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yWriter 4

October 23, 2008 by in category Archives

By Stephanie Shackelford

According to its creator, Hal Spacejock, yWriter 4 is “. . . a word processor which breaks your novel into chapters and scenes. It will not write your novel for you, suggest plot ideas or perform creative tasks of any kind. It does help you keep track of your work, leaving your mind free to create.”
(http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter4.html)

I’m here to say he’s right! It really does help me organize, structure and keep track of all those pesky details as I create my interesting, compelling, everyone-is-screaming-for-them stories.

Currently, I am wrestling with a behemoth of a project so I can start marketing it. I’m what is often called a pantser. I write “by the seat of my pants”. That’s actually how I do almost everything (my husband hates that I can never reproduce a recipe exactly; I think it makes dinnertime an adventure). The problem with being a pantser writer, though, is that I so often end up with a huge pile of scenes, some meandering plot and, if I’m lucky, the beginnings of a grand finale showdown. There comes a time when I have to structure those scenes into a coherent, compelling plot that brings everything to a satisfying conclusion. (At least that is the theory.)

That’s where yWriter shines for me. My 2nd draft (and 3rd and 7th!) is often more of a “putting together a puzzle” event. As I play with the various scenes, I’ll realize one needs to be in the beginning of the story even though I have it written as part of the ending. Or what I thought was a great lead-in to the finale actually will make a better hook for the first chapter. This process becomes a nightmare with Word. I either have one behemoth manuscript or way too many little ones. And let’s not even mention how to name all those little files. Labeling chapters 1, 2, 3 at this point is the process in ludicrous. I’ve tried it. It totally confuses me and eventually turns the story into a pile of mush in my brain.

Enter yWriter! yWriter is perfect for this restructuring! I can create as many chapters as I want and as many scenes as I think I need in each chapter. Each chapter or scene has places to enter a multitude of information. There is a place to note description, point of view, tools, location and so much more. And when I decide I want scene 3 from chapter 6 to become scene 6 in chapter 1, all I have to do is drag and drop and all that info goes to its new home. Oh and when I write the scene, yWriter keeps track of the words.

I’m still finding new things to track, but mostly I use yWriter to organize my story. There are countless ways to do that (and I’m sure I’ll find another one before long), but for now I am using a hybrid of the Hero’s Journey and Michael Hague’s Six-Stage Plot Structure. I listened to a workshop he and Chris Vogler presented that merged the two systems in a way that made so much sense to me. Basically, they presented the Hero as having an inner and outer “journey”. Just the renaming of the steps helped me to see more clearly what should be happening at certain times of the story.

My beginning attempt to structure my project into a story starts with creating 12 chapters. Eventually, they will be transformed into something more conventional, but for this first organizational step, I start with chapters labeled according to the 12 Stages of The Inner and Outer Hero’s Journey. (I put these in the description section so they are easier to see at a glance.) Chapter 1 is “Ordinary World” and “Limited Awareness of Problem”; Chapter 2 is “Call to Adventure” and “Increased Awareness of Need for Change”; Chapter 3 is “Refusal of the Call” and Fear: Resistance to Change”; and so on to Chapter 12, “Return with Elixir” and “Mastery”.

I scrutinize each of the scenes in my behemoth puzzle and start the process of determining how important it is to the story and where it should be placed. As I rearrange the scenes, the story come into better focus. I can more easily see what needs to happen when. I recognize which scenes don’t belong anywhere in the story. I can easily determine the purpose of each scene. I can write any pertinent notes (“mentor needs to change and be a fool” or “hero is afraid of change here-make that clear!”). I can copy and paste the scene into its place (or type it directly into the program). And, if I change my mind, I can easily drag and drop an entire scene, with all its notes, to another section of the document.

When I have all the scenes arranged in the order I think they best tell the story, I start editing and rewriting. Sometimes I write directly into yWriter, sometimes I write in Word and copy/paste when the scene is finished. I progress through each scene, editing, layering in emotion or description or backstory. As each scene is “fixed”, I change its status, another of those choices available in yWriter (choices are: outline, draft, 1st edit, 2nd edit, done). It’s easy to see at a glance where I am in the story and to track my progress through the weeks. One of the last steps is to create and rename the chapters more conventionally. I often do this as a part of the editing process, renaming to numerical chapters, creating new chapters and dragging and dropping scenes as desired. The final step, after everything is edited, organized and labeled, is to export it into a Word document and do any last-minute touches before sending it to all those publishers vying for it. 🙂

However you chose to organize you book, yWriter can simplify the process. And the price in right! Free. We writers can be so generous at times. Thanks, Hal Spacejock, for a great piece of organization software!

(Update: Because life, for me, never stays the same (I’m a lifestyle pantser), I’m now playing around with yet another way to organize stories. And yWriter is making it easy to experiment with the 15 “beats” that Blake Snyder discusses in his book, “Save the Cat”. But that is the topic for another day. LOL)

Stephanie Shackelford has been creating characters and stories about them for as long as she can remember. In high school (a million and a half years ago), her brother’s English assignment opened her eyes to the idea that she could actually write them down for others to enjoy. She has hundreds of scenes and stories and tall tales in various stages of completion on her computer, stored in boxes, or lost forever. It’s time to share some of these stories with the rest of the world. Storytime, anyone?

http://www.RoutinesForWriters.com/
http://StephanieandHerThoughts.blogspot.com

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CHOICES

October 19, 2008 by in category Archives tagged as

Monica Stoner, Member at Large
A story has been making the rounds recently about the profound influence the choices we make in our lives have on our future. The main character of the story is a man who makes the decision to be happy every day, no matter what. Even after a horrific accident, he decides to not only live, but to bring his positive attitude to everyone around him.

How can this apply to our lives as writers? We make a choice every time we put words on paper. We can choose to put off writing until later. We can choose to write to our lowest level since we think no one beyond our critique partners will ever read it. We can fret over every word, searching for perfection from the very beginning. Or we can find our personal special place in our minds, letting us get the words on the page.

We make that same choice when we critique or judge others writing. Do we hunt for every possible error, or do we look for the story under the writing? Do we toss the work aside because it starts in the most boring, banal fashion possible, or do we hunt for that perfect opening line? Most of all do we come away from these readings with a better sense of purpose in our own writing?

To think of always entering a room with a positive attitude takes us back to lessons from childhood. Turn that frown upside down and walk on the sunny side of the street. Banal then, boring now. Except how many grumpy gloomy people attract anyone not grumpier or gloomier than themselves? Not many. Try leaving the gloomy side in the car, at the gate, packed up in a box for a couple of days, and see how much easier life can be. Is writing any easier? Well, I got this blog done, which is more than I=ve managed on my down with everything days!

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On Finishing the Damn Book

October 15, 2008 by in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Java Plots by marianne h donley tagged as , ,

by Marianne H. Donley

I am taking an online class titled Fast Draft. The idea behind the class is to send your internal editor on vacation. Somewhere nice, of course, like the East Coast where she can bask in the fall colors and leave you the heck alone. Then you’re supposed to write twenty pages a day for two weeks. (For those of you who don’t want to do the math this early in the morning, that would be two hundred eighty pages.) You aren’t supposed to pay the less bit of attention to the quality of your written pages, here quantity only counts.

It was actually working pretty well there for a while. I will admit that I struggled to get twenty pages completed each day, but I was getting much more writing done. Since the start of the class, I’ve been averaging about ten pages a day. Before the class, I would be thrilled with three. No internal editor in sight. When an idea for tweaking an earlier chapter popped into my head, I made a note of it and then forged on.

Then we went to the Poconos on Saturday. What was I thinking? The Poconos are on the East Coast. Yes, the fall colors were beautiful, but the place was just crawling with internal editors. I think at least six of them hitched a ride home with us. Now, they’re crowded into my little writing cubby, whispering things.

Internal editor #1: That first scene in chapter six. You must be joking.

Internal editor #2: But we can tell you how to fix it.

Internal editor #3 It really isn’t funny. It doesn’t move the story forward.

Internal editor #4: Wait, chapter six is fine. Can we talk about the ending of chapter seven? Can we say weak? WEAK!

Internal editor #5: What the heck happened to the dog in chapter four? First she was there barking and then she disappeared. You have to go back and explain what happened to the dog. Short fix. It won’t take you long, a sentence here, a bark there. Two or three hours at the most. You know if you don’t do it now, you’ll forget all about it.

Internal editor #6: No offence, in that scene you just wrote, your heroine is acting like a twit. But I can tell you how to fix it. All you have to do is rewrite her scene from the hero’s POV, so instead of her just cleaning things up, he’s searching for clues. Clues are much better than cleaning.

I don’t think all of the internal editors who hopped into the car are mine. Some of them could be yours. If so, I wish you would call them home. I have to get rid of them, especially the ones who don’t belong to me. I enjoy writing a lot of pages each day and I don’t like all the whispering going on while I write. Sending them on vacation didn’t work for long. Yet, I don’t want to do anything too drastic like tossing them in the septic tank. While that would help get pages done, I really wouldn’t want to work with them after they lived in that environment. In addition, I suspect they won’t be too happy about the whole situation. Since I want to make use of them later when the first draft is done I really don’t want them mad at me. I suspect living in the septic for any length of time would make them all a bit grumpy.

So I’ve decided to give them all sleeping pills in this morning’s coffee. These are going to be long lasting magic sleeping pills, sort of like apple Sleeping Beauty ate (which I guess makes me the wicked witch, but I can deal with that). They are going to stay asleep until I write the magic words “The End” on that last page. So if I have YOUR internal editor hanging around, you might want to get her out of here before breakfast, otherwise she won’t be working until the end of November.

Marianne Donley writes quirky murder mysteries fueled by her life as a mom and a teacher. She makes her home in Pennsylvania with her supportive husband Dennis and two loveable but bad dogs. Her grown children have respectfully asked her to use a pen name, which she declined on the grounds that even if some of their more colorful misdeeds make it into her plots, who would know the books are fiction. Besides, they weren’t exactly worried about publicly humiliating her while growing up.

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ME AND THE DUKE

October 13, 2008 by in category Archives tagged as ,


By Bobbie Cimo

Elvis Presley might have been known as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Michael Jackson as the Prince of Pop and James Brown as the Godfather of Soul. But way back when, in the good ole movie cowboy days, (so long ago, that I was a brunette), there was a tall, rugged actor, by the name of John Wayne, who had a title of his own. It was the “Duke”.

His real name was Marion Robert Morrison, but when his parents decided to name his younger brother Robert they changed his to Marion Michael. But it was the local fireman who saw him walking to school every day with his huge Airedale Terrier dog, Duke, that gave him the nickname of “Little Duke”. Because he preferred Duke to Marion, (and who wouldn’t) the name stuck for the rest of his life. As far as his stage name, John Wayne, that was decided by a director and a studio head, when he wasn’t even present.

I’m going to digress a little here and tell you about a cartoon that I had once cut out and taped to the inside of our kitchen cabinet when I was younger. It was of two Indian chiefs positioned on top of a mountain ridge, sitting on their horses, looking down at their warriors fighting cowboys and the Cavalry. One chief turns to the other and the caption reads, “If John Wayne is down there, I’m not going.” And I think that’s how we all felt, growing up on the Duke‘s movies. Off camera and on he seemed indestructible. According to Wikipedia Encyclopedia, he epitomized rugged masculinity and was considered an enduring American icon. It also states he was famous for his distinctive voice, walk and physical presence. All which I can attest to, since I got to meet him.

In the early days of television, when there were a lot of variety shows on the air, we (the employees of CBS) would spend our lunch hours, brown bagging it, while watching rehearsals in the studios. I think back then the celebrities were much more sociable and approachable than they are today. So it wasn’t uncommon to have the weekly guest star, rather then hide themselves away in their dressing room, to sit in the bleachers with us common folk and watch others rehearse–even though they weren’t needed on the set. It was kind of professional courtesy to watch one another’s work.

Which brings me back to how I met the Duke. I had wandered down to the Red Skelton set just to see what was going on. The crew was always friendly there, and it was safe, as long as I didn’t enter during “The Dirty Hour”. This is a well known inside Hollywood fact, that as much of a beloved clown Red was, he did have a side to him, that could make a sailor blush when he would put on his private shows for his cast and crew members.

I was very young when I started with CBS and nobody ever bothered to warn me about “Dirty Hour”. Unfortunately, I accidentally found out about it on my own. I should have caught on when I saw I was the only woman in the audience. And if Red was bad on his own, having Martha Raye as his guest, only made him even more incorrigible. Once he and Martha were up on stage, I found myself trapped in my chair. I was too embarrassed to get up, so I just sunk down low and kept praying the floor would swallow me up…it didn’t. The cast and crew loved them both, and I vowed never to return during The Dirty Hour and I never did. I can’t say all the guest stars participated in this show for the crew, but Martha sure did. Actually, she was worse than Red.

It was during normal rehearsal when I wandered down to the Red Skelton set and sat behind a tall, elderly, bald man, who was quietly reading, going through a script. It wasn’t until he got up and headed towards the back of the studio for some coffee, did I realize it was The Duke, without his hairpiece. And like a puppy, I got up and followed him. He was very unpretentious, as he stood alone, in the back of the studio, drinking his coffee.

Because I was new to California– fresh out of high school, and a dork, I carried my autograph book everywhere I went.

Standing next to him, the 6’4” star towered over me. And even though without a hairpiece, he resembled a bald eagle, his face was still ruggedly handsome and there was a twinkle in his eyes. When I asked him if he would sign my book, he couldn’t have been nicer when he answered, “Well, sure.” When he asked me my name, I told him, Barbara, (my formal name). Wanting to make sure he heard me correctly, he bellowed my name back to me,
B-A-R-B-A-R-A. And for a brief moment, I thought God was speaking to me.

Because he was so nice, I didn’t hesitate the next day to bring my camera to work. This time the Duke was all dressed in his cowboy garb, complete with hat and hairpiece. He truly looked like the John Wayne that I knew from the movies. And when I asked him if I could take a picture with him, he quickly obliged…except I made the mistake of standing on his bad side. And without any warning, he said to me, “Not that side, this side,” and with one swift movement, the man had picked me up with one arm and swept me over to his good side. The picture was snapped and the light bulb went off. The American icon of the silver screen, using the back of hand, wiped his eyes with his knuckles and then grumbled, “Damn light bulb, can blind ya” I guess, I should have responded with, “Whoa, take ’er easy there pilgrim”…but I didn’t.

We said our friendly goodbyes and I wish I could say like a true hero he rode off into the sunset, but he didn’t–instead, like a true professional, he walked onto the set.

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Writer-Person Digs Deep

October 3, 2008 by in category Archives tagged as , ,

by Cait London

We all have life-lint, memories/incidents/visual scenes that attach to us while we travel through our lives. Bits of our lives remain quietly attached to the writer, waiting to be tapped and used in a unique story.

Question: Are there really unique stories?
Answer: While certain underlying elements can be common, each writer’s style and life experiences create a unique story. Repeat: We are each unique with our own stories.

IMHO, the best stories are built from scratch, from digging around within our collection of life experiences. To start from a pre-made story line (i.e. Secret Baby) is not digging deep, not exploring the who/what/why layers, though the final story may fall within that pre-made category. For instance, in developing my psychic triplet trilogy, (FOR HER EYES ONLY* is an Oct 2008 release) I basically understood how a mother relates to her daughters, and how those daughters relate to each other (well, not in the psychic sense J). Or as Kathleen Eagle says, “I’m selling them off in pieces.”

Sponge-like, the writer absorbs everything around him. My best story lines came while sitting in waiting rooms. Or traveling. The feel of the story locations came from actually visiting Montana, Lake Michigan, and Lexington, KY, the psychic triplets’ homes. Since I am basically artistic (a trait common to many writers), the handbags, sculptures, and jewelry designs were fun to fictionally create. I love Celtic jewelry and an ancient brooch is spotlighted in the psychic triplets’ story arc. Runes and Vikings have long intrigued me, as have psychic-seer elements. In short, much of Me is chocked within my novels.

Our own life experiences can be fictionalized. Just for fun, let’s bump them up, taking them to another dimension. Here’s mine (these can make a fun bio):
Landscape Designer (I’ve planted a few roses in my day.)
Interior Decorator (I’ve painted walls, shoved furniture around.)
CEO (I run my household.)
Technical Engineer (I can use a television remote.)
Chef (Pots and pans manager.)
Lighting Engineer (I change light bulbs.)
Director of Security (I lock the house doors.)
Director of Finances (I pay bills and budget.)

While that’s fun, it’s also a serious examination. When you actually make a list of what you do throughout the day, it’s quite long and filled with great story-fodder. Tap into yourself. Use You.


Cait London’s OCC writer series began last month. Visit CaitLondon.com for more on craft. FOR HER EYES ONLY, the conclusion of her psychic trilogy is an October 2008 release.
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