Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

What I’m (th)Inkingabout

Tuesday prompt: #19 2013

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What is under the surface of the water?

Write about what is under the surface of things.  Below ground, below the skin, below normal, below zero, below the murky film of a puddle, below the big toe of your right foot or his right foot, beneath her eyes, under the tongue, below the top level of meaning in the words “I’m sorry,” under the surface of sadness, loneliness, madness, crassness, below the surface of the sound of a cockroach clutching at the silky sheen of bedsheets.

News: In Times Passed is back at Smashwords

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Back in September I took my first novel in the Students of Jump series out of publication to make some additions to the text and finish some small cleanup. Life was very busy: teaching always keeps my personal life on hold from September to May each year. But I still managed to complete the draft on the second book in the series, No-time Like the Present and worked on In Times Passed to get it back into circulation.

Which brings me to now.  I uploaded the updated version last week and have waited until now to announce it because I wished to wait till the book was reviewed and placed in the Premium Catalog which will make it available at other e-book sellers.

Summer is coming; I feel it flutter behind my heart, which means I will be writing again.  I can now prepare the second book for upload which should occur by July 2013 and begin the redraft of book 3, Time on my Hands.

L. Darby Gibbs’s Smashwords Author Profile: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/LDGibbs

See my book page to sample or purchase In Times Passed: http://smashwords.com/b/77866

Or see my book page to sample or purchase my anthology Gardens in the Cracks & Other Stories: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/177065

Narrative Mode: #12 Personal prose narrative

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When using this narrative style, it is important to understand the prose essay form first.  Once you have that clear, shifting it to a fiction story is fairly easy.  It is the first persona viewpoint taken to a new level. 

So first let’s examine the prose essay.

  • In this essay type, you write about several related topics and how they intersect in a highly internal and personal way.  So for example, you might write about your first car, focusing on facts, qualities and use of this vehicle.  
  • But wound among those facts and features will also be islands of personal experience and connection to what it means to have a first car. You would include both the moments that gave you great personal satisfaction as well as those moments that may have been frightening, the results of less than perfect driving or the imperfect reliability of a used vehicle.
  • These islands would draw the reader in to such a point that he or she might forget entirely what the original focus was, but that is the magic of the personal prose essay, for ultimately you must bring the reader back to the original line of examination: the carburetor or those new bucket seat covers.  And you must slide her out again into another personal moment.
  • In the end, the entire work should create an understanding, a journey of epiphany that the reader has taken with the writer. 

So how does this style work in fiction?  This is not a plot directed story, for it is bound up in the personal process of growth in the character.   The narrative voice must be strong, it must be willing or ultimately able to share its greatest fears and triumphs in the course of the life events the character reveals, and it must feel authentic.  Examples:  Heinlein did it with Podkayne of Mars, and Kathryn Stockett did it with The Help.

The personal prose narrative is more than first person.  It is a close writing that pulls the reader into a sort of Siamese twin connection with the speaker.  The reader doesn’t argue about how she would do things differently.  The reader understands every feature of it, the choices the character made, and sympathizes and laughs with her.  It is a very private way of writing where plot is less important than the scope of the experience shared.

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.

Tuesday prompt: #18 2013

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This is about punctuation control.  A writer must have control of the basic tools of writing.  So this prompt is about being conscious of your sentence structure.  When a person is writing a draft, she should be automatic in handling punctuation and usage and not spending time thinking about where the commas go.  That is for later when a person edits. But in this exercise, you will be aware of sentence structure and proper comma placement. 

  • Search out the rules for the following popular comma uses:  compound sentences, introductory clauses and phrases, direct address, dialogue, and appositive and restrictive clauses and phrases.  
  • Once you have the rules, write a story consciously making sure that each sentence contains at least one of each of the rules.  Be conscious of the punctuation conditions.  Your story won’t be great, but what you practice is what you perform.  

You want this to be automatic when you write and at your fingertips when you edit.  Writing is about communication and punctuation ensures that happens cleanly.

Narrative Mode: #11 Dream Vision

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The dream vision format can manage on just two characters:  the dreamer and the guide. This format has both an outside story (outside of the dream that is) and an inside story (which occurs inside the dream).  Seem familiar? This a variant of the frame narrative.

  • The dreamer starts out awake, though several authors who have used this have avoided the opening waking segment that is traditionally used. It is up to the writer to determine how long the dreamer is awake before he falls asleep and the means by which he falls asleep and therefore into his/her dream. Sleeping due to exhaustion, meditation, normal sleep pattern are common, and I suppose being knocked out would suffice as well.  The waking hours provide the laying of the outer story which is the difficulty that the awake dreamer is suffering. This can be the loss of a loved one (already quite famous in The Pearl by an unknown writer — the same believed to have written Sir Gawain and Green Knight).  This outer frame is useful because it supplies the drama needed to find the wake dreamer so unhappy that he seeks sleep to avoid it and finds his answer or solution in the dream to come.
  • Now we have the dreamer sleeping.  He finds himself in a landscape both familiar and unfamiliar (the nature of dreams, you know).  Soon in his wanderings, he comes across an individual (the guide) who challenges the dreamer to an examination of a philosophical nature.  Strangely, to the dreamer, this has nothing in common with the problem he is experiencing in the waking world.  But he gets drawn into the discussion.  In the various forms of this narrative mode, this can be provided by more than one individual: talking animals, plants, bright lights, etc.
  • It is common to the form to carry numerous motifs, repeating images and themes.  So this is a style of writing that calls for deep description, symbols and metaphors.
  • Over the time of the dream, the dreamer begins to gain an understanding of other issues of either greater or equal value.  He suffers a change, giving his support, emotional investment, and loyalty to this new ideal or understanding.  
  • When he awakens, what was once his greatest sorrow though unchanged or remedied is no longer his driving force.  He has found a new faith.  “The Dream of the Rood” follows the path of an unhappy man whose guide is the tree which later became the cross that Christ was crucified on.  It is a very short example of the form, but a very worthy one to examine.
  • Here’s the clincher:  the dream vision narrative is a poem and a very old format.  But no prose writer should let that stop him or her.  It has good bones and could be fleshed out in prose with some creativity and a strong muse.  

 The Little Handbook of Narrative Frameworks available on Smashwords and Amazon.