New Workshop: How to Write a Story that Rocks

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Folks, the first tentative schedule for Life, The Universe, & Everything (LTUE) has been set. For the past few years I’ve been teaching a 2-3 hour workshop called “The 3 Things You Must Learn To Write Killer Stories.” I think I must have taught it over 15 times in different venues. Hundreds have attended and said they loved it.

However, this year I’m going to be doing something different. I’m developing a new two-hour workshop called “How to Write a Story that Rocks.”

I’ll be teaching it Thursday evening, February 11th from 5 PM – 7 PM at LTUE at BYU. It’s FREE and open to all.

What I found was that a lot of new aspiring authors get lost in mountains of rules. But great storytelling isn’t about rules. They try to form stories with word counts, chapters, and weird plot diagrams. But stories aren’t about those things. They have a hard time knowing what to write next because they don’t understand how story works. In fact, some don’t know how to start at all. They just flounder in their piles of zing. Finally, even if they can get a bullet outline, they have a hard time turning that into a scene.

So what we’re going to do in this workshop is this.

  1. I’m going to bring in some ideas for character, setting, and problem. We’re not going to generate from scratch as we’ve done in the past because I want to get to the next steps.
  2. Then I’m going to teach you how to go from idea to outline–we’re going to do it together, and you’re going to learn exactly how to know what comes next 
  3. Then we’ll go from outline step to scene sketch.
  4. Then from scene sketch to draft.
  5. At every step I’ll be pointing out key story development concepts and principles

When we finish, you should be able to:

  1. Identify the essential story objectives and story development questions–get these right and the rest doesn’t really matter. This will include the HANDFUL of key things you need to worry about and develop with character and plot.
  2. Develop more likeable and interesting characters
  3. Develop more powerful story concepts (call it premise, problem, situation, whatever). Once you get this the story writes a lot of itself.
  4. Explain the real Story Cycle. Not Campbell’s mumbo-jumbo hero’s journey. Not the three, five, seven, nine acts. Not Freytag’s diagram. Story.
  5. Explain what it means to “move a story forward,” “increase the stakes and tension,” “complicate the plot,” “complicate the motive” and how that’s done using surprise, conflict, motive, and problem. Included in this are “turns,” “rugpulls,” and “reversals.”
  6. Use the Story Cycle concepts to generate a story bullet outline and take a bullet step idea and turn it into a scene.
  7. Explain the creative principles that help you generate stories more easily.

Larry Correia will be there as well. So I’m expecting this to be a very helpful workshop. I’m going to do all I can to make it as good or better than the first.

Go Shoot Somebody, Feel like Captain Kirk

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Imagine running and dodging for thirty minutes through dimly lit corridors as kids with guns chase you down and shoot you with glee.

That’s what happened to me recently.

The kids were daughters 1, 2, and 3. On my team were dead-shot Nellie and daughter number 4. The dimly lit corridors were provided by the Cache Valley Fun Park. The guns were lasers.

This was my first time playing laser tag, and I must report that we had an absolute blast. For twenty minutes we dodged and ran and shot with wild abandon. It’s like paintball without any of the pain, unless of course you crash into someone.

Here’s how it works. You divide up into two, three, or four teams. The attendant gives each of you a vest and scans you onto the appropriate team (your laser has a bar code and is attached to the vest with a cord). There are markings on the front and back of each vest. If someone lasers those markings, you lose points. If you shoot someone else’s vest, you earn points. It’s that simple.

All the teams go into the half-lit battle room–cut up with walls, corridors, and windows–and the game begins. You try to kill them. They try to kill you. You try to shoot their bases, but if you linger too long the bases shoot you. It quickly turns into chaos fun. You shoot someone only to have a daughter sneak up behind you and nail you in the back. You flee, waiting to regenerate, only to find that sneaking daughter has followed you through all the twists and curves and kills you the moment you come back to life. But the next time you escape, and you’re the one that’s got them running. It’s like a video game except better.

The system automatically keeps score for each individual and each team so you can have a player on the losing team actually be the high scorer. We could have gone on for another hour.

Of course, me and my exceedingly svelte figure might have had to take a breather. Or not. I don’t think twenty minutes of aerobics has ever passed so quickly. And I didn’t have to follow some gal in a pink leotard to do it.

But you’re not there for the cardio-vascular benefit. Although I can see the ads now—the Laser Tag diet! Featuring Bob, a happy nerd who played laser tag for thirty minutes each day and lost 200 pounds. He could join up with Subway’s Jared so they could be geeky together. Hey, wait a minute. . . I’m smelling moo-lah!

The only negative is that the game isn’t bargain basement cheap–$4/person for 10 minutes of play, $10/person for 30 minutes. So we might not do that every time we take the family to Logan for some fun, but you can bet we’ll be doing it again.

Go shoot somebody. Feel like Captain Kirk. You’ll love it.

Smith’s Grocery and Servant of a Dark God

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I’ve just learned that Kroger Food has decided to carry Servant of a Dark God on a trial basis in its Utah Smith’s grocery stores. If it sells well, they will take it nation wide.

Folks, this is a BIG opportunity for SERVANT. To put this in perspective, Barnes & Noble, the biggest book retailer in the nation, currently operates 775 retail bookstores. For first time novelists in my genre, they usually stock 2-6 copies of a hard back book. (BTW, if after eight weeks the book has sold decently, they will model the book for the store which means when they sell out, they order some more.  Other books that aren’t modeled are not reordered or are sent back to the publisher.) Kroger, on the other hand, operates 2,500 + grocery stores with book sections in them. That’s more than three times the size of B&N! That gives so many more readers the chance to preview the book. Heck, to even know it exists.

If you know someone in Utah who was thinking of buying SERVANT, let them know now’s a good time to get it at Smith’s. My fingers are crossed.

Also, if you spot the books while shopping at your local Smith’s, please let me know. I’d like to know how widely they’ve been distributed.

Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell

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I’m a sucker for military stories. I wanted to be an ARMY Ranger was I was in my teens. Wanted to go commando. Still regret it to this day that I didn’t. And so when a friend told me about Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson, I had to read it.

In June of 2005 four U.S. Navy SEALs took up a position on a godforsaken mountain in Afghanistan close to the Pakistan border. Their goal was to capture or kill a notorious Taliban/al Qaeda  leader whose small army had been ambushing and killing Marines. The problem was: three goat herders stumbled upon the SEALs not very long after they got into position.

If the SEALs don’t kill the goat herders, they will almost assuredly alert the Taliban force. SEALs are the best. But four against two hundred doesn’t compute. If they do kill the goat herders, then they’re sure someone will find the bodies. The Taliban will claim US soldiers are killing innocent civilians.  And the US media will pick it up. The SEALs were sure they will end up being tried for murder. It wouldn’t be the first time.

The SEALs let the goat herders go. Within hours the Taliban show up. Four SEALs. Two hundred plus Taliban armed with rifles and grenade launchers who have the high position on a mountain with plummeting slopes and very little cover.

Lone Survivor tells the story of Marcus Luttrell, the leader of that SEAL team, his training as a SEAL and then that desperate fight in the mountains. He and the other three SEALs fought ferociously. He was the only one to survive.

I had to force myself not to read this book in one sitting. Not only do you get a great story, but you also get insights into what makes a SEAL and their system of values. You’ll get to know a man who makes you want to stand up for God and country. And you’ll marvel at the courage of those who fight in our armed services.

I loved this book. May God bless the men and women who risk life and limb for all the rest of us. For the rest of us, we can see what they face in this excellent first-hand account.

Behold, the Opening Chapters of CURSE OF A DARK GOD

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For your reading pleasure, I have posted the current version of the first 12 chapters of Curse of a Dark God below. (And there was much rejoicing, yea.)

Read and enjoy!

CURSE OF A DARK GOD draft 3 chapters 1-12 reader 

Note: these are draft chapters and may change in the final version.

If you would like to be part of a test audience, please open the document and begin reading just as you would any book that you picked up because it looked interesting. Stop where you normally would. Then email me by clicking on the Contact John link under my photo up on the left. I’ll send you a couple of questions. Please make sure you don’t ask for the questions before you’ve given the bit above a go (I don’t want the questions to affect your reading). Also, don’t put any critique hat on. Just read as you normally would. 🙂 The deadline for test audience responses is January 15th.