Today, I got up early, and I'm ready to dive into today's challenge of writing one page of my own work, before I work on anybody else's.
But I decided to listen to the little bitchy voice, I was talking about the other day. The inner voice that keeps telling me that my fiction writing sucks.
No, I'm definitely not going to give up. But I'll do some discovering first.
I'm going to watch Michelle Spiva's video about how to write a scene, because I prefer to get it right the first time, instead of having to rewrite the whole book. In a moment, I'll tell you what I discovered after viewing module 2 of "Creative Fiction Writing for Kindle".
How to Write a Scene Correctly the First Time
Have you ever read Greek tragedies?
They followed certain principles about unity. From WikiPedia about fiction writing in the Greek Tragedy:
The three units will therefore refer to the unit of time (the story takes place in a day), theme (one main theme) and space (one place only, in fact, the scene at the time of the three great tragedians was static).
The three units originally had to be observed through the whole tragedy, but in modern times, luckily, we can spread our stories more.
But these rules still holds, when you're writing a scene: One point of view, one main theme, at one place only, and at one time.
Michelle gives a good tip about scene lists, which makes it easier to come up with the best actions to get the story running from one point to the next (instead of running in place and be boring).
One of the things I really like about Creative Fiction Writing for Kindle is that you don't have to watch all the videos to go back to a point. Michelle has provided PDF-files with a detailed overview.
I used the PDF-files today to quickly find the module I needed to watch again, and even to spot the exact point inside this video (38 mins) to watch again. (Hint: It's around the 32 minute mark in module 2 and from the beginning of module 6.)
In the PDF for module 2, you get an awesome example of plot development. I don't know about you, but I always find it helpful to see an example, when I'm learning new stuff. It makes understanding so much easier.
To me, this plot example also gave me an idea about how to create the scene list.
I also get in doubt… my scenes are much shorter. Is that wrong? Well, Michelle said that the plot example wasn't right or wrong. It was just an example. And maybe, for my book, or my writing style, it's better with shorter scenes. I get easily bored myself, so maybe I just need these short changes faster.
I'm going to watch module 6 tomorrow.
I don't stop working on my book now. I just continue in a different way. A lot of times, I get the best ideas when I'm away from the computer. I can "write" full scenes, and even short stories, in my head. Today's task is to write the scene list. Tomorrow, I'll continue watching Creative Fiction Writing for Kindle. And then it's weekend again...
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Being the mean bastard that I am I have to ask; what happened to the rest of the Kindle challenge?
Did you manage to get it done?
You mean bastard!
How DARE you!
Kindle challenge? What Kindle challenge? I never joined a Kindle challenge, and if I did, you’ll not be able to prove it.
(Nope, I never finished. Me and fiction… I’m an excellent starter, but then I start to hate what I write and I give it up.)