Writing / Storytelling Posts

Some successful authors attribute at least some of their success to playing Dungeons and Dragons.

“Those three years playing D&D at boarding school did more to ground me in storytelling, plot construction, and sheer, raw imaginative throughput than any other single activity of my life. Today I’m a successful fantasy and science fiction novelist with ten novels and over two hundred short stories in print or on the way. I might have gotten to this point by a different path, but it would not have been the same journey,”
-Jay Lake, author of ten novels.

“On a base level-and I’m saying this as a professional educator & curriculum designer-it’s great for getting kids to realize there’s a world beyond their own, and to put yourself in another world or make yourself think like somebody you’d never be. One of the nerdiest, most non-physical people I knew would always be a fighter or a ninja. But there’s something more than that: it reminds you of old-fashioned sitting-around-the-fire-and-storytelling, word-of-mouth stories.”
-Matthue Roth

Good to know I didn’t waste all of those hundreds of hours in college.
_____

Links

Writers reminisce about Dungeons & Dragons via io9

I just started using both physical and digital index cards in order to plan out the next sequence of The Winchcombe scenes, and I found them surprisingly useful.

(Some background: I’m using a television series metaphor when thinking about The Winchcombe. Each comic is a “scene”. Scenes that tell a relatively self-contained story are then collected into “Episodes”, I’m envisioning around 20 to 25 scenes will make up an episode.)

I used physical cards to quickly capture a scene with a line of description. In the upper right corner, I encoded some information:

1. a letter A, B, C, or D to associate the card with a storyline
2. A location
3. The main character’s name

Then I captured some ideas for what would happen in each scene. Critical beats. Location information. Sequences of events. The cards were handy here because I just carried them in my pocket with my pen and notepad, so whenever I had a spare moment, I could pull them out and work on them anywhere to catch those fleeting ideas.

When it came time to assemble the scenes into an episode, I was able to lay all the cards out on my table and arrange them however I wanted. I did this in a couple of ways:

1. by storyline, so I could easily see where I was missing a scene or had one too many
2. in order of appearance, in order to get a sense of the flow of the episode as a whole

I then transferred the pertinent information to Scrivener. I then used the index card interface to break down each scene into panels. Doing this gave me a very interesting and useful sense of really looking at panels when composing a scene (click on the image for a better look).

But I’m not the only one with things to say about writing and index cards. Screenwriter John August has 10 tips for using index cards:

1. Keep it short. Maximum seven words per card.
2. A card represents a story point, be it a scene or a sequence. You don’t need a card for every little thing.
3. Keep cards general enough that they can be rearranged. (“Battle in swamp” rather than “Final showdown”)
4. Horizontal (a table or counter) often works better than a vertical (a corkboard).
5. Post-It notes make good alternative index cards.
6. Consider a letter code for which characters are featured in the sequence. Helpful for figuring out who’s missing.
7. Most movies can be summarized in less than 50 cards.
8. Cards are cheap. Don’t hesitate to rework them.
9. Consider a second color for action sequences. Helps show the pacing.
10. Write big. You want to be able to read them from a distance.

Links

10 hints for index cards (JohnAugust.com)

This is yet another bit of encouragement (for you AND me) to put that Netflix account to good use and start breaking open your favorite movies and feasting on all the storytelling goodness that’s hidden inside.

Watch the first scene, then pause the DVD.

Now write the generic mission of what you just saw.

For example, the first scene in the film version of The Cider House Rules is a train arriving in a remote location during a snow storm. But don’t write that down.

For this exercise you’d write: establishes location.

The next few scenes of that film are quick cuts – a montage, really – to familiarize the viewer with the orphanage, which is the stage upon which this drama will unfold. For this, you’d write: montage, establishes setting and dramatic stage.

Do this for every scene in the film. Remember, the idea is to stay as generic as possible.

Your notes will be bullets, rather than sentences.

They’ll look like this

- meet the protagonist;

- see where hero works;

- glimpse of hero’s inner demon and backstory;

- suspicious character, possible foreshadowing;

- antagonist appears, but hero unaware of danger;

- hero is unhappy, but hiding it;

… and so on.

I really want to start doing this regularly. I kind of do it now, in my head, but usually only get through the first 15 minutes of the show, and then I get sucked in and forget to pay attention.

Links

The Most Powerful Two Hours You’ll Ever Spend as a Storyteller