A basket of writing prompts for spring

Seasonal prompts can be helpful in your routine, to get you paying attention to your immediate environment and the sensory experiences you can collect. It can also get you thinking about story potential in everyday events. Consider how to spin theses prompts for different genres or milieus. For example, try "a spring fashion trend no one could have predicted" as dystopian fiction, as fantasy, as horror, as SciFi, or as farce.

I know winter is over when...

My idea of a perfect spring day is...

Smells I associate with spring.

Spring foods I have been craving for months.

How my protagonist's neighborhood changes in spring.

In the hour lost to daylight savings, a cataclysmic event takes place

The Little League moms go to war because...

What my protagonist likes most and least about spring.

Beneath a minor league baseball team's diamond is a hidden ______.

A recent arrival on the frontier has to put in this year's planting.

A shipment of live chicks is delivered to the wrong address.

A surprise Easter blizzard strands a congregation in the church for three days.

A deranged criminal, the Easter _____,  delivers baskets of dangerous ______.

The Junior League Spring Fashion Show goes horribly wrong.

Strange things begin to happen when the local garden center starts selling a new variety of flower.

The high school track and field team is taken hostage and must use their skills to escape.

An ingenious designer creates rain-resistant ______.

During a magical Passover Seder, a family is swept back to Egypt in the days of Moses.

A flock of geese bring something terrible north during their spring migration.

At the height of spring lambing, an unusual ewe gives birth to _____.

A hotel double books its space for a Cotillion and a tattoo artists' awards banquet.

A group of college friend have an unforgettable spring break when...

The spring fashion trend no one could have predicted.

The day the garden gnomes revolted.

How three ingenious friends saved prom.

The marriage proposal that never got off the ground.

A couple with OCD plans a wedding.

A small town's rabbit population grows so fast that...

While preparing her little vegetable patch for planting, a widow discovers...

A flight full of college kids headed to Cancun crash lands in the Louisiana bayou / Death Valley / a Nebraska cornfield.

Wishing you a blessed Holy Week and very Happy Easter!

Which prompts appeal to you? What is your favorite thing about spring?

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Spatial surety: moving characters around buildings

Photo credit: melschmitz,  morguefile.com

Detective Fredricks completes his investigation of the dining room, then he...

goes through the French doors to examine the patio
or
takes the left exit into the butler's pantry
or
leads the officers back to the main corridor

Wait. Is there a butler's pantry? Which side of the room has French doors? What other rooms lead off this corridor?

Space, the essential frontier

Even if  you don't write mysteries, like in my example above, you likely need to move your characters through space, both architecture and landscape.

Like a director, you may have put a great deal of thought into how to "block" each individual scene in terms of how characters interact with one another.

But do you know how they are interacting with their environment? Further, do you know how your various locations connect? If your image of the protagonist's key environments is fuzzy, chances are you will introduce some pretty significant continuity errors, like having him go upstairs to bed in one scene, and getting breakfast down the hall in another.

The best way to avoid problems like this, and even to increase your productivity, is to map all your locations.

You don't need to be an expert cartographer or an architect to do this. You don't even need to invent places from scratch. You simply need to know how the story's spaces are connected, their approximate shape and size, and any environmental details that will play a role in the story.

In this week's post, I will cover tips on mapping man-made spaces, specifically building architecture. In a future post, I'll discuss mapping larger landscapes.

Architecture

Unless you have a deep understanding of how buildings go together, I'd recommend basing all your floor plans on existing buildings you know, or professionally made plans you can get your hands on. Because there are extremely detailed rules about what shapes hold weight, how plumbing and electricity are added to structures, etc., your amateur plans are likely to be unsafe (or at least improbable) spaces.

There are loads of places to get useful floor plans that show exactly where the dining room is in relation to the butler's pantry and patio. Where windows are located in a building. Which stairways go all the way to the second basement. How many bedrooms there are and which has a closet large enough to hide a corpse in. *wink*

Realtor sites

I found, on a realtor website, a three-bedroom, two-bath floor plan for the apartment building where my character lives. I printed it out, and voila, I never again had to wrack my brain about where the bathrooms were, or which windows faced 93rd Street. This was loads easier than taking a train up to New York, trying to wheedle my way past a doorman, and asking tenants to show me around.

Even if you don't have a specific location in mind, but rather are creating an amalgam of various places, hitting a realtor site can give you a picture of typical housing for an area, especially which architecture styles and eras are common there.

Many city high rises use realtors to vet tenants and offer varied floor plans for their different-sized units, which realtors will have available to view. Newly constructed housing complexes almost always include floor plans, as do commercial buildings.

Books

There's a series of books published by Dover Architecture that covers all sorts of architectural styles and eras. Here's a sampling:

Small Houses of the Forties
101 Classic Homes of the Twenties
More Craftsman Homes
The American Bungalo, 1880-1930
Turn-of-the-Century Houses
Georgian Archtectural Designs and Details

If you need some contemporary homes for your characters, here are some additional books of floor plans.

Lowe's Bestselling House Plans
The Complete Home Collection

Or simply hit your library's architecture section and photocopy the plan you wish to use.

Map what you know

If your locations are buildings you have access to, do a quick and dirty layout on graph paper, which will help keep the proportions in line. Or ask an artistic friend to do this for you.

Once you have a floor plan, mark it up with details to include in the story, like furniture placement, color schemes and the like--whatever details are necessary. Don't use this as an excuse to endlessly plan and never write!

Do you enjoy exploring and dreaming up architecture? What kinds of building spaces do you need to know to write your story well?

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Rough or a route? Using coarse vs. course

Today we're tackling a set of fraternal twins of language, the homophones coarse and course. Once again, I'll provide a definition, examples and mnemonic tricks to help you keep them straight. Because spellcheck will not help you if you use the wrong term for the context.

Luckily, these two words are always different parts of speech; the A version is only an adjective, the U version is a noun or verb.

Coarse fabric (Alvimann at morguefile.com)

coarse

(adj.) having a rough texture, or a loose weave; vulgar, rude, crude.

examples
The beggar's coarse woolen cloak gave little protection from wind.
Use coarse sandpaper to remove the old, thick layers of paint.
Mickey's coarse jokes made everyone blush.

mnemonics
Coarse oars make hands ache
The coarse mannered are always alone.

course

A riding course (jade from www.morguefile.com).

(n.) a route traveled, as by a ship, plane, or car;
a directed or mapped route
progress in time;
portion of a meal;
a unit of instruction, a plan of study on a topic

(v. intrans.) to flow or stream without obstruction;
to follow a course or be directed in a course

(v. trans.) to hunt using sight instead of scent;
to chase or pursue

Of course (idiom) - a turn of events is obvious or expected; certainly; naturally.

examples
Buffy often lost her way on the club's golf course.
Over the course of a week, the team built a new prototype.
We'll be serving salmon and roast beef for the main course.
Kyle really loved his art history course.
Tears course down Lucinda's cheeks.
My kayak coursed forward in the strong current.
The greyhounds coursed hares across the field.
Of course the class clown would wear a vampire costume to the prom.

mnemonics
For an utterly ultimate run, use our course
Una's unique course unified us students.

Which sound-alikes tend to trip you up?

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Word smart: jealousy vs. envy

Welcome to my new periodic series I'm calling "Word Smart," an expansion of my "Homophone Helps" series. In it, we will look at two words and/or concepts that writers confuse, offering clarifications to help you express your ideas most clearly and accurately.

I often hear the term "jealous"  used incorrectly as a synonym for envious or covetous or even greedy. And dictionaries, because they are descriptive (reflecting what is seen in speech) rather than prescriptive (defining rules), have let the erroneous conflation become acceptable.

I hope you want better for your fiction. Because there are very good reasons to NOT conflate these two very different emotions.

Jealousy

A rival stirs jealousy (Photo from morguefile.com)

Jealousy is a very complex emotion that arises when you fear losing something rightfully yours. It most often arises in threatened relationships. Generally jealousy involves at least three parties--you, your beloved/valued thing, and a rival. This rival threatens to take away the beloved and break the bond you have.

A classic example of jealousy can be found in Shakespeare's Othello. In it, a villain named Iago convinces Othello that his wife is cheating on him. Othello's jealousy grows into a murderous rage. He orders a hit on his supposed rival, then murders his supposedly unfaithful spouse. When he later discovers the infidelity was a lie concocted by Iago, Othello is overcome with remorse and kills himself.

Jealousy is built upon distrust. It finds fertile ground to grow in relationships when trust between partners is weak and/or one partner is deeply insecure and fearful about the relationship.

While in the throes of jealousy, one wants to cling to the beloved while simultaneously feeling fearful, suspicious, hurt, betrayed, and angry.

Jealousy can also be experienced regarding more abstract things rightfully yours, like your good name, reputation or accomplishments. I suspect this is where the confusion with envy happens, If someone else gets praise for your accomplishments, is it rightly envy? No. They took what is yours. Your accomplishment, your deserved praise. You would rightly be jealous.

Teens often like to play jealousy games as a way to test whether someone is a beloved. They flirt with a possible rival to see if feelings of hurt and betrayal are stirred up in their love interest.

Non-exclusive relationships, like siblings with parents, can also lead to complex jealousies--a sister might see her brother as rival for Mom's time or Dad's affection, relational perks that are rightly hers (but also rightly his). Ditto with friend groups. Valerie is spending more time with Morgan than with me. But I'm her BFF! That sense of rivalry and betrayal, of a wedge in a relationship, is jealousy.

Envy

Photo by greyerbaby at morguefile.com

Envy is the desire for some good you do not have but another does. Another word for this is coveting, though to covet can simply mean yearn for or deeply desire, Envy involves only two parties, you and the envied one. You want to take away what they have--it is desire mixed with malice.

Some say that consumer culture and advertising are intended to stoke feelings of envy.  But note that envy is deeper than greed, You don't merely want a Maserati, for example. You want to take away your neighbor's black Maserati and keep if for yourself. An envious person couldn't enjoy having a matching car. The envious could only enjoy the car if it is gained through another's loss.

Desiring someone else's partner is therefore envy. You want to take away their beloved and keep him or her for yourself. Should you succeed, you would be the rival another is jealous of, but you don't actually experience jealousy in this case. The relationship did not belong to you; you yearned for it and maliciously stole it from another.

When your coworker is lauded for his accomplishments, the emotion it stirs is envy. You desire to take away both his accomplishments and his praise. There is no beloved thing of yours betraying you or being taken from you in this case.

When a someone seems to hate you because you have a talent they do not, they are not "just jealous" but rather envious. Make sense?

Final thoughts

When deciding how to describe one of these emotions, remember this: jealousy involves fear of losing something rightfully ours. Envy involves taking something another has.

Interestingly, in the Ten Commandments, envy or coveting is condemned ("Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's animals or his servants or anything that belongs to your neighbor"). Jealousy is not mentioned.

In the Torah/Old Testament, God calls himself "a jealous God" who desires that his people be faithful in worshiping only Him. As creator and protector of his people, he expects them to not give allegiance to Zeus or Ashera or Horus or Odin or the Tree Spirit. Thus jealousy is a "relationship protective" sort of emotion. It becomes pathological when there is no reason for distrust of the beloved, or when exclusivity is demanded in a naturally non-exclusive relationship (such as friendship).

Do these words have distinct images in your mind, or do you confuse or conflate them?

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Filtering: why it harms deep POV and how to fix it

Photo by Earl53 at morguefile.com

First person point-of-view is way of narrating as if you were looking through someone else's eyeballs, wearing her skin, moving about the world in her body. It offers tremendous access to another person's psyche.

But only if you remember to let your reader get that close.

A common problem in writing first person POV is what I call "filtering," that is, when the character first labels an experience before experiencing it. While filtering is a staple of third person limited POV, it weakens first person narration.

Here are some examples, (both past and present tense):

1. I feel a chill prickle up the back of my neck.
2. I see eleven elven princesses arrayed in silver sweep into the room.
3. I hear the waves crash against the shore.
4. I smell the pungent odor of old fish and gag.
5. I wondered what my dad would do when he found out.
6. I thought he had the style sense of a colorblind accountant.
7. I turned my head and there to my right I noticed a patch of cheerful daffodils swaying in the breeze.

They don't sound like problem sentences at first blush, do they? But consider that we have access only to the sensations of the protagonist narrator. Is it really necessary to tell us first that he is feeling a sensation or thinking a thought? Of course not. Obviously only the protag/narrator could be having these sensations and opinions, since we are privy to no one else's inner world.

The filter clause further adds a redundant telling to something the rest of the sentence shows. And these filter clauses add a load more iterations of that pesky pronoun "I" that can make even the most selfless protagonist sound like a raging narcissist.

Now let's see those sentences "unfiltered":

1. A chill prickles up the back of my neck.
2. Eleven elven princesses arrayed in silver sweep into the room.
3. Waves crash against the shore.
4. The pungent odor of old fish makes me gag.
5. What would my dad do when he found out?
6. He had the style sense of a colorblind accountant.
7. To my right, a patch of cheerful daffodils swayed in the breeze.

Note how much more immediate and punchy these are. As a reader, you feel as if you are experiencing sensations with the protagonist, rather than being told about them across a table. You're looking through her eyeballs, not sitting on her shoulder.

The thoughts and opinions sound more natural, the way thoughts form inside your own head. You don't think to yourself "I think I want cake." No, that desire will be in your head as "I want cake" or simply "Cake! Must have cake!" (For some, the "I think" filter is a way of expressing uncertainty, so the unfiltered version would be "Should I have cake?" or "Is it bad that I want cake?")

Most of these filters are easy to find and trim away.With "I wondered" some rearranging will likely be necessary, because wondering is a way of contemplating questions.

Example 7 is a way of filtering using excessive "stage business"--narrating movement that could be inferred from context. Obviously a character turns her head to see something to her right. Trust the reader to get it.

A few caveats

When your character is relaying a story to someone else, these filters would be perfectly appropriate. His or her storytelling will not be deep POV, but limited.

Another instance where filtering might be necessary is when the reader knows the protagonist's senses have been interfered with or limited in some way. For example, "Through the blindfold I could see only dark blotches against a field of orange."

What special challenges do you have with writing particular points of view?

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Thoughts on motivation and change arcs

We're entering the Lenten season today, a time when some of us prepare for Easter by committing to putting off something--whether it be fasting from desserts or TV. or taking a break from a vice--in order to put on a new spiritual habit.

Image by Seeman, morguefile.com

There's something useful to be learned for character arcs in this.

Making changes in one's life doesn't happen by accident for the most part. There is almost always some volition involved. One commits to change when staying the same becomes uncomfortable and when those with whom we have important relationships require it.

Willpower alone is usually inadequate for lasting change to happen. Lenten practices have built in rituals and community support, two key elements you also find in 12-step programs to break cycles of addiction.

Change involves replacing one behavior or habit with another one. If a positive behavior or habit isn't intentionally chosen, focused on, striven for, human nature is such that change won't happen--or a different bad habit will take the place of the one left behind.

The fact that change is so hard is why it is so appealing, so very necessary for us to see embodied in stories.

Behavioral science researchers have been hard at work to uncover some other helpful tidbits about what does and does not motivate change. As you create and refine those "inner arcs" in which a character grows toward change, keep in mind the following:

• Giving someone information can make them defensive instead of receptive

• A person entrenched in a habit needs to be invited to reexamine the stories they tell themselves about it. 

• We can be blind to why we're stuck, often fixating on only one motivation without seeing the whole picture. 

• Quick fixes--plowing ahead with a one-sided approach to change--tends to fail or simply not last

• Change happens when multiple sources of help and motivation come into play:

• Personal motivation -- the good for me needs to be powerfully appealing, moreso than other things
• Social motivation -- other people give me positive attention or shame
• Structural motivation -- there are powerful "carrots and sticks" (rewards and punishments) tied to this
• Personal ability -- deliberate practice increases skill, just like learning an instrument
• Social ability -- seeking help from mentors, teachers or friends adds encouragement and accountability
• Structural ability -- create an environment that aids success, create "carrots and sticks"--especially carrots.

More on the behaviorist approach, which I parsed here, can be found in The 3 Most Powerful Ways to Change People Who Don't Want to Change.

If you're struggling to make a character's inner arc dynamic and believable, take into account these truths of change, and use them to balance forward movement with setbacks.

What aspects of character change do you find most tricky to portray, forward movement or setbacks?

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8 signs you're doing better than you think you are: writers' edition

Photo credit: Alvimann from morguefile.com

I admit, this title is partially ripped off a post one of my Millennial friends linked on Facebook from a site called "Thought Catalog," meant to help folks feel less like a lost cause because, hey, they do this "adulting" thing with at least minimum competence. And they aren't starving or being carpet-bombed. Win!

Since only a handful of you lovely readers leave comments, I don't know how far to go in making sweeping generalizations about those who read this blog. However, I think the following is likely true if you've decided to stop by here today.

1. You have some degree of fluency in English.

Native English speakers, do you have any idea how blessed you are? English is one of the world's most difficult languages to master. Its grammar is difficult, its spelling and pronunciation seems to follow almost no rules at all, and its vocabulary is mind-blowingly huge.

People the world over are shelling out a fortune to have what you have. And believe me, even people with PhDs in English for whom it is their second language often don't write as well as a native-speaking high schooler. So to my teen readers, go you! You can write far more fluidly than the university English department chairs in many developing countries.

And visitors learning English, you are my heroes! Keep adding vocabulary. Keep reading. Keep working hard at your writing. You are doing something phenomenal!

2. You read books.

In fact, if you read at least one book in the past year, you're doing better than one out of every five Americans. (You can read more stats at The Decline of the American Book Lover.) You've likely heard the maxim about putting in 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, but have you also heard the related reading one? That reading about your field for an hour a day will make you an expert in seven years? That should tell you that this one habit can be a powerful force in your life.

Books offer many benefits over other forms of entertainment. Every little bit you do grows your knowledge base and vocabulary. Reading fiction has been linked to increased empathy.

3. You're interested in something besides celebrity gossip.

I blame Facebook for this being on my radar as well. In this video, a reporter went to a college campus and asked basic history and civics questions, like "who won the Civil War?" and "who is our vice president?" The kids overwhelmingly couldn't answer correctly, unless the questions were about a celebrity, then bingo! correct answers every time.

Since you're on my humble page rather than stalking a Kardashian, you are doing a lot better than most at developing into a multi-dimensional person. Go, you!

4. You're seeking to improve yourself.

It's far easier to stick to what you know than to try new things. But you writers are real go-getters. Yes, even those of you who agonize over every word. Who are riddled with self-doubt. Who won't show anyone--not even your cat--what you've written. Because you aren't content to stick to what you know. You are moving toward change.

5. You care about creating something new.

Our world is so fast-paced, it can be overwhelming or conversely fill a person with ennui. But not you. You have stories that demand to be told and you care about them. You're not content to passively sit by and wait for some great tale to come out of Hollywood. No, you're out there in the trenches with your Bic pens and  your laptops and your voice-to-text software dreaming up new worlds, new adventures, new imaginary people that will change readers' lives forever.

6. You have goals.

You might not have a clear sense where this germ of an idea is going, but you are following it to some kind of conclusion. This manuscript has been on your hard drive for a while and more than anything you want to type "the end" on it. You think one more editing pass is probably a good idea for this quadruple-revised and beta-read manuscript. You sent ten more queries to agents about a manuscript you love.

Wherever you are in the process, that you're IN process with a writing project is amazing. Did you know "write a book" is one of the most common "bucket list" items? If you've so much as dreamed an idea for one, you're on your way to something most people hope to accomplish at least once in their lifetime.

7. You have doubts.

Only those with serious psychological problems never have doubts. Doubts are a sign that you take yourself and your creative drive seriously, and that you are taking risks in what you try to write. Doubts make you dig deeper to find the true heart of every story, rather than settle on the first idea that popped into your head at 2 a.m. Doubt is a tool of a craftsman who seeks to continually improve.

8. You're seeking support among like-minded people.

Mentoring has been shown to be a vital ingredient to success. Even if you don't have face-to-face contact with writer-mentors, visiting blogs like mine can be a powerful way to connect to other writers, gain support and advice, and be an encourager to others as well.

Study after study of what makes people happy name "positive social connections" at the very top of their lists. So by networking on social media with people who care about the same things you do, you are also doing a great deal to become a happier person. How cool is that?

Any others that you would add? 

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