Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Vibrancy and a Sense of Urgency

Vibrancy and a Sense of Urgency

I dreamed about this blog last night. This morning I woke up and knew exactly what I was going to write but it was one of those mornings filled with more important things to do. So here I sit when things finally slow down, darn near spent from the days activities.

Vaguely I remember thinking that one of the strengths of the Exploratory Writing course was being able to go off on tangents, to follow your muse and just see where she was headed. Sometimes a muse leads somewhere. Then again, sometimes she doesn’t

In the military there are two steps to the planning process. The first is figuring out what is best and the second is planning how you intend to do it. This workshop I am writing embodies the first of those two principles. You can’t just start writing about the first possibility that comes to mind. It might be sort of half baked and fall far short of the character and story potential. If I learned anything in my first two classes teaching the One Act Play it was that a little bit of development work could go a long way.

For example if you just start out to write a story you might think you know who the central character is but I guarantee if you act solely on first impulse you will get just past the point of no return and realize the story you’re writing is not going where you want and your Central Character is something less than central….Instead, in the workshop possibilities begin to open up that are much more intriguing and characters emerge that upstage the CC you started out with.

In the exploratory workshop then you can begin with an attitude that the development part is going to be an audition of sorts to find out who the CC is going to be and the direction the story is headed. Then in phase 2, after you settle on these answers you are ready to firm up an outline and follow the story line that is now much more clearly defined. Finally you will know how it ends and that is huge before you start pushing the pencil or pounding the keys.

Once you have written the six vignettes and developed three characters (or more) you have a pretty good idea, much better than you did to start with… as you looked out the window and lamented your writer’s cramp.. “Woe is me. “ How much easier it is, to write these little exploratory essays and see who is worthy of the role in this story that is going to take a whole lot of pain and effort to develop. To settle instead on the thread of a tale that has some complexity and elegance rather than the first thing that came to mind.

A story line needs some vitality. It needs to vibrate like a motorcycle that rumbles to life and resonates with a deep throbbing engine. When you pop the clutch, as a writer , it needs to accelerate with power and urgency.., a rush of excitement needs to animate the writer. It it gets you amped up there’s a good chance it will have the same effect on your reader.

Exploratory writing is the only way to go. Its fun and when you finish you have some food for thought in the lauder that will be sustaining through that long winter of creative despair.