Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Writing

No further Tuesday prompts

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For the past two years, and then some, I have been supplying a Tuesday writing prompt.  I was once told I was wasting my time having a prompt each week, but I knew how much my students needed those little boosts to get them started, I felt that translated well here.  However, over the time that I have been doing this and visiting Twitter and other sites, it has been made very clear that for those searching for inspiration, there are plenty of prompts out there.  This is not the go-to place.  Perhaps if I had provided a daily prompt, I would be looking at this differently, but that is not the case.  So no more prompts as of yesterday. 

On the other hand, I do still want to focus on the variety of writing, writing tools and aspects of writing.  So with that in mind, let’s talk about flash (or instant) fiction, the short, short.

I love this style of writing because it is so immediate and so open to providing a single deep impression.  So what is basic to the flash fiction model?  Knowing where to cut the plot line is crucial. You only get 250 to about 700 words to work with, so you must cut to the meat of your story.

  • Leave off the exposition, the initiating action and even the complication.  Start in the trouble, the crucial decision moment. 
  • End at or just before the conclusion with no wrapping it up.  Let your conclusion be inferred — without being obvious.  Let the reader think it through, the implications developing as the story is reviewed or reread. 
  • Once the story starts in the action just prior to the climax, bring up the pitch in the question being asked or the tipping moment of shifting gears. 
  • Then tumble the reader off the cliff or up the mountain. 

It is very simple and ridiculously complex.   

Wrapping up Narrative Modes

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For the last thirteen weeks, I have been presenting the various modes one can design a story or novel around.

 

Using strong foundation stock.

Some are common traditional modes, such as the Heroic Journey, Faustian Legend, Cain & Abel, the Christ Figure, Coming of Age, the Dream Vision and the Frame Narrative.  There are others which are more directly related to authors’ well-known works: Hemingway’s Code Hero, Heinlein’s Three-stage Character and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Fairy tales had a few to offer, and several more than I mentioned:  Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast the most common.  The prose essay format is a new form, most notably first used by Virginia Wolf.

The purpose in bringing them up and outlining them as I have, is to remind any writer that our readers often enjoy a tale as much for the author’s unique style and the genre as they do for the return to a format we love to read again and again in its traditional form or a modified version that surprises us with a new twist.  These narrative modes make great bones for our imagination to flesh out and clothe in fresh linen.

And mixing them up is not such a bad idea.  Throw together a Heroic Journey with Cinderella or write a Coming of Age novel in the form of a prose essay.  Those too are out there (take a close look at Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), and those mixes add increased complexity to the story and still maintain familiarity for the reader.

Tuesday prompt: #20 2013

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Flipping the image.

Think about your best friend and then make a list of all his or her qualities, good and bad.  Make it a nice long list, say twenty items.  Make a second list with the opposite qualities.  Now write about this person who would probably not make the best friend for you, but he or she would be someone’s, so give this character a friend in this writing practice.

Narrative Mode: #13 Beauty and the Beast

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I cannot say I saved the best for last, but I can say this is one of the most familiar of the narrative modes.  Everyone knows this story, but we love the ones we’re familiar with, so it is not one to ignore.  Beauty and the beast: a simple story of redemption, forgiveness and true love.  As familiar as it is, one cannot claim it is simple.  Look at the requirements.

  • A young beauty who gives without reserve and is appreciated by her parent but mistreated by others close to her.
  • A father who cannot fulfill the exterior needs of his children though he does supply that which none can live without: love
  • Difficulties which make the young beauty and her father falter and fear they may not survive economically, spiritually or physically if things go on.
  • Opportunity to gain what is needed either through outside pressure to agree to an unsatisfactory contract, one that involves the daughter as servant or companion to a person or creature recognized as dangerous, unrelenting, unforgiving and cruel or through being driven by need to apply for a position with those same characteristics.
  • Refusal and then acceptance when there is no other solution.  The young beauty must sacrifice her happiness to save her father.
  • She gets to know the monster who holds the power over her and her father’s chances for  survival.  And he gains understanding, even appreciation for her kindness, constant forgiveness and obvious personal strength.
  • He risks her denial of him as a worthwhile individual, while struggling for his own self-acceptance.  She guides him out of his imposed purgatory (self-projected or a judgement placed on him by another force).  He reveals the person he has been desiring to be: good, kind, worthy of love.
  • The other shoe drops: he is running out of time and she needs to return to a much greater obligation than being his companion.  
  • Another sacrifice: only this time it is his.  He must give up his chance for redemption to prove his love for her (unselfishly, and outside of her awareness) by releasing her from the agreement seemingly temporarily though he is aware that it is permanent if she leaves.
  • She leaves and realizes, perhaps too late, that he needs her for his own survival.
  • Acceptance, redemption, happiness.

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

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.

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.