Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Templating and Spiders

Templating and Spiders

I read several more chapters from Game of Thrones last night and was impressed by the skill of the Author. He is quite good at foreshadowing and dangling clues at the outset of what is to come. If the reader is in the “Turbo-Mode” he/she will pass over a raft of good stuff that sets up elements of the future story line. Also George Martin is very talented at mixing dialogue and exposition while keeping the story moving.

In past blogs I have mentioned “Templating” as a technique a new and aspiring author (me) should use. It is one of those ideas I seem to have stumbled across and intend to include it in one of the lessons on Exploratory Writing. The germ of the idea is to read a chapter from a favorite work and then try and emulate the structure in the unrelated novel you are writing. I am not talking about trying to duplicate the voice, storyline or characters but rather to emulate the mechanics. For example, using backstory, dialogue, exposition (as it relates to the story world and character descriptions) and foreshadowing. Remember in school, diagraming sentences (UGH!) Well do the same thing with a templated chapter and then include the same components in yours. As you write your chapter you have one open in your favorite book… that becomes the template. Now it doesn’t really have to be a favorite book but rather a book written in a style that you want your book to follow.

Now that I think about it perhaps I should tell students who sign up for Exploratory Writing to select a template work they intend to use in the course and read it thoroughly in the interlude between signing up and the course starting. It goes without saying that in choosing an example to follow the reader will be examining in microscopic detail each sentence and classifying it in the role it plays in the storytelling model.

Yesterday was the funeral and Larry’s wife was buried. It was a sad day. I am awful at names. My mind is going to mush. Afterwards we did some yard work. That is always a good cure for sadness and got about half of it done.

One of my daughters is an Army Wife (3rd Generation) and writes a great blog. She and her husband, who is deployed to Afghanistan, have a ritual called “Hiding the Spider”. It began when he scared her with a real looking rubber arachnid and continued as each used it to try and startle the other…i.e. he would put it in her jewelry box and she would put it in his boot. It goes back and forth and is a never ending game. Last week she found it between the cushion of the couch (--an emotional moment.) As I was reading I realized that on a recent trip I bought several trick boxes that when the lid is opened a rat or spider pops out startling the nosey person. It did me anyway. I think I will send her one of my spider boxes.