Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Simply Write

It looks like a nice day to fly my RC airplanes. It amazes me how much this hobby is analogous to my writing. When flying an RC airplane the writer is not in the cockpit but rather standing on the sidelines working the controls while the central and supporting characters have all the fun.

In yesterday’s blog I described how I write, realizing that the process I follow is not how everybody writes. There are minds out there that can seemingly hold all the balls to a good story in the air as they scribble with purpose and enthusiasm. Unfortunately my bio-processor falls far short of having such a capability. What I facilitate in the workshop is what works for me, a process that might not be suited for everyone.

As a writer stands on the sidelines orchestrating where the story is going it is easy to make a mistake that brings the credibility of the writer into question, to have the story drift out of sight, or bore holes in the sky that take the story nowhere. If a writer can write tactically they can certainly string one vignette after the next and wind up with a manuscript. If it flies and the author takes off and circles awhile and brings it down in to a safe conclusion then I have to take off my hat and bow respectfully. For me the process cannot be entirely spontaneous and still contain all the components I want it to contain.

With this in mind the Exploratory Writing Workshop is designed to capture the enthusiasm of an idea by writing vignettes and once the sense of the story comes more vividly to mind to capture it in a structure of bite sized parts. Given the limits of my mind I cannot think at the tactical, operational and strategic levels all at the same time. No doubt there are those who can and I have seen some amazing individuals who across the board surpassed anything I was ever capable of doing.

For me its necessary to brain storm and freelance my ideas to first see if they are going to fly. Once there comes the sense that the story will take off, the real work begins. I say work, but it is really fun to write an outline once you know what the story is going to be about. Once that is done I stroke my chin and say Hmmmm. What is the Life Changing Event (LCE) in the story, what is the Dramatic Premise, and what are some of the recurring themes? I poke these into the outline, and read on to where the crises are coming that arise as a consequence of the Central Character deciding to change the direction of their life. Then I look for some of the devices and the balance and distribution of the components to good writing. Hmmm. Are the characters being developed with a good before snapshot, is the story world being shown in an integrated fashion, does the momentum begin to build, is there a balance between the old “Show and Tell” exposition.

Once all this is captured for each chapter I begin to seriously write, confident that now the operational and strategic aspects of the craft will take care of themselves and I am free to do what I like best… simply write.