|
[an error occurred while processing this directive] |
WorldCrafters Guild (TM)
Where Sime and Gen Meet, Creativity Happens
Syllabus for Online Course "The Essence of Story"
This course has 4 levels, beginner, intermediate, advanced and professional. Click on the links at the bottom of your screen to select your working level, and click the links that will appear on the left of your screen to select your Assignment. Click "home" to see the links to Student Handbook and free Registration in WorldCrafters Guild.
When this course is not currently in progress:
BEFORE doing any of these Assignments,
READ the work of previous students in the Student Showcase, (click on SUBMISSIONS) then
READ the teacher commentary on each student's Assignment. You will find the teacher's comments linked to each posted Assignment text. Study the teacher's comments to be sure you do not make the same mistakes these students made.
Then do the Assignment. Read the instructions on the Independent Study Seminar Board -- then post your own Assignment there, properly labeled.
When this course is in progress, HERE YOU WILL FIND: how to register for our first Online Course, "The Essence of Story," Schedule for quizzes and tests and assignments, and submission instructions for Assignments, plus the class-schedule for real-time chat meetings.
Additional Assignment instructions and elaborations are in WorldCrafters-L Newsletter. Check back issues for Summer of 1999 for those relevant to Essence of Story.
Every Assignment must have at the TOP of the page your BYLINE and your COURSE EMAIL ADDRESS. You must also include the title of the Assignment and any particulars such as Beginning, Intermediate, or Advanced version of the exercise.
This course is not currently being given. Subscribe to WorldCrafters-L for announcements of courses and during courses, WorldCrafters-L will bring you all additional instructions.
When it is in progress, one of its most important curriculum points is the discipline of adhering to deadlines and schedules. While this course is not in progress, you may do the work in our Independent Study Seminar at your own pace. In any future course where EoS is a prerequisite, your final exam posted in the Seminar Board will qualify you (or not, if you didn't demonstrate skills).
Note: DO NOT rewrite Assignments after you've discovered what you did wrong. We will be mounting another course in "How to Re-write Effectively." In this course, rewriting would be counter-productive.
When this course is being given, Assignments are to be sent to an email address to be specified here. When it is not being given, Assignments are to be posted to the Seminar Board.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Always remember, "Writing is a Performing Art." There are no "right" answers, only useful ones.
In this course, don't try to guess what we want you to do. Don't try to guess answers -- invent them. Put everything you have to say into your written Assignment, and don't expect to add anything by email to anyone reading the posted piece. Make it complete in itself, a "stand-alone" piece. And BE SURE not to use any material you consider valuable, personal, or that you intend to develop later. Put an appropriate copyright on it. And be sure it arrives before the deadline, and in html format.
Remember, it is our goal to invite many professionals to comment on your work. You are presenting your work to those who will become your professional peers.
Part of the professional image is having nothing at all to say beyond what is in your words. If they aren't understood the way you expect them to be, that doesn't mean you got "the wrong answer." It only means that person didn't understand what you intended to say. Don't try to explain what you meant, especially not to the person who misunderstood -- study the misunderstanding and decide whether you want to change your method of expression NEXT TIME. Do not look back -- look forward to the next piece you are going to submit.
This will be possible for beginners only when working with material in which they have no emotional investment -- such as Jack&Jill or Romeo&Juliet -- not with material that has erupted from your subconscious screaming "write me!"
These are exercises. You aren't trying to get the right answer. You are not trying to impress people, or make them understand your worlds. You are trying to make yourself strong enough to control the material that erupts from your own subconscious.
Quizzes presented here were made on Half-Baked Software's excellent software. Teachers check this site out.
"The Essence of Story"
A course in writing saleable fiction of value to fan and pro, Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced writers
Run for the first time June 1 - August 1, 1999
Assignment 1 posted in the Workshop is the PRELIMINARY ASSIGNMENT for this course.
Completing and turning in Assignment 1 by the deadline when the course is being given will REGISTER YOU FOR THIS COURSE if you are already registered for the School. Pay attention to the WorldCrafters-L Newsletter.
Assignment 1 will tell us how well you read and follow instructions, how closely you pay attention, how much you rely upon your own mind to figure things out rather than asking questions (i.e. how creative and independent you are -- how well you work by yourself), and how well you meet deadlines.
The results of Assignment 1 will tell you how much you know already about the craft of writing, and how much you have yet to learn -- as well as provide you with a benchmark against which to measure your own progress once you've completed "The Essence of Story."
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Examples for Assignment 1
(N/A)
This quiz is to be taken before and after doing the course "The Essence of Story" to measure your progress.
Required Reading for Assignment 1
All Workshop Posts Students who signed up for the NL have had several months to read all the posts. If you're new, do the relevant ones listed below first.
Assignment 2 -- Analyze 3 plots as to protag and conflict. You will turn in this Assignment for posting to the Student Showcase website or you will post it to the Seminar board.
1. CHOOSE 3 stories to analyze for Protagonist or Hero and to Identify .
A) Beginners in writing must first learn to ANALYZE the writings of others, preferably of published stories or novels before attempting to SYNTHESIZE (i.e. write) their own stories. Skip this learning stage at your own risk
If you are a BEGINNER (i.e. have not yet completed one whole manuscript, submitted it and gotten at least one rejection slip (you are still a beginner if you've sold everything you've submitted and have not yet been rejected!)) we recommend you choose as follows:
1. One story or novel from those you will find reviewed in our Review Section. (there are hundreds of titles there already) Scroll down that page for review columns that are not Romance. Choose any story or novel that's been reviewed -- for speed it may be something you've already read more than once. You must analyze the novel yourself, but you may also add a short paragraph discussing the review where it identifies the Protagonist and/or the conflict. You may refer to the review via a hyperlink. You may use other review columns posted to the web.
2. One story or novel from your own FAVORITE STORIES shelf. This should be of another genre than the story chosen for #1 above. For example, if you chose a Romance for #1, then here choose a Best Seller, or an SF novel -- or you might choose a TV spinoff novel, or a novel based on an RPG.
3. One TELEVISION EPISODE, or feature film, preferably one you've OUTLINED and studied for Assignment 1. Or you may choose a children's book, a Shamanistic Tale or other traditional story. The third choice should be something that is from an ultra-simplified medium -- comic books would be a reasonable substitute. Please do not choose a fan-written story based on another work for this particular exercise. That will come later.
2. When you've selected the 3 items you will analyze, then for each of the 3 items do the following:
Start your file by typing in your byline and email address for the course, with the title of the course, the Assignment number and description, and which level of the Assignment you've chosen to do:
A) Identify the item you are analyzing, and use hyperlinks where appropriate.
B)Write a typical review column's one-paragraph summary of the story. (do not copy the style of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's review column -- do it like a Library Journal or Publisher's Weekly review - 50 to 200 words summarizing the story). You must describe the story well enough that the teachers evaluating the exercise can decide if you have identified the protagonist correctly even if they have not read the story itself.
C) Name the Protagonist
D) Describe the Protagonist's EXTERNAL CONFLICT. (this is the conflict that drives the plot) (we will get to internal-conflict in future work; here we are dealing only with external conflict).
For Definitions of Protagonist, Conflict, Internal Conflict, and various discussions of confict, see the required reading list of online posts listed above or just go to the Workshop. If you did Assignment 1, you've already read these posts at least once. Re-reading might be advantageous. Advanced students may want to write their OWN essays on the topic of Identifying the Protagonist and explaining his/her CONFLICT to clarify the matter in their own minds. (and we might want to post those essays).
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Examples for Assignment 2
Quiz for Assignment 2
Class Chats for Assignment 2
Required Reading for Assignment 2
When Plot Conflicts With Theme
Conflict Workshop Post dated Jan 1997
Conflict=Story & Writer's
Block
Read #1 on Conflict by
Cheryl Wolverton before you read this one.
Conflict in a Fantasy Romance by Jean Lorrah
Conflict, both internal and external, Goals, and Motivations. You will see a red herring outlined and then fixed.
Movies and Television Shows as Textbooks
Assignment 3: Create ONE original PROTAGONIST and ONE original CONFLICT that grows out of the PROTAGONIST's Character, showing that you have mastered Assignment 2 -- how the protagonist and the conflict must be related to each other.
Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced students do this one the same way. Intermediate and Advanced students may go further than suggested here and attempt to RESOLVE the conflict they create.
1. Describe your original Protagonist -- in 2 sentences or about 100 words maximum.
Don't invent more about this person than you can describe in 100 words. Create only what you must to complete Assignment 3. Control the urge to create more. (make this something that you've never thought of before, not a work you're currently struggling with.)
EXAMPLE: "Ivan Spinksy, a 33 years old immigrant Doctor from Russia, has a lisp, a very thick accent, and walks with a limp. His greatest joy in life is working as a Volunteer in the amputee's rehab center - until Sally Feingold, a young lawyer, is wheeled in on a stretcher, screaming inconsolably."
This is a distilled version of your protagonist -- imagine you've completed the novel featuring this protagonist and you're standing in the bookstore holding the book in your hands. Turn it over (if it's a paperback) or open the flyleaf if it's a hardcover, and look at the blurb (the sell-copy). What does it SAY about this person whose story this is? How would an editor try to SELL your protagonist to readers?
2. Describe your Protagonist's objective, goal, intention, desire, -- what is your protagonist trying to accomplish? Remember this must be something that your targeted readers would admire or want to accomplish themselves. If they would NOT admire this goal, then the person you've focused on is the antagonist or villain. Distill this down to no more than two sentences -- 50 words. (the fewer words you can use to convey this idea the more likely you will be able to sell books on a partial.)
EXAMPLE: "Ivan Spinsky watches the doctors sedate Sally Feingold and vows she will walk again."
3. Describe what is PREVENTING (i.e. conflicting with) your Protagonist's achieving his/her objective. Likewise - one sentence.
EXAMPLE: "As a volunteer with no legal medical credentials, Ivan Spinsky has no power to influence the course of Sally's treatment."
4. Describe what your Protagonist is going to DO ABOUT that obstacle. Again - one sentence.
EXAMPLE: "Watching mistakes and neglect destroy Sally's chances to lead a normal life again, Ivan Spinsky enrolls in Medical School night courses."
BEGINNING STUDENTS may end the Assignment here.
OBJECT OF THIS EXERCISE: show us you can identify the PROTAGONIST -- the person whose story you are telling (this is actually one of the single most difficult things for beginning writers, especially Romance writers, to learn to do! So don't be surprised if you find it harder than you expected) -- and create an external force that opposes your protagonist, a force that is clearly and obviously relevant to that protagonist's individual, personal LIFE.
Assignment 2 is an exercise in ANALYSIS. Assignment 3 is an exercise in SYNTHESIS. We want to see you synthesize PROTAGONIST with EXTERNAL CONFLICT -- make them one single, fused, whole -- and you will note that above, I (JL) have created a PLOT and described it in a format which could serve as the beginnings of a working OUTLINE or even the rudiments of a selling outline. And all we focused on is two elements -- the PROTAGONIST and that protagonist's EXTERNAL conflict. Notice how much detail is MISSING -- and yet suggested.
See items labeled EXAMPLE within the Assignment.
Quiz for Assignment 3
Class Chats for Assignment 3
Required Reading for Assignment 3
Plot-Character Integration &
Homework
The "Homework" mentioned above is not to be turned in.
Assignment 3 is to be turned in.
When the course is not being given, you post the results of this assignment to the Independent Study Seminar board.
Finding the Beginning of your Story
Part I
by
Jean Lorrah
The reason I am putting this Assignment as #4 is that several students showed in Assignment One that they had not yet mastered the technique of discovering where their stories began. It's one of the hardest lessons to learn, but one of the most important. To this day, I frequently write half a story before I realize that the first 10% of it either must be cut, or must be moved, often in bits and pieces, to later in the story. The beginning is where the conflict begins. In order to identify the beginning, you absolutely must know two things about your story: who is the protagonist, and what is that protagonist's conflict?
So--let's do an analysis in Assignment Four, just as you did in Assignment Two, and then in Assignment Five create something original that demonstrates your grasp of the concept.
Find something to analyze as to why the first scene is the first scene. I often suggest to my students who are only learning to analyze fiction that they look at Walt Disney animated features, particularly those of the "revival" period of the 1980's-90's, where they have gotten the technique of beginnings down to a formula--a formula that works so well that it is art despite formula. After all, the structure of a sonnet is a formula, isn't it?
In a Disney animated feature, there is an opening song by the ensemble that sets the scene and the theme for the work ("The Circle of Life," for example). The second song, though is the one we are looking for here, as it defines the original conflict of the protagonist--and identifies the protagonist without question for the audience. "I Just Can't Wait to be King," sings young Simba, never dreaming what karma he is bringing down on his head--he is too young to realize that the only way he can become king is through the death of his beloved father. That is probably the most profoundly ironic twist on their own rule that the Disney artists ever created. It's usually simpler: The Little Mermaid wants "to go where the people are," while Belle (Beauty) wants to get away from "this provincial life."
In each case, the protagonist's first conflict--a wish, a desire--thrusts him or her into the action of the story, and the rest of the story demonstrates the consequences of having that wish come true. Non-Disney films for children frequently follow the same formlula, as when Dorothy sings about wanting to fly "Over the Rainbow."
Your assignment is to find an equally clear-cut example of that wish/desire/decision that opens the conflict in a well-known work, and then explain how the rest of the plot grows out of the protagonist's search for that specific goal. If you look at it this way, you can see why it is not a flaw that Gone With the Wind opens where it does, and not when Scarlett and Rhett meet.
Remember what the first scene is about? It's the Tarleton Twins telling Scarlett that the war is beginning, and therefore Ashley Wilkes is announcing his engagement to Melanie Hamilton so the long-planned marriage can occur before he leaves for the war. But Scarlett wants Ashley for herself--that is her driving motivation throughout the entire twelve years that the novel covers. That is her conflict, and her undoing. It makes her incapable of recognizing the right man for her, even when she eventually marries him. It drives her every selfish act, and it drives her to acts of incredible heroism. Everything in that long, long novel is ultimately driven by Scarlett's single conflict: her obsession (which she believes to be love) with Ashley Wilkes. She rescues Melanie and her baby from the burning of Atlanta because Ashley asked her to take care of Melanie. She fights to hang on to Tara not only because it is her home, but to provide Ashley with a home after his home has been destroyed in the war. And that is why the scene that everyone forgets all about in light of the famed confrontation scene between Scarlett and Rhett in the Twelve Oaks library is the right first scene for Gone With the Wind--and why it opens the film as well as the book.
I could go on at greater length, giving more examples of how Scarlett's primary conflict, delineated in the very first scene, drives every major event in the plot, but I won't. What I have provided is enough to give you an example of the analysis I am asking you to do. Feel free to go on at greater length, if you wish, about why the opening scene of the work you choose to analyze is the perfect opening scene for that work.
Specifically: choose a book or a film that does this--that clearly delineates the protagonist and the protagonist's conflict in the very first scene, or else the first scene in which the protagonist appears if there is a scene-setter before it as in Disney films. Yes, books get published and films get made that do not do so, but in this assignment you are to look for one that does. Then explain how the protagonist's conflict, delineated in the first scene, drives the action throughout the rest of the work. (Quibble: it is going to be hard to find as consistent an example as GWTW, but try. Chances are, any work that is that well structured will also turn out to be extremely popular.)
(JL INSERT: a clue for the sf/f fans among you. Try any early Darkover novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley - the shorter novels in particular. I suggest Star of Danger . MZB's novel Colors of Space (non-Darkover) is perfect for this exercise as is Brass Dragon. Or see my March 1999 column for analysis of a ST episode that has this quality. Andre Norton's early novels work well for this also. In Mystery, try The Ritual Bath. by Faye Kellerman, an award winner that launched a career. Romance writers, ask on Romance-L for suggestions. Some of the early Danielle Steel (did I spell her name correctly?) novels have this quality we're looking for here. I can't think of any Westerns off hand, but I know I've read some.
The quality Jean is looking for here is termed in Writer's Markets columns "tight plotting." You'll find it in P. N. Elrod's first Vampire novels, a series called The Vampire Files. The first volume is titled Bloodlist . The first few novels in that series are examples of formula writing with a twist. And that series, too, launched Elrod into high orbit in this field. You can also find it in Laurell K. Hamilton's vampire novels. The quality that Jean is teaching you here is just exactly the quality that I look for in the books I review in my column.
Notice how I've emphasized the FIRST or EARLY novels of a series or an author? Once a career or series is well estabished for a given byline, more complex, more subtle structures are allowed. Before you can learn to analyze those very advanced structures, you must master the simple, clean, clear structure we are emphasizing here. The more complex structures are built out of the same building blocks, with the same mental tools we are focusing on here. Master this section of this course, and you'll have what you need to launch a long career. END JL INSERT)
Then in Assignment Five, you can attempt to outline your own story in which the protagonist's conflict is delineated in the first scene, and drives the rest of the plot. But analyze someone else's work that does it supremely well first. (See one before you do one.)
JL HERE: And don't forget, "teach one" -- you don't know it until you've taught it. Those of you who have begun to publish and are ready to teach what you've learned so you can progress to the next level, see the bottom of our Workshop page -- and email us.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Examples for Assignment 4
Quiz for Assignment 4
Class Chats for Assignment 4
Read and Study
CLASS
MEETING #2
Required Reading for Assignment 4
Finding the Beginning,
Part II
by Jean Lorrah
If you have completed last week's assignment, and read the other students' responses, you have probably learned a great deal about how professional writers structure a work so that the opening defines both the protagonist and the conflict, and how that conflict then drives the plot through the rest of the work. It's been there all the time in many of your favorite works--but readers don't look for it. It just grabs their subconscious minds and leads them along by the emotions. If you can learn to do that, you will have readers saying, "What a page turner! I couldn't put it down!"
So, now it's your turn. Here you make the difficult transition from analysis to synthesis: you take what you have learned from your analysis, and apply it to the creation of your own outline. That is Assignment Five: write the outline of a story (any intended length) which tells how the protagonist and his/her conflict will be presented in the opening scene, and then event by event how that conflict drives the story and the plot hand in hand.
You may never write this story. (That's a may; if you discover that you really like what comes out of this exercise, there is no reason that you can't write the story later on.) Treat this as an intellectual exercise for now: your object is to show that you can write an outline in which the protagonist and his/her conflict are clearly delineated in the first scene, and every event in the plot is driven by that conflict. This is a technique you need to master, even if only to abandon it because you hate such formulaic writing. You must know what it is you are abandoning before you reject it out of hand.
Even if you never use this technique in its entirety (as I told you, it is rare to find something as tightly plotted as Gone With the Wind), doing the exercise should make it much easier for you to determine where any story you want to write begins.
Furthermore, the longer and more diverse the story is that you have to tell, the more important it is to master this technique. The longer the work, the more important it is to have a strong connection among its parts. GWTW appears on the surface to be driven by an errant wind, the events of the war blowing Scarlett about from one adventure to another. If that were true, though, we would not find either Scarlett or her story so fascinating that it has become an icon of not only U.S. but world culture.
Let us point out once again that you should not be practicing these lessons on your own most cherished story ideas. By the end of this course, our hope is that you will have a firm grasp on basic techniques, so that you will be able to decide objectively how to apply them (and which of them to apply) to the stories that stir your heart. This particular exercise, for example, is a perfect one to use for a throwaway fannish story. Write the outline for a Star Trek story in which your favorite character has a conflict that drives the plot, scene by scene. Never mind the ensemble--you're not writing a script you hope Paramount will buy. Focus on one character and give him/her the responsibility for the entire plot. Or do the same thing with any tv show or movie or series of books.
You may write something original if you wish, but as the purpose of this lesson is conflict-driven plot, it's perfectly all right to practice with somebody else's characters. If you do an original piece, make the story up now--don't use something you have been working on for a long time, in which you have personal emotional investment.
Those of you who write humor are not left out here, you know! Situation comedy, when it works right, uses exactly this formula. Write the outline for a new episode of your favorite show (you might produce one more tightly plotted than what we usually see on tv), or create an original story. Just remember that we are focusing on the conflict of one protagonist here, so your model is better taken from I Love Lucy or Frasier than from Friends or Spin City.
Write just the outline--don't write the story. The outline is in narrative form, but for purposes of this exercise I am asking you to divide it into scenes more clearly than you usually would, and in each scene explain how the protagonists's conflict causes it to happen as it does--just the way you did when you analyzed someone else's plot in Lesson Four.
This is one of the most important lessons we can teach you--and the more you hate formulaic writing, the more you need to put yourself through the exercise!
(JL Insert: Some of you might still be confused over what constitutes an outline. What we're looking for here is a WORKING OUTLINE, the outline from which you would write this story -- not the outline you'd turn in to an editor to get them to buy it. A selling outline is a piece of advertising copy writing. A working outline is a set of notes coded in your own personal imagery to remind you of what the emotional content of each section has to be.
We will be analyzing your WORKING OUTLINE for its operative parts, not criticizing the content or imagery, or trying to judge whether there's enough here for you to write from.
For more on OUTLINING - see the Workshop section "The Outline You Write From" and "The Selling Outline" -- and for examples of what we're talking about, see the Writer's showcase for professionals.
Note that the working outline can be a scribbled set of notes, not even in full grammatical sentences, while the selling outline has to be well organized, where spelling, punctuation and grammar count, and it must be neatly typed. For this exercise, we want you to present us with a WELL ORGANIZED and NEATLY HTML'd version of a working outline written in complete grammatical sentences.
You can use the SUMMARY format, rather than numbered items in a list. Whichever way the thoughts flow for you the best.
For a perfect example of what I'm looking for see By Another Name, Still the Leech…? By Robin Bausman -- Assignment 1 for this course posted on our PASSWORDED URL http://www.simegen.com/school/studentshowcase/ under Robin's name. At the bottom she's provided a summary of her overall story divided into Beginning, Middle and End. Yes, there are a couple of flaws in that particular example -- read our commentary on the related passworded BB for a discussion of that. She's got the beginning of one story, the middle of another, and the end of a third totally different story. In this exercise, we want you to show us a Beginning, Middle and End that all belong to the same story.
Focus on the PLOT=BECAUSE line of events, and strip away all the background detail so we can see the skeleton, and the joints of the skeleton. Show us how one event or decision or action causes the next event, decision or action. And use ONLY ONE because-line, one conflict, one protagonist, one antagonist.
If you find difficulty in narrowing your focus to just one line -- do this exercise 4 or 5 times, inventing a totally new set of characters and situations -- a whole world -- for each of your attempts and turn in the best of the results for us to analyze. The more often you do the exercise, the stronger your ability to control your material will become -- so that characters won't pop up and insist on dragging you off the conflict-line -- which happens because the CONFLICT is not integrated with the PLOT and CHARACTER or because the protagonist is not well-chosen.
Have you ever ridden in a car with a student driver? The hesitancy, indecision, wandering around inside the lane, wandering a little over the lane-line, and just the way the car moves without a firm hand on the wheel coordinated with a firm foot on the gas and brake, makes the passenger very nervous, upset, unhappy. You as a writer are the driver of this plot/story construct, and the reader is your passenger. If your control of the wheel and coordination with your accelerator (plot-direction and pacing) are "uncertain" the reader will sense it and not be comfortable and happy and secure.
As a professional writer, you are selling ENJOYMENT. If your reader/passenger doesn't feel secure, they won't get ENJOYMENT for their money. Doing the Assignment 5 exercise over and over and over until you can do it in your sleep will give you the strength and control of your material to give your readers a smooth and enjoyable ride inside the protag's point of view.
That strength will then let you work within all the other sorts of fictional structures that Jean has mentioned above without losing control of your vehicle. END JL INSERT)
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Examples for Assignment 5
Quiz for Assignment 5
Class Chats for Assignment 5
Required Reading for Assignment 5
Internal Conflict
Getting tired of conflict?
Then you are tired of story writing.
The essence of story is conflict, and that is the hardest concept beginning writers have to grasp. I know--I had a terrible time grasping conflict. When you create a nice protagonist with an honorable goal, you want that protagonist to reach that goal--and so there is a tendency never to go for the worst case scenario that makes him or her expend the last bit of energy available to reach that goal.
But the most satisfactory story occurs when the protagonist overcomes the greatest obstacles, and when the antagonist fights and fights and fights before the protagonist finally wins.
So far we have been discussing external conflict. However, sometimes there is no external antagonist--sometimes it is the protagonist who fights himself. The internal and external conflicts must be related, too--in fact, the internal conflict often causes the external conflict. For example, go back to my analysis of Gone With the Wind in the introduction to Assignment Four. Scarlett's external conflict is not the Civil War; it is her futile struggle to acquire a man who is completely wrong for her. Her internal and external conflict are exactly the same: every event of her external conflict grows from her internal conflict. It is only in the final chapter that most readers come to the realization that Scarlett is indeed her own worst enemy.
Internal conflict is at the heart of every Sime~Gen story: these stories are really, of course, about prejudice--prejudgment. That is what a large segment of science fiction stories are about, the preconceptions we inevitably bring to any new situation, and how we must overcome them before we can see what the _real_ conflict is. Or whether there really is one--look how many Star Trek episodes are resolved when the preconception is exploded, what is really happening is understood, and it is discovered that there is no external conflict after all.
It is our own beliefs, our own feelings, our own desires that constitute our internal conflicts. So do our personality traits--and some of the most interesting literature comes from placing a protagonist in a situation in which a benign, even beneficial, personality trait suddenly becomes a crippling weakness.
An excellent example of how a personality trait that has served a protagonist well in the past becomes debilitating can be obtained by interchanging the main characters of Hamlet and Othello. It doesn't take very much thought to realize that if Othello were placed in Hamlet's situation, the moment his father's ghost told him, "Your uncle murdered me," he would charge right off, sword in hand, to "sweep to his revenge." Claudius dead, situation settled, end of play at Act I, Scene III.
But if Hamlet were placed in Othello's situation, and Iago told him his wife was cheating on him, he would not act rashly. He would investigate. And investigate. And investigate. He would sneak around, listen at keyholes, trace events, question people, and gather all the evidence--and he would learn that Desdemona was innocent and Iago was lying. The play would turn into a mystery with a happy ending for everyone but Iago--no murder, no tragedy.
Now, think a bit further: up until his father's ghost told him he had been murdered and that his son was expected to take revenge, Hamlet's contemplative, investigative nature had served him well. He was a perpetual graduate student, staying away from the machinations of the court. Like a typical scholar, he immersed himself in details, in poetry, in contemplation rather than action. Had he not been called home from school, his habits would have continued to work for him in the academic environment. Yes, I know he should have had a prince's, not a scholar's education--that is not the point. The point is that when he is faced with a new situation, he attacks it exactly as he has successfully dealt with situations in the past. It is an entirely wrong modus operandi for the situation he is in--but how is Hamlet to know that, when it has always worked for him before?
The same for Othello: as a general, he has to make snap decisions. He has no choice but to move fast to defeat his enemies. A warrior doesn't have the leisure to stop and consider, to make and discard half a dozen battle plans when the barbarians are at the gates, or to consult with many different people before he acts. Time is of the essence. So when he is confronted with a new situation--a potential attack on his marriage--he continues to use the same tactics that have previously resolved all his conflicts successfully: he briefly assesses the situation, takes the advice of a single trusted officer (who has always given him good advice in the past), and attacks.
Scarlett O'Hara has always gotten her way by flirting, pouting, lying, and scheming. Gone With the Wind revolves around her self-destruction as she pits those tactics which have always gotten her what she wanted in the past, and which continue to get her what she wants from everyone else, against the only two men in that time and place who are completely immune to them.
In each case, the protagonist is his own worst enemy.
And that is the definition of internal conflict: the protagonist's own personality, beliefs, and past experience fight against his/her ability to attain the goal in the situation s/he faces in this particular story.
(JL COMMENT inserted here: It's the INTERNAL goal Jean is referring to here - not the external one. The internal goal is usually the real reason the external goal has been chosen. For example, someone may have an external goal of career-success -- "President of the Company by the time I'm 35 or die trying!" But the INTERNAL goal would be the love and pride of the father or mother who inculcated the belief that he/she should be President of the company, self-respect, respect of siblings, wife, children, -- the emotional payoff from being President is the INTERNAL GOAL while the external, tangible, articulate goal is President of the Company. Or put another way - the subconscious motivaton is the internal goal. The conscious motivation is the external goal. Trouble happens (i.e. story happens) when attaining the consciously chosen goal can't produce the internal goal, the emotional payoff.
It's very easy to confuse internal and external goals because in a great work of fiction, they are welded into a unity by the theme. So think conscious and subconscious for external and internal, and it'll work. Though somtimes, both goals are consciously known to the protagonist. And Jean has sent you on a hunt for a great work of fiction -- I hope you can find it on your own book shelf, the ONE book you read that made you decide to write a book of your own. END JL COMMENT)
Assignment Six, then, is to find your own example of a story in which the protagonist is his/her own worst enemy--in which traits and actions which have been positive in the protagonist's past experience prevent his/her success in this story. Here you are to analyze someone else's story. As you might guess, in Assignment Seven, you will be asked to create your own scenario in which the same thing happens.
Be sure to do the Required Reading.
Examples for Assignment 6
Quiz for Assignment 6
Class Chats for Assignment 6
Required Reading for Assignment 6
Conflict and Thesis in Real Life by Jean Lorrah
When Sondra Marshak and I were writing Star Trek Lives! for Bantam Books, one of the questions we asked ourselves, and answered by surveys of the fan writers producing all that Trekfic, was, "Why are these writers focusing on Kirk, Spock and McCoy with such a passionate determination to crack open their TV personas?" They were CHANGING the characters, and some of us were uncomfortable with that. Most fanzine buyers (and thus publishers) seized on it with an esurience unmatched in the history of fanzines.
We decided that the amateur, beginning writers who had become the most popular, best selling, fanzine writers had stumbled upon an age-old axiom of the fiction craft that is disallowed in the anthology television show format (where the main stars must survive and everything must be returned to pristine starting conditions at the end of every episode - so that the episodes can be shown in random order).
"Test the Hero to Destruction." That's one of the oldest, tried and true story mechanisms.
I used this trick in writing Unto Zeor, Forever for Doubleday and it became my first Award Winner. We expect to make that book available on the web, but in the meantime you can read several early versions, and the out-takes from it here on http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/
What is it that must be destroyed in that testing to destruction?
The DEFENSES -- emotional, psychological defenses -- against self-knowledge, against tapping into ultimate reserves, against risking pain, against whatever that particular hero fears the most. (and it's only the protag who gets tested -- that's one definition of "story" -- the ONE TIME in that person's WHOLE LIFE when they encounter that "test to destruction". In Romance, that "test to destruction" is the moment when Love must be admitted, out loud, opening, eye-to-eye with the object of adoration and affection. )
Inner psychological defenses also create blind spots (against seeing that you love someone) as well as "buttons" -- which when "pushed" result in fulminating rage (or other emotion) at events not worthy of such an outpouring. Such moments of explosive reaction to ordinary events are one way a person can be his own worst enemy -- one way the internal conflict is dramatized and revealed to the reader.
Ultimately it's those inner defenses against emotional truth that are the SOURCE of "Internal Conflict". And the source of its resolution at the end.
There is always a part of every sane human being that knows something the rest of that person does not want to know. There is always a "Let's not go there!" place. There is always a yearning countered by a fear. There is a shining ambition countered by a feeling of unworthiness. There is a need countered by a shame before that consuming desire.
We all carry emotional scars from our upbringing -- no matter how wonderful our parents were. It is that pattern of scars that begins us on the path to individuality.
Assignment 7 is about learning to DRAMATIZE that network of interior scars, to make them EXTERIOR so the reader can see them and recognize them as a PATTERN that's familiar to them.
In sf/f or Futuristic Romance, this "familiar pattern" effect is the key to getting the reader to suspend disbelief and enter into your Crafted World as if it were in fact Reality. The more exotic your premise, the more vitally necessary it is to shape and reveal that familiar pattern to the reader right up front in Chapter One.
How did I learn this?
Five to seven years before I did the surveys and research and writing of Star Trek Lives! (writing that book was a 5 year project and I had to take on two partners to get it done) I had taken the Famous Writers Course (a mail order writing school). Their main focus was something they termed "Selectivity."
I encountered this concept of SELECTIVITY again while studying the philosophy of Ayn Rand because my partner on Star Trek Lives!, Sondra Marshak was a dedicated advocate of Ayn Rand's world view (I'm not, but I do admire her brilliance, and her writing is crystal clear, so it's wonderfully easy and fun to disagree with what she says.)
It turned out that Gene Roddenberry was very familiar with Ayn Rand's writing, too.
One of the concepts that emerged from this contrast/compare study among ST fanzines, ST itself, Gene Roddenberry's personal off-the-record idea of what ST was, and Ayn Rand, plus a number of other authors I was reading at the time -- was ART=SELECTIVE RECREATION OF REALITY.
Later, writing my 1994 columns for The Monthly Aspectarian, I wrote extensively on my theory of Art, and its connection to the Astral Plane and thus the 9's of the Tarot -- and I've included all that esoteric philosophy material and more in the series of Tarot books I'm writing.
Why am I talking about abstract philosophy in a section on INTERNAL CONFLICT? Because the INTERNAL CONFLICTS of your protag and antags are the level of the fiction structure where you first must reveal to the reader your THEME. That level is where you speak to the reader in your own voice about your personal idea of how Reality actually works and why. THEME=PHILOSOPHY.
A good half of a writer's life is spent developing a personal philosophy, learning other people's philosophy, studying how people adopt philosophies and create for themselves a passle of trouble trying to live those philosophies. Psychology and philosophy are the core of the driving energy within every Protag and Antag pair.
An artist -- no matter what medium that artist works within -- always is DEPICTING reality as they see it.
So an artist must spend a lot of time seeing Reality -- studying it -- meditating on it, mulling it over, shearing away all the DETAILS to reveal the underlying PATTERN behind lives.
Real lives are a mess -- they are buried in a loud, noisy System called "reality." Most of what happens in a real life is random, pointless, nonsensical, irrelevant, irritatingly meaningless and boring.
The writer's job (especially the Romance writer's job) is to depict life as EXCITING for people who look at their own lives and see nothing interesting that anyone could possibly want to hear about. The writer's job is to DRAMATIZE LIFE.
How you learn to do that is by studying REAL PEOPLE using the same tools of ANALYSIS that we've shown you in Assignments 4 and 5. Cut away the DETAILS, cut away all the noise and nonsense, and slice to the bone where you can FIND THE PATTERN behind a real life.
You will find that in almost every real life, there is ONE TIME, one moment, one year, one affair, one adventure, that changes that life -- that changes that person deeply. In every life that's long enough, there is a DEFINING MOMENT, a test-to-destruction. And people come out of that TIME with a new identity, a new philosophy, a new lease on life.
A "biography" is the story of a person's life. To write best selling biography, you need not only a subject who is famous, but also a good grasp of that ONE DEFINING MOMENT that made that person who they are. The biography then is written by connecting the dots -- by showing the pattern of that person's life in events foreshadowing and leading up to that TEST, and a very short section after that showing how the person profited from that lesson. Biographies are usually written about people who are older, at the end of their lives -- so there are enough decades to reveal the pattern -- because REAL LIFE happens very slowly.
A Novel is written by knowing pretty much what the Protag's whole life, whole BIOGRAPHY would be about, but doing just what you do to write a paper for school -- narrow the focus, cut a section out of the material, eliminate the beginning, eliminate the ending, put a frame around that one hot-spot where TESTING TO DESTRUCTION happens.
Note, there's a VERY IMPORTANT principle here. You don't tell the reader everything you know. Part of the power of your drama is developed by what you withhold. You lead the reader to imagine those missing parts.
And what part do you withhold?
THE INTERNAL CONFLICT.
The most powerful protags and antags, the kind that walk off the pages into the readers' dreams, are the ones who are unaware of their own internal conflicts. And thus the writer can't ever state those conflicts from inside the point of view of the protag or antag. The writer must know them, must have them clearly defined, and must build every piece of DRAMATIZATION from those internal conflicts (which are derived from the theme, or from which the theme is derived) -- but the reader must be free to IMAGINE that character's internal mechanisms.
The reader's imagination is your most powerful tool. Use it.
How do you use the reader's imagination?
How do you get the reader to understand a character's internal conflict if the character is unaware of it?
NOT by having another character psychoanalyse the conflicted character. Most people don't trust friends, relatives (or enemies) to understand a conflicted person. Very often, in real life, people assess other people by projecting their own internal conflicts onto the other. People misunderstand people this way. "Oh, she's so superficial!" "All he ever thinks about is himself." These are not statements a reader will believe about a character. More often than not, the speaker is revealing their own internal conflict with such statements about others. "It takes one to know one."
So how do you explain a protag's internal conflict to a READER?
You DRAMATIZE the internal conflict. "Show don't tell."
How do you dramatize an internal (emotional, intangible, personal, and abstract) conflict?
You externalize it. You make it concrete and REAL. You SYMBOLIZE it. You encode it into people, events, and actions.
How? By using the EXTERNAL CONFLICT.
That's right -- external conflict is just the internal conflict projected into external reality.
Or -- internal conflict is just external conflict projected into the internal reality of the character.
It doesn't matter if you start outside or inside the character to find the conflict. When you have one, you create the other from it. The two levels are mirror images of each other.
That's why the Villain, or Antag is always so similar to the Hero or Protag. The Antag's internal conflict is a REFLECTION of the Antag's external conflict which is a REFLECTION of the Protag's external conflict, which is a REFLECTION of the Protag's internal conflict.
Two people, four conflicts, -- 6 elements of the story and they are a MATCHED SET.
When you get that "matching" of that set done according to the rules of REALITY that the majority of the readers of your target genre believe (or want to believe) most fervently, your fiction will be remembered, your byline will be memorized.
This MATCHING OF SETS of elements in the story is the core of WorldCrafting.
Jean Lorrah and I tend to start with the character, with the conflicts, passions, ambitions, dreams, ideals, and desires of a particular person -- and work outward from that to the world that surrounds that person. Other writers, such as Hal Clement and Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein create WORLDS and then craft characters to live in that world. It doesn't matter which way you do it, just so the finished product is composed of matched sets.
Why? Why do the sets have to match? Because that's the way most people understand (or wish they understood) Reality.
We have a "Law" in Physics that describes the subatomic world -- "Symmetry".
In Physics, in every branch of the discipline, that law of Symmetry keeps popping up.
Our concrete external reality has the property SYMMETRY.
Biographers have catalogued thousands upon thousands of lives -- by finding the symmetry between the beginning and the ending of the life being described.
Laws of Magick are built around the property of Symmetry.
If it's not really there, we (all of us) wish it were.
Great Art is built around SYMMETRY -- and occasionally, an artist comes along who can describe the world as ASSYMETRIC and reveal a memorable truth. But Assymetry is a form of symmetry. (to use assymetry, you must first learn to depict symmetry). Symmetry is as powerful an artistic tool as perspective.
An example:
I just saw Part Two of the 1999 season finale of the television show, "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." It's script is composed of layer upon layer of symmetry -- it just fairly screams SYMMETRY IS THE ESSENCE OF ART.
And that is one of the most popular shows on television.
At the end of the movie upon which the series is based, Buffy burned down the school gym fighting vampires.
At the end of this season -- when Buffy is graduating and leaving her new High School -- she blows up the whole school building, starting with the library.
At the end of last season, Buffy killed Angel. At the end of this season, Angel kills Buffy.
If you have an encyclopedic memory of all this series, go through it and sift out the symmetries.
One axis of symmetry that pervades all popular, commercial fiction is the symmetry between the Protag and the Antag. The one is built out of the other. The internal and external conflicts of protag and antag reflect each other.
And that's what ASSIGNMENT 7 is about -- creating an internal conflict that is symmetric with an external one. As Jean pointed out in Assignment 6 - the internal conflict CAUSES (because-line) the external conflict. Or put in psychological jargon, we all "project" our internal conflicts into our external worlds. For more about this, see Jean's comments on the Assignment 5 for this course written by Sunny Johnson. That's the one about the abused 18 year old, Molly who gets herself pregnant by a fisherman. Study how Jean has analyzed Molly's internal conflicts.
Yeah, this time you must walk and chew gum, and pat your head and rub your tummy all at once. What a coordination challenge.
So I'm going to break this Assignment down into 4 levels, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Professional.
Take one of the books you've analyzed for Assignments in this course so far, study the comments on your analysis that we've posted, rewrite the analysis using what you've learned about how to do it from the commentaries on your analyses and on your syntheses assignments. (DO NOT send this part in. It's homework. You might want to share it on the open bulletin boards, but it's just an exercise.)
When you're confident that you have a complete, firm grip on how that one novel comes apart into its components, including ALL THE SYMMETRIES, then take the skeleton that you've analysed out of the novel, clothe it in original material, and write a WORKING OUTLINE such as you were asked to do in Assignment 5.
Only this time (yes, I know many of you jumped the gun on this and tackled internal conflict in Assignment 5 -- go read and study all our comments on Assignment 5 and the Internal Conflicts depicted there) -- THIS TIME show us a clean, clear outline nailing the following points -- all encoded into "Show Don't Tell" using fresh, new characters that you have never, ever heard of or worked with before: (you may use a familiar world, but use NEW characters)
1. Protagonist -- don't list or write character sketches. SHOW DON'T TELL in actions.
2. Antagonist -- likewise, don't list or write character sketches. SHOW DON'T TELL in actions against protag.
3. External Conflict between Protag and Antag
4. Protag's Internal Conflict (remember, DO NOT ARTICULATE IT; encode it into the actions -- the things the protagonist DOES). If the commentators can FIND and articulate the conflict you had in mind, then you can give yourself an A++ for this assignment. (NOTICE: at this level, deal ONLY with the Protag's internal conflict. Do NOT attempt to deal with the antag's internal conflict at this level.)
In Romance genre, deeds are more important than they are in action-genre -- because "actions speak louder than words." Only by a person's deeds do you know why they are lovable, why a particular person finds them attractive, what that other person sees in them. Your heart is revealed in your deeds.
Remember, the most potent source of power for your drama is the protag's subconscious mind. Subconscious means he/she is not consciously aware of what's driving him/her -- does not KNOW his/her own motivation is actually an internal conflict. That's how people end up their own worst enemy.
5. BEGINNING -- the protag meets the antag and DOES SOMETHING. Give us 1 or 2 paragraphs of the opening, what would show on page one of a paperback novel. No more than 250 words of text.
EXAMPLE: see the part of House of Zeor that is exposed on the top page of http://www.bb.com -- or if it's not visible on their top page, go to Chapter One and read down to where Stacy says, "He'll come. He's dependable as sunrise." Now in HoZ, the antag is offstage during the opening, which does weaken that opening (it was my first novel). We want you to write an opening like this with the protag and the antag on stage and interacting with each other. But do it just like that -- cutting off at a cliffhanger sentence.
6. 1/4 point -- Antag strikes back. What does the antag do in response to the protag's initial action? Reveal the because-line.
7. HALFWAY through the word-count allotment: Antag WINS, (but not decisively). This is where the HERO IS TESTED TO DESTRUCTION. This is the moment of absolute undoing. This is where the facade is cracked open and the INTERNAL CONFLICT is revealed. But not articulated. The reader must see and understand what inner-pain is driving this person -- what confrontations with fear this person must make to grow and change into a better, happier person. But as in real life - the character is unaware of this process.
Do not name the emotions. DEPICT them.
(example: "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" -- Buffy desperately wants a "normal" life. She is forced by her abnormal life to kill Angel and send him to hell. THAT is the halfway point in her life's story. This year, where Angel kills her, that's the 3/4 point in her life's story -- she has paid for killing him by sacrificing her life to save him. Faith became her antagonist because Faith is a REFLECTION of Buffy. Now, Buffy must "lose" Angel -- she and Angel both attain freedom from her desperate desire for a normal life, and her consequent rejection of her Destiny. Now she goes to college, having accepted her position as protector of Sunny Dale, and presumably her very abnormal life. Her Story's ENDING must involve another confrontation with Angel. If it were my series, I'd make that a feature film story.)
8. 3/4 point climax -- Protag voluntarily faces inner demons and strikes back (or launches plan to strike back) decisively at the Antag. Protag takes the battle onto Antag's turf. Protag gives the order to launch the troops onto the beach at Normandy. This is the POINT OF NO RETURN. Protag has launched him/herself into a confrontation with Antag that can ONLY END IN RESOLUTION of the conflicts.
9. ENDING -- Protag resolves internal conflict, which frees him/her to ACT to resolve the external conflict.
Until the ENDING (the last 10 to 15 percent of the wordage) the Protag has been his/her own worst enemy. The internal conflict has PREVENTED solving the external problem because it creates the external problem.
Now, at END, resolving the internal conflict causes the external problem to become resolvable, and frees the Protag to act.
An example of this: In "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" the end of the 1998 season was Buffy Kills Angel and sends him to hell. Focus down close on that one scene, where she runs him through with the magic sword and shoves him through the gateway into Hell. At the last minute, Angel regains his soul because of Willow's spell, but the gate is open and only by shoving him through can Buffy save the world. Watch and listen to that scene (if you have this on tape). Her internal conflict (wanting a normal life vs. her extraordinary Destiny) externalized in graphic detail by her love for Angel and her need to kill him. She pauses. There are a few lines of dialogue that are not philosophy. Basically, it is a declaration of undying love. She RESOLVES (temporarily) her internal conflict, and this frees her to kill him. Then her internal conflict clamps down on her soul again, and she runs away from home, family, and Destiny. It is all done in actions, SHOW DON'T TELL.
That abstract conflict is externalized into ACTIONS.
That's what we want to see in Assignment 7 -- DEEDS. Show us a pair of "made for each other" enemies, whose conflict plays out in DEEDS driven by the protag's subconscious self-sabotage.
RESOLVE that conflict in an ENDING that is connected to the beginning by a because-line.
Because Protag does this at the beginning, Antag does that at 1/4, Protag accepts defeat by his own doing at 1/2, pulls him/herself together and at 3/4 point launches him/herself into the teeth of his/her worst nightmare. At ENDING, Protag confronts and defeats the nightmare in order to strike back at the Antag, and wins.
Look closely, and you'll see that's the formula of my own first professionally published novel, House of Zeor. I didn't invent it. I stole it.
Examples for Assignment 7
Quiz for Assignment 7
Class Chats for Assignment 7
Required Reading for Assignment 7
FINAL EXAM: written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg -- Due November 28, 1999 6pm Pacific Standard Time -- NOT TO BE TURNED IN BEFORE NOVEMBER 15, 1999.
Turn this in too soon, and it will not be accepted for posting and evaluation. (If you think this not professional -- I just got an invitation to a story anthology where any submissions had to arrive between two dates several months hence, with a warning that early arrivals would be returned unopened.)
Now you have a chance to show the world what you've learned in this course.
When the final exams are posted, we will open the Showcase for all to read.
1. Choose a short novel (75,000 to 100,000 words -- where a "word" is defined as 6 characters including blank spaces and punctuation).
You may choose a shorter work or a play -- whatever your ambition is to write professionally.
It must have a simple structure. It should start with the protagonist confronting his/her conflict in the form of a living antagonist. It should have a MIDDLE where the protagonist hits darkest despair, and end with the protagonist resolving that conflict -- and winning. You can find examples of this novel in ANY genre.
2. ANALYZE that novel until you can OUTLINE it in its barest, bare bones form as demonstrated many times in the commentaries on the Assignments posted on the Student Showcase. Use no names, no universe or world-building background details, no anatomical details of the aliens -- nothing to identify the novel you are outlining as a unique work. DO NOT mention the name of the novel you have outlined. Show us a picked clean skeleton of a novel form. Scour it again and again until you have nothing left except what you may legally and ethically steal. (this can be a 4 or 5 stage process -- keep going until it's clean as a whistle, but show us only the single, final stage of this process.)
IDENTIFY whether your pattern novel is a "Beartrap" or "Likeable Hero" plot. Whichever it is, that's what you will be writing, so choose what you like best. If it's a "Beartrap" the first Chapter ends with the trap springing shut. If it's a "Likeable Hero" the goal is chosen and the odds are tangibly assessed.
IDENTIFY the BEGINNING, 1/4-point, Middle, 3/4 point, and ENDING. These points are reliably determined by wordcount or pagecount in a printed novel. PACING is everything.
Show how the Beginning connects directly to the Ending in an unbroken because-chain (i.e. the conflict identified at the Beginning resolves at the Ending).
3. WRITE: your final stage of this analysis -- to show us the skeleton you will be using for this Final Exam. (See Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced below for details.)
4. Now put your OWN ORIGINAL FLESH onto that skeleton.
(CAUTION: Do not use any material dear to your heart. DO NOT use anything you have ever thought of before. This material will remain posted to the web for an indeterminate length of time. To avoid repeating past mistakes, do not use anything even remotely similar to what you've already been working with. Make up something new that's completely trivial to you. This is an exercise, not a demonstration of your talent.)
Invent a protagonist, give him/her a CONFLICT with an active antagonist, situation, background, setting and theme -- right on that skeleton. Make absolutely certain you do not take any detail at all from the novel you are lifting the PATTERN out of. Any stray details from that novel will ruin yours -- like a stray bit of yoke can prevent the eggwhites from whipping up stiffly.
Show how YOUR protag resolves the conflict with the antag. (this stage should be about 100 to 200 words for what would eventually be a 75,000 word novel (typical size for a first novel sale). If you're using more words, you haven't got the bones bare enough yet to see the underlying pattern.
5. WRITE -- one short chapter in full blown prose, giving the opening of the novel (or a few scenes of the shorter work). This might be 1500 to 2000 words. Pace it like a teaser for a one-hour episode of a tv show. You define the protag, the conflict, and the antag in SHOW DON'T TELL -- and end with a cliff-hanger ACTION. Be sure that EACH SCENE changes the SITUATION. (action=rate-of-change-of-situation) --- SEE BEGINNER, INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED BELOW, not everyone should be doing this in its entire form.
6. WRITE -- the rest of the novel in OUTLINE form as you've learned from these lessons. Nail the 1/4 point EVENT, the MIDDLE POINT EVENT, the 3/4 POINT EVENT and the END/RESOLUTION EVENT. That's all -- not a chapter-by-chapter delineation of each thing that happens -- just the CLIMAX POINTS. This should total about 250 words. NOTE: with proficiency you will learn the structures for INTERNAL CLIMAX POINTS. For now use the one where each climax point must be more emotionally TENSE, more powerful than the previous one -- all the way to the END. We want the novel to graph out as a straight line rising to the final climax -- which is the structure of the SHORT STORY, and works exceedingly well for the 75,000 word novel.
House of Zeor is an 87,500 word short story by structure -- which is why it's a "can't put it down" read --- longer novels have more complex climax-point elevation patterns so that you can put them down, but you are compelled to pick them up again. The writer controls reader behavior by manipulating the relative emotional heights of the climax points.
7. TEST what you have written. Look for the mistakes you've made during the Assignments. Look for the oversights you have made. Look for the words you didn't need to include. Now, go through it again and search for the mistakes you've seen others make in the Assignments.
TEST: to see if you have a real protagonist and that THIS really is that protag's own story.
How? Check to see if this protag is meeting up with his/her own personal nemesis in this particular CONFLICT. Does the external conflict throw the protag into intenal conflict to match? Is this protag the one whose actions determine what will happen next? Has this protag taken charge of setting the agenda? Is this protag the one who wins -- and most importantly CHANGE in the end? Whose conflict is resolved? If not, you haven't got the right protag for this story.
TEST: to see if the inner conflict and outer conflict are thematically related.
TEST: to see if the whole novel SAYS SOMETHING.
It doesn't have to be saying something important -- this is only a Final Exam not a commercial novel. It just has to SAY SOMETHING and say it definitely and clearly.
You must have a THESIS.
We don't expect you to handle theme perfectly here -- there's a lot more to handling theme than we've mentioned in passing in the commentaries. We only expect that the DETAILS you have invented all go together to add up to ONE THEME. Just one. Simple. Clear. Concise.
And you must not tell us what that theme is. It must be obvious from what you have SHOWN NOT TOLD.
You'll succeed at this if you keep the number of details you invent to an absolute minimum.
TEST: see if each detail you have SELECTED reinforces or elaborates on your thematic statement. If it doesn't - throw out that detail.
TEST: to see if all your elements come in the matched sets we have been talking about in the commentaries. (re-read those commentaries closely, study them -- extract every last bit out of them. This course has gone so fast, I know that many of you haven't yet paused to think about all the information we've packed into those essays on your work. Much of what I've written in one student's commentary is actually aimed at other students, and even at items that came up in previous Assignments. We've covered a vast amount of material in a short time. Go back over it and mull it over. Sleep on it.)
TEST: to see if the conflict joined in the BEGINNING is actually RESOLVED at the ENDING. Is there an unbroken line of cause-effect from the opening ACTION to the final ACTION?
TEST; to see if every scene moves the plot forward in a way that leads obviously, along the because-line to the resolution of the conflict. If not, throw the scene out.
The very brightest among you will do the above exercise three or four times before deciding which one to turn in. The more often you do this Chapter&Outline exercise, the faster and more accurate you will become at "Performing" that particular skeleton that you have analyzed. (Writing is a Performing Art -- and the skeleton you have stolen for this FINAL EXAM is the script or score you are performing onstage for us in the Student Showcase.)
Pick one skeleton, and master it by repeatedly performing stories on it. Then pick another, and master it. One day (soon, I expect) your ability to buy groceries will depend entirely on your ability to turn out these Chapter&Outline exercises without working up a sweat. (but then you'll have to finish writing the whole novel).
WHAT TO TURN IN: (Or Post to the Independent Study Seminar Board)
Material produced for the paragraphs above that begin WRITE is what must be turned in. Those paragraphs are numbered 3, 5 & 6.
That's ALL you turn in -- what you WROTE for paragraphs 3, 5, & 6.
3. WRITE: your final stage of this analysis -- to show us the ABSOLUTE bare-bones skeleton you will be using for this Final Exam. The ONLY thing we want to see here is CONFLICT and BECAUSE-LINE (plot events). This should be 250 - 300 words maximum. (Which is often all the words allowed in a selling outline -- what is called in Hollywood parlance the "one-pager".)
EXTRA CREDIT: Create a one-sentence PITCH that tells the whole story in one sentence. To find good examples, go to your library and read the flyleaf jacket copy of some hardcover novels (it's called "sell-copy" for a reason). Also read TV Guide descriptions of movies (online is OK; you don't have to buy the thing just learn how to write the descriptions.) You might want to read my special acknowledgement to Marion Zimmer Bradley in Unto Zeor, Forever -- which is about the power of the "one-sentence-story-concept" and keep in mind that Unto was my first Award Winner.
5.WRITE -- one or two SHORT SCENES that open Chapter One in full blown prose. Introduce protagonist, the protagonist's internal and external conflicts (which are a matched set, like left and right shoes, the design of one implicit in the design of the other -- don't dress your protagonist with one foot in high heels and the other in jack-boots), AND THE ANTAGONIST who is actively thwarting the protagonist's efforts. We want to see that first thwarting action. TOTAL WORDAGE OF THE TWO SCENES no more than 500 words.
Be sure that EACH SCENE changes the SITUATION. (action=rate-of-change-of-situation)
EXTRA CREDIT: this is about "style" -- see my remarks on "style" for Assignment 7's -- style your opening to use a variety of sentence structures. Use dialog, description, exposition and narrative in short, easy flowing style. Note at the top of this section that you are attempting this so we'll know what to look for.
6. WRITE -- the rest of the novel in OUTLINE form as you've learned from these Assignments. Nail the 1/4 point EVENT, the MIDDLE POINT EVENT, the 3/4 POINT EVENT and the END/RESOLUTION EVENT. That's all -- not a chapter-by-chapter delineation of each thing that happens -- just the CLIMAX POINTS. Who does what to whom BECAUSE of what whom did to who before. This should total no more than 500 words -- probably a lot less if you have packed all the necessary information into your opening scenes. OR #5+#6= 1,000 words total.
This is the 4-5 page story proposal for a selling outline -- this is NOT A SYNOPSIS such as described by Karen Lebo in her Chat here on simegen.com. NOTE: the Romance Genre writers use slightly different TERMINOLOGY than other groups. It's not the word you use to designate a functioning part of a manuscript that counts -- it's the nature and function of that part. A "synopsis" is a short-form story narrative. An "outline" shows the bones and joints (protag, antag, conflict, beginning, middle and end). A "detailed outline" shows that you can write the novel without running into any "plot problems" that will take you time to solve because you've solved them all already.
The rest of this work you must do to produce 3., 5. & 6. , and test them to be sure you've got it right. You are not to turn in anything BUT 3., 5., 6. and note any EXTRA CREDIT efforts.
From the results of these Final Exams, we will design the next course building on what you've learned, so SHOW DON'T TELL what you've learned. It may be that we'll have to create an elementary course in dialog, description, exposition and narrative, word-choice, and even grammar. Perhaps some other teachers will do this.
Examples for the Final Exam
Quiz for the Final Exam
Class Chats for the Final Exam
Required Reading for the Final Exam
See Beginner's Section. Everyone does the first Assignment the same way.
Examples for Assignment 1
Quiz for Assignment 1
Class Chats for Assignment 1
Required Reading for Assignment 1
Assignment 2 -- Analyze 3 plots as to protag and conflict. You will turn in this Assignment for posting to the Student Showcase website by emailing it as an attached file to studentshowcase@simegen.com .
DEADLINE -- June 13, 1999
1. CHOOSE 3 stories to analyze for Protagonist or Hero and to Identify .
INTERMEDIATE students -- if you've SOLD your writing, but not your FICTION, or if you've been getting rejection letters and much encouragement from editors who buy your kind of story, or if you've had your fanfic published online and have gathered a fandom of your own from that, but want to break into professional fiction writing, or if you've had your fiction bought and published but just don't get the response from the readers that you were aiming for -- you are an INTERMEDIATE for our purposes. It is possible you know most of what we can teach here, but haven't "mastered" these techniques - or it is possible that you have mastered a good percentage of what we have here -- but have a hole or two in your overall skills development. It is up to you to analyze your position on this scale, and create your own assignments from these guidelines to target your own weakest spots. Please identify yourself to us by emailing simegen@simegen.com with the particulars of your publishing history.
INTERMEDIATES may choose as follows or may choose from the Beginners suggestions above or a mixture of the two: (It is assumed you understand the objectives of this assignment because you've taught this course yourself a few times.)
1. One story or novel from their own PUBLISHED work. The analysis should be written so that the teachers and other students reading the analysis do not need to have read the work. If the work is available online, hyperlinks to it may be included.
2. One story or novel from your own teacher's work -- or a work you have studied very closely in developing your current techniques. This should be something of a different genre than what is chosen in #1.
3. One story from any other medium than printed narrative. (This could be a stage play you have written that has or has-not been produced.) It could be a TV show you have written for. It could be an epic poem or a famous song, or a Classic you admire such as an Ancient Greek play. It could even be a TV Commercial series! (such as the coffee commercial series about a couple getting together because they live in the same apartment building).
2. When you've selected the 3 items you will analyze, then for each of the 3 items do the following:
Start your file by typing in your byline and email address for the course, with the title of the course, the Assignment number and description, and which level of the Assignment you've chosen to do:
A) Identify the item you are analyzing, and use hyperlinks where appropriate.
B)Write a typical review column's one-paragraph summary of the story. (do not copy the style of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's review column -- do it like a Library Journal or Publisher's Weekly review - 50 to 200 words summarizing the story). You must describe the story well enough that the teachers evaluating the exercise can decide if you have identified the protagonist correctly even if they have not read the story itself.
C) Name the Protagonist
D) Describe the Protagonist's EXTERNAL CONFLICT. (this is the conflict that drives the plot) (we will get to internal-conflict in future work; here we are dealing only with external conflict).
For Definitions of Protagonist, Conflict, Internal Conflict, and various discussions of confict, see the required reading list of online posts listed above or just go to the Workshop. If you did Assignment 1, you've already read these posts at least once. Re-reading might be advantageous. Advanced students may want to write their OWN essays on the topic of Identifying the Protagonist and explaining his/her CONFLICT to clarify the matter in their own minds. (and we might want to post those essays).
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Examples for Assignment 2
Quiz for Assignment 2
Class Chats for Assignment 2
Required Reading for Assignment 2
When Plot Conflicts With Theme
Conflict Workshop Post dated Jan 1997
Conflict=Story & Writer's
Block
Read #1 on Conflict by
Cheryl Wolverton before you read this one.
Conflict in a Fantasy Romance by Jean Lorrah
Conflict, both internal and external, Goals, and Motivations. You will see a red herring outlined and then fixed.
Movies and Television Shows as Textbooks
Assignment 3: Create ONE original PROTAGONIST and ONE original CONFLICT that grows out of the PROTAGONIST's Character, showing that you have mastered Assignment 2 -- how the protagonist and the conflict must be related to each other.
Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced students do this one the same way. See Beginner's instructions. Intermediate and Advanced students may go further than suggested here and attempt to RESOLVE the conflict they create in step #5.
5. Describe what the obstacle is going to do to fight back.
EXAMPLE: "Spinsky's teachers fail him using his speech problems and mobility problems as a thin excuse."
INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS may end the Assignment here while Advanced students forge onwards.
OBJECT OF THIS EXERCISE: show us you can identify the PROTAGONIST -- the person whose story you are telling (this is actually one of the single most difficult things for beginning writers, especially Romance writers, to learn to do! So don't be surprised if you find it harder than you expected) -- and create an external force that opposes your protagonist, a force that is clearly and obviously relevant to that protagonist's individual, personal LIFE.
Assignment 2 is an exercise in ANALYSIS. Assignment 3 is an exercise in SYNTHESIS. We want to see you synthesize PROTAGONIST with EXTERNAL CONFLICT -- make them one single, fused, whole -- and you will note that above, I (JL) have created a PLOT and described it in a format which could serve as the beginnings of a working OUTLINE or even the rudiments of a selling outline. And all we focused on is two elements -- the PROTAGONIST and that protagonist's EXTERNAL conflict. Notice how much detail is MISSING -- and yet suggested.
Examples for Assignment 3
Quiz for Assignment 3
Class Chats for Assignment 3
Required Reading for Assignment 3
Plot-Character Integration &
Homework
The "Homework" mentioned above is not to be turned in.
Assignment 3 is to be turned in.
See Beginner's Section for the Assignment -
Examples for Assignment 4
Quiz for Assignment 4
Read -- CLASS MEETING #2
Required Reading for Assignment 4
See Beginner's section for the Assignment -
then check everything you've done to make sure you have not made any of the
mistakes discovered in the first 4 Assignments.
Examples for Assignment 5
Quiz for Assignment 5
Class Chats for Assignment 5
Required Reading for Assignment 5
See Beginner's Section for instructions -- now we tackle INTERNAL conflict.
Examples for Assignment 6
Quiz for Assignment 6
Class Chats for Assignment 6
Required Reading for Assignment 6
Conflict and Thesis in Real Life by Jean Lorrah
Read instructions in Beginner's section, then do the following:
Do the Beginner's Assignment
BUT:
ASSIGNMENT 7 - INTERMEDIATE
The intermediate level of this Assignment is to do all the steps listed above -- but for both the protagonist AND the antagonist simultaneously. Again at this level, work ONLY WITH NEW CHARACTERS you have never invented before.
You don't have to confine yourself to a novel you've already analyzed (and had your analysis vetted by the teachers here) for this class. You can find another novel you would rather use, analyse it, extract the pattern and use that pattern for this Assignment. This assumes that at the Intermediate Level, you have complete confidence in your ability to extract the pattern from any novel you choose to analyse.
Here, at this level, demonstrate the ability to handle the SYMMETRY discussed above, so that it is clear that the protag deserves and/or needs the antag (as for example in a co-dependent relationship, or in an abusive relationship). Your protag's internal conflict is reflected in the protag's external conflict which is reflected in the antag's external conflict which is reflected in the antag's internal conflict.
Examples for Assignment 7
Quiz for Assignment 7
Class Chats for Assignment 7
Required Reading for Assignment 7
Read all the instructions in the Beginner Section, do everything there and add the following:
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL FINAL EXAM --
3.WRITE: your final stage of this analysis -- to show us the skeleton you will be using for this Final Exam. Include protagonist, internal and external conflict set, and antagonist. 250 - 300 words maximum.
EXTRA CREDIT for Intermediates only -- try adding THEME to this mix. Create a title and narrative hook that "tells it all" in three or four well chosen words. Label the attempt so that in case you don't quite get it right, we'll know what to say about it.
5.WRITE -- one short chapter in full blown prose, giving the opening of the novel (or two scenes of the shorter work). This might be 500 - 750 words -- make it very, very short and sharp. Pace it like a teaser for a one-hour episode of a tv show. You define the protag, the conflict, and the antag in SHOW DON'T TELL -- and end with a cliff-hanger ACTION. Be sure that EACH SCENE changes the SITUATION. (action=rate-of-change-of-situation) We want to see the last words of this opening be what Hollywood calls a "springboard into action" -- a takeoff point, which foreshadows what's to come, sets up reader expectations that you actually WILL fulfill.
EXTRA CREDIT for intermediates only: stretch your vocabulary. Eliminate all the adverbs and re-choose your VERBS to be the exactly correct word. Adverbs modify verbs ("he moved slowly" where "slowly" is an adverb) -- but English has enough verbs that if you choose the correct one, you don't have to use an ill-fitting one and modify it. ("he crept") Note at the top of your work that you've attempted adverb-control so we'll know to look for it. By using this technique you can tell more story in fewer words.
6. WRITE -- the rest of the novel in OUTLINE form as you've learned from these lessons. Nail the 1/4 point EVENT, the MIDDLE POINT EVENT, the 3/4 POINT EVENT and the END/RESOLUTION EVENT. That's all -- not a chapter-by-chapter delineation of each thing that happens -- just the CLIMAX POINTS. This should total about 250 words -- or #5 + #6 together total 1,000 words.
NOTE: with proficiency you will learn the structures for INTERNAL CLIMAX POINTS. For now use the one where each climax point must be more emotionally TENSE, more powerful than the previous one -- all the way to the END. We want the novel to graph out as a straight line rising to the final climax -- which is the structure of the SHORT STORY, and works exceedingly well for the 75,000 word novel.
Examples for the Final Exam
Quiz for the Final Exam
Class Chats for the Final Exam
Required Reading for the Final Exam
See Beginner's Section
Examples for Assignment 1
Quiz for Assignment 1
Class Chats for Assignment 1
Required Reading for Assignment 1
Assignment 2 -- Analyze 3 plots as to protag and conflict. You will turn in this Assignment for posting to the Student Showcase website by emailing it as an attached file to studentshowcase@simegen.com .
1. CHOOSE 3 stories to analyze for Protagonist or Hero and to Identify .
ADVANCED writers are those who write and regularly sell in a particular genre and can see they must improve their skills to progress in the profession -- or who want to learn to write in some genre or medium different from the one where they've had success. (e.g. an established Romance Writer who wants to learn screen writing to create and sell a TV Series.)
Assuming you have total confidence in your ability to analyze any piece of fiction for protagonist and conflict, you may create your own CHOICES here, and note the parameters you have created with each of the THREE items you are analyzing for us so we'll understand what you're doing. (and introduce yourself to us by emailing simegen@simegen.com with your standard biography and bibliography, and URLs and hotlinks).
At this point in this course, we would expect you to create and execute an assignment that will be an example to the other students -- beware: we might well try to recruit you as a teacher in your area of expertise. This school is called a Guild because we use the "see one; do one; teach one" apprenticeship method. If you haven't successfully conveyed the skill to another writer, you don't yet have mastery of that skill. Use Assignment 2 as your opportunity to TEACH ONE by "show don't tell."
Should you feel that your basic analytical skills require polishing, do the INTERMEDIATE level of this exercise.
2. When you've selected the 3 items you will analyze, then for each of the 3 items do the following:
Start your file by typing in your byline and email address for the course, with the title of the course, the Assignment number and description, and which level of the Assignment you've chosen to do:
A) Identify the item you are analyzing, and use hyperlinks where appropriate.
B)Write a typical review column's one-paragraph summary of the story. (do not copy the style of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's review column -- do it like a Library Journal or Publisher's Weekly review - 50 to 200 words summarizing the story). You must describe the story well enough that the teachers evaluating the exercise can decide if you have identified the protagonist correctly even if they have not read the story itself.
C) Name the Protagonist
D) Describe the Protagonist's EXTERNAL CONFLICT. (this is the conflict that drives the plot) (we will get to internal-conflict in future work; here we are dealing only with external conflict).
For Definitions of Protagonist, Conflict, Internal Conflict, and various discussions of confict, see the required reading list of online posts listed above or just go to the Workshop. If you did Assignment 1, you've already read these posts at least once. Re-reading might be advantageous. Advanced students may want to write their OWN essays on the topic of Identifying the Protagonist and explaining his/her CONFLICT to clarify the matter in their own minds. (and we might want to post those essays).
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Examples for Assignment 2
Quiz for Assignment 2
Class Chats for Assignment 2
Required Reading for Assignment 2
When Plot Conflicts With Theme
Conflict Workshop Post dated Jan 1997
Conflict=Story & Writer's
Block
Read #1 on Conflict by
Cheryl Wolverton before you read this one.
Conflict in a Fantasy Romance by Jean Lorrah
Conflict, both internal and external, Goals, and Motivations. You will see a red herring outlined and then fixed.
Movies and Television Shows as Textbooks
Assignment 3: Create ONE original PROTAGONIST and ONE original CONFLICT that grows out of the PROTAGONIST's Character, showing that you have mastered Assignment 2 -- how the protagonist and the conflict must be related to each other.
Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced students do this one the same way. See Beginners. Intermediate, Advanced & Professional students may go further than suggested here and attempt to RESOLVE the conflict they create by doing step #5.
5. Describe what the obstacle is going to do to fight back.
EXAMPLE: "Spinsky's teachers fail him using his speech problems and mobility problems as a thin excuse."
INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS may end the Assignment here while Advanced students forge onwards.
6. Describe what your Protagonist does about the obstacle's obstinacy.
EXAMPLE: "Spinsky gets Sally Feingold to coach him in English, which brings her out of her depression."
If this is a short story, it ends there. If it's a novel it ends when Spinsky gets his US Medical License because Sally Feingold took his case to court under some anti-discrimination statute no Russian Immigrant could believe existed. If it's a Romance, they get married. If it's International Intrigue, it ends in a shoot-out on the Volga. If it's a mystery, Sally gets murdered and Spinsky catches the murderer. If it's horror, one of the doctors in the rehab center is trading in body-parts. If it's SF, Spinsky has invented a cyber-limb Sally needs. If it's fantasy, Sally is a Supernatural Being. If it's a Western, Spinsky is a White Man and Sally an Indian Princess. Or you could set the whole thing in 12th Century India and write a Best Seller.
EXTRA CREDIT: Show us how your Protagonist and Conflict would "morph" as you shift your structure from genre to genre or medium to medium.
The EXAMPLE you see here, complete with the morphs across genre lines took me less than 1 hour to write while creating this lesson from Jean Lorrah's notes, and I'd never given a single thought to Spinsky and Sally before - and won't ever again unless I use them for examples again. This is an exercise professional writers do several times a day -- like an athelete in training might squeeze a rubber ball to strengthen the hands.
ADVANCED STUDENTS may show us they can drive their chosen protagonist to near destruction and then resolve the conflict, and identify the genre the resolution belongs to. Choose to work in the genre you are trying to master, not the one you've already mastered. Keep to the one-sentence per developmental stage format.
OBJECT OF THIS EXERCISE: show us you can identify the PROTAGONIST -- the person whose story you are telling (this is actually one of the single most difficult things for beginning writers, especially Romance writers, to learn to do! So don't be surprised if you find it harder than you expected) -- and create an external force that opposes your protagonist, a force that is clearly and obviously relevant to that protagonist's individual, personal LIFE.
Our very ambitious or accomplished ADVANCED AND PROFESSIONAL students may attempt an the additional 3 scenarios suggested for the professional level using an internal opposing force that clearly and obviously generates the external opposing force. Answer the question: "What did this person do to deserve this enemy/plight/predicament?" (Why does this one love that one? Hate that one? -- WHY is always the key question the writer must define and address but NOT answer definitively.) But for Assignment 3, we are focused on mastering the use of External Conflict. See Assignment 6 for more on Internal Conflict -- and it will likewise be the subject of other courses here.
Assignment 2 is an exercise in ANALYSIS. Assignment 3 is an exercise in SYNTHESIS. We want to see you synthesize PROTAGONIST with EXTERNAL CONFLICT -- make them one single, fused, whole -- and you will note that above, I (JL) have created a PLOT and described it in a format which could serve as the beginnings of a working OUTLINE or even the rudiments of a selling outline. And all we focused on is two elements -- the PROTAGONIST and that protagonist's EXTERNAL conflict. Notice how much detail is MISSING -- and yet suggested.
Examples for Assignment 3
Quiz for Assignment 3
Class Chats for Assignment 3
Required Reading for Assignment 3
Plot-Character Integration &
Homework
The "Homework" mentioned above is not to be turned in.
Assignment 3 is to be turned in.
See Beginner's section for
instructions.
Examples for Assignment 4
Quiz for Assignment 4
Class Chats for Assignment 4
Read CLASS MEETING #2
Required Reading for Assignment 4
See Beginner's section for instructions.
Examples for Assignment 5
Quiz for Assignment 5
Class Chats for Assignment 5
Required Reading for Assignment 5
See Beginner's Section for instructions -- now we tackle INTERNAL conflict. Assignment 7 gets much harder.
Examples for Assignment 6
Quiz for Assignment 6
Class Chats for Assignment 6
Required Reading for Assignment 6
Conflict and Thesis in Real Life by Jean Lorrah
Read instructions in Beginner's section, then do the following:
Do the Beginner's Assignment with Intermediate Assignment (read both before starting) BUT ADD:
Do the Intermediate level just as described but here you may work with characters, worlds, and situations you have been working with for some time to no avail -- laying them out in outline form and solving the problems you have learned how to find and solve during this course, by shearing away the detail to reveal the skeleton underneath, fixing the skeleton, then SELECTING from among the shorn-away detail certain details to add back that will clothe that skeleton in story.
The key to working with old material that has major flaws at the core of the conception is being willing to tease apart all the details, select only a few of them and throw away the rest. Fix the skeleton then put the details back, and you'll have a novel to be proud of.
The problem posed by this process is that the detail you must discard usually is the very detail you cherish and love the most. Professionalism is developed by learning to throw away those most-cherished parts in order to benefit the composition as a whole.
At this advanced level, you may work with more than one protag and more than one antag (providing you have a symmetric, matched set of characters) -- which means the most crucial component of your story will be your THEME -- the glue that keeps all the characters, their internal and external conflicts all together, making one coherent and understandable statement about "Life, The Universe, and Everything."
Most writers, by the time they're ready to attempt this advanced level of Assigment 7 have learned that it's much more cost-effective to just go invent new characters and new worlds that don't have the conceptual flaws at the core than to try to fix old, flawed material.
But that old, flawed material is a gold mine. The two Sime~Gen novellas, "Easy as Hop, Skip and Jump" and "Lortuen" I have posted here are the sources of bits and pieces of detail that have gone into many of the published novels, including the award winning, Unto Zeor, Forever. Nothing ever goes to waste.
Examples for Assignment 7
Quiz for Assignment 7
Class Chats for Assignment 7
Required Reading for Assignment 7
Read instructions and assignment in Beginner's Section, ADD the additional work from the Intermediate Section, then add the following:
Final Exam: ADVANCED & PROFESSIONAL LEVEL: Repeat the Final Exam steps 1-7 at the Intermediate level several times and pick one of your efforts to turn in -- keep going until you hit one that's marketable and start writing it.
How do you tell if a novel is marketable? A)read Writer's Markets for requirements, and check any online writers resources regarding markets, B)read what is being published, C)go to conferences and listen to editors talk about what their lines need, D) call your agent and ask what's selling, E)talk to your editor about what they are selling now, F)Watch a lot of television, and check out the relative ratings of the shows, and especially plans for next season. Analyze (as we've emphasized here) the popular shows to see why they are popular -- and write your story addressing those themes and those particular conflicts, use those skeletons, or, G)check out what amazon.com's top page is advertising, check the advertising pitch and estimate the audience it's aimed at, read the posted reviews and comments on amazon.com then go to your local library or book store and riffle through the book checking "BEGINNING, MIDDLE, END, theme, Protagonist, Antagonist, conflict, resolution" (after this course, you can do that to any book while just standing there in the book store, you don't have to buy it to analyze it) -- if a book is successful in sales, suddenly every editor wants one just like it only completely different. "Morphing" the genres as we've done here has already taught you the trick of doing an identical book that's totally different. F)write anything you like and wait until your agent says he/she wants one like that. Everything comes back into fashion eventually.
EXTRA CREDIT: for Advanced Only: Do all of the EXTRA CREDIT delineated for Beginning and Intermediate, PLUS -- Employ symbolism, visual imagery, sensory appeal (smell, taste, color, sound etc) to create mood and convey background information and thematic substance all at once in a demonstration of "word economy" -- compacting information feed into easy, entertaining reading.
Most "critique groups" start their comments on beginners' manuscripts at this ADVANCED EXTRA CREDIT level, as if changing the surface decoration and word use would improve a story that's got a decalcified skeleton that'll shatter under the impact of an editor's eye. If you have spelling, punctuation and grammar down pat, and are a native speaker of English who is widely read and well educated, word-usage, imagery, sensory appeal, word-economy, etc. etc. is the very LAST thing to add to your writing skills. They are the advanced professional tools and extremely trivial to learn. More than likely, you'll just start writing that way once you master the basic skeleton structure focused on in this course.
A Beginner or Intermediate writer who focuses their efforts and attention on word-mechanics and usage will fail in the commercial marketplace no matter how well they learn to use words. An example of this crossed my desk yesterday -- a Star Trek novel proposal that Pocket Books and Paramount rejected. It was spectacular in professional level word-usage, imagery, symbolism, sensory appeal, mood, dense background easily conveyed, effortless word-economy, -- but it had been rejected. Why? Conflict=Plot, protagonist, antagonist. That's it -- that's all that was wrong with it.
Endless effort polishing words that don't say anything will get you nowhere. A car manufacturer doesn't layer on glossy finish-coat paint to the steel sheets before it's been formed into body-parts. There's a reason why things are manufactured in a certain order. Learn the order for manufacturing a story, and your efficiency and cost-effectiveness will rise to professional level.
HOW TO TURN A CHAPTER&OUTLINE INTO A NOVEL:
After writing the first chapter and the rest of the book in outline form -- with minimal flesh:
FIRST: extract your THEME and state it in one short sentence, write it on a 3by5 card and tack it up over your computer screen where your eye rests on it whenever you aren't doing anything. Tack copies up all over the house if you can. Meditate on it while going to sleep. Argue the point or discuss that issue with your imaginary reader, with friends, family, in chats online, anywhere. Keep it in the forefront of your conscious mind. Every single CHOICE you make while writing must emphasize, restate, or elaborate on that theme. Every item of visual decoration, every room, the period furniture, the clothing people wear, the hobbies they have, the cars they drive, or horses they own -- where they eat lunch and what they eat - everything you CHOOSE to put into the novel MUST explicate that theme.
THEN Outline Chapter Two. Write that, and as you write things that make you think of what has to happen next, fill in the outline for Chapter Three. Then write Three and outline Four. And so on to the end. Keep your eye on your next climax point (1/4, Middle, 3/4 or End) and steer directly toward it in as few steps as possible. Never write a scene to characterize -- scenes are for moving the plot toward a resolution of the conflict and nothing else. Keep your eye on the Outline, and follow it exactly.
That's why you put so little into the outline -- so you won't have to throw it out because you had a better idea. NEVER elaborate in the outline. You put in the outline what MUST NOT BE CHANGED (i.e. the "formula" you are writing under). Everything else you have the fun of inventing as you go along. That way you get a reputation for delivering exactly the book that was bought.
Each Chapter must have a BEGINNING, A MIDDLE and an END that echo the Beginning, Middle and End of the book. The BEGINNING always starts with the conflict joining -- with someone doing something. The Middle has to digest the actions from the beginning of the chapter, lay plans and launch initiatives that CHANGE THINGS at the end of the Chapter. The End of the Chapter is a cliffhanger -- an action where the initiative has changed hands, or threatens to change, implying strongly what the next event will be -- but leaving doubt in the reader's mind.
Each SCENE within the Chapter likewise has a beginning, middle, and end, each with that same QUALITY noted for the novel as a whole. (Review all the points in the Commentaries where Symmetry is noted. Symmetry is the key element. Chapters are symmetric with the whole novel. Scenes are symmetric to the Chapters.) A. E. Van Vogt had a rule for scene-length that always works -- 750 words per scene MAXIMUM (most much less), 7 lines per paragraph, never more.
In Theater, they call the scene structure that works best "Rising Action" -- even if nobody is doing anything physical, it's still called "Rising Action" as the situation becomes more and more tense, and more and more intense, the emotions RISE -- until at the end SOMETHING CHANGES leaving your reader hanging off a cliff, needing to know what happens next. That "something changes" is called a Climax. Each Chapter and each scene starts with a narrative hook and ends with a climax. It's best to end a chapter one sentence short of the resolutionof the climax -- that makes your book a "page turner."
The point of using the outline in this fashion (fleshing out the details right ahead of where you are, but not too far ahead) is to keep yourself interested, happy, Crafting your fantasy World as you go, exploring that world, intrigued, having fun showing off your world to your readers, and above all WRITING. Writing with your specific reader in mind -- writing TO a particular audience. You have something to say, and someone you really need to say it to -- and that will drive you over the slack points where energy flags.
This way of using an outline is the most powerful tool against writer's block -- and against getting bored while you work, or writing too short or too long, or falling off the conflict line and having to rewrite so many times you get sick of looking at the thing and never finish.
When you do the work with the outline as we've emphasized in this course, you always know exactly what comes next.
Even if you're sick, have a bad headache, have gone emotionally numb because of a personal crisis, or can only write 3-5 minutes at a stretch because you've got two sick kids on your hands -- you can still turn out the book on deadline. Oh, it might not be as good as it might have been had you been feeling better -- but it will be publishable prose. Maybe not brilliant, maybe not world-class, maybe not award-winning (but don't bet on that), and maybe not the best you'll ever do, but publishable.
Why? Because the outline will constrain you to the conflict line and the genre-formula. Sometimes the words flow beautifully -- sometimes you grind them out. But you can do the work even if the creative muse is totally blocked. Using this method, you don't depend on inspiration to create a novel. You don't have to feel like writing in order to write your day's quota. You are writing a novel ON PURPOSE not by accident -- and that is what makes a professional in any field. To make a living at anything, you must engage in purposive, goal-directed activity. This form of outlining provides that scaffolding for you.
This way of creating and using an outline is the tool that lets you make a living at writing, rather than selling an item now and then. This is the tool that convinces editors to give you a contract for a novel you haven't written yet. If you can do this kind of an outline, you can write the book - no doubt about it.
So write that novel and sell it -- and let us know when it will be published!
Examples for the Final Exam
Quiz for the Final Exam
Class Chats for the Final Exam
Required Reading for the Final Exam
See Beginner's Section -- this Assignment is the same for everyone.
Very often writers begin selling their work before they've finished learning the craft of writing. When that happens, it can put a huge strain on the writer's "life" -- sometimes a strain that causes them to stop writing for sale. The apparently basic beginner's material presented here, when mastered systematically as presented here, can relieve that strain.
Examples for Assignment 1
Quiz for Assignment 1
Class Chats for Assignment 1
Required Reading for Assignment 1
Assignment 2 -- Analyze 3 plots as to protag and conflict. You will turn in this Assignment for posting to the Student Showcase website by emailing it as an attached file to studentshowcase@simegen.com .
1. CHOOSE 3 stories to analyze for Protagonist or Hero and to Identify .
Follow directions and Required Reading for the Advanced section.
Examples for Assignment 2
Quiz for Assignment 2
Class Chats for Assignment 2
Required Reading for Assignment 2
Assignment 3: Create ONE original PROTAGONIST and ONE original CONFLICT that grows out of the PROTAGONIST's Character, showing that you have mastered Assignment 2 -- how the protagonist and the conflict must be related to each other.
Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced & Professional students do this one the same way. See Beginners instructions. Intermediate and Advanced students may go further than suggested here and attempt to RESOLVE the conflict they create. See Intermediate Instructions
Professionals should then see the Advanced instructions, and may want to create a scenario that plays out to a resolution in 3 separate genres. For example, a Romance professional might want to do a scenario involving an impossible match, and play it out in a)a vampire setting, b)Regency England, c) Civil War America.
An sf/f professional might want to do a scenario involving an apprentice or college student who has made a major scientific breakthrough but has no credibility -- whose work could save the world (solar system, galaxy, universe?) if only people would listen! Play that out in 3 settings: a)contemporary America, b)an Interstellar Federation, c) a Lost Colony on some isolated planet.
Note how the SETTING dictates the details of what the barrier-to-love would be, or what the scientific breakthrough would have to be. Note how the same theme can be used in each setting to produce a different, unique and original story, and how the theme dictates the details of the conflict that will resolve at the end of that story.
For maximum benefit, the professional should work with settings or genres in which s/he has not yet sold anything. Post the result to the current instructor or to the Independent Study Seminar Board.
See Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced sections for examples given within the text.
Quiz for Assignment 3
Class Chats for Assignment 3
Required Reading for Assignment 3
Plot-Character Integration &
Homework
The "Homework" mentioned above is not to be turned in.
Assignment 3 is to be turned in.
See Beginner's Section for instructions.
Examples for Assignment 4
Quiz for Assignment 4
Required Reading for Assignment 4
See Beginner's Section for
instructions.
Examples for Assignment 5
Quiz for Assignment 5
Class Chats for Assignment 5
Required Reading for Assignment 5
See Beginner's Section for instructions -- now we tackle INTERNAL conflict. Assignment 7 gets much harder.
For Assignment 6 the Professional who tackled Internal Conflict in Assignment 4 should now re-check the material produced for that Assignment to see if any further understanding of Internal Conflict has been achieved in Assignment 6. Assignment 7 synthesizes all these skills.
Mastering the manipulation of an outline using the elements of protag, antag, internal conflict, external conflict, resolution, theme beginning, middle, end will cut the production time for a novel drastically -- sometimes by one-third to one-half the time from idea to completed submission draft. Likewise, the use of these tools can cut the time from contract to publication by several months because the editor won't have to call for major revisions.
Being a professional is about making a profit on your time-invested. In low-paying genre fields, that means the professional making a living form writing must become very efficient at turning out words. These are the tools that the prolific writers use.
Examples for Assignment 6
Quiz for Assignment 6
Class Chats for Assignment 6
Required Reading for Assignment 6
Conflict and Thesis in Real Life by Jean Lorrah
Read instructions in Beginner's section, then do the following:
Do the Beginner's Assignment Intermediate Assignment and Advanced Assignment THEN:
ASSIGNMENT 7 - Professional Level
For the MOST ADVANCED level of this Assignment, start by throwing away everything you know about your favorite unsellable universe conception. Now, re-invent it all anew, from scratch.
This should be material you've had in the drawer, un-looked at, for at least 7 to 10 years. DO NOT LOOK AT ANYTHING you've written before. Pretend the ms was burned up or eaten by your cat. Re-imagine it from scratch. Capture that feeling you wanted to imbue the material with -- and use the tools you've learned in this course to create that emotion.
That, by the way, is how Marion Zimmer Bradley sold the first Darkover novel, Sword of Aldones. She had been writing a thing she called "The Seveners" for fanzines and friends for years and years. One year, she took that material, discarded MOST of it, and re-invented around it the material we know as "Darkover" today. And after decades of writing Darkover, she came to a point in evolution as a writer when that original novel, Sword of Aldones, seemed too flawed, too juvenile, too illogical to her adult eyes. So she threw out the PUBLISHED and much reprinted novel, and recreated it from scratch to be what it would have been had she the skills then that she has now. That second beginning novel for the Darkover Series (Sharra's Exile) is exactly the same story, but completely different.
Study the two novels, Sharra's Exile and Sword of Aldones (which isn't in print anymore, but had many, many printings and editions so you should be able to find a copy) contrast compare, analyse. See how they're related.
Now go do the same sort of rewrite to your own material.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Examples for Assignment 7
Quiz for Assignment 7
Class Chats for Assignment 7
Required Reading for Assignment 7
Follow all the instructions delineated under the Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced/Professional sections, but pay special attention to the Extra Credit Suggestions.
The Professional should analyze the Extra Credit suggestions to discover their purpose and invent different versions of those suggestions targeted specifically at the areas pertinent to their own career development. Take this general course and make it specific to your own area.
Remember, writing is a performing art -- and such arts are mastered only by teaching them. The Professional Final Exam is to execute this final exam in its entirety on all three levels of accomplishment in such a way as to make it a document from which others who are taking this course will learn.
Such a document should turn out to be a novel which you can sell -- and when that happens, we do want to hear about it and link to it.
Examples for the Final Exam
Quiz for the Final Exam
Class Chats for the Final Exam
Required Reading for the Final Exam
Search amazon.com for your favorite author or book title.
SEARCH ENGINE for simegen.com : Find anything on simegen.com. Register Today Go To Writers Section Return to Sime~Gen Inc. Explore Sime~Gen Fandom Science Fiction Writers of America Free Professional novels are to be found on http://www.bb.com
Feedback about technical problems with this site.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
This Page Was Last Updated 03/14/05 02:47 PM EST (USA) |