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Play Writing

5/17/2013

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Boiled Cat is launched. I’ve managed to get another book proposal in to my publisher for a little novel I call Stupid. Now it is that time of the  year when I start prepping my classes.
I work all summer. I teach at various summer camps such as WordsWorth, DramAntics, and RIO. And what do I teach? Writing of course. But not just any writing. I like to use play to teach. So in my classes we play  writing.
That probably sounds strange. I mean how do you play and write at the same time. Well, it’s pretty easy. I think of the lesson I would  like to get across, be it incorporating more senses into one’s work, or learning to pump more tension in to an action scene. Then I think of a way to get bums out of seats and up and moving. Bringing the lesson to life.
For senses I’ve done blindfolded hiking and  tasting/smelling/touching/hearing crazy stuff. For tension I’m thinking of firing live water guns at my students while they run around trying to write in  a notebook. Not everything I do works. But I do try everything. And even if it  doesn’t work 100 percent, we have fun and writing comes off as a positive  experience. Which is success in my book.
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Two Truths and a Lie

1/18/2013

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Two truths and a lie – ever played it? It’s a game where you say two things that are true about yourself and one thing that isn’t and the people you are with try to pick out the lie. The more detail the lie has, the more it tends to be believable. It’s like that in writingThe more details you add, the more senses you use, the more you know about your subject – the more your writing sounds real.

I was writing a creepy scene where my main character walked through a rather rundown neighborhood in London, England. I had never been to this neighborhood in my life. The last time I was in England, I was twelve and nowhere near this place. So to research I found a walking tour on the internet. It was just visuals, but it gave me a good impression of things. Then I read articles about the neighborhood, just a couple, for flavor. I found out about how the police handled things and what was socially acceptable. After that I picked one image for each of my senses to work into my scene. Then I plotted the whole thing out.

I think the resulting scene is one of my best works. One of the people in my critique group said, “I can really tell you’ve been there.” That made me happy. So bring the techniques of two truths and a lie into your work and see just what it can do.
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First Draft - Editing

7/16/2012

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First draft – A Rubik’s Cube found under the bed. Dirty black sock stuck to one side with dried root beer. Half a decal torn off. Cheese Doodle dust stinking of underarms and stale closets giving a fuzzy orange appearance.

Editing – Pull off that sock. It just complicated the plot. A side character that, while funny, didn’t do much for the overall story line. Wipe off the gooey brown root beer. The words were sweet but cloying. They weren’t original, finding their prose in the cliché and over used. Chip off those decals. Brilliant red, orange, yellow, blue, green. Put in place curry in a bed of rice, sweaty camel’s back, desert sand under moonlight, silk snapping in the wind. Paint careful pictures on each black square. Sand away hard edges. Be subtle and clever in your plotting. Sharpness is only left for chases and hard words spoken between lovers. Pull away a cube or two. Show the heart of the story. Sprinkle gems of plot – a path to follow. End with a gentle, short, swoop leaving the reader crying more, again.

The first draft – you cannot fix what is not there. Editing –words must be written to be rewritten. Be patient with yourself writer. Never expect more than a Rubik’s Cube found under the bed for your first draft.

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Setting and Senses

7/1/2012

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Write what you know is an often repeated statement to young authors. But in the world of Speculative Fiction where we create other worlds, step into the future or change the past, writing what you know is harder than a simple phrase. However, the teachers of this philosophy are correct. You must know your environment before you can write about it.
So how does one get to know a space station on a distant, impoverished and forgotten asteroid? Senses and research. 
Our character’s senses are what connects our story to our readers. A derelict old space station will smell oily and musty. Head out to your uncle (the car fanatic’s) beat up garage to get to know that one. The space station will creak as things clatter and break. A trip down to the metal recyclers or into an old metal building that shifts with the wind can give you good sounds. How does stale, over-breathed air taste? Think of your school or an office building. Run your hand over some rusty, dusty, greasy metal to get the walls and floors of your spaceport. The look of your space station can come from what you’ve seen in your travels, your research from looking at real and imagined space stations and your own sketches.
To make a place that readers from here and now can imagine, we must use things they can relate to. We must take things from this world and place them in our imagined place. This will allow our readers to understand and walk within our story. Right where we want them.


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    Kim Firmston

    Writer, Teacher, Mutant. What more could you want?

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