Writing | I'm Just Sharing

Where Do You Come Up With This Stuff? – Guest Post

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Dec 3, 2011

Most of you know that Mitchell Allen of Morpho Designs and I are pretty good friends. We play email chess together and work on encouraging each other to do great things. He’s also one of the most creative writers I know. I’ll admit that I may not always understand it, but it challenges me, which doesn’t happen all that often. I asked him to write this guest post on his thinking process and, well, how he comes up with his stuff; this is his response.

I often get asked this question when I post a piece of fiction. I love answering the question because, over the years, I can see how my answers evolve. I take more credit for the process than I used to. Yet, I’m quick to acknowledge that elusive spark when I’m at a loss to explain where that stuff came from.

ENGINEER OR ARTIST?

The first time I answered this question, I was the one who asked. I’m introspective like that. So I sat down, a man beside himself, and worked out this whole left-brain, right-brain dichotomy. A conversation sprang up between Elbe and Arby (get it?) Elbe was all analytical, while Arby simply tried to keep the words flowing gracefully. When the two had shut up, I was satisfied with the result. Elbe the Engineer and Arby the Artist had carved up my poor brain and staked their claims to the creation process.

If I am asked today, it’s likely to be from the writer folks at CreativeCopyChallenge.com. Twice a week, we write stuff, based on a list of ten word prompts. In this instance, the whole idea of a creative spark seems to be more relevant.

I have written entries on that site that leave me shaking my head. Other times, I have been in conscious creation mode, as when I wrote the chapters of Sisterhood of the Void, a science fiction story. When my writing buddies ask me the question, I usually tell them which word set off the chain-reaction.

MUSES

To be honest, I misappropriated the nine ladies of the arts. I didn’t know I was supposed to invoke them before setting my pen to paper. I just thought it was cool how writers personified the essence of their creative force. So, I name-dropped them collectively. I made up assignments for them, such as tending to the seeds of creative ideas. In general, I pawned off much of the credit for my ideas to these mythical mistresses.

Let’s be clear, I’m being metaphorical. There are a lot of crazy people in my head, but they’re all real! They talk to me every day and, none of them is named Thalia.

MAGIC

In truth, I don’t think most people really care where anyone gets their ideas. We’ve all seen enough mind-blowing brilliance from writers that we know the answer is simple. It is magic. And, just as the magician chooses not to reveal the secrets of the guild, we writers shouldn’t work too hard to analyze our mental sausage factories. Rather, we should invoke a few juicy images, roll them around in dirt and hold them up for a quick peek before putting the whole mess into our carryalls.

The next time someone asks me where I come up with my ideas, I’m going to assume the real statement is one of wonderment: “How did you do that?”

BEHIND THE CURTAIN

There are some people who really, really want to know. If that’s you, I’ll let Elbe and Arby take over. One or the other character is always spouting off on my blog.

You can read the result of the conversation between Elbe and Arby on my 2008 Father’s Day Introspective.

Elbe gets jiggy with it, expounding on the use of allegory to understand stuff.

Arby dreamily replies, telling Elbe that he should loosen up and just let things go.

And, when I can’t take their bickering any longer my head explodes.

A final thought: when Elbe dominates, I write poetry, because Elbe is obsessed with meter. When Arby is ascendant, I kick out some vignettes. When all three of us are humming, we work on science fiction stories.

Bio

“I had to choose between being the funny dad or the creative dad.

However, when I stepped into the plasma, I tripped over a roller skate.

The result was a mad scientist who cackles a lot.”

You’ll see this quirky bio all over the web. I like to have fun. If you like to have fun, too, check out my Virtual Dinner Party and other goodies.

Writing | 26 Comments

The Art Of Storytelling

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 5, 2011

When I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago asking How Far Would I Go, I mentioned that I was in a story contest to try to win a free Kindle. Well, I didn’t win, and I can’t say I placed since I think there was only the main prize. Hey, that’s just how it goes sometimes.

However, I did get one critique on the story, which was a drastically cut down version my tale on meatloaf. The guy said he liked the story and laughed at it, but that I used the word “I” too many times and that if I’d tightened that up then the story might have been stronger.

Let’s talk about storytelling for a moment, if I may. Back when I wrote my series on book writing, I talked about the art of telling a story. People love stories, and the better you can tell your story, the more people love to hear it. My dad loved telling stories, and I think I got that from him. Our friends Charles, Allan and Jessica tell some wonderful true life stories. And of course there’s Hyperbole and a Half; ’nuff said.

If you’re telling a story in general, it’s often recommended that you try not to use one or two words over and over. For instance, if you’re writing fiction and your story’s main character is Henry, you shouldn’t always be writing “Harry said” or “Harry thought” or something like that all the time. The idea is to weave Harry’s name in there every once in awhile to make sure everyone knows when it’s Harry or someone else, but otherwise try to make one’s story flow better by not stopping on every sentence by saying “Harry”.

That explains writing other stories; what if you’re telling your own tale? Suddenly the rules change, at least in my mind. It’s would sound silly if you were trying to convey your thoughts and you said “there was this thought that” or “Johnny wondered” if your name was Johnny. If you’re telling your story one would expect you to use “I” most of the time if you’re in it. For instance, I was the main protagonist in writing my stories on The Keys or the poker tournament I was in back in 2009. How else would I have told those stories without the word “I”? If it was fictionalized maybe one finds a different way, but if I, or you, are telling our own story, how ridiculous would it be without “I”?

There is an art to storytelling, though. Beginning, middle, end; that’s the script, just like the script for most songs follows a 1-4-5-1 chord progression. We want to be introduced to our hero, so to speak, early on, and then we want to see what happens to that character, and then we want to see how it’s resolved. Stories can be short or long; in essence, they are what they are, as I stated in one of my posts on better blogging. Stories need to follow a progression; not everyone likes stories that suddenly go back in history, or take sidebars that don’t seem to have anything to do with the story. We want it direct, in order, fleshed out as much as needed, and then concluded in a way that makes us feel something; happy, upset, or even laughing. And if it’s your story, we want to know how you felt, what you thought, and if you have to use “I” often then so be it.

Of course, I could be wrong on this, but I doubt it. As I was reading Traci Lords book Underneath It All, I was struck by this thought; how could she have told her story otherwise without the frequent use of the word “I”? She couldn’t; that’s the point. If you need to use it, use it as long as it’s about you. If it’s not about you, or you’re telling a story about someone or something else, then it shouldn’t be an issue with that word, but you need to be careful in looking at the words you do use to see if maybe there’s another choice every once in awhile.

Writing | 19 Comments

Writing – A Rant

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Feb 22, 2011

Lo and behold, today I’ve got a video for you, and I’m ranting about writing. I’ve had something on my mind for a couple of weeks and I’m trying to get it out of there so I can move forward. Sometimes you just have to take an action to get bad stuff out of your mind. In my case, it’s this video. More after the jump (I wonder why they call it “the jump):

If you’re wondering, yes, I did feel a little bit better after getting that off my chest. Of course, I’d look a lot better if I’d remembered NOT to record in Hi-Def. lol I’d really like your opinion on the topic, if you watched it. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for blogging tips or book writing tips, which are in actually just more writing tips, look at the page tabs above and click on one, then check out any of the articles on there. I actually have to update those, and by the time you see this post I hope to have done that. After all, writing and blogging are subjects I’ve talked about often enough here.

So, is this considered a short post or not? Eh; doesn’t matter.

Writing | 35 Comments

Bad Writing Kills Sci-Fi Shows

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 11, 2010

Recently it was announced that the show Caprica on the SyFy Network was being canceled for, or course, low ratings. People have started speculating on the dearth of science fiction shows and how they’re dying out and coming up with all sorts of reasons for the possible demise.

One site called Airlock Alpha had its writer come to a determination that what was killing many of these shows was injecting religion into the mix. Indeed, it lists Caprica, Lost, and the final shows of the very popular Battlestar Galactica as shows that decided to inject a religious bent into them and, for whatever reason, drove people away.

I tend to take a different view of this type of thing, and in a weird way it can be related to blogging as well. I tend to believe that some science fiction shows, like shows in other genres, might fail because of bad writing. Well, not necessarily always bad writing as much as a loss of what the shows were supposed to be about in the first place.

For instance, there was a great show called The 4400 on the USA Network. The first season, and it seems funny calling it a season since it started with, I believe, 8 or 10 shows, was absolutely fantastic. The general premise was that people had gone missing over decades and suddenly one day they all show up in Seattle, 4400 of them, with no recollection of where they’ve been. And, over the first set of shows, all of them started showing signs of genetic mutation that gave them superhuman powers of some sort, all different.

The second season came and everything went into the trash. No one had any idea what was going on with the show; it was like they had started a totally new series as opposed to continual exploration of what was happening beforehand, and that was that for the series. Nothing made sense; and you really weren’t sure who to pull for and who the bad guys were supposed to be. What you did know, though, was that it had nothing to do with religion.

For that matter the Sarah Connor Chronicles, one of the most awaited science fiction shows in history, flopped for the very same reason. The pilot was very good, but after that, the show made absolutely no sense. When the cyborg that’s come back starts having “flashbacks” of being a young girl when she not only was never alive but didn’t have a past to even be considering, you knew someone had been watching Dallas in the 80′s and decided adding ridiculous scenes was what made that show good (supposedly; I never could watch that stuff either).

In other words, bad ideas and bad writing killed those shows, not religion. I’m not a religious person, as you know, but this is one time where I just can’t let religion take it on the chin for something that has nothing to do with it.

The same kind of thing goes for blogs. I personally believe that almost any type of blog has an opportunity to make a big and positive impact in some fashion if some of the writing was better, and I’m not talking about spelling. Unique ideas, or old ideas written in a different and entertaining way will help a blog sustain itself. Being informational or even confrontational can help as well. But if you take a position on something such as gun control and the best you can write is “I don’t believe in gun control because I want to shoot my guns at stuff”, your blog is going to fail. Even supporters would be ashamed to own up to stupid writing like that.

As another point, in closing, I believe that Caprica ended up running into the same type of problem that Enterprise ran into. It’s hard doing a prequel to a popular show because we’ve already gotten used to certain things. A one time movie explaining the history of something works really well, but a full series is hard to pull off, and hard to keep on direction. As much as I loved Enterprise, as well as every other Star Trek themed show, it ultimately lost its direction in one full year by leaving what people expected in the series, that being ever changing themes and “baddies” along the way, not spending an entire year on one theme and then, when everyone thinks “finally, they’ve ended that arc”, going in a totally different and confusing direction; anyone who ever watched the show knows what I’m talking about (it went from chasing aliens who wanted to destroy earth from afar to aliens suddenly being Nazis; what the hey?).

Of course all this is my opinion, so I ask you what your opinion is. And it doesn’t have to be on science fiction; in your opinion, what type of thing usually kills new TV shows, if you watch TV?

Writing | 30 Comments

Can You Change Writing Styles?

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 4, 2010

Last week I was reading a guest blog post on another blog when the writer wrote one specific line: “Get to the point as quickly as possible, say it in as few words as possible, and you’re done.”

by Markus Rodder

And he was. For a guest post I was thinking how relatively short the piece was. Frankly, it didn’t have a lot of personality in it, but I overlooked that so I could think about it some over the weekend. I don’t remember the blog, but I’ve heard and read that statement many times before, and thought it deserved to be addressed.

I tend to believe that we all need to learn how to write for the moment and purpose. As you may know, I do a lot of writing, not only for myself but for others. When I write on this blog, you’re “hearing” my voice, the way I normally speak. When I write on my business blog, sometimes you don’t hear the same type of conversational voice, sometimes you do. It depends on the topic. Actually, even on this blog you’ll see that when I’m talking about something technical, or a step-by-step process, it’s pretty straight forward.

I write for a couple of different industry blogs. One is real estate, and for the most part it’s fairly flat writing because, well, there’s really nothing about real estate that allows for much conversation and deviation except for the news about the industry. Where I differ there is that I don’t just write about the news; I kind of give an opinion about that particular bit of news and then hopefully end on a happy note to encourage people to continue looking to buy. Overall though, it’s pretty straight forward; nothing extraneous.

That differs with a wedding blog I write. I have a lot of fun with that one. It’s a mix of news, recommendations, and opinions. I’ve gotten really good with that topic, and thus I have a lot of fun with it and I put a lot of personality into the writing. Yet it still remains upbeat at all times, as well as instructional. If you saw any of the posts on that blog (sorry, can’t share the link), you probably wouldn’t know it was me if you compared it to this blog because I use a different “voice” for it.

Same thing with writing papers for others, whether it’s white papers or term papers, so to speak. In those instances those papers are very straight forward, no personality whatsoever, because they’re purpose is to explain, not entertain. Also, I know that the person with a term paper is going to have to change up some of the language so it looks like they wrote it; it has to sound like them, and I don’t know those people to try to sound like them.

I think what makes a person’s blog different is how they decide to use their language to enthrall our mental ear so that we see them as unique, entertaining, and worth giving time to. On this blog, I often try to use a storytelling technique when I’m talking about things because I’ve found with my newsletter that people really started sharing it with others, and thus it started growing, when I went to that format. I think we all like stories; who here can honestly say they didn’t enjoy having their parents read stories to them as a child?

Of course, there are times when getting to the point is imperative. If you’re asked a certain question or want a certain answer, you don’t want someone to pontificate for 45 minutes then tell you what you want to know; you want your answer now. That’s one of my gripes with how many people conduct webinars and podcasts, and why the hairs on my neck go up with many of the free presentations that say they’re going to tell you how to do something, then spend hours telling you everything except that to get you to buy something from them. Promising something and not delivering; I hate that.

Just something to consider when you’re writing your blog. To me, this is imminently more important than sitting around thinking about SEO when writing your post. Boring keeps people away; entertain them, and they’ll keep coming back for more. Kind of like adding a video as an entertaining touch: