Archive for August, 2009
New Article Up at Ezine Articles
Monday, August 31st, 2009
I wrote a new, and more precise, article about the different sorts of poetic meter:
“Understanding Poetry — Accentual-Syllabic, Syllabic, and Accentual Meters”
This article is posted at Ezinearticles.com, and you can republish it if you follow their terms of service.
Writing Software: TreePad
Monday, August 31st, 2009
I do my writing in a program called TreePad.
TreePad is a hierarchical information manager with an organizing tree on the side, and a pane for articles. In the article pane you can also put links, graphics, and so on. In the TreePad Lite, the freeware edition, you’re limited in how much text you can put in the article pane. I use TreePad Business Edition, and in that version, the article pane will hold vast quantities of text.
Here’s a screenshot of my fantasy poem in progress. (Click on the thumbnail to see a full-sized image.) As you can see, I can keep different versions of scenes I’ve edited and easily find them; I can also keep fragments, partials, or differing versions of scenes I’m working on. (There’s a wordcount utility called ‘Article Statistics’ under the Edit menu, by the way.)
TreePad screenshot of fantasy poem
And here’s a screenshot of a story I was working on with the aid of someone else’s map. I created a story-planning section in the tree, and pasted the map right into an article.
TreePad screenshot: a story with notes and a map
Sigurd the Volsung: New Upload
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
I’ve uploaded a new section of the unabridged version of William Morris’ epic poem The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs.
I’ve also added Genreality and Storyfix.com to my Link page.
Story Structure
Sunday, August 30th, 2009
I got hung up while writing the next scene of my fantasy poem Dragon Winter. I think it’s necessary for continuity, but dramatically it was falling flat. I wasn’t sure why. I think I may have a handle on it, now, however.
I was idly reading Genreality (recommended for writers) when I came across a post briefly discussing author Larry Brooks’ Story Structure series, which begins, on his own Storyfix blog, with an article titled “Story Structure — Just Possibly the Holy Grail of Storytelling.”
Brooks discusses the structure of screenplays and novels; he uses concepts and some terminology often applied to the former. Some of this isn’t new to me: I’ve read it before. But the typical three act structure concepts of ‘rising action,’ ‘turning point,’ and ‘falling action’ do nothing for me. Neither did Syd Field’s stuff, last time I looked at it. I understand the ideas in theory, but in practice they’ve never generated a single concrete thought about any story I was trying to write.
Brooks doesn’t explain his concepts in the same way. Instead of talking about rising and falling action, he discusses the dramatic milestones in terms of information presented — what do the reader or the hero know, and when do they learn it? That does map to the way I think about plot and presentation, so I stayed up very late Friday night reading the whole series and taking notes. I’ve spent today contemplating the application of Brooks’ principles to Dragon Winter, and making an outline of how my existing scenes map to the crucial points he discusses. It’s been highly educational, if mildly dismaying.
The middle of Dragon Winter is structurally OK.
The first half probably needs significant revision, for a couple of reasons:
- My characters pulled a fast one on me. It’s only in writing the last scene I finished, well past the halfway point of the story, that I realized that the male main character and the female main character are betrothed. I wish they’d tell me these things earlier, darn it.
- I actually hit a fair number of the points Brooks mentioned for the early part of the story, but not all, and they’re not necessarily in order. With the new relationship between the main characters, I can see how putting them in order and developing the missing stuff would strengthen the story.
There are a couple of scenes that I’ll need to chop up and rewrite, but most of the revision should be adding new material. I’m blanching a bit at the idea of revising, because I’ve been working on this story for so long already.
I’m probably going to keep writing forward from here, although I may go back and work on earlier scenes before I get to the end of the story if I have a particular idea for a new scene, or if I need time to distance myself from a later scene.
I don’t think all good short stories follow Brooks’ whole pattern (he’s talking about novels and screenplays, not shorts), but Dragon Winter is elaborate enough that it possibly will, and possibly should. I’m not going to swear to it. But I think I see in what way pulling closer to the pattern would improve the beginning of the story. And I think that not being consciously aware of the whole pattern — but knowing that something was wrong — is what’s been giving me trouble with these scenes at the end.
I’ve done a lot of work and a lot of learning over the past couple of weeks. I’m optimistic.
Free Agent: Jeremy Duns’ Spy Novel
Friday, August 21st, 2009
I’ve just read Free Agent, Jeremy Duns’ debut novel. I recommend it to fans of John Le Carré, Graham Greene, and Len Deighton.
I’m familiar with spy stories of two different stripes. In the first sort, there may be moral difficulties, but fundamentally we’re rooting for a hero. The second sort — exemplified most conspicuously by Le Carré and Greene — gives us a morally bleak environment where the characters have long since lost any idealism they might have had, where pragmatism rules the day. Free Agent is more the second of story.
It differs from Le Carré and Greene in two important respects. First, it’s fast-paced — more like the typical Deighton book, in pacing. Second, it has some darned good plot twists — it’s twistier than the aforementioned authors’ books tend to be. I prefer Duns’ writing, overall.
Here’s a link to the all-important writing sample.
The author tells me that his second book, Free Country, will come out next year. I’m anticipating it with interest.
Thinking About a Science Fiction Story
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
I want to write tonight, but I want a break from Dragon Winter. I’ve been contemplating a science fiction story I have an editorial request for, but haven’t written successfully even though I’ve started it several times. After some time away, and reading some short stories, I’ve concluded that the problem is the plot. To wit: there’s nothing technically wrong with the plot, but it has an element I don’t actually like. Lots of luck getting cooperation from my backbrain writing it.
I need to fix the plot.
Whew! Back in Sight on Google
Friday, August 14th, 2009
It seems that Google didn’t like parts of my page recode, and this site dropped way down in the search ranks for ‘fantasy poetry’ for a bit. I fixed the probably-offending parts and applied for reconsideration. I’m back on the front page of results for ‘fantasy poetry,’ so I guess the recode was the problem.
I’ve noticed that the way Wordpress generates URLs, several references that look different will end up pointing to the same page, which makes for messy search results. Tonight I wrote a robots.txt file intended to keep the blog from generating different URLs for the same page. I’m not sure I’ve got the right approach for it, though. I probably won’t really know until the spider crawls the site again.
Got a lot to learn yet.
New Material: Sigurd Slayeth Fafnir the Serpent
Friday, August 14th, 2009
I’m going to start noting whenever I make significant changes to the rest of the website.
Tonight I uploaded William Morris’ The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs, Book 2, Part 7: Sigurd Slayeth Fafnir the Serpent.
The Ballad of the White Horse
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
I’m going to work on Dragon Winter tonight, rather than writing a lengthy post. In the meantime, let me take the opportunity to recommend G.K. Chesterton’s narrative poemThe Ballad of the White Horse. It’s about Alfred the Great and his struggle with the Vikings, and it rocks.
If I could write like this—!
“Mother of God,” the wanderer said,
“I am but a common king,
Nor will I ask what saints may ask,
To see a secret thing.
“The gates of heaven are fearful gates
Worse than the gates of hell;
Not I would break the splendours barred
Or seek to know the thing they guard,
Which is too good to tell.
“But for this earth most pitiful,
This little land I know,
If that which is for ever is,
Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,
Seeing the stranger go?
“When our last bow is broken, Queen,
And our last javelin cast,
Under some sad, green evening sky,
Holding a ruined cross on high,
Under warm westland grass to lie,
Shall we come home at last?”
And a voice came human but high up,
Like a cottage climbed among
The clouds; or a serf of hut and croft
That sits by his hovel fire as oft,
But hears on his old bare roof aloft
A belfry burst in song.
“The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gain,
The heaviest hind may easily
Come silently and suddenly
Upon me in a lane.
“And any little maid that walks
In good thoughts apart,
May break the guard of the Three Kings
And see the dear and dreadful things
I hid within my heart.
“The meanest man in grey fields gone
Behind the set of sun,
Heareth between star and other star,
Through the door of the darkness fallen ajar,
The council, eldest of things that are,
The talk of the Three in One.
“The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gold,
Men may uproot where worlds begin,
Or read the name of the nameless sin;
But if he fail or if he win
To no good man is told.
“The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.
“The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.
“The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.
“The wise men know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green wine
And sick of crimson seas.
“But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.
“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
“Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?”
New Epic Poetry Title
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
I’m calling the poem Dragon Winter. I’m not nearly as fond of that as I was of The Winds of Winter, but it does a reasonably good job of telling the reader what the story’s about, and I need to make a change quickly.
I’ve updated all, or almost all, the references in this journal and on the rest of the site.
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