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Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing

Sometimes one needs a MacGuffin, at least to start with

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the sword in the graveyard
You know how there are words that we just love to say or write?  Some of my favorites are frikasee, mimsy, bailiwick, and conniption though they are rather hard to find a place for in my writing.  But one I have found usable is MacGuffin.  This word is a tool used in writing, and I  love the way it rolls off the tongue.   It’s fun and useful.  However,  the MacGuffin has earned some bad press.  Some writers for movies, novels, short stories use them simply to start the plot off and then completely leave them behind.  But when used properly, this tool can provide motivation for a character to get involved in some action and can still resurface where it can provide depth and deeper connections later. 
Mystery novels often use MacGuffins to embroil the characters in a
mystery.  Spy novels also can make use of the MacGuffin.  Basically the
character is chasing something that may not really exist:  the fountain
of youth, courage, grandpa’s missing will, microfilm with the schematics for a satellite laser beam.  Or they do find it, and it is not of value any more.  I was thinking about this word yesterday and realized I used a version of this tool in both the first and second books of my Students of Jump series. 
In the first book In Times Passed, Brent is searching for independence so he jumps into the past.  His desire to get away from
his mother’s manipulation instigate the decision.  But once he is there, this is no longer a
motivating feature of the actions that follow.  What started out important  becomes unimportant.  That is the nature of a MacGuffin.  (Of course, I plan to make use of this issue between Brent and his mother in a later work in the series.)
In the second book No-time Like the Present, Misty wants to face her father and demand he tell her why he
abandoned her.   When the opportunity arrives, she takes it.  But what motivates Misty initially is not a central feature
of her growth or the more important goals she really wants but didn’t think she could have: a relationship with her father and saving her
mother.  It is at best an excuse she gives
herself to see her father.  She claims to
have no interest in him, but is in fact obsessed with knowing him.  Escaping manipulation and high expectations or desiring one’s father explain why he made the choices he made are the MacGuffins which motivate them to take a step into a place they do not understand but need to go.
What MacGuffins have you identified in works you have read or works you have written

?

Personal experience (loss of a loved one) provided direction and depth

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Love is a foundation: loss a process

One of the main issues in the first two books of the series Students of Jump is loss of a loved one.  This is an area I have some experience in.  Though my original plot did not include a death, the events grew naturally out of the interaction of characters and circumstance.  My own mother died when I was a baby, and I was at first unaware of the effect it had on my father or myself. As I grew older, I realized he never allowed himself the time to adjust to losing his wife.  He buried himself in his work and in raising his children.  It was a new experience for him to be the sole parent of two small children. 

He shared a story with me about the first months he found himself caring for us.  He knew that my mother had always kept us fed and clean.  He had been guided on feeding us properly by the ladies in the neighborhood, and my father was always a good cook, but the requirements of keeping children clean was never addressed.

He bathed us night and day.  We were not particularly dirty children, both of us under two years old.  When he took us to our yearly check up, he asked the doctor if he was caring for us well, as he feared being gone during the working hours meant he could only bath us twice a day.  Our skin was a bit flakie, but the doctor set him straight relieving quite a bit of tension and reducing the bathing to a more manageable level, and our skin and hair returned to that shiny, moist quality inherent in healthy children.  When I had my own daughter and spoke to my father about her potty training not going well, he gave me just the information I needed to have a smooth process for my daughter.

Talking to and observing how my father dealt with his loss and my own later frustrations at not having my mother around during my teenage years helped when I worked through the changes my characters dealt with and their challenges dealing with loss.

What parts in the writing you have done is a reflection of your own experiences?

I have just spent the last three hours working on novel blurbs

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I’ve written two versions for the first book of my series.  That took the first hour and doesn’t include all the previous ones I have written, none particularly good.

I wrote four more for the second book in the series which I hope to publish in just a couple of weeks.  I don’t think I like writing blurbs.  And now there are five.

I know what I want them to do. But they are not doing it.   Excuse me while I go scream.

Well, that didn’t help.  Perhaps some sleep and another stab at it tomorrow.

Please respond with all tricks, advice and personal experience that you think can help me with this endeavor.  The dogs don’t like it when I scream.

Update:  final version complete, and I still have my hair and my dogs have their hearing.  Thank you, Marcy.

Not just sitting around

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Not just watching the flowers grow.

So I have not been preparing my Tuesday prompts and am not busy teaching, but that doesn’t mean I am just sitting around twiddling my thumbs.  I have been steadily working on two separate projects.  One is getting the second of my Student of Jump books (No-time Like the Present) ready for publication at the end of this month.  I just finished what is my pretend final edit.  The one I convince myself is the last one needed.  But in a week or so it will go through another which will no doubt result in finding so many errors I will be a basket case for a few days, losing all confidence before I do another edit which will do the exact opposite, and I will split the difference and feel fairly confident that I have taken care of all I can.  I have my absolutely wonderful beta reader tackling it right now, which will provide the impetus to make changes and edit again.

The other project is The Handbook of Narrative Frameworks for Novels & Short Stories.  This is a gathering of the narrative mode posts I have been doing since February 2013.  After pulling them together, I edited, added, and am currently creating worksheets that will help make use of the frameworks each one provides for novel and story writing.  All and all I have been busy and since school has let out, intensely content finding myself immersed in my writing, spending time with my family, and taking care of those little jobs that always wait for summer to come.

Narrative Mode ~ #15 Sleeping Beauty

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I like sleeping beauty because I always felt my own mother
lived a life that fit a large part of this framework. She was a classic good
girl who thought life as a secretary would be made to order.  It had some challenge, and she did well and
even did some modeling on the side.  But
life lost excitement, had no adventure for her. She did travel, but it was
basically from her parents to her grandparents. 
Boredom set in ,and she felt trapped, almost asleep while life went on
around her.  And then the dashing
engineer arrived interviewing for a position at the company where she worked.
They grew close and soon she was learning how to pilot a plane and traveling to
Cuba and other South American countries. 
After five years of adventuring, they married, had children and well,
lived  happily every after.
The basic plot is easy to lay out:

  • A girl is born and the family sees danger in her
    future.
  • They protect the girl by limiting her
    interaction with others
  • She is innocent of the danger and trusts
    everyone
  •  
    The dangerous situation takes place and…
  • She falls into a deep sleep due to the backlash
    of the measures taken to protect her. 
  •  Another stranger arrives and breaks through the
    protection to awaken her
  • She then lives happily ever after.

Simplest way to adapt this to a modern story is to make the
protection and its affects a metaphor. 
Imagine her innocence as a type of sleep.  She is unaware of life outside a set locale
and group of people.  The protection is a
valid and necessary one, and she will face that danger too, but she can also come
out of that sleep through an activity, through meeting someone or through a
physical or mental challenge.  She will
struggle to gain a sense of understanding and then finally reach the moment of
complete awareness.
This one is not particularly demanding as frameworks go, but
for simple bones and easy adjustments to bring in complications, it is a nice
one.



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

Narrative Mode ~ #14 Arthurian Legend

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Okay, so I thought I was finished with the narrative frameworks, but it turns out I am not.  A few more have come to mind.  Arthurian Legend is a great one to consider as the mythology is quite fluid with a variety of shifts that change who is related to whom and the motivations behind their actions.  T. S. White did a lovely extrapolation of the story behind Arthur with The Once and Future King. But limiting yourself to just Arthur in the height of his kingship leaves plenty to work with, though the early days before he became king are also chock full of opportunity for creating a story about a young boy unaware of his parentage being cared for by a foster father and annoyed by his foster brother as he learns the rules of engagement, be it knighthood, business or modern politics.  However, I am going to focus on the adult Arthur as a framework.

  • A man strong in power and human understanding wants to bring peace to the hierarchy he leads.  
  • He has a beautiful wife and many trustworthy friends who will lay their life down to protect and support him.  They believe that he can shape their world into a place where they all can prosper.
  • But there are undercurrents, past deeds and associations which are at work to pull his kingdom (company, position of authority) down or at least replace him.  The child he had with another woman wants to be recognized as the true heir.  The child’s aunt would do anything to undermine Arthur, place the now grown illegitimate son in control and gain power herself through manipulation.
  • Then there is the faithful, most trusted among his supporters who is in love with Arthur’s wife.  Does she return the sense of connection or control her desire?  Does it get to be too much for them both?  Do they actually remain true to Arthur despite what others believe and their own strong feelings?
  • When Arthur is forced to face the fact that his wife and his best knight have a long term relationship (you define its actual limitation), he must respond as the others close to him expect and in the action also deal with the insurrection brought on by his son and his half sister.

There is plenty of room in this framework to write in most any genre.  In science fiction, Arthur can be the captain of a ship, the leader of a colony, a business mogul.   A romance novel could just as easily work.  The shift could be made to highlight the wife and the lieutenant as they work through their feelings and their loyalty to Arthur.   A contemporary novel could fly with it as well in the business world or on a ranch.

Key point to remember in the Arthurian Legend is the fact that he is a good man with a difficult job who honestly cares about the people he leads, and what makes him great is also what makes him vulnerable.  He would rather take the bullet than have someone else suffer.  It is his flaw as much as his finest quality.

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

                                                                                • Then there are the other men who pride themselves on their