All these tips from Story really started to stack up by about P300. I knew I was going to finish and I knew I’d be better for it. However I still think that there is still a less tangible side from writing that comes from within. Mr McK states quite rightly about the importance of writing from the outside in but what about that vial of leaking stardust that spills pure creative Novocaine into our blood. What about creating a meme that will spread throughout your audience like wild fire. Yes as much as these fundamental rules need to be given respect i also rate individual style and talent as the real kicker that can carry a book simmering and bubbling above the myriad of stories… OK here is another round of superb ditties from the Page Python, turn on, tune in and drop out…
Extract: P212
But if history has taught us anything it’s that when toxic nightmare is finally cleaned up, the homeless provided shelter and the world converted to solar energy, each of us will still be up to our eyebrows in mulch
Thus whilst the quality of conflict changes as it shifts from level to level, the quantity of conflict in life is constant. Something is always lacking like squeezing a balloon the volume of conflict never changes, it just bulges in another direction.
Extract: P213
Life isn’t about master criminals with stolen nuclear devices holding cities to ransom. No life is about the ultimate questions of finding love and self worth, of bringing serenity to inner chaos, of the titanic social inequalities everywhere around us, of time running out. Life is conflict. That is nature. The writer’s challenge is how to orchestrate this struggle artfully, delicately, beautifully, ironically and with such aplomb and panache that the reader is left in state of enrichment.
Extract: P243
The understanding of how we create the audience’s emotional experience begins with the realisations that there are only two emotions – pleasure and pain. Each has it’s variations joy, love, happiness, and anguish, dread, and terror to name a few. At it’s heart , we’ll lean life gives us only one or the other!
Extract: P254
How might we write a love scene? Let two people change a tire on a car. A textbook on how to fix a flat. “hand me the wrench. Don’t get dirty. Let me…whoops.’ However as their meet sparks fly it’s the unspoken thoughts that let us see through the surface. ‘He thinks she’s hot and she knows it.’
Extract: P255
We realize we cannot go around saying and doing what we’re actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum… In truth it’s virtually impossible for anyone, even the insane, to fully express what’s going on inside. No matter how much we wish to manifest our deepest feelings, they elude us. We never fully express the truth, for in fact we rarely know it… No text without a subtext.
Film Reference: Annie Hall
When Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) speaks directly to the audience “confessing” his fears and inadequacies, he also lies, dissembles, cajoles, exaggerates and rationalizes, all in a self-deceived effort to win us over and convince himself he is doing the right thing. Subtext is present even when a character is alone…
Definition: P259
Opening & Closing Value. At the end of the scene, examine the value-charged condition of the characters situation and describe it in the positive/negative terms. If the value has undergone change, then the scene has turned.
Extract: P288
The Inciting Incident is the Story’s most profound cause, and , therefore, the final effect, the Story Climax, should seeminevitable. The cement that binds them is the Spine, the protagonist’s deep desire to restore the balance of life.
Extract: P290
The alteration between tensions and relaxation is the pulse of living, the rhythm of days, even years. In some films it’s salient, in others subtle… each story speaks it’s natural accent, but never in flat, repetitious, passive non events, or in unrelenting, bludgeoning action.
Extract: P295
This is why we tend to tell stories about lawyers, doctors, warriors, politicians, scientists – people so positioned in society by profession that if something goes haywire in their private lives, the writer can expand the action into society. MY THOUGHTS: Perhaps the opposite with Fight Club; Normal office worker ant gets to make a huge change… neat… that’s got mass appeal.
