Tag Archives: story structure

Morning Pages Entry – June 15, 2014

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Woah, I always sleep so much at the boat. I did wake up around 6:30, and made a mad dash to the washroom, but sam was still asleep (it’s just the two of us up here), and I thought I’d lay back down for a few minutes. Next time I look at my watch, it’s 9:44 … woah big sleep in. Ah well, I suppose that’s only fair, that I get to sleep in extra since it is fathers day. Fathers day number 20 for me, thanks to Jenifer. Maybe it was because we had the heater cranked up so high, and it was warm in here that I slept so much. Although the last time I was here, I slept a whole bunch as well … but, then again we had the heater cranked up that day as well. I haven’t slept on the boat yet this year without having the heater cranked up. It was pretty cold at first, when I went to sleep, and even sleeping with my long pants, socks, and tshirt, it was pretty cool. I’m not sure I liked sleeping in that much. I didn’t get my online time really this morning before Sam got up. I was reading some rather interesting stuff on the Kindling facebook page, before I fell asleep last night. And, it’s not like I went to bed all that late, it was around midnight. Almost 10 hours sleep is quite a bit for me. I did find an interesting video about writing structure last night, the one that uses a “W” shape for story boarding, and it had a rather interesting concept for thinking about events in your story. It talked, about coming up with all the different events you could think of that could happen your story. Just brainstorm a bunch of different things that could happen, in no specific order, and it called all those events “islands”. Then, it used the “W” storyboard to arrange all those islands in approprite sequence for falling, and rising actions. There were periods, where things were getting worse for your heroes, in which case you would use the events that made things bad. It didn’t have to be continusously bad … you could have little blips of good things, but in general the progression should be bad, until the story starts to take a turn for the better, in which case, you would use events that supported that upward swing. I’ll have to watch it again, but it was pretty interesting I thought for thinking about story structure. Your going to have to be careful, that you don’t get too wrapped up in story structure and finding all these methods, without picking one and going for it. None of that analysis paralysis crap is necessary in this here adventure. You’ve got enough procrastination battles to be waged, without coming up with another one. Either way, it’s another interesting way of coming up with a good structure, and you never know which concept will stick with you. I did particularly like the idea of brainstorming “islands” of events that could happen throughout the story. I think I may do that a little more for this second book, and see what kind of stuff I could come up with. I would think, that I should be able to dream up lots of different events. Events are easy I think. Just a random bunch of things that take place. If I get good at it, I should come up with tons of stuff, and there’s nothing to say, you can’t go back, and come up with a whole bunch more later on. Cool. I really like being up here at the boat. I so need to spend more time up here, like multiple days in a row, to really get in the rhythm of being here and doing some good writing. I think, that’s going to be so cool this year. This is a good place to get some writing done. It just get’s my brain in a different place. You should get your taxes out of the way, before doing so though. I don’t need that silly worry rattling around in my brain any longer. Maybe, I’ll get it done this week. Likely have to do Jennifers as well. Maybe even Sams. It is getting a bit late for it. Anyways, it’s time to get some breakfast going here this morning. We do need to put up the mainsail today, and at the rate I’m going, we’re going to be doing that around noon.

TIGERBLOOD: Yep DAILYMOOD: good LOCATION: at the boat in bayfield WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: 25 pushups TODO: breakfast, write a bit, put up sail TV: documentary on 600 pound woman from TLC BOOK: none GAME: Sly Cooper EXERCISE: walk on beach WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs & tomato LUNCH: none DINNER: steak, asparagus, avacado SNACKS: orange, too many grapes ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 12:00 AWAKE: 6:30 and 9:44

Morning Pages Entry – May 22, 2014

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Alright, things are about to get busy for me the next few days. There are a number of other projects I need to get moving on, as well as the usual editing, writing and reading. I really suck at the reading part of stuff though I must admit. need to cut down on the wasted time just surfing around and whatever. I read a post somewhere yesterday, about the 17 books you should read after high school. I had only read one of them, but I think I may have seen one of the others in movie form. I had the strong urge, to want to read them all, and find out what I was missing, but it could just as easily have been another 17 books, and I would have had the same feeling. And, it gets back to the usual thing, that I really should do more reading. Sure, I do a lot of reading online I suppose, about news and technology, and writing, and boats, or what have you. But part of me feels, that I should be doing more of that reading from real published books. What is it about books, that makes people feel, like they are missing out on something. Or, at least it makes me feel that way. The thing about those books though, is that they weren’t really stories or anything, they were more about self discovery and introspective kind of things. Which being somewhat narcassistic means they struck a chord with me. I do need to start doing more quality reading. About things that matter. About things I can use to think about myself, and make my life a better place. I’ve been dogging the editing this week, since staying on the boat for a few days, and I need to fix that routine. If the book doesn’t get edited, it doesn’t get out there, and it doesn’t get published. So, quit screwing around and get to it. I suppose, one of the things that took time away, was that I got a bit distracted with TattooedWriter (WritersCafe forum poster) story of his 1000 books day. And more specifically, interested, in his story sturcture with his serial books. How he uses a three story archs within his series. An “A” “B” and “C” plot. There is the “series” plot, that runs all season, the “multi-episode” plot, that runs for 2-4 episodes ,and of course, the “monster-of-the-week” plot that starts and finishes for each episode. That’s something that I could certainly use for the short stories that I wanted to publish each week. If I could get to my 10K words per day writing, where 5K is for the major novel, and another 5K is for the short stories, then I could continue to work on the larger novel and publish regular stories as well. I suspect, that both could help each other. And indeed help me as a writer. I guess, reading about his structure, was just another one of those shiny things, that distracted me to no end, and kept me from doing stuff that I should really be doing. But, in the long run, it could also be very valuable information. The other thing yesterday, that was kinda cool, is that we have agreement with the whole family to do a Whole30 food elimination diet. This should be interesting. The only way to get Karen to agree to it, is that I would do all the shopping and cooking. That is for all 3 meals a day, for everybody. At least in the beginning. I fully intend, to have them do their own breakfast and lunches at some point, but at least for the first week, I’ll take charge of those two meals for everybody. We’ll see how it goes from there. It will take a bit of time, especially in the first week, but I think once we get through the first week, it shouldn’t be as time consuming. I just need, to get it all organized. I need to figure out, what the meal plans are for the next week at least, and maybe the entire 30 days. And, put together a shopping list for it. I need to accomodate time at the boat, and I need to accomodate Sams eating, which includes a pretty intense workout schedule still, and one swim meet (regionals), which I think, is about half way through the 30 days. Oh yea, and I need to get that damn leaky window in the boat fixed. That could take a day for me. So, that’s a lot to do over the next week or so. No time for screwing around. Really no time for that. So, get your editing done early this morning, so you can do other stuff.

TIGERBLOOD: yep DAILYMOOD: good LOCATION: home office WORDSWRITTEN: none PUSHUPS: 2:00 plank TODO: edit, write, read, meal plan, window fix plan TV: mad men, orphan black BOOK: none GAME: none EXERCISE: none WEIGHT: 170 BREAKFAST: bacon & eggs LUNCH: big ass salad DINNER: gypsy sausage SNACKS: orange, grapes, apple, 3 lara bars ALCOHOL: none BEDTIME: 12:00 AWAKE: 6:15