Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Light at the end of the Tunnel

Light at the end of the Tunnel

Getting two looks at the Student’s outline has turned out to be another good idea. Most of the vignettes they have written are in the early chapters of the novel outline. That was to be expected. Having the three Crises included put one in the beginning, one about half way and the last (climax) at the end.

What I am seeing is that most of the vignette material is happening in the first half and only one vignette is in the last half. This demonstrates the dreaded “Sag” which is common to many novels to where the mid portion reads like the mid portion of a term paper. Seeing this in the outline is crystal clear to me and I hope it is crystal clear to the students.

When I was “Shadow Writing” along with the students it popped up in my outline and I had to create some threads of parallel action to shore it up; then came the issues of pacing and momentum building. If you use an outline these components jump right out at you. You can see the structure of a raw and exposed story line staring up at you.

On the workshop table seeing some of the pieces laid out and the creation beginning to emerge is a messy process but like making a dress or other garment the seamstress (writer) can begin to get a sense for what the end product is going to look like. Next week when I see the completed outline, I’ll have a much better idea for how the workshop turned out.

The point I try and keep in mind is that for most of my students this is a first try at a longer work. I remember when I built my first truck, how the quality kept falling short of my expectations as I forced myself to see the project through to the end. That as I became more involved and experienced certain tasks and functions became transparent and I began to take them for granted
.
Sometimes I think that having an expert try and teach anything is an exercise in futility. So much of their expertise has become transparent that they can no longer see what they need to be telling their students. The Exploratory Writing Workshop made some good initial assessments on what needed to be done and by “Shadow Writing” other important lessons learned reared up and allowed for their recognition and recording in the reviews, group letters, and even in this blog showing what the really important stuff was in the EWW process. I don’t want to sound like blowing my horn, but what Karen and I put together has succeeded beyond all expectation. Much of that had to do with having some smart and experienced tactical writers as students.

I don’t plan on writing a course for the next step in novel writing… I know some of my fellow instructors have given the matter some thought and even done some developmental work. I hope one of them steps up to fill the gap.