Do you know where Christmas trees come from?
I bet you had no idea it’s all thanks to Santa’s helper cat Garland!
Tag: Image Prompt
“It’s like I’m a perverted Sherlock Holmes, being watched in a chair by a horny Watson.”
What the heck is an unreliable narrator?
Shouldn’t, of all people in a story, we be able to trust the person telling the story to us?
Not necessarily.
I’m a huge fan of the Japanese cleaning-up legend Marie Kondo and her philosophy about “tidying up” your home and life.
In fact, seeing her made me wonder if it was possible to apply her idea about “sparking joy” into story-writing as well.
As it turns out, yes, it is not only possible, but it works great!
This pig isn’t going to be slaughtered by Farmer Chuckins.
This pig has a plan.
And it involves the New Year’s countdown and a rocket ship.
Over the weekend I watched the movie Coco, one of Pixar’s most recent films.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it got me thinking, “Man, Pixar is really good at telling stories!” I wonder if they’ve ever talked about how they go about writing them?
All it took was a little Googling to find “Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling.”
When you reach a pivotal point in your story, you can go one of two ways: a “trick” (something bad/evil happens), or a “treat” (something good/wholesome happens).
But what if it wasn’t up to you which way it went? What if it was up to… Twitch chat?
THUNDER THUNDER LIGHTING!
For the last stream, we did something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while: create the Ten Writing Commandments.
I’d put it off until we as a stream had written and read enough material for me to feel comfortable writing them up. I jotted down a few ideas before the stream started, but as always, chat was the real star with their suggestions.
After a long brainstorming session with good discussions and questions, we wrote our Ten Commandments.
Here’s what we came up with:
For the last stream, we did something that we haven’t done in a while: rewriting the beginning to a viewer’s story.
When MetaWarrior shared their piece during the freeshare part of the previous stream, I thought it would be a perfect candidate for a writing makeover. It had potential, but it was a little vague and bland at the beginning. So we decided to rewrite it and spice it up!
To do this, we made sure to set the scene and tone right from the start, and to give the reader the who/what/when/where/hook as soon as possible. That way they could visualize what was going on, and want to continue reading.
Here’s what we came up with:
For the last stream, we decided to try out a new exercise: writing about one small action in excruciating detail.
To do this, we picked a simple action (ie: paying for groceries, shaving a beard, etc.) and then described it using at least 500 words. Doing so forces you to go into extreme detail and show off lots of visuals, sounds, and smells that you might otherwise leave out. Plus it’s also good to practice slowing down the pacing in writing.
Together with chat we came up with a bunch of ideas, and then this one is what was voted for: sitting alone at a carnival.
Here’s the 500 words of crazy detail that we wrote about for it: