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Friday’s Fun Find: A Two-Fer One: Alan Gratz and Jeanette Ingold

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Gosh, I hope I can squeeze everything into this fun two-fer-one today! So off we go…

On the ride from the airport to the Highlights Workshop, awesome author Alan Gratz went on and on about Dropbox, a free storage service. In fact, he sang its praises so loudly that, even though I wasn’t absolutely sure I understood everything that Dropbox could do for me, I wanted it. I wanted it bad. (And now I have it.)

But Alan also talked about plotting, the three act structure, crossing thresholds, tent poles and how important it is for your protagonist to actually do stuff (rather than have stuff happen to him/her/it). The thing is, you’re probably like me. You know about plotting. But understanding plotting is another thing entirely, right? So I’m keeping all the nifty Alan notes right next to me during this revision. I write and check a note. Then I write and check another note. It’s amazingly helpful.

I wish you had Alan’s notes. But I can tell you the book from which he gathered his notes (and highly recommended we read as well): The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler. It’s not quite the same as having Alan explain it all. But I think it must be an awesome book. I mean, have you seen all the books Alan’s had published? (And the fact that many of them are related to baseball in no way has influenced my glowing recommendation of these books. Um, all right, all right. Maybe just a teeny bit.)

And awesome author Jeanette Ingold shared her words of wisdom about how to tighten a story. (Actually, they were pictures. I love pictures! They appeal to my visual-oh-now-I’ll-remember-this side.) My favorite one was “Just the facts, m’am.”

You remember Joe Friday, right? Yeah, it was Dragnet, and why yes, it was a while back. (And no, that’s not Jack Webb. That’s Jeanette Ingold).

The point Jeanette was making here had to do with dialogue, so let’s move on, shall we? Which, come to think of it, was exactly Jeanette’s point. Good dialogue is the illusion of speech. So leave out the boring stuff, the hemming and hawing (unless it’s there for a purpose). And make sure your dialogue moves the story forward. You don’t want to bury great lines in pages of dialogue.

And if you want to see how expertly Jeannette employs dialogue, read one of her many books. I just finished Hitch (It’s about the CCC) and marveled at how well she captured the speech of those young men in the late 1930’s. But I paid careful attention to the craft of her dialogue, too. And it was mighty fine stuff.

Now, tell the truth.  You got lots more than a two-fer today, didn’t you? It doesn’t get any fun-ner than that.

P.S. BIG thanks to Nanci Turner Steveson for the Highlights Whole Novel Workshop pics appearing in this Fun Friday post!

MORE Amazing Workshop Wonders

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First, you don’t want to miss the AMAZING wonder-ful discoveries I made while workshopping. That’s going on over at The Muffin where I blogged today.

Okay, back? Now it’s on to today’s AMAZING character wonder that will change your writing forever. But first a BIG thank you to Kathi Appelt, a pretty amazing author and teacher, who shared her wisdom about character-writing.

She shared lots of fine tips on writing about people. But the one that I’m in love with is the “controlling belief.” It’s such a simple concept (but I’m not going to lie. Figuring out the controlling belief can be a wee bit difficult).

When Kathi (I can call her that because we sat next to each other at the table) discussed knowing the controlling belief of your character, she explained its importance in terms of pushing and pulling. The “controlling belief” is what pushes your character through the story–the belief pushes and the goals pull.

And now I suppose you’ll want an example. Hmmm…let’s look at Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz again. She believes that it’s possible to find the way back home. (Of course, she wants to go home, but that’s not quite the same as what she believes, is it?). And her goal is to get back to Kansas.  So she follows the yellow brick road–and her belief pushes her through all the obstacles she meets along the way to the Wizard. But then she learns she has to kill the witch, so now she has a new goal within her bigger goal. Is her belief strong enough to push her through the next obstacle? I mean, suddenly, she has to kill someone!

Wasn’t it brilliant of L. Frank Baum to not make that the goal in the beginning of the story? Because I don’t think readers would have bought that a farm girl from Kansas, falling from the sky, could jump up and decide to kill someone.  Dorothy has to grow a bit (and we have to get on her side, too) before she can push through that obstacle, even though her controlling belief is in place. Of course, in the end, Dorothy finds that the way to get home was always within her. But doesn’t she learn a lot about herself on the journey? I mean, besides the fact that she’s kind of a bloodthirsty young woman.

If you know what your character’s controlling belief is, then you’ll know why he/she does everything. EVERYTHING. And you might want to find that CB for all your characters so you’ll know what makes them tick.

I’m not saying it’s easy. But I bet if you’ll think of some of your favorite stories and/or characters, you’ll get a handle on figuring out the whole controlling belief tip. Katniss in The Hunger Games believes she’s the only one that can save her sister/family. Scarlett in Gone With the Wind believes she will survive, no matter what. Sam-I-Am believes that green eggs and ham are amazingly delicious!

It’s pretty amazing when you start to think about characters this way, isn’t it?  And just think of the AMAZING things it will do for your story! (Um, try not to think about the amazing rewrite you’re going to have to do, now that you know all this.)