Zing

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    Story zing method: fiddling with knobs

    ByJohn Brown

    One of the most basic way of coming up with story ideas is to take a familiar story or thing, list out what’s commonly associated with it, then start changing some of those elements.

    For example, you list out all the normal things for vampires–the coffins, black, bats, sucking blood, etc.–then you begin to twist. What if the vampire wears, instead of black, some styling plaid? What if it isn’t a person but a rabbit (whoops, that one’s been done)? What if instead of gothic places like catherals you find him in a trailer park? What if instead of being dangerously suave, he’s a drunk?

    Do you see? You can do this with anything.

    In this interview, Matthew Sturges talks about how he did just that with the movie The Dirty Dozen and ended up with with Midwinter, a novel about prisoners given another chance. According to Sturges, “In the case of Midwinter, the beginning of the story was, ‘What is prison like in Faery?'”

    Read the whole interview. I think you’ll find it enlightening.

  • Maya, a character for a thriller?

    ByJohn Brown

    mayalassiterbeachphotoMaya lives in a yurt.

    She has glorious garbage floors.

    And chickens that run around and lay pastel eggs in odd places like buckets–Easter every day.

    Here’s a list of her most popular blogs.

    So, folks. Maya has a fascinating life (as do most people when you start to get the details). So fascinating that you can’t help but want to write about someone like her to see where the story goes. Go read her blog and tell me you don’t agree.  It doesn’t get any better than this.

    In fact, what would happen if I took a Maya and put her in that thriller I’ve got incubating? 

    Oh, baby. Zing.

  • For your epic enjoyment

    ByJohn Brown

    On Writing Excuses someone talked about writing an epic fantasy in a limerick. I figured I’d give it a go. Of course, it’s a slight cheat, but epic nevertheless.

    A tiny man with a ring
    Said I’ll save the world from this thing
    He traveled to Mordor
    But in very short order
    Was trounced by the chatty bling bling

  • The Face of Mechanical Genius

    ByJohn Brown

    This is Warren Ellis.

    I heat my house with radiant heating. When we built this place, Nellie, I, and the girls laid down yards and yards of tubing. Then the mudmen came in and covered it all up with concrete. We run hot water through that tubing. That water it heated by a boiler, which also heats the water for sinks and showers.

    About two and a half weeks ago our boiler quit working. We called the guy who sold it to us. It worked again for one week and went out again. Then again. And again. Now if we lived in the valley and it was summer it wouldn’t be an issue. But we live at 6,000 feet, in the mountains, and it’s winter. We just got four inches of snow two days ago. Needless to say, heat is important.

    Well, four technician visits, $600, and many hours later, we still have problems. The blasted boiler conked out again tonight just as Nellie and I were about to take showers to go to a dance for adults our church was putting on.

    So we brought in the big guns. We called Warren. Now Warren fixes cars. He fixed our fridge. He’s worked on everything from computers to furnaces. So Warren arrives. In less than 10 minutes the @#!$ boiler was working again. And we now know exactly what the problem is so the Lochinvar boiler rep can’t tell us to look for something else and that it’s an installation error (yes it’s a Lochinvar Knight boiler–remember that boiler buyers). Genius. Absolute genius.

    I offered to give Warren a big old kiss–hey, hot water’s important, almost as important as a wife who doesn’t have to take a cold shower in the morning. Warren refused. 

    So here’s a wet one for ya, Warren. You’ve done your work to further world peace.