Car Wandering

When I'm in a car for longer rides (like the one I'm about to embark on) I usually do one of two things:

1) Read

2) Daydream

I can rarely do homework, and sleeping is nearly impossible unless it's dark, the middle of the night, and has been almost 24 hours since my last shut-eye. I do usually listen to music, though.

I call the daydreaming part "car wandering," because my mind wanders all over the place. I keep a notebook with me in case I get some fantastic story ideas, which I do. What about you? Do you read in the car? Daydream? Listen to music?

Kieryn
www.kierynnicolas.com

Unofficially NaNoWriMoing It!

Today is the first day of NaNoWrimo (National Novel Writing Month), for those that live under a rock and didn't already know.

I wasn't going to NaNo this year. I figured, I've been writing manuscripts in a week. What do I need a month for?

But then I looked more in-depth at my process and I realized two things:

1. All of the books I've written in a week or plan on writing in a week are fun novels, usually MG or lower-YA.
2. My upper-YA ideas are much more involved and need more than a week to develop.

So I said, why not? and decided to unofficially NaNo this year.

I say unofficially because the story I'm going to be working on is one I already started, which is against NaNo rules. It was one of my WIPs when I started this blog that I haven't worked on in a few months but I'd really love to get back into it. So, NaNo it is!

We'll see if I can make it!

Who else is doing NaNo? What are you writing?

Harmony

Saturday Is a Sunday

Or: I got a fever and my body tried to boil my brain.

Yesterday, I woke up with a sore throat, a killer migraine, body aches, and I couldn't warm up to save my life. Long story and Nyquil later, I'm feeling better but not better enough to write a post. Sorry guys!!

Happy Halloween,
Peace and cookies,
Laina

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

Tim Burton is kind of a genius.

Since it's Halloween weekend, I thought I'd talk about one of my favorite horror flicks when I was a kid. I'm not necessarily sure why I liked this movie - I'm pretty sure I had no idea what it was about, since I watched it when I was, like, five or something - but I always, always watched it when it was on.

The plot is about a "bio-exorcist" who tries to scare away this couple who recently moved into a new house inhabited by ghosts. The ghosts aren't happy with the newcomers and hire the infamous Beetlejuice to do the job.

And this brings me to my topic today: plot. There are so many ways you can twist a conventional story into something new and unique. Instead of telling an average ghost story, where humans try to exorcise ghosts, Michael McDowell (the original script writer) decided the ghosts needed to exorcise the humans and Beetlejuice was born.

So say you get an idea that doesn't sound really original but you'd love to write. One that sticks in your head. It's happened to me several times, and I sat with that idea and talked to it. How can I make you scream, idea? How can I make you unique and witty and zany? And we discuss it over a cup of tea and decide on some key elements. There are a lot of things that can make an unoriginal idea original: writing, characters, the plotting itself, and setting.

So say you have an idea for a romance story. But it's just a romance story, you say to yourself. How is that original? Try setting. Make it in Alaska. Make it in Germany during World War 2. Make it in an entirely new world you create.

Say you want to write a horror story. But it's just a horror story, you say to yourself. Try something new with your writing. Write from the point of view of the horror creature itself. Beowulf's Grendel, written by John Gardner, probably came from this same idea of thinking. Take that monstrous thing and write through it's eyes.

Say you want to write a comedy. But it's just a comedy, you say to yourself. Tell the characters to stop being lazy and speak to the readers. Tell them to do something interesting, daring.

Don't ever not write a story idea that's eating at you because you think it's unoriginal. Make it your own. Spin it, weave it, write it.

WEDNESDAY IS HILARIOUS?

When I volunteered to do a post on TEH FUNNY I didn't quite realize that NOTHING I WRITE IS EVER COMEDY. Instead there's always an underlying current of tongue-in-cheek humor, little lines here and there to lighten the emotional load. Because the stories I write are about families torn apart, the death of a friend, alcoholism, and love stories that never quite go the way they're supposed to.

I'm not a comedy writer, but you have no idea how much I sometimes wish I were. I can spend hours watching shows like 30 Rock, Community, and The Office, and trying to figure out why the funny works as well as it does. So it's no surprise that, when doing a post on TEH FUNNIES, I'm going to be looking at both television and books.

Elements of Funny
Keep in mind, please, that there's no reason to use EVERY SINGLE ELEMENT unless you just want to. This is just a list of common funny things I've noticed that some hilarious works make use of, if that makes sense. And, because I didn't have a whole heap of time to write this post I only came up with three. SOZ BOUT THAT.

THE FUNNYMAN :
Ex:
Spencer, from Suite Scarlett
Alpha, from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (arguably)
Spencer, from iCarly
Tracy Jordan, from 30 Rock


This is the character that makes you laugh. You learn pretty quickly that this character is never going to have a not-funny scene. They just say the darndest things. Or do the darndest things. This is the character that you can always rely on to be funny. (For all you TV tropes fans, the funnyman can sometimes be the Cloudcuckoolander, but not always.)


In television it's fine to have a character whose sole purpose is to be funny, but one of the reasons that Spencer (the Suite Scarlett one) works so well is that not only is he the funnyman in pretty much every scene, but he's also one of the most important characters and has a very strong relationship with the protagonist. He's not the primary main character, but he's close.

OUTRAGEOUS SITUATIONS :
Ex:
Everything 30 Rock does
Most of Community
Everything Spencer from Suite Scarlett is ever involved in

These are the situations that, even on their own with no characters to support them, are completely insane. Things like putting on a Shakespeare play (complete with unicycles!) in your home, breaking into a KFC space shuttle simulation and being towed away. Those things. They just sound ridiculous, and if you can fit something that ridiculous into your completely-grounded (or even un-grounded) story, KUDOS TO YOU. It's funny.

WACKY NARRATOR/NARRATION :
The best example of this one is Serafina67, in which the entire book is told in blog format and there are whole chapters (including scenes and dialogue) written in... wait for it... LOLCAT. For serious. It's undoubtedly off-putting to some readers, but for others (like me) it's absolutely hilarious.

I'm not telling you to write your book in lolcat. But telling it in an interesting, offbeat way usually gives it some humor.

JOKES :
I absolutely love jokes. I wish I could write them into my stories, but I have no idea. I know nothing about them, but obviously they're hilarious.

Flashbacks

Traveling gives me weird dreams. I mean, I have weird dreams normally, but traveling gives me really. Strange. Nightmares. Which is awesome, because half of them are great story ideas, if I can remember them long enough.

I had one of those strange dreams Friday night, and I remember it quite vividly, as I had to wake up in the middle of it to get to the airport (you can only remember dreams you wake up during, right?). It was the perfect combination; crazy dream, vivid recollection, and lots of time sitting in moving vehicles to mull over it.

Needless to say, bam, new story idea. The characters and their relationships are already so clear in my head that I was itching to start writing. So, I did. (Not going to say in which class.) By the end of a surreptitious half hour, I had four pages written. Normally it's hard for me to write that fast, except when writing a flashback scene. Which I was.

Why is that? Almost every time I write flashback scenes, I write at least twice as fast as when writing present-moment scenes. Anyone else find that happens to them? Any thoughts why?

Kieryn
www.kierynnicolas.blogspot.com