The Writing Workshop

Writing Prompt: Power to the Shippers

There's this thing called fanfiction, wherein an amateur author writes a story using the characters from their favorite books, TV shows, etc. and then publishes them online. It's generally considered a form of flattery, doesn't make much money, and thus, isn't penalized under copyright law, even though it technically should be. Sometimes, that fanfiction develops into something else - the Random House bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey (as of this posting, the book is over on the Amazon's Most Wished For list in the sidebar) started life as a Twilight fanfiction.

There's also this great internet meme called "shipping" (a derivative of relationship), wherein fans of a particular show or book or comic wish for a particular relationship that doesn't quite exist in that world's reality. For example, people might ship Wolverine and Storm, Heathcliff and Nelly Dean, or there's even something called Wincest, the pairing of Supernatural's Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean.

Write a fanfiction story in which you ship a pair of characters that are normally not paired up. Then change the names and setting to create an original work.

Imitation is the finest form of flattery, people.

Writing Prompt: Making the Most out of Gibberish

Writers write for different reasons: some of us love a good story, others like the wordplay. For some, it's the rhythm of a sentence that drives us, while others need that emotional tug of the heartstrings. But for most of us, it's still about making sense out of black and white blobs on the page.

In today's prompt, we're going to take that literally.

Take a piece of paper and cut it up into small pieces, at least 24 of them. Write down the names of your favorite 4 movies, 4 characters, 4 places to visit, 4 items you'd take with you in case of a fire, 4 great quotes, and 4 flavors of ice cream. Put all the words in a hat. Pull out 4 pieces of paper. These words should combine to be the basis for your story.

For the movie titles, you must use the plot of that movie. For characters, an analogue of that character must appear in your story. For places to visit, that must be your setting. The items must be used (although you don't need the fire), the quotes must be said, and the flavors of ice cream must be tasted (although not necessarily in ice cream form). If you get more than one type (two plots for instance), then you must merge the two together.

Repeat the process to create a new story.

The more crazy your words are, the more exasperating this prompt will be. Fun times!

Writing Craft: Writing Deaths & Other Highly Emotional Moments Without the Melodrama

Storytelling is about getting the reader to understand a point or about getting the reader to feel an emotion (sometimes both). This is why writers tend to be drawn towards the extremes of human experience when writing narratives. It's much easier to get a visceral response in the midst of a shoot-out then it is in a polite discussion between parents about their children (not that it can't and hasn't been done).

The problem with writers' proclivity to go towards the narrative extremes is that their ability to write extreme emotions must come through. In other words, without identifiable human reactions to go along with extreme (plot) situations, the narrative will become melodrama, or worse, feel false to the reader.

Comic books are probably the best example for this. Since comic books are known for both their death scenes and coming back to life, a character's death (like Jean Grey's rather famous demise in Uncanny X-Men #136 over there) must mean something. In Jean's case, she sacrificed her own life to save the universe from her own growing powers. Her death then affected the rest of the cast and the stories told for the next ten years.

But recently, death has become something a breezy issue in comic books. Bucky's (Captain America's WWII partner) death in an event comic wasn't even dealt with, and the character didn't even die that heroically or surprisingly. Fans were upset. In other words, the plotting and the story didn't serve for Bucky's death to make sense to the reader.

Does death make sense to anyone in real life? No.

Does death need to make sense to your story and therefore your reader? Absolutely.

Part of being a writer is taking the things that don't make sense in this world and distilling them into something recogniziable and understandable for the reader. If a hero falls saving his friends, then that's a death the reader can understand. If a woman get hits by a car while chasing down her child, that's a death the reader can understand.

But if a man gets hit by lightning on page 3 and nobody seems to care because you didn't really focus on the death in your plot and theme, the theme of your book is now how cullous the world is. In other words, highly emotional moments, like a death, impact the story much more than other moments, and create shifts in tone, plot, and most importantly, theme.

In other words, anytime you write a death or other highly emotional moment into your story, make sure it's not there for shock value alone. Make it worth something.

Writing Prompt: 5 Characters, 1 Locked Room

There's a TV trope called Locked in a Room, in which two or more characters who don't like each are trapped together for what appears (at least to them) to be an indefinite but lengthy amount of time. As such, conflict arises and the characters are forced to come to grips with their animosity. The more general use of this is the Bottle Episode.

Write a story in which five characters who already know each other (and possibly hate each other) are trapped in the same room.

Why is this story so much more difficult to write than it is to tape? Mostly because you're going to have to do a lot of dialogue choreography to make this story about more than just the description of wherever you've trapped them. Also, you've got 5 characters - making sure the reader understands whose talking when and keeping the plot moving along is going to be a pain. Since there's no movement, the plot will be basically completely emotionally driven. For writers who focus more on action, this prompt will be a challenge.

Writing Prompt: Change One Plot Point

In any classic story, there's certain plot points to hit for it to be said classic. If you're talking Romeo & Juliet, you need Romeo to be told that Juliet's dead. In Jane Eyre, it's Mr. Rochester's first wife getting out and burning the house to the ground. Or, in Harry Potter, it's that whole Voldemort choose to attack baby Harry over baby Neville. What would happen if these details changed?

Write a story in which a certain plot point from your favorite book was altered.

The goal here is to inspired by the original piece, but also to show your creativity. Whether you change something large or small, it should show the theory of unintended consequences. Let each change, starting with the first, be a series of dominos that finishes by dramatically changing the story's end.

If you can alter the story's themes while you do so, even better.

Writing Prompt: Flash Fiction Friday: Guys & Dolls

One of the world's favorite narrative arcs is that of the love triangle. Everyone loves a story of two competing lovers - look at the popularity of The Vampire Diaries, which is basically just Twilight with a lot more death and sex (all the good things) and one hell of a love triangle. Twilight's love triangle is pretty pathetic in comparison, since Edward is perfect in every way (to Bella) and Jacob is kind of an obsessive freak (to Bella). Or, in other words, it's really no surprise at all that Bella ends up with Edward instead of Jacob.

On The Vampire Diaries, there's actually been a question from the very beginning as to whether or not the heroine Elena would pick the good boy vampire Stefan or his brother, bad boy vampire Damon. Why, you ask? Because both characters have that wonderful shade of gray that makes Stefan not quite the good boy he appears to be, and Damon has the hooker with a heart of gold complex, just with fangs and killing instead of sleeping with people for money.

Write a one-page story in which a love triangle is resolved.

Your goal today is manage the depth of The Vampire Diaries' long triangle in a single page. Don't go all Twilight on me, especially if you're using vampires. No sparkles. No fluff. No obvious conclusions.

Writing Craft: Who is Your Main Character?

Sometimes, it's hard to figure who exactly your main character actually is.

Janet Fitch, my professor at USC and author of White Oleander, tells a great story about writing that book. The main character was not originally Astrid, a young girl whose life is continually upended by her crazy, absentee mother who murders a man with poison. Instead, the story began with the mother, but Fitch realized that the mother didn't have a story - she was a murderer, sure, but she was unrepentant about it and to change that would alter the character. The mother was this great, complex character, but there was no plot to her, no place for her to go. As such, Fitch created Astrid, to struggle against the mother and gave her a growing up arc.

The point of Fitch's story is this: as writers, we often do not know who the main character is when we start writing. A lot of times, it changes as we go along, or another character comes up and demands attention while we are writing. They are just so interesting that they take over the stage, and our planned out main character fades into the background.

However, it is important to note that you've got to know for yourself who the main character is at some point (hopefully before a first draft is finished). While interesting characters are great, characterization is only one part of a book. Characters work hand-in-hand with the plot to create a narrative, and without a main character directing the action of the plot, your narrative falls to pieces.

The point I actually took from Fitch's story is that you must find a narrative that works. By taking the main character and altering it, you need to also alter the plot. By choosing a main character, by saying this is the person the reader needs to pay attention to, then you've already dictated at least part of your plot. The main character must change between page 1 and the end. If not, then you have no story. Or you have the wrong main character.

This isn't to say that you can't have multiple main characters. The problem is still the same - they must evolve through the plot. If they are a main character, we need to see every step of their narrative arc. Just remember, though: the more main characters you have, the more in-depth and creative you're going to have to be with plotting, as the reader will expect there to be a reason that you have multiple main characters. If you don't know what that reason is, I suggest you find one, hopefully through the plot and not just the theme.

Writing Prompt: Famous Last Words

I admit it: I'm kind of obsessed with Wikiquote.org, the quote database equivalent of Wikipedia. It's got all sorts of fun quotes, from authors to celebrities, movies to books, and I fully admit that I use it when I'm trying to find all those Great Quotes over at the PFS Book Club.

For today's prompt, we're going to use Wikiquote's Famous Last Word page.

Write a story based around a Famous Last Words quote. The quote should be said by a character in the story and it should play an important part in the story's characterization and plot.

The fun part is not so much writing the story, but figuring out which famous last words you want to use. I'm partial myself to John Dillinger's "You got me."