Up next! @PiperJDrake Piper J. Drake - Incorporating Romantic Elements in Any Story #WXR18 (there are handouts and one is labelled explicit! :O)
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What are romantic elements? Any moment that creates intimacy between characters. Sex =/= intimacy. Need intimacy to create a believable romance. Your reader will start to ‘ship that couple and that is gold.
.@PiperJDrake#WXR18
Both romances and thrillers are emotional rollercoasters. Romance is about hope. Thriller is about justice. Both create strong emotional bonds between the readers and characters.
.@PiperJDrake#WXR18
Establishing intimacy. Lots of ways. Touch, eye contact, written word (e.g. letters in Inu x Boku SS), taste (how they eat or drink), scent, dialogue. Lots of other ways: gifts, shared experiences, caring
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The hint of romance in any genre. You can use romantic elements to get the readers onside, build character. It doesn’t have to end in a happy-ever-after.
.@PiperJDrake#WXR18
Exercise 1: Using Alien movie. Ripley x Bishop versus Ripley x Hicks: FIGHT. We watched some clips and wrote an argument for one of the ‘ships and are now having to argue back and forth between the two ‘ships. (Me: haha)
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Character development. Who are the characters in the beginning of the story: identity: who are they showing the world? may or may not be aware of it. Belief: what do they have that has to change? Relationships: why are they closed off to that relationship?
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Who are the characters at the end of your story? Identity/Persona Essence. What have they learned? that makes them believe in or be open to love.
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Once you have the characters at the beginning and end, the next thing: What romantic elements/moments in your story contributed to your characters journeying from who they were in the beginning to who they are in the end?
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Driving plot. Action (scene) > Reaction (Sequel) > Plot moves forward. The action can be romantic. The key thing here is that something changed about their relationship, even if they’re not aware of it.
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Conflicts: External and Internal (non-romantic) > romance elements > Black moment / All is lost. This can be very powerful, especially if your readers don’t know whether or not they’re going to choose the relationship or not.
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Progression of romantic elements through story for a believable relationship.Don’t have to be entire scenes
>First impression
>>First intimate moment
>>>First kiss
>>>>Want.. but this can’t work
>>>Maybe this CAN work
>>BLACK MOMENT
>Reconcile? Forever lost?
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First kiss is very important for readers. More important than any badoinkadoink at the end of the book. This is the moment that readers will go back to multiple times.
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“Maybe this can work” followed immediately by BLACK MOMENT. Very powerful contrast.
Reconcile/forever lost: are you writing a romance or a story with romantic elements story?
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Exercise 2: Pride and Prejudice. Watch a scene first without sound and then with sound and explain what is NOT being said in the scene.
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Building an explicitly intimate scene (why lots of people are here!). use all of your senses, build your scene in layers, make your readers breathe with you.
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Build your intimate scene in layers. Not just choreography. Give emotional reaction to what happens at each stage. Memory, physical reactions. Moments of decision (consent, trust, be impulsive). Tease your audience and don’t give them everything right away.
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Make your readers breathe with you. Taken from @DamonSuede’s talks. Make your readers breathe with you, sob with you, laugh with you, and they won’t be able to put your book down.
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Breaking down an intimate scene. Highlight the layers: actions, layers of emotional reaction, important background, decisions that move the plot forward. Make sure the scene needs to be there. If it's superfluous then why have it? Even in erotica.
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Breaking down a scene: actions, layers of emotional reaction, important background, decisions that move the plot forward. You want a good balance between these elements. Depends on the purpose of the scene.
.@PiperJDrake#WXR18
12 Stages of Intimacy. Progression of physicality between characters.
Using death or rape is a nuclear detonation to incite a visceral reaction in the reader. It's the easy option. It can be done in other genres. Consent is *required* in Romance, and rape is unforgivable/unredeemable. Also, use condoms.
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In other genres, if you're going to use one of these one the page, you better have a damn good reason.
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.@mauricebroaddus#WXR18
What is key to dialogue? 1. Pay attention to how people speak.
Exercise: record a family conversation and transcribe what people say. Different generations, ages, backgrounds. Start to see how people talk. eg Gilmore Girls, Joss Whedon, Quentin Tarantino
.@mauricebroaddus#WXR18 2. Good dialogue only evokes how people really talk. You don’t want to write how people really talk (um, uh, cussing). Straddle the line between how people really talk and how we wish they’d talk.
.@dongwon#WXR18
Authors vs Writers. Anyone can be a writer. Big achievement! craft skills. MFA, writer’s groups. A professional author is a different job: career management, workflow, deadline/time management, networking, marketing and promotion, PITCHING.
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Always be pitching. Your pitch is not only for agents, it’s also for publishers, editors, marketing/publicity, sales. Build a readership, network with your peers, connect with booksellers, convince your family. A good pitch is a key element of achieving goals.
K Tempest Bradford .@tinytempest Description, Language, and Writing Inclusive Fiction #WXR18
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These are things she’s learned, not things she knew. Ask, learn.
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Exercise: shows two pictures of two women and asks us to describe what they look like. Describing people who don’t look like you is another craft skill. Identity markers that students don’t usually touch on: race, class, religious status.
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Audience questions: Why people don’t like poetry? High school English, rigidity of form, why is ambiguity a feature and not a bug, extraneous to story (e.g. LotR: @tithenai disagrees), make you work
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Talking about her experience writing a poem at the age of 7, parents were overjoyed about her art, to be a poet is a responsibility in her family to speak truth to power, following grandfather who wrote humorous poetry while incarcerated
Next up: .@MaryRobinette Mary Robinette Kowal - Diagnosing Story Problems #WXR18
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Writer’s block can be a way of diagnosing that something’s gone wrong with a story. Four reactions: 1) drowsy: suddenly sleepy; 2) staring: how long can I look at the blank screen without putting words down; 3) restless: why am I suddenly in the kitchen?
.@MaryRobinette#WXR18
Drowsy writer's block: your story is boring you. back up to the last point that excited you and make a different, more dynamic choice.
.@TheDanWells Dan Wells “First Chapters, First lines”. He's talking SUPER FAST so this is going to be a slightly delayed livetweet stream as I frantically take notes. #wxr18
@TheDanWells .@TheDanWells#WXR18 Early writers freak out over first chapters. Chillax. Just write whatever and come back and fix it later. or keep going til it gets good and cut the bad parts later. or Pantser: write chapter 1 last. however it works
.@TheDanWells#WXR18 What is the purpose of a first chapter? Better: what is the first chapter supposed to accomplish. 1. introduce the book; 2. make us love the main character; 3. Grab the reader's attention.