Hello, dear reader, tonight I won't be making a normal Heart and Business blog post in the spirit of Thanksgiving. Instead, I'll leave you with a writing prompt idea. What would a protagonist do if a mechanical turkey was at their Thanksgiving celebration? What is the protagonist thankful for by the end of your story? Have a Happy Thanksgiving, America! If you're not American, have a blessed and wonderful day, dear reader.
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Hello, dear reader, I hope you’re having a good day. Is it day for you? Is it night? Are you tired? Why are you tired? Questions can go on and on, can’t they? One technique I learned in college was to ask ‘why’ five times to get to the bottom of your problem. An example would be: There is water under my sink. Why? The sink is leaking. Why? I check and find a hole in the pipe. Why is there a hole in the pipe? Further investigation leads to sub-par construction of the pipe. Why was it sub-par? Turns out the contractor wasn’t paid well enough to buy quality pipes. It continues so you can identify the root cause of a problem and work to address it. It can also prevent future mistakes. I probably would go with a different construction company that pays its contractors well after such an experience. How does this help you tell a story? It helps you think critically about problems. Every story has problems. There are plenty of YouTube channels making money criticizing stories.
After you grow more comfortable with storytelling, find a story you like. Whether you listen, read, or play through a story, think about what makes you like it. Was the villain relatable? Was the protagonist interesting? Why was that plot twist so exciting? Now, start asking, “why?” Okay, that was fun! Let’s experience a bad story now. Yuck. Express your disgust. Swallow it. Then ask yourself, “what made this so bad? Was there anything good about it? What mistakes did it make that I can learn from?” Now tell your story. If you’re confident, ask your audience for feedback. Then ask them why they thought/felt the way they did about the story. Try and get to objective facts they have subjective opinions on. If they thought your protagonist was too whiny, find out what the protagonist did that twisted their ear. Did you want to annoy the audience? Keep questioning, and don’t give up! Let me know what you think, and feel free to post any other ideas for starting to be a storyteller. Have a good day, dear reader! Hello, dear reader, and welcome to this blog on telling a story better than you used to. Really, it’s more about learning in general. I’m going to lay down a couple of tips I’ve learned over the years, from a variety of sources, and inspire you to have at it!
Abraham Lincoln started life as a boy who loved to tell stories. I’ve been to his birthplace, and have seen the roads he would walk. If anyone around was willing to listen, Abraham was there for them. A story already on the tip of his tongue. We know Abraham eventually became one of the greatest presidents the United States has ever seen. He used his talent and drive to tell stories to, as an adult, inspire people with his speeches. He didn’t write the Gettysburg Address when he was 10. In fact, he thought the Gettysburg Address had been a flop after he gave it. If you’re interested in history, then you may want to follow this link to learn more about Lincoln’s address and his thoughts about it http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2009/11/lincolns-audacious-address.html. If you aren’t interested in history just know, Abraham Lincoln worried and fretted over the words he would say. Words we now consider to have changed a nation. If he had never started telling stories, do you think he would have ever pursued law? Politics? Would he have ever become president? Abraham had to start somewhere. So do you. Now, how do you start? I want you to answer several questions for me. Do you like coming up with random stories off the top of your head, do you like modifying existing stories, or do you like retelling stories in exact detail? Wherever you land, start where you’re comfortable. Have fun and keep telling stories. You can copy pages of your favorite book, be a role-playing game master, or even change the ending of that one movie you loved and follow the idea into another story. Your story. The more you practice, or play, the better you'll get at it. As Shia LaBeouf would say, “Just do it!!!!” The most important thing is to start. Have fun. Make mistakes. Play! Don’t worry about whether your story is the best thing ever. It won’t be. It will be the first of many stories. The beginning of a life of laughter, tears, and wonder. Each story you create will build on top of the last one. Each story will be better at something, and you'll get better at storytelling. The process will start when you start. Have a good day, dear reader! Let me know what you think, and feel free to post any other ideas for starting to be a storyteller. Hello, dear reader, and welcome to an inner debate I’m having right now. I’m thinking of writing a story based on daily creative prompts. Normally, you’d use a prompt to get you started on a story by getting a singular idea. Is there any possible way to bring numerous disparate story ideas into a singular tale, bringing it into a cohesive whole?
What I mean is, say I write a chapter a day based on a prompt. Maybe just a page a day. The story is, for grins, 30 chapters (or days) long. The first prompt says the story is based on a corporation’s monopoly selling clean water. The problem is the corporation is lying and all water on the planet is clean. How did people start believing the lie? Why do they continue to believe it? Is anyone doing anything about it? Well, it sounds like a decent prompt. The next day the prompt may say something like a unicorn salesman is down on his luck. His magical unicorns are sick and losing their magic. In order to keep their magic the salesman has to make all the children of his village smile. Every day. It is possible to bring these two stories together. But what about the 15th day? What happens when 15 chapters, or pages, become a jumbled mess of stories? The question thus becomes, what sort of rules should I have for liberties with the prompts? Should I take every prompt literally or not? Would it make sense to take prompts from different sites, or do they all need to come from the same source? Could I write with an unlimited cast of characters and environments? Dear reader, do you have any suggestions or rules you’d want me to use? This is the idea I’m toying with. I plan to post the results on the website. Let me know what you think. Any suggestions? Have a good day, dear reader! |
AuthorBrian Petrilli, creator of Lunar Nebula LLC. Archives
March 2018
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