August 20th, 2010%
Some stories only have beginnings. No middle. No end. Nothing actually happens in your story, but you don’t know this until you start telling it.
- You begin with a little build-up.
“You’re not going to believe this” or “I know what you mean, there’s this place just like that.”
- You take a few seconds to find the beginning.
“So I was there a few years ago, but this place was . . . “
- You finish describing the people, place, and why you were there.
“Yeah, and . . .”
- Awkward pause. Skip to next beginning.
“Hey, have you ever been to . . . “
Telling stories is a shared experience. When we start sharing experiences, the story doesn’t have a middle or end because the conversation dictates where it goes.
Ideas get explored. Perspectives coalesce. Stories stop when the audience doesn’t connect.
August 12th, 2010%
When I start to believe that the last bits of my Gin are sticking to the ice cubes, I officially have the killer instinct of a security guard when it comes to wit and humor.
- Honest and serious can be funny: This is a good drink, but you already know that. (optional smolder for emphasis)
- Funny is sometimes funny: Please make this drink a little stronger. Unfortunately, English is my first language. (optional glance at date, then eye contact with server)
- Trying to be funny is never funny unless everyone is already laughing: Those drinks were so good, I’d date myself. (you are the only one laughing, but keep laughing and say the next thing that comes to you)
Being funny is like dancing. Telling a story is like walking. I’m not sure how to explain it, but you might know what I mean.
August 6th, 2010%
I enjoy learning how a character thinks through dialogue rather than narration.
In her introduction to Plato’s Five Great Dialogues, Louise R. Loomis summarizes Plato’s solution to how we can discover knowledge that is true:
Our sense impressions, taken alone, are misleading and superficial and tell us nothing about the real nature of the things around us. Common opinion, grounded as it is on sensation, hearsay, and habit, cannot be trusted as a guide to truth. But through our reason we may arrive at what may be rightfully called true knowledge and understanding. Through reason we may use our sense experiences and memories of past experiences as material for a process of analysis, classification, and synthesis that bit by bit builds up for us a pattern of permanent, invisible order behind the perplexing panorama which is all that our sense alone perceive.
This conversation from His Girl Friday or this conversation from Born Yesterday, which were both written as plays and then adapted for film, use character reasoning to communicate a true knowledge within the context of the story.
July 28th, 2010%
Our goal is to bring the reader into the story, not to confuse them. Readers need stability. Writers have concrete details. Then, things get a little crazy when we start to write.
For example, how would a writer move the reader through this scene from Roma, a film by Frederico Fellini, while retaining pace and energy?
Dialogue, observations, thoughts, and actions can be the source of order or unpredictability as we seek to recreate the scene. Tension can be created, but we need to manage it using all the tricks of craft.
As writers, our budget for special effects is unbounded, but our ability to handle complexity limits our access to the reader’s imagination. Film directors have their boundaries. We have ours.
July 25th, 2010%
An assumption. A lack of interest. An unwelcome introduction. A hopeful suspicion. Polite conversation presses you against the elbows and knees of reality.
I find myself apologizing. Your dull life. Your impossible blindness to the most obvious and mundane truths of your existence. I am so sorry. What can I do?
And so I make your life more interesting by reconstructing it with questions. I agree directly and disagree indirectly. I smile when you do. Eventually, you remember something significant or launch a defense.
Polite conversation is the perfect trap for sarcasm–sometimes its only saving grace.
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Writer Loop Official Photographer Jenny Hoover currently lives in Bellingham, WA.
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