Friday Fictioneers--Woods of Danger

Hi readers and writers,

Madison Woods has given us a really idyllic photo of a path in the woods this week.  100 words about this might put me to sleep.  I don't know if it's good or bad, but I seem to have a group of characters in play for the fictioneers, and they want to have a military adventure in the quiet woods.  Okay.
cheers,
Laura

                                         Woods of Danger 

Five Bendizi warriors stood on the path, then they disappeared.  Cosima and Alex darted left, Miriam, Hector, and Wulfram IV dashed right. Cosima and Alex took refuge in thick brush. The others clambered high among the branches.  Tramping feet thundered louder.  The path teemed with armed changlits, marching fast, looking neither right nor left.  After they passed, the Bendizis  saw Brin and Rouxlan’s close advisor, Sevrin, cruising along the trail in an all-terrain vehicle.  Cosima feared the outcome of their conflict, now that Brin was against them.  If only the balloon had landed closer to Bendiz.  

Vinegar and Salt

Hi readers and writers,

When I write my first drafts, definitely to Anne Lamott's prescribed degree of non-excellence, I often reread them and wonder, "Where's the beef?"  The thing I tend to leave out is the tension.  One of my friends from many years ago once made a dish called Slum Gullion, essentially Beef Stroganoff with burger substituted for the steak.  She forgot the vinegar and salt, and it was so bland we had decided never to use the recipe again until she reread it and realized what she had left out: the taste, the subtle items that make you want more so you can figure it out.  My first drafts can be that way.  The bones of the story are there, but the lines between them are all slack and there's nothing urgent about how things are connected.  Revision is where I actually put together the motivation, the tension, the stress and write them into the story.

Adding tension sounds like there's no way it could work.  Not true, though.  It's implied there already, but in the written part, it's not featured.  I just need to bring it out, show the dialog with subtext and conflicting desires, let the characters try to move the story towards their individual dreams.  I often cut out text that is over-the-top descriptive or contains information in excess and replace it with these elements that ratchet up the stakes for the characters.

What are your revision strategies?  Do you need to add tension, or do you concentrate on the beauty of the sentences, or do you add subplots?

cheers,
Laura
Image from Creative Commons/Wikipedia with thanks.

Conflict with Conflict

I’ve been interested lately in “story,”  the underpinning of a lot of creative writing.  And there’s bad news about story for those of us who want to think good thoughts in the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas: story arises from conflict.  The worst criticism my fellow MFA students give to each other’s writing is, “No conflict.  Nothing happening,  No tension.”  A relaxed pair of old men, friends, fishing from a small boat, where’s the story in that?  But let one of them challenge the other to a fishing contest?  Let one be in love with the other’s wife?  Let them be competing for the same high mileage vehicle at the car dealer’s?  Conflict!  Drama!  Story!

I submitted a chapter about Holly, a young girl in North Carolina, getting to know her next door neighbor, an older woman of the Cherokee tribe, living alone in a house attached to an old pear orchard.  I loved envisioning the natural environment and describing it, and having the two enjoy each other across the lines of age and ethnicity.  But of course, I got, “Where’s the tension?  Why should we want to read this, and find out more about these people?”  And yes, conflict was coming, in that Galilani’s friend’s grandson, a Native American boy, was going to scandalize Galilani and his mother by going out with Holly.  But I didn’t want to foreshadow that in the beginning.  So my fellow writers suggested ways I could use language to clue the readers in that conflict was off stage but it was just around the corner.  I’m still thinking it over.  I suspect they are right But I am the same writer who is often accused of summarizing the conflict scene that should be developed fully, skipping over the problems.  Hmm.  I do that in movie DVDs sometimes too, although I’m pretty good about not looking ahead in murder mysteries.  Well, there is no fast forward in life, and as I writer, I must face that and even revel in the details of the scenes of conflict.

I deplore this finding, but I can’t deny it.  Without conflict there is really no reason to tell a story.  With conflict, the reader wants to find out what happened to the characters, how the conflict plays out, is resolved, or is passed down to the next generation, or whatever.  You don’t need resolution for the story, but you do need conflict.