Freddy Words

Exercises based on “Writing Picture Books” by Ann Whitford Paul. I have modified  the exercises for more general writing, but there is still a heavy slant towards fiction.

Step 1: Write an Opening

Roughly 250-500 words.  I want to call this a paragraph, but I’ve seen opening paragraphs that are only one word long.  You need a little bit of meat to be able to do these exercises. You will be using this for all the exercises, so try not to write something that will annoy you.

Step Two: Point of View

Rewrite your Opening in at least 2 different POV:

a. Third Person, single POV
b. Third Person, different POV Character
c. Narrative Voice, multiple POV
d. First Person
e. First Person, different character
f. First Person, like a letter
g. First Person, like a diary
h. Second Person

Step Three: Setting

Rewrite your Opening

a. Change the time
b. Change the location
c. Change to verb tense
d. Change the characters (People to animals, animals to aliens, Fantasy to Sci fi)

Step Four: Tone

Rewrite your Opening at lease twice using a different tone

a. Funny
b. Scary
c. Epic
d. Romance
e. Thriller
f. Mystery

Step Five: Character Study

For each character, decide the following:

a. Name
b. Age
c. Appearance
d. Relationships
e. Personality

Bonus:
f. What has brought the character to this point in the start of the story?
g. What does the character want?

Step Six: Strong Opening

I like this step, it uses colours!

Print out your Opening and mark it up with the following colours:

a. RED – Who is the main character?
b. YELLOW – What does the main character want?
c. GREEN – When is the story taking place?
d. BLUE – Where is the story taking place?
e. PURPLE – What is the tone of the story?

BONUS STEP: Poetry!

Rewrite your Opening as a poem.  (or at least pump up the poetical phrasing)

a. Rhythm
b. Rhyme
c. Alliteration
d. Assonance, consonance
e. Onomatopoeia

Have Fun!

Susan

I put this list of working definitions together for the brand spankin’ new memoir group.  I was surprised to have such a hard time tracking down explanations of these terms, so these are an amalgam of my own knowledge and what I have been able to find. Feel free to discuss these in the comments!

NON-FICTION

1. CREATIVE NON-FICTION (CNF) is non-fiction which uses the literary devices of fiction to tell a story. According to Wikipedia, CNF is “a genre of writing truth which uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft.” Examples of CNF include memoir, autobiography, personal essay, travel writing, biography, and literary journalism.

The journal Creative Non-Fiction explains that the term “‘creative nonfiction’ precisely describes what the form is all about. The word ‘creative’ refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.”

Links:
- A good description of the genre of CNF
- More detail on CNF
- An interesting essay on CNF

2. A MEMOIR is a thematic slice of the writer’s life. An AUTOBIOGRAPHY is a chronological description of the writer’s entire life. Both are sub-categories of “creative non-fiction.” Again, from Wikipedia: “While an autobiography typically focuses on the ‘life and times’ of the writer, a memoir has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions.”

Links:
- More information on memoir

FICTION

3. An AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL is “a novel based on the life of the author. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Because an autobiographical novel is partially fiction, the author does not ask the reader to expect the text to fulfill the ‘autobiographical pact.’ Names and locations are often changed and events are recreated to make them more dramatic but the story still bears a close resemblance to that of the author’s life. While the events of the author’s life are recounted, there is no pretense of exact truth. Events may be exaggerated or altered for artistic or thematic purposes.” (Source: Wikipedia.)

Examples of autobiographical novels can be found here. Autobiographical novels need not follow the form of non-fiction autobiographies; these should read as fiction novels, but be enhanced by the fact that the story is based on the author’s life (usually the protagonist is modeled on the author and the events in the book resemble ones in the author’s life).

I could not find any useful links to further explain an autobiographical novel or autobiographical fiction. This is the best link I found.

Once you have your head around those working definitions, you could move on to reading these articles (which might further confuse you and/or enhance your understanding of the terms and genres):

1. “An Interview With Creative Nonfiction Writer Phillip Lopate”

Choice quotes:

“The reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind… I’m arguing more for reflective nonfiction where thinking and the play of consciousness is the main actor.”

I like his thoughts on the writing process: “It is very much like working with a lump of clay. You’re trying to form it into a statuette. Will it fall over, or will it stand? If at least you complete the process, you complete the arc, then you know that you pulled it off on the simplest technical level. Then you have to try to make it better. You go over and over, revising, and then you come to the point where you say, ‘I’m done.’”

2. “An Interview With Writer Robin Romm”

Choice quote:

“Q: Your relationships with your father and boyfriend play a central part in this memoir. How did you navigate the tricky business of writing honestly, yet remaining respectful of those relationships?
A: This was a giant task. I was angry with my mother for dying and I was angry with the people in my life who couldn’t help me. Which was everyone. How do you express this rage without compromising love? I wrote and rewrote these two men, searching for a way to make anger respectful. I guess I settled on critiquing myself rather than them. That’s how I managed the complexity.”

ETA: More thoughts I’ve come across on memoir (actually the first one is good general writing advice!):

• Great suggestions on how to digest feedback from writing groups (and any feedback in general, really).

• Interesting article on the James Frey affair and related controversies.

In the article, the author says that disclaimers in memoirs are okay when they:

1. protect identities
2. suggest that the author’s memory is imperfect
3. note that omissions have been made for narrative economy

• More on fake memoirs, a little more optimistic.

• A humourist’s guide to faking your memoir without getting caught. I like what the author says about “emotional truth.” Hee.

Seven people attended our June 6 meeting, including one new member.

WRITING RETREAT (Sunday, November 8th)

The writing retreat is all set up for November. We have 11 FW members who have said they’d like to go, which should cover the cost of renting the building. We’ll ask for payment from FW members by early September so that we can cancel the retreat if it looks like the basic cost is not going to be covered.We will ask everyone else to pay by early November before the retreat. Since right now it looks like we should be able to cover our basic cost, we decided to offer a cheaper rate for post-secondary students. Any additional monies will be donated to NaNoWriMo (first to go toward the expenses of the local group, then donated to the NaNo main office).

We have people set up to organize activities, a potluck and snacks, and the carpool. The fee will be $20 per person for the day ($10 students), plus bringing one potluck contribution and one snack for the group.

NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH (November)

We brainstormed about NaNoWriMo. Members offered to poster various parts of the city and help out in other ways. Writerly is accepting donations for NaNo prizes starting now — if you have any books, notepads, pens, kitchen timers, post-it notes, or anything that would make a nice prize, contact writerly at writerwithoutborders@gmail.com to arrange to drop them off. If we get enough notebooks (we’re aiming for 20), we won’t have to buy any. We will have goodie bags this year (YAY!).

There was also a lot of goofing around, but since it was two weeks ago now, the details now escape me. Rest assured, much merriment was had.

BONUS: DIALOGUE WORKSHOP

The dialogue workshop the next day was a success. We had 9 Freddy Words members plus two new people join us. We started with a discussion in Triniteas, where Jarod offered many tips on how to write good dialogue, and then we moved to Officer’s Square. We brought a sample of our writing which we read out loud like a script, with someone reading each character, so we could see what dialogue worked and didn’t work. We all learned a lot and had a lot of fun. Thanks for leading the workshop, Jarod!

The next Freddy Words meeting is June 16th at 7 p.m.

Eleven people attended the dialogue workshop today at Trinitea’s/Officer’s Square. I think that it went very well, but one thing that I didn’t get to talk about was this list of exercises I found, mostly because I thought it would be really uncomfortable for everyone to sit in silence and listen to me read it all off word-for-word. Instead, I’ll post the link here for anyone who’s interested.

http://www.poewar.com/12-exercises-for-improving-dialogue/

Thanks for coming, everyone.

I have started my rough draft of the really long sentence, and I am having a lot of fun writing it.  I am keeping my topic a secret for now, it will be revealed at the meeting, so I hope I can make it.

Is anyone else making progress at the really long sentence?

This fall I attended a non-fiction workshop put on by the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. It was a talk by Jacques Poitras, CBC journalist and the author of Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy and The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma.

Jacques Poitras said he’s used to talking to audiences about the content of his books, so he was excited to be able to talk to us about his process, his method for putting a non-fiction work together. He said that the Beaverbrook book was a very specific non-fiction book, since it was a journalistic work and was done under a tight deadline. Due to his role at the CBC, he needed to be balanced and not take a side strongly in the controversy he was covering. He writes 2,000 – 5,000 words a day for his job, so he was used to the pace of writing a lot very quickly. To write the book, Poitras took 3 months off of work without pay. Teaching a course at STU that semester (which took one day a week) helped, but his savings still took a big hit. He joked that having a wife who works full time helps.

He had a lot more time to write his first book (The Right Fight), and was able to prepare maps and outlines in the planning stages. For non-fiction you really need a plan or formula in order to get the story out – then you can add layers (beauty, meaning, lessons) as you edit it later. Poitras said his books have been relatively straight-forward to research and organize. With the Beaverbrook book, there was so much material so far away (in Britain!), he was thinking at first of writing it in the first person, like his own journey to find the truth. But, due to lack of time, it became easier to tell the story as it was.

He was really helped out in the research stage since both sides of the legal team agreed to share their research with him. So he was sent CDs of digitized research that he could go through at his leisure – hundreds of hours of research for free and at his fingertips! This made his job a lot easier.

Colour-coded system: Pierre Burton uses file cards to organize his writing – put a fact or quote on each card, put them in the proper order, and then start writing. Poitras had written all of his notes in notebooks, however, and couldn’t use that method. Instead, Poitras used colour highlighters. Ex. Green for chapter 7, pink for chapter 8, blue for chapter 9. Then he went though his notebooks and colour highlighted everything relevant to each chapter. Then when he sat down to write each chapter, he would go through the notebooks again looking for the correct colour in order to put together an outline for that chapter.

He also had a secret blog, which he shared with a few friends. Here he would write rough notes about what he found. He used references in the blog posts so he knew where it was in his notes.

As he wrote, he would make notes about facts he didn’t have (research he needed to do). Once he got those facts or did that research, he would plop them in to the appropriate place in the narrative outline. When he started writing the Beaverbrook book, he did NOT have the second half of the book, but started writing about Beaverbrook’s life since it was fresh in his mind. When he hit a spot where he didn’t know something, he could put that on his to-do list.

He treated each chapter as a separate story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Generally this was linear, with some time overlap which was dealt with in the text. For his book excerpt for the Telegraph Journal, he chose the chapter on Lady Beaverbrook – it was easy to do since it was a coherent story on her life.

When talking about an event, you must tell the story through a person. People move the story. You’re adapting the storytelling mode of fiction – keep the story focused and the action moving. If information (that can’t be told through a personal story) doesn’t fit, skip it; if important, deal with it briefly.

If an event is thrilling but your account of it isn’t, then your account is false. To show desperation and frenzy of an event, you must show this in the writing – in the sentences and flow.

When you write the last parts of your book, go back into the earlier parts and throw in hints of foreshadowing. These are bits of payoff for the reader.

The search for the proper protagonist: In The Right Fight, the protagonist was a concept, not a person. (The book wasn’t really about Bernard Lord, as the title claims; it was about the right-wing movement in New Brunswick generally.) In the Beaverbrook book, Beaverbrook was the protagonist for most of the book (until his death). It was difficult to decide on a protagonist for the last part, about the fighting over the collection at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. The two sons both had compelling stories. Poitras initially thought he’d focus on the one son who had more of a, shall we say, dramatic persona in the media. But he ended up focusing on the other brother after interviewing him in Britain; there he was a compelling character and had many insightful things to say.

In the question period, one person asked about whether he used written permission forms for his interviews. Poitras responded that, per journalistic convention, if the person agrees to an interview, it is presumed that you will be using the material. Consent is implied and no written record is needed.

Another person asked about the length of his books, if he was clear how long they would be beforehand. Poitras said that his publisher asked for 80,000 words for his first book; he had 90,000 words in his first draft and ended up with 120,000 words, and the publisher didn’t cut it. For the Beaverbrook book, Poitras didn’t think he had enough material. He chose the number of chapters and divided  the length – after he wrote a chapter or two, he knew he would have enough. His final count for that book was 88,000 words.

He pitched his first book, and his publisher pitched the second. After his first book he wasn’t burning to do another, but after the second, he is burning – thinking he should take advantage of the attention he’s gotten for this book.

Someone else asked if he ever had bad writing days. He said that, since he had an outline, if he was having trouble writing, he would at least spit something out on the page; when he got his groove back, he could then shape what he’d written. He wasn’t sitting there with writer’s block.