And hoorah, I must say. Along with May, August and September are officially the worst months of this year :|
This month something particularly irritating has been occuring - my Office trial, which came with my computer and theoretically ought to last me for 60 days, has expired not once but TWICE in the last threes weeks since I bought my laptop. Not fun.
Anyway, on to the positives :)
This month I have:
* Written 7569 words. This is the second least amount of words I've written in a month so far this year, so it's a bit dismal... But on the other hand, given my word count as of the 17th was ~1100, I've pulled it together in a not too bad way. I really wanted to get to 9,500 at least, becauase that would mean I've done 100,000 for the year, but *sigh* thus is the Uni life.
* All the above words were on TP, which means I've added 4 chapters to it. That's one short of my goal, but chapter 22 is half written and I can probably finish it before bed tonight :o) I'm looking forward to having ch22 done, because it means I'll have passed the Halfway Mark in the novel! Much excitement :)
* Made 1 submission. Haven't written anything else to submit :S
That's about it. If you wanted the list of everything I've done for uni, the list would be quite a bit longer... Hehe.
Even though it's not as much as I usually acheive, I'm still happy with it. It's been a real struggle to get any writing done this month, and I'm sniffing halfway in TP, so all is well :)
Thanks to all of you who have read my blog this month, especially the newcomers. Thanks most particularly to those of you who leave comments - it's nice to know real people are reading :o)
Here's to a better month ahead!
Showing posts with label chapters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chapters. Show all posts
31 August 2008
30 July 2008
Story Elements #3: Scenes
It came to my attention the other day that those things we writers like to call 'scenes' are neither as well-known nor as straight-forward as I'd always believed. And since they fit nicely into my Story Elements series, I thought this would be a lovely opportunity to explore my opinion on them :) Prepare yourselves...
Defining Scenes
There are lots of definitions of the word 'scene', but for the sake of brevity and focus, here are the more relevant ones.
Wikipedia:
In TV, stage plays and movies a scene is a part of the action in a single location.
In fiction, a scene is a unit of drama.
TME:
Continuous block of storytelling either set in a single location or following a particular character.
Screenwriting Info:
Action taking place in one location and in a distinct time that (hopefully) moves the story to the next element of the story.
Film/Editing Terms:
Action that occurs in one location at one time.
Screenwriting Glossary:
Continuous action with or without dialogue that takes place in one setting.
Good definitions - but note that they're all from screenwriting. Mostly, this doesn't make a difference, but let's throw in an author's definition here just to round things out.
Holly Lisle:
The simplest definition of a scene is that you've written a scene when something important changes. See her article on scenes and scene creation here.
Which means scenes can be tiny, or massive, depending on the scale of the change you're focussing on.
Scenes often line up with chapters, but they don't have to - and you can have multiple scenes in a chapter, but not multiple chapters in a scene. It's a complete, discrete unit, an event, an episode... A scene :)
However, when I said this to my friends the other day, one of them came right back with:
Oh yes you can [have multiple chapters in a scene]! I just ended Chapter three with Rick peering through a window and someone hits him from behind. Chapter 4 starts with him reacting to the blow and finding out what happened. Same scene. Different chapters. And a coat hanger in the middle.
The question is, does a chapter break equal a scene break? I think so, because it's the change that you're focussing on in the scene that determines where you break the chapter. It all depends on where you cut and why, because this will depend on what change you're trying to show. *tries to think of an example*
A guy comes into a restaurant. That's a change - he's moved positions. If that's the important change, then you could just end the scene there, and start a new scene for the next change that you wanted to show.
If, however, he comes in, and the waiter says something which irritates him, and he gets angry - maybe the change the scene is supposed to show is his change of emotion, rather than his change of position. In this case, the scene will be longer, and will be one scene even if it includes the same things that the previous two scenes would have shown... Yes? It's about figuring out which change you're emphasising.
A great resource that really helped me get my head around the whole business of what makes a scene - and more importantly, what makes a good scene is Holly Lisle's How To Write Page-Turning Scenes. It's a quick read, and for me it was well worth the money to figure out how to tell before writing which ideas had potential to become scenes, and which didn't. It's a great refresher on types on conflict, too. However, I've always struggled with structure (versus character), so if you're pretty confident you know how to plot and structure, it may not be so useful.
Defining Scenes
There are lots of definitions of the word 'scene', but for the sake of brevity and focus, here are the more relevant ones.
Wikipedia:
In TV, stage plays and movies a scene is a part of the action in a single location.
In fiction, a scene is a unit of drama.
TME:
Continuous block of storytelling either set in a single location or following a particular character.
Screenwriting Info:
Action taking place in one location and in a distinct time that (hopefully) moves the story to the next element of the story.
Film/Editing Terms:
Action that occurs in one location at one time.
Screenwriting Glossary:
Continuous action with or without dialogue that takes place in one setting.
Good definitions - but note that they're all from screenwriting. Mostly, this doesn't make a difference, but let's throw in an author's definition here just to round things out.
Holly Lisle:
The simplest definition of a scene is that you've written a scene when something important changes. See her article on scenes and scene creation here.
Which means scenes can be tiny, or massive, depending on the scale of the change you're focussing on.
Scenes often line up with chapters, but they don't have to - and you can have multiple scenes in a chapter, but not multiple chapters in a scene. It's a complete, discrete unit, an event, an episode... A scene :)
However, when I said this to my friends the other day, one of them came right back with:
Oh yes you can [have multiple chapters in a scene]! I just ended Chapter three with Rick peering through a window and someone hits him from behind. Chapter 4 starts with him reacting to the blow and finding out what happened. Same scene. Different chapters. And a coat hanger in the middle.
The question is, does a chapter break equal a scene break? I think so, because it's the change that you're focussing on in the scene that determines where you break the chapter. It all depends on where you cut and why, because this will depend on what change you're trying to show. *tries to think of an example*
A guy comes into a restaurant. That's a change - he's moved positions. If that's the important change, then you could just end the scene there, and start a new scene for the next change that you wanted to show.
If, however, he comes in, and the waiter says something which irritates him, and he gets angry - maybe the change the scene is supposed to show is his change of emotion, rather than his change of position. In this case, the scene will be longer, and will be one scene even if it includes the same things that the previous two scenes would have shown... Yes? It's about figuring out which change you're emphasising.
A great resource that really helped me get my head around the whole business of what makes a scene - and more importantly, what makes a good scene is Holly Lisle's How To Write Page-Turning Scenes. It's a quick read, and for me it was well worth the money to figure out how to tell before writing which ideas had potential to become scenes, and which didn't. It's a great refresher on types on conflict, too. However, I've always struggled with structure (versus character), so if you're pretty confident you know how to plot and structure, it may not be so useful.
16 July 2008
Progress
It seems I haven't done a progress report at all yet for July, which is good, because if I just had to report on the last week's work, there wouldn't be much to say O:)
The first third of the month was great - I wrote over 10k in 10 days. Lovely. However, to make up for it, I haven't written a thing in nearly a week. There are very good reasons for this (snow trips, birthdays), but still... Ack.
Those words have been:
* About 4 chapters added to TP. Way behind where I wanted to be, but a lot better than nothing. I've been stalling in chapter 15 because of some police procedural details - I really need to push past that. But I'm still excited about having a complete plot for this thing. :)
* Short story involving platykies, a new species of mine based somewhat on selkies. Currently titled With This Ring.
* My first ever flash fiction piece! Woo, am I excited about this! An entire story, in less than 600 words :D This one's called Certified, and was inspired by a line a friend dropped on the forums the other day about being certified to raise the dead (she's a doctor-in-training).
On top of the writing, I've polished both With This Ring and Certified and sent them out as my July submissions, and entered the first page of TP into the Are You Hooked? contest over at Miss Snark's First Victim :)
So, even though I feel like I've been slack writing-wise for the past week, I guess I can't really complain :o)
The first third of the month was great - I wrote over 10k in 10 days. Lovely. However, to make up for it, I haven't written a thing in nearly a week. There are very good reasons for this (snow trips, birthdays), but still... Ack.
Those words have been:
* About 4 chapters added to TP. Way behind where I wanted to be, but a lot better than nothing. I've been stalling in chapter 15 because of some police procedural details - I really need to push past that. But I'm still excited about having a complete plot for this thing. :)
* Short story involving platykies, a new species of mine based somewhat on selkies. Currently titled With This Ring.
* My first ever flash fiction piece! Woo, am I excited about this! An entire story, in less than 600 words :D This one's called Certified, and was inspired by a line a friend dropped on the forums the other day about being certified to raise the dead (she's a doctor-in-training).
On top of the writing, I've polished both With This Ring and Certified and sent them out as my July submissions, and entered the first page of TP into the Are You Hooked? contest over at Miss Snark's First Victim :)
So, even though I feel like I've been slack writing-wise for the past week, I guess I can't really complain :o)
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