, structure the events-- it's not really your story, is it? All those things ARE story. (And that is why people hire ghostwriters, I guess.)

Thinking back on perfectpunctators/lousystorytellers... I have seen that too. I used to write Regency novels, a subgenre that attracted a lot of English teachers and librarians (it's set in the time of Austen, see). And when I'd judge a Regency contest, I'd frequently get an entry that was well-written on the basic word level, but lacking in story grammar. They knew how to write a sentence, but couldn't flesh out a character. They knew how to punctuate dialogue, but not how to make it sound authentic. The story would never be insane (that's much more likely with the messy manuscript, and yeah, I've seen that a lot too), but it would be "by the numbers," often using conventional situations (ballroom scenes, mistaken identity) with nothing fresh added.

In a contest, this would often score sort of on the high end of mediocre, but never win. And really, I don't have a quick solution ("hire someone to type it") here. The problem is more global, more personal-- that is, the writer probably doesn't have a great imagination and/or an innate or learned sense of story grammar, and you just can't hire that. (But I do think these would be great transcribers for the oral storytellers out there! :)

So... which of the two (messy but good story, clean but boring story) would be more likely to be published? Hmm. Well, of course, when we pick up a published book, we're seeing an edited version, not the original submission. So there might be plenty of previously-messy books that have been wrestled into rightness by a pair of editors and a proofreader, and we'll never know unless we get the editor drunk. ("You know that writer of mine who made the NYTimes list last week. Boy, you should have seen the manuscript when it came to me. One long sentence, the whole first chapter. I kid you not. You're buying the next round, right?") Notice that this requires a lot of time and energy from the editors and money commitment from the publisher, so a damn good story is required, not just a good story, to elicit that much effort.

But we certainly all read boring but well-written books. They're well-written enough that we don't take them back to the bookstore and demand our money back, or post nasty reviews on Amazon. We don't feel passionate enough about them for that level of response. Meh... we sort of wonder why this book was chosen out of the many the editor must have read that month. (Probably the original book for that slot didn't come in on time, so they needed a book to fill the gap, a book that didn't require much work to make presentable, and this one landed very cleanly on the desk at just the right moment. See why it's a good idea always to send in a clean manuscript? "Doesn't need much editing" is maybe not the fulsome compliment you were hoping for, but there are times when that's exactly what the publisher wants in a book.)

Well, anyway, we should all strive for great story/great mechanics. Figure out our weakness and what to work on to overcome it, but maintain our strengths too.

I'm remembering a query I got from one of those meticulous types, the one that made me really WANT to buy out of pity-- "I always make deadlines. I always deliver a clean manuscript. I have worked as a proofreader for a decade"-- it was sort of sad. Imagine an epitaph: "She always made her deadlines, including this one."

Alicia

Writing articles

Three Acts: Three "Things' That Can Increase the Coherence of Your Conflict

 Try this exercise if you're afraid your conflict is lagging!

This uses the 3-act Structure to organize your plot events into setup, rising conflict, resolution, and that structure provides propulsion and the progression of events within the story arc. Willy-nilly eventing won't build up the dramatic power that intensifies the emotion.  In fact, effective plotting is all about cause and effect. Events matter because they cause something else to happen and something to change and the characters to feel. The accumulation of events is what propels the reader to read on, and organizing this cause/effect sequence into acts will help you build tension and cause change.

Three Acts:

Act 1 -- Set up conflict.
Act 2 -- Make conflict rise.
Act 3 -- Make conflict explode, and then resolve it.

Try breaking these acts into 3 big events of ascending emotional risk: Examples-

3 times she needed help

3 times he got stuck

3 attempts to deal with the conflict

3 attempts to reach the goal

3 heartbreaks

3 secrets

3 lies

3 failures

3 betrayals

3 times she didn't ask for help

Just try it-- ascending risk, remember!

Then consider: What are the risks he/she is afraid of?

Why is this a risk?

What might this risk cause, and what might be caused by their trying to AVOID the risk?

THREE ACTS. THREE SECRETS.

For example, let's take one that is just full of emotion-- secrets. Three secrets.

Kept or revealed? Or both? Maybe the attempt to keep a secret leads to revelation.

Let's think of ascending risk --

Act 1: This sets up the first secret. She's an FBI agent, and she's sent undercover into a small town. So the first secret is that she's secretly an FBI agent.

There's not a lot of emotional risk in this secret because it's her job. But it sets in motion all the rest of the risks.

What does this cause? It causes her to be placed in this small town to investigate the local bank, and it causes her to have to take on a disguise—she's pretending to be a bank teller.

Act 2: The next secret comes when she meets and is drawn to the son of the bank president. This is just the sort of guy she despised when she was growing up, rich and polished and educated. But she's supposed to investigate his father, and she's supposed to be a bank teller who would be flattered by his intentions, so she has to keep the secret from him about who she is... and the secret from her boss that she's falling in love with one of the "targets".

What does this cause? She's getting deeper entrenched into deception. It's going to be far, far worse now when her secret is revealed. She's also becoming alienated from her job, from her old self, from the FBI, as she's not reporting her contact with Junior. Maybe she's even started lying to her boss, withholding information that could get Junior in trouble.

Act 3: What's the final secret? It's probably her real identity, not just FBI, but her former identity. Maybe she's never told anyone that she grew up as "trailer trash," the daughter of a small-town prostitute or drug dealer. Her final secret is her shame, which has caused her all along to hide her past and her true self, to cut herself off from her old friends and her family, maybe even to make up a more generic and acceptable past.

(The big task would be—and I'm too brain-dead now to come up with an idea!—make the revelation of that secret in the start of Act 3 happen and affect the plot.)

REMEMBER TO TRY AND ASSEMBLE THIS IN "ASCENDING ORDER OF EMOTIONAL RISK." THE RISK OF THE LAST SHOULD BE THE GREATEST RISK TO THE CHARACTER'S EMOTIONAL SECURITY. SO IN THIS CASE, WE'RE SEEING THAT THE BIGGEST SECRET IS HER PAST, AND THE GREATEST DANGER IS SHAME.

—

Let's try another "Three Acts, Three Somethings."

Remember the film Casablanca? Rick is a symbol of the United States before Pearl Harbor, isolated, uninvolved, as the world crashes around him.

This is a tightly plotted story, and there are several "3 things", but the one I like to focus on is "Three Times Rick Refuses To Help." (Tip: To determine “ascending risk,” you want to ask after each of the 3 things: What is the risk? What does this cause?)

Act 1: Ugarte asks Rick for 2 things—to hold the letters of transit for the evening (he agrees), and later to help him escape from the police (Rick refuses this time).

What is the risk? There's some emotional risk from refusing to help—a few hours later, he drunkenly refers to it—but he can shrug it off as kind of a cost of doing business—sometimes, to run a successful saloon, you have to sacrifice a friend.

What does this cause? It's very important externally because with Ugarte dead, Rick is now stuck with these letters of transit, and as he says drily, "As long as I have them, I'll never be lonely." (I tell you, this film is SO well-written, because in fact, he is alone, and his loneliness is ended only because he has those damned letters of transit!)

--

Act 2: The news of his having the letters spreads, and he's approached by Victor Laszlo, a Resistance leader who will be arrested by the Gestapo if he can't get out of Casablanca. When L offers to buy the letters (which will get him and his wife to safety—do NOT ask why! Because, that's why. These are magic letters :), Rick refuses, and when asked why, says bitterly, "Ask your wife."

Much more emotional risk here! In refusing to help, he is acknowledging that the wife (Ilsa) hurt him earlier, and he's using this as a means of revenge. His hard-won isolationist wall is beginning to crumble. Also, weirdly, he's sort of letting himself hope that Laszlo will find out about the earlier affair and cast Ilsa out so that she will come to Rick again.

What does this cause? Well, one effect is, paradoxically, to reconcile Laszlo and Ilsa. She's been keeping the secret of the former affair (she'd thought L was dead), and this actually lets Laszlo understand what happened and gently indicate that he doesn't blame her. (This becomes a huge part of her conflict, actually, as she realizes she still loves both of them.)

For Rick, this causes him to get more and more involved in Ilsa's dire situation and make it that much clearer that he's still in love with her.

--

Act 3: Ilsa herself comes to him and asks for—no, demands—the letters of transit to save Laszlo so he can continue to fight the Nazis. She is so determined that she pulls a gun on him, and he is so determined to refuse to help her, that he invites her to shoot him. Rather than help her, he will commit suicide! Talk about emotional risk. Helping her would be worse than dying?

(She as always ends up acting with love, putting the gun down and confessing that she still loves him, and he ends up embracing her—this is one of the greatest scenes in the history of film.)

What is the risk? That he will fall in love with her again (as he does), that he will lose all his defenses, that he will be hurt again, that he will lose her. This ALL happens. (That is, sometimes the greatest emotional risk should explode.)

What does this cause? Rick’s refusal causes her to confess her love, and that leads to their tacit decision to use the letters of transit. But here's the amazing thing. Ilsa says to him, "You'll decide what's right? For all of us?" That is, she is telling him that whatever he decides to do, he has to help Laszlo to safety. (She assumes that he will give Laszlo one letter of transit, and she and Rick will escape together some other way. And you know what happens, or if you don't, go watch the film!!!!!)

The real result is Rick's return to the family of man, actually. He accepts responsibility for other people, and joins the war effort. He gives up his isolation and accepts the power of love.

Notice that a powerful place to put 'the thing' is close to the end of the act, so that its repercussions propel into the next act.

So look at your own story, and see if you can identify "Three Things", or invent them, and center each act upon this thing.

1. What is the "thing" in "Three Things" in your story? If you'd like to speculate about what this means, how it relates to a deep internal issue or theme (like Rick's refusal to help is an aspect of his fear of getting too involved again and getting hurt), have at it.

2. Where can you put some manifestation of "this thing" in each act?

For each occurrence, ask:

    a. What is the emotional risk here (and remember to assemble these three in ascending risk)?

    b. What does this thing cause to happen?

3. How can this thing near the end of the story (maybe the dark moment?) cause a great emotional change?

Try that. It might mean a bit of re-arranging or intensifying events you already have.

Any examples?  Questions? Ideas?

Alicia  Writing articles

Making Memories, and Hooking Them Later

Hi, everyone! I was asked to do a guest post about what I call "Life Hooks"—the recording of memories that lets us yank our life experiences together.

I've never had much of a memory. We moved around a lot when I was young, so every year I'd be in a new place and all those visual cues to memory (the chair my grandmother sat in, the kitchen where I started a fire while making popcorn) were left in the old place.

But years ago, for my parents' 50th anniversary, I was in charge of making up a "memory book" of old photos. There are eight of us siblings, so I delegated each a town the family had lived in along the way, with the assignment of choosing some photos associated with that place and writing down a memory.

What I learned from that process is that we each remember different things, but also different sorts of things. I regret to tell you that what I remember are old grievances (like the time my big brother told me to do a swan dive into the snow off the back porch in Elgin, IL, assuring me that it would just be like jumping onto a big pillow: Note to self, never trust a big brother's assurances).

Mark (that very big brother) remembered the cars we had, and since my dad would buy old junkers that couldn't last, he had to remember a lot of them. Rick, the youngest, remembered a single crystalline experience of going out into the desert and seeing the stars like they'd just burst into flame.  We all remembered… but different things in different ways.

What I also learned was that the very fact of recording a memory brought up a dozen more, and that as my parents paged through the memory book, they recalled events and experiences none of us had ever heard of. It was as if they could live them again—and significantly, they remembered only happy things, or at least things that were amusing in retrospect. 

The memories weren't lost, but they needed a "hook" to become accessible. And that hook was the sharing of our collective memories.

As we baby boomers move protesting and incredulous into our senior years (btw, I just saw a book title, "You're Never Too Old to Rock and Roll," which could be our battle cry), I think we're going to need to find more of those memory hooks.

We were most of us more dedicated to “living in the moment", keeping our options open, and trying new things to get much into ritual and tradition, which are the most common ways of "hooking" memories.  Many of us have moved far away from our homes and families, discarding boxes of junk and mementos on the way. Now we look back at a lifetime and find that we don't have a lifetime's worth of memories available for review.

But of course we do. Experience carves actual pathways through our brains—that's where the memories are stored—and we have them, but it's like they're up on a high shelf in a distant corner of a dusty attic in an abandoned house. We need a way to find them and bring them back into the light of life.

After doing the memory book, I realized that there's something special about the physical representation of memory. I used to scorn my friends who scrapbooked; now I wish I'd been doing that all along, saving the tickets from concerts and films, the cards I'd gotten for my birthday, the scraps of my life which I just threw away.  I know now that the act of recording events, capsulizing them into some piece of paper or photo or memento, and gluing them into a book, would hook my memories together. And then they'd always be right there—not so much in my mind as in this physical book, ready to be taken down and paged through whenever I need a reminder of who I used to be.

What is it about an actual book and actual ink and actual photos? I wonder why those are still so significant in these digital days—why we still jot down a to-do list in the morning, rather than just texting ourselves our schedule; why we page through a young couple's white satin wedding album when we've already seen the photos posted on Facebook.

Maybe the physical act of recording captures the physical experience? My sister-in-law Cher Megasko, a frequent traveler, keeps a travel journal and writes down her impressions as she makes each trip.  She said, "I journal when I travel abroad, taking care to record lots of unremarkable details. I keep track of each drive we take, every restaurant we eat at ... even things like the number of stray dogs and cats. I'm surprised at how often I go back and read what I've written. Sometimes it's just to reminisce, but I also use it to help plan future trips, even if not to the same destination. My travel journal is my younger daughter's first choice of things to inherit when I'm gone!"

The memoirist and writing teacher William Zinsser echoed the importance of both the recording of  the unremarkable, and the usefulness of a physical representation: "When my father finished writing his histories (of the family and his shellac company), he had them typed, mimeographed, and bound in a plastic cover. He gave a copy, personally inscribed, to each of his three daughters, to their husbands, to me, to my wife, and to his 15 grandchildren, some of whom couldn’t yet read…. I like to think that those 15 copies are now squirreled away somewhere in their houses from Maine to California, waiting for the next generation."

My friend Cynthia Furlong Reynolds has also used the physical to capture the ephemeral memories. She once worked to help elderly people record their memories—kind of making their own oral histories-- and told me that they often found it oddly calming.  She remembered sitting with one elderly man with dementia, taking notes as he talked about his past. Then she typed up her notes and made them into a little book, which she printed out for him. She tells me his wife found that when he got agitated, just holding the book of memories calmed him. I think it's because knowing the memories were in this paper-and-ink, permanent form freed him from the anxiety that he might forget.  He didn't have to constantly remind himself about his childhood home, or his mother's name. All that was here in this book and would always be there for him.

Maybe all this "physical" stuff is just a relic of any earlier age… but I don't know. I had two nieces who are close in age – still teenagers-- but not in geographic proximity, and while of course these days, they kept in touch with texts and emails and Facebook messages. But once we were all together, and they showed me the little wooden boxes where they kept the letters they mailed to each other (yes! envelopes and stamps and all), and here they were, children of the electronic era, holding these pieces of paper and reading the letters out loud and remembering when they'd written them.

Anyway, I'm thinking of printing out some of those photos I have on Pinterest, writing out a note to my mother-in-law by hand for once, maybe even getting a scrapbook and starting—way too late!—to collect the junky little scraps of my days and nights. Maybe then, when my always-bad memory slides into no-memory-at-all, I'll have something to touch and page through that reminds me I indeed did have a life!

What do you think? How do you hook into your memories? How do you remind yourself of what's been and gone? What do you want never to forget?

I'll leave you with a couple pretties to help jog your memories—

Here's a Tim Buckley song about memory, Once I Was.

And a W.B. Yeats poem, "When You Are Old and Gray and Full of Sleep (take down this book)."

 

Alicia Rasley

Lorem Ipsum as poetry

Do you know what "Lorem Ipsum" is? It's nonsense gibberish used as sample to fill in text boxes and book samples, like this:

Lorem ipsum (from Gutenberg app page).

Well, I came across this Lorem ipsum while checking out some new WordPress app, and Google popped up a box asking if I wanted to translate. Automatically I clicked on it, assuming it wouldn't work-- after all, this is just gibberish, right? Yes, but it's LATIN gibberish-- every word Latin with an English counterpart. So here's how Lorem ipsum looks translated!

That's sort of like absurdist poetry, don't you think? "How I wish football at another office of honey!" There's all sorts of meaning in that!

Viral horror stories-- like those creepy urban legend stories we loved in middle school.

I found this interesting-- an infographic about the amateur horror stories (like Slenderman) which have circulated on the Internet. This offers a "recipe" for what makes a horror story viral. I remember-- long before the internet made it easy-- we used to circulate stories like this, telling them at Girl Scout Camp and at school, and they would make it across the country just one kid at a time. Everyone remembers the "Hitchhiker" story, for example. 

"I decided to sit down and read 72 of the most shared creepypasta stories to try and figure out the recipe for a viral horror story. Check out my findings, along with a spooky infographic, on our blog (warning, some of the content is preeetty freaky):

Creepypasta Study: The Secret Recipe For a Viral Horror Story [INFOGRAPHIC]

Magical Mystery Tour of my youth- Paul McCartney Carpool Karaoke

Point of privilege here... You know, often we look back at our adolescence and shrink in humiliated memory... "Did I actually wear pink and yellow polka dots over plaid?" But here's one thing I was really right about: 

Beatles, greatest ever.

Paul, best Beatle. 

Paul McCartney returns home.