Putting your Story's Plot in Order #BYBin30

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

I had an experience today that made me think about the order in which we tell stories. For instance, if you were telling someone about how you fell off a deck and injured your foot, you could explain what you were doing on the deck, what happened to cause you to fall, about the fall itself and then about the results of the fall.

Of course, you could just say "I fell off the deck." That much information would let people know what happened in a very simplistic way, but it wouldn't be very interesting to them, and they would probably ask questions.

You could say, "I have a sprained ankle, because I fell off a deck," and then go on to explain the details of why you were on the deck and how you fell, which would change the order of the story.

But there are times when changing the order of what you are telling is not a good idea. And other times when changing the order of a story can change the tension in the story or change or the over-all mood and tone of the story.

And now I'll tell you a bit about what happened to me today which got me thinking about the order in which we tell stories.

Some of you know that, back on March 5th, I had a cyst on my ovary, the ovary on the same side as the cyst and the fallopian tube on that side removed, along with a biopsy done on some tissue taken from the lining in my uterus. Today, I had a follow-up appointment.

It was a new (to me) doctor.

Doctor: "Unfortunately, we found something we were not expecting when we examined the mass that we removed."

(long pause while I start to freak out)

"It wasn't a cyst. It was a borderline ovarian tumour."

(another long pause while I REALLY start to freak out)

"Let me stress that it is NOT cancer."

Me (in my head): Dude, LEAD with "It's not cancer"!!!

So for a little while after that appointment, I was feeling emotional because for a brief moment in time, I thought I was being told I had cancer. (I'm so relieved it's not though!)

And this is just one example of how the order in which you tell things in the story can change the entire mood of the story.

Have you changed the tone in your story by changing the order in which you tell the events in it? Let me know in the comments!

Making your Story Unique #BYBin30

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

I mentioned an idea for a story that came to me in dream to someone and she pointed out that she had seen an episode on one of the shows she watched that had a similar plot. I looked it up, and she was correct. The plot was similar to the story that I had dreamed up.

It's actually quite rare to come up with a story-line that is truly unique. While you shouldn't purposely use someone else's story plot, it is nearly impossible to come up with a plot that hasn't already been done before. What makes the story unique isn't the plot itself but how you tell the story. Yes, you need to make the plot as unique to your story as you can. Add-in to the plot, give it different subplots, give it characters with personalities that you have imagined for them. Your story needs to show your ideas and use the ideas from your imagination, and those ideas will be unique to you.

Yes, someone might have already done a story, for instance, of a witch's spell that goes wrong that splits someone else into two identical people with two distinct personalities of good and bad. But what if the person split in two is a celebrity? And what if letting the "bad" personality loose on the world creates the risk of creating a scandal for that celebrity? And what if the witch isn't really a witch but a new-to-the-religion Wicca who found a very old book of spells of unknown origins and that spell book has a mind of its own? (Yes, this is an actual story plot I had in a dream one night.)

No matter what plots have been used before, your story will be unique to you and to your own imagination. If you feel the pull to write that story, then don't worry too much about what has been done before and write your story.

How Your Dreams Can Feed Your Stories #BYBin30

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

I've been having some strange and interesting dreams lately. Sometimes, those dreams are more like wish-fulfilment and other times, they are nightmares I try to escape from. Sometimes my dreams at night are of the mundane variety, and sometimes they are magical. Often times, they make very little sense, and occasionally, they make no sense whatsoever.

But one thing every one of those dreams has in common is that they are fodder for stories. They can become whole new stories for me to write about, or they can give me new scenes to add into already forming stories. Sometimes, they just help me better pinpoint an emotion I am trying to portray (by letting me experience it in depth within the dream so that I can better describe it to my readers).

Just as our nightly dreams can sometimes help us work through issues we are having to deal with in real life, they can also sometimes give us answers to problems we are having in the writing of one of our stories. There are times when dreams are largely symbolic though, so we might have to navigate their meanings before we can find those answers.

Have your dreams ever inspired a story you've written (or wanted to write)? Have your dreams ever helped you with a story you were already writing? Let me know in the comments!

The Full Writing Day that Turned Into a Research Day #BYBin30

Today, as the start of the weekend, was intended to be a day of intense writing. Instead, it was a day of no writing, but lots and lots of research.

My story is set in the Joseon period of Korea's past. Occasionally, I get to parts of it that need setting description or even a closer relating of certain roles within the period that require me to do some research in order to get it right. Fortunately, my story is a story within a story, and the setting, rather than being purely in the Joseon period is actually set in a Kdrama version of the Joseon period, so, if I get a few small things wrong, it can be put down to the drama being wrong. But I still want to write this as accurately as possible.

That research can sometimes take me down a rabbit-hole of interesting information and I can let myself get carried away by the research, beyond what is needed for the scene I am writing, and that is what happened today.

How about your story? Does it require you to do any research? Or does your story stick to things, places, people and roles that you are already familiar with? Let me know in the comments below! Also let me know how your writing is coming along.

New Possibilities and Directions for the Story #BYBin30

This image of a fox has nothing to do with the story I am writing; I just like it, so I decided to use it on this post.

I have only written a little bit today, but my story is taking on some interesting *possible* twists. I put the word "possible" inside asterisks because I am not sure what I will do with those possibilities going forward. I might run with them and use them in the story to create new plot twists, or I might keep things on a more even keel going forward and these possible leads to new directions will lead nowhere. This is all part of the fun of "pantsing" a story. I have no outline and no detailed plot in mind, so my story can take me absolutely anywhere, especially since the story is premised on a magical, supernatural event to begin with.

Here is an excerpt from today's writing that will give you a small idea of how my story could evolve:

In the Kdrama this world was based on, Kai had died on that battlefield and would have been dead for days by now. What if the Kdrama was trying to re-assert its intended storyline by correcting the “mistake” of Kai surviving? There were so many things about all of this that she didn’t understand. What were the rules in a world where she’d already turned the rules upside down?

My character Faith is wondering the same thing I am; what are the rules in this world where nothing is impossible? Are there any rules? How much of reality do I want to bend in this story? How much can I bend the reality of this world before I lose my readers? I don't want to go too far for my readers' suspension of disbelief.

And here's another quick snippet from today's writing:

If every film or TV show created a mini world based on the storyline, what happened when the story was over?

Faith is interacting with a side-character in a Kdrama, not even the main character. The original story was written for a different character than the one she is spending time with, and that main character's story has already ended. So what happens to the story now? And what happens to her, as an intruder in that story?

And yes, I know I have to figure all of this out in order to continue writing my story. What do you think? Do you think the story should be trying to correct for the changes that had happened within it, as if the story-world is a living thing with a mind of its own? Or should I just leave it with the one bad guy who is already involved in the story being the main problem these two face (aside from the whole not-being-from-each-others'-world thing)? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

I'd also love to find out how your stories are coming along.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the phrase, "suspension of disbelief," it is a phrase intended for stories. Wikipedia defines it this way: "The term suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe something surreal: sacrifice of realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment." It means you can watch a film or read a book with supernatural elements, or even just slightly unbelievable events within the storyline, and you can suspend your critical thinking on those aspects long enough to enjoy the story.)

Refreshing the original story in my mind and going from there #BYBin30

Image by nile from Pixabay

I spent today re-reading the words already written in my story, so that I could refresh the story in my mind, making it easier to start from the correct point and to remember the plans I had for it. Usually when I re-read something I wrote in the past, I hate it, but I quite enjoyed the story so far, which I think is a good sign.

I didn't write much more on the story today, only another 329 words. (I didn't do any writing yesterday.) I'm becoming more familiar again with my characters and the issues they are facing.

Here's a short excerpt from the story:

As she turned, she started to fade. Kai could see through her to the objects behind. In a panic, he reached his hand out and grabbed onto her arm, squeezing tightly. 

She instantly came back into focus, the strange transparency was gone. Had he been seeing things? Thinking of how she arrived here and from where, he thought that maybe he hadn’t been imagining it.  

She turned back to him in surprise at his sudden grip, wobbling slightly in place, placing one hand on her forehead.

“You were disappearing,” he said. “Did you feel it happening?” 

“I felt dizzy, but it went away when you touched me.”

So that's it for my update for today. How is your story coming along? Anything about it you'd like to share? Let me know in the comments!

Day 28 - Story Conclusions #BYBin30

image found on Pinterest here

I've been in a bit of a writing funk lately, and, aside from the post that announces the prize winners, this will be the last blog post for this year's challenge, and, since we are supposed to be nearing the ends of the stories we are writing, I thought I'd leave you with some images with quotes about endings.

image found on Pinterest here 

Finishing stories is difficult. Everything needs to tie together and the ending needs to satisfy the reader. There is nothing easy about writing those last chapters of your story.

image found on Pinterest here 

Endings don't have to be happy to be satisfying, although many readers do prefer happy endings. the most important thing about the story's ending is that it makes sense within context of the rest of the story.

image found on Pinterest here

If your ending isn't working for you, change it. You're the author, you can write the ending that satisfies you the most. If you are satisfied with your ending, chances are that your readers will be satisfied too.

How have your stories and writing been coming along during the challenge?

*****

Give-away

Today's give-away is a surprise. I might make something. I might buy a trinket of some sort. It will be a complete surprise. Even I don't know yet what today's prize will be. If you are a signed-up member of the challenge, all you have to do to be entered into the give-away is leave a comment on this post by April 30th. A winner will be chosen on April 30th, 2017 by using a random number generator.

The Power of the Short Story Format #BYBin30

Last year, I wrote thirty short mermaid-themed stories for the Blog Your Book in 30 Days challenge. This year, I am writing short fairy tales and paranormal-themed stories for the challenge. I have had many short stories and flash fiction published in a variety of different anthologies. I think it is safe to say that I enjoy writing short stories. Writing short stories allows me to test out characters and possible story-lines ahead of time and see how others respond to them. It allows me to flex my creative muscles in new ways with each short story I write. So I thought it might be useful for me to share a little bit about the history of short stories, current trends in the short story market and how writing short stories can be an excellent marketing tool.

Years ago, before we had a written language, stories were told verbally. The stories told served many purposes, from preserving a group of people's history, culture and beliefs to ways of explaining things that had no explanation in those days. Stories helped people to be less afraid of the unknown by creating stories around things to explain how they came to be. The oral stories served as lessons to the younger generations.

Short stories and poetry was often interconnected, as many of the writers in the days of Old English and Medieval English told their stories in rhyme or in the metered and measured way of poems. In medieval times, bards often sang their stories.



Short stories were a popular from of storytelling from the 1400s onwards, but, in the late 1900s, the growth of print magazines and journals created a stronger demand for short fiction. As time went on, longer length novels became the new normal and began to take over the market. It wasn't until the emergence of the e-book market that the short story would take on new life. Shorter attention spans, busier lives and the popularity of mobile devices spawned more demand for stories in their shorter forms.

This new demand for short stories has given them a new value in the marketplace. Authors are producing short story collection and multi-author anthologies of short stories. Short stories are being sold on their own as e-book purchases, and e-book covers are made for them just as they are made for longer novels. People are buying books as "serials," only getting a small portion of the story sent to them at a time and paying for each installment.

Searching the Amazon e-book marketplace today under the search term "short stories and anthologies" pulled up 50,916 anthologies and 133,207 short stories. Many of the books listed under "short stories" are collections of short stories.

If you don't want your short stories published in a collection of your own, there are many paying markets for your short stories, from other anthologies to magazines and even short story competitions.

If you do publish your short story in an anthology that doesn't pay (or offer your short story for free on Amazon and other sites like it), you might wonder what benefit you will get from doing so. Some authors may tell you never to give away a story just for "exposure." They maintain that the value of exposure is not enough to make it worthwhile, but I am suggesting otherwise. Short stories do not take as long to write as novels. Short stories also do not take as long to read as novels. A reader might be more willing to try a short story from a new author than a full-length novel. And if readers like your story, they will look for longer works by you.

In some recent anthologies in which some of my stories appeared, I found that I gained some new fans. These fans read my short stories and then tracked me down on social media to see if I had any other offerings, some of them even suggesting which of my short stories would make a great subject for a longer book. By publishing my short stories, not only am I gaining some readers who are now looking for more work written by me, but if I continue some of the stories they seem to like best, or write my novels in the same genre as those short stories, I may be able to turn these fans into lifelong fans. And those are the kinds of fans who help build a reputation, and that is one of the ways authors can find themselves becoming best-selling authors.

Day Twenty-Seven: Humor in Writing #BYBin30

comic by Robert Fyfe

Humor adds an element to fiction that keeps readers engaged. It gives them a break in the drama or suspense. It can produce some memorable lines. It can help create more realistic and multi-dimensional characters. There are many reasons to use humor in your novel, but there are also many types of humor that can be used.

1. Sarcasm or wit - This form of humor is usually shown through word-play. Your characters can be sarcastic or witty through their dialogue with one another. Sarcasm is the use of irony to show contempt for something or someone. Wit is more about the intelligence and ability to think quickly when using sarcasm.

2. Dark  - This form of comedy covers jokes about the morbid, evil or depressing. If your character makes a joke about the form of his imminent death, that is an example of dark humor. Dark humor is comedy that makes light of dark situations or subject matter.

3. Satire - This form of comedy points out human flaws while also making fun of them. Although it is meant to be funny, it usually has an underlying point to make. It is used to make fun of or point out people's vices or stupidity.

4. Slap-stick - This is physical comedy. If you have a clumsy character, you might employ a lot of slap-stick comedy in your writing. "The Three Stooges" films were full of slap-stick humor. The physical actions in slap-stick humor have no boundaries or common sense. This humor is often physically violent.

5. Farce - This is an exaggerated form of comedy, where your characters get themselves into completely improbably situations. It often incorporates slap-stick elements, and often has absurd plot twists. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Dougless Adams is an example of farce comedy.

6. Parody - This form of comedy makes fun of other artistic pieces, either of previously written stories or of movies and shows. It tends to pretend to be those shows or stories while changing enough to make them utterly ridiculous. The relatively new influx of zombie stories based on literary classics, such as "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" by Quirk Classics is an example of parody.

One thing is certain, if your story make your readers laugh, they will remember it.

Day Four: Conflict #BYBin30

It might seem strange to refer to conflict for non-fiction books, but I think of it more as introducing the reason for your readers to want to learn whatever it is your book has to teach them. For example, I recently discovered a YouTube video for mermaid lovers who want to swim like mermaids. The video explained what the conflict was: Buying professionally created mermaid tails is very expensive and many people can't afford them. And it presented itself, a video on how to make your own mermaid tail inexpensively, as the solution. In a travel guide, the conflict is that you want to travel but don't know which hotels are the best or which sights there are to see in the place you want to visit. The travel guide itself is the solution to the conflict.

In non-fiction books, the conflict is implied rather than written into the book. The book itself is the solution to the conflict. If you want to learn more about Christopher Columbus, you find the solution - a biography about him. If you want to grow your own garden but don't have a lot of garden space, you might find that a book about container gardening will give you the answers you need. If you want to sell your own house, you can easily find a book on the subject which will help you learn what you need to know.

Fiction novels have a deeper dependency on conflict within the story. Without conflict in a fictional story, you won't have much of a story. Conflict is the driving force in the story. The conflict that your character faces drives his or her actions. The goal of the story is for your protagonist to overcome the conflict. There can be other conflicts in the story which help to fuel the main conflict, such as your character having an argument with the one person who holds the answer to something your protagonist needs to know or your protagonist and his or her charming secondary character/sidekick getting separated and needing to find each other again before they can, together, defeat, whatever it is that's causing the original problem.

If done correctly, the journey to overcome the conflict your protagonist faces, should, in some way, change your protagonist. He or she should grow as a result of defeating the obstacles along the way. Every decision your protagonist makes and every event that occurs as a result of those decisions should help shape your protagonists later decisions.

There are four main types of conflict in stories: man verses man - you have a protagonist and an antagonist pitted against each other, man verses self - where the biggest challenge for the protagonist is to overcome his or her own shortcomings, man verses nature - where man must overcome the forces of nature or creatures within nature to survive, and man verses society - where man must overcome the restrictions of society in order to succeed. These can sometimes overlap in stories. Others have suggested that there are more types of conflict for modern stories, such as man verses fate, man verses the supernatural and man verses technology, but, again, many of these types of conflict will overlap within stories.

If you are writing a non-fiction book, ask yourself; what is the implied conflict for which my book is the solution?

If you are writing a fiction novel, ask yourself these questions:

What does my protagonist want?

What obstacles or problems is my protagonist facing?

How will my protagonist need to change, or what will he or she need to do differently, in order to overcome the obstacles or problems being faced?