An absolutely perfect and maddening turn in the story

By John Brown | March 4, 2009 - 10:22 am |August 25, 2010 News - updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

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You’ll note the word count on CODG is steadily rising. Today, I experienced a delightful AND maddening turn.

I find outlines to be immensely useful tools for story development. Of course, there are many more tools in the box–outlines can’t do everything. For example, there are times when you’re drafting a story that you write something and it suddenly generates new options for the story that you in no way could have imagined without getting to that point in the draft. You can get a lot of ideas with an outline, but drafts generate still more. Sometimes the options that present themselves while you’re drafting are so right they give you goosebumps. I got one of those today. Of course, part of why it was so good was not only that it put the character in a perfect dilemma and the reader in a perfect chapter cliffhanger, but also because it was completely unexpected yet logical.

This all sounds so good, right? Well, the story turn was so unexpected, it startled me. It’s thrown my outline off. Which means I’m going to have to now revise the working outline. I was tempted to make the story fit. After all, I DO have a deadline. But this story turn is so freaking juicy that I cannot justify the hackery. Besides, working outlines are made for revision.

I’m riding by the seat of my pants today folks, and it’s exciting. I think readers are going to love this turn.

Buffett’s Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders on 2008

By John Brown | March 1, 2009 - 9:06 am |March 1, 2009 John's Reviews - books, movies, whatever, Zing

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I got my masters degree in accounting and information systems. While going to school I started an investment club and learned about a man named Warren Buffett.

Warren Buffett is humble, full of folksy humor, and trades places with Bill Gates as the richest man in the world, depending on the year you’re counting. His annual letters to his shareholders are a delight to read. This year’s is full of wisdom about the current financial crisis. Moreover, within a few minutes of reading you will be able to get some key insights that can help as you evaluate the plans being hatched in Washington and how to prevent this particular type of crisis from happening again.

If you’re not that into finance, I recommend reading:

The introduction starting on page 2 and ending on page 3
The “Finance and Financial Products” section starting on page 10 and running through page 12

Once you’ve read those, if you want to laugh and see Buffet’s humor, skip to page 21 where Buffett talks about the annual meeting of shareholders. Tell me you wouldn’t want to attend.

The Berkshire Hathaway homepage

This year’s letter to shareholders (you will click on 2008 because he’s discussing the results of that year)

More 10-to-20’s

By John Brown | February 25, 2009 - 10:38 am |February 25, 2009 On Writing

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I just posted this in one of the comments sections and realized it would be useful to everyone.

There’s another part to this that has to do with text. There will be more 10-to-20’s that go along with it. But I think I’ll be trying to create that presentation as a video for the site. We’ll see. Right now I’ve got to finish CODG. But when you finish the ones I assigned, I suggest you add these.

1. BEGINNINGS. Go to the bookstore or library and pick up 10 to 20 random fiction books off the shelves and then sit down with them. Pick up each and read the first two pages. Note which ones pull you in and which resist you. Identify the cause. Then see what patterns you can find.

2. 3 GRUNTS. Find 10 to 20 short stories or chapters from different books. Read them over three or four days. Do NOT read them looking for problems, but just as you would any book you’d picked up for enjoyment. While reading make a note of any section where your interest flags, the writing or story is unclear, or you just don’t believe it. These bumps are what Orson Card calls the three reader grunts. They occur when a story is unclear, unbelievable, or boring (i.e. you grunt huh? come on? or who cares?). When you’ve finished, look for the patterns that caused this response in you. ***This is one of the key things we did in Card’s boot camp that made me feel like the mists were being parted***

3. ENDS. Look at the endings to 10 to 20 novels or short stories that you’ve read. Identify which you enjoyed the most and which you did not. Look for causes. See what patterns emerge.

4. SMALL BEGINNINGS AND ENDS. Do the beginnings and ends analysis 10 to 20 chapters and then 10 to 20 scenes.

Of course, you can look at anything this way–plot turns, magic systems, aliens, settings, dialogue exchanges. Get 10 to 20 of them. Identify which are interesting to you and which aren’t. And then try to see the patterns. But I’d recommend you start with those above.