Baby Carrot Algorithm Method

It’s surprising to me to find it’s almost sunrise and here I am taking a breather from fact-checking. It’s that point where I’m having to go back over everything, remember when I switched a paragraph five chapters back, and keep a running tab of random characters that were placed with the expectation of bringing them to the forefront later. If I can tie them in later, then it’s worth it to keep that extra seemingly unrelated bit of data, but it’s got to seem to work with the rest of the early chapters as important detail about the setting then, rather than a boring setup for later.

Too many movies do that. Make you sit through the boring early setup only to pay it off later at the very end. It’s like grading a paper. You were going to give them a C, then it turns to a B- at the last minute only because they remembered to thread it back through at the end.

There are two ways to deal with extraneous characters. The first as noted above, is to work them in as integral figures later in the plot so that a sense of community is established. The second is to take a crowd of characters that have amassed by the end, and find ways to make them deeper by giving early snippets of them in opening chapters so that for the reader it becomes clearer near the end that so much has changed for the characters actively engaged. The world has changed. Something has happened.

For my part I finally broke down and got note cards. I’m creating the freaking dewey decimal system of a characterized world. I’m not that I’m aiming to end up one of those eccentric LOTR card playing mother’s basement dwellers, it’s that I want to make sure I’m not asking anyone to read a word more than they have to in order to get some joy out of the experience. If someone’s going to be there in each line, there’s got to be a reason for it.

It’s putting the deus in the machina. The peas and carrots mix, but not like someone building the mountain in their mashed potatoes. More like those display case food plates.

Nobody needs to know you’ve scientifically engineered to arc radius of each baby carrot using the golden ratio. For all intensive purposes, it should look roughly like the fibonacci sequence.

That’s when you know you’re cribbing from the best.

Check out seventeensyllables for some happy little trees and a haiku for lunch.

Going off the Path

Learn the rules so that you can break them. So the saying goes. Perhaps you can if you’ve studied structure, the classics, and social metaphor enough to pass the time by writing along where the story takes you. Many established writers do, and their work does gain traction.

Still, it’s more of an exercise in finding the path anyway, even if it’s just a new path and you’ve decided at some point the path your character or plot structure is on is so bad that it’s worth wandering off into uncharted jungle to find something – anything – better. There’s something to be said for that.

Discriminating tastes will serve you well as your own best critic.

Script Frenzy over at StoryLink has more on the excursion from set story outline to complete and total chaos used to channel back the real purpose of your characters.

McKee Story Seminar

If you’re out in LA, or anywhere near New York or London, there’s a training seminar coming your way. It’s very reasonably priced, I might add.  Yes, you can pay ridiculous amounts for DVDs and videos that may have a small amount of realistic grit, but for around $350.00 you can have a seat in an auditorium like a film school fresher and learn about the roots of mythic story structure from possibly one of the last living possessors of that art.  At least, the last willing to stand up in front of a bunch of bat crazy emu children to teach it.  MckeeStory.com

If you can’t go that route, there’s still the book itself, which will run you about $20 for the hardcover. The paperback is perpetually sold out.

And if you’re still desperate for something under $15, Blake Snyder’s “Save The Cat” will at least keep you headed in the right direction.