Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

Thanks again. I should have looked in the Beta forum a long time ago. I have no idea what I was thinking of, but it seems like somewhere, when I first joined these boards, I read of someone paying Beta. So I never thought to look for one.

Thanks

Hi guys,

Thank you for leading me to Starbucks, but I looked for it and I didn't find it. I'll just have to be patient then I suppose. Thanks anyway.

Not 100% sure, but I think Yeshanu may have meant The Sandbox. Calli, check that one out, it may be what you are looking for.

In re: titles. I asked the friend who did a beta pass on the first several chapters (English profs are brutal, but effective, betas!) and she began tossing out ideas. So maybe asking someone who isn't so close to the work for what they would call it could at least give you the working title. My working title was "story" for about 6 months.

As for dialogue, I have found it most useful to listen carefully to the sort of people you're trying to portray. Figure out where they hang out, and park yourself nearby. My MC almost never uses contractions, but it's by choice. He learned English in his teens and he likes the way the language sounds. He doesn't use much slang in any of the other languages he speaks, either. When he has to assume an American accent, the contractions come out - but his sentence structure is still slightly formal because that's a character trait. All that is a long way of saying you should know why your character speaks the way they do.

smsarber said:

I'm doing a complete rewrite of it, and was wondering if there is a place I can find out a more accurate depiction of a New England-style dialect.

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Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. But you have to read it with a Brit accent to get the Yankee to come out right.

All right, ol' chap, Bob's-yer-uncle...

Can somebody help me? I can't figure out how to correctly insert a header in OpenOffice. I can do the header and page numbers just fine, but I need to have them start on page two. I know how to do it in MS Word, but I can't find the way to do it on the OpenOffice program.

The tech help board here might give you an answer.

Calliopenjo said:

Hi guys,

Thank you for leading me to Starbucks, but I looked for it and I didn't find it. I'll just have to be patient then I suppose. Thanks anyway.

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The SYW Starbucks...

Thanks Uncle Jim, and side note to Yeshanu; I put a link to a story in Starbucks. Cool idea, and though the initial question wasn't mine, thanks for the link.

Thanks

I posted my first story there and hopefully I'll have more critiques to lead me the right way. I swear my head has taken a vacation. I've been looking at the story and I see (awevlidnvzvlk v). Laugh and giggle. This will definitely help. Thanks

awevlidnvzvlk v ?

A
Wandering
Elephant
Verily
Lolly-gags
In
Dreamy
Nuances,
Vacationing;
Zimbabwe.
Vacationing;
Lakeside
Katmandu

Voila

"A
Wandering
Elephant
Verily
Lolly-gags
In
Dreamy
Nuances,
Vacationing;
Zimbabwe.
Vacationing;
Lakeside
Katmandu

Voila"

Not quite, but thanks. I needed a good laugh.

That's what I'm here for.

Sad or Happy

Uncle Jim,

Does a story ALWAYS have to have a happy ending? Can it have a sad ending as well? I've been contemplating both issues and could do both but I can't decide which one. I asked someone else the other day, and joking or not couldn't tell, was surprised that I would leave the other behind therefore having a sad ending.

Am I making sense?

Details: The basis of the story is that a rich girl who doesn't like anything different. She doesn't like homosexuals and lefties for the most part. They're not normal. She inherits a house from a grandmother she never knew. Through the course of time, she discovers seven mirrors which transport her to a fantasy world. While in the fantasy world her views change. At the end of the story she is transported back to her world where she can either be transported back to Fantasy World after a stint reuniting with her other half, or she commits suicide because she feels she never belonged anywhere therefore never reuniting with her lover.

Plenty of stories have, ahem, sad, endings. Read "Cell" by Stephen King, for one example. Some have almost no endings at all, they just kind of stop. But they give enough information so that you can decide what happens for yourself.

Calli, I'm at the point of plotting where I'm working out my ending too. Endings don't really have to be happy or sad. They're kind of like characters, in that happy endings need to be flawed and sad endings need to have some likable and sympathetic qualities.

But I think you need to at least resolve something, whilst not needing to tie everything up.

Just be aware that readers, especially fantasy readers, tend to prefer "happy" endings. That doesn't mean that everything has to be perfect at the end, but that good should triumph over evil. And I would categorically advise against having your MC die, especially by committing suicide.

I can tell you that personally, if I pick up a book off the shelf at a bookstore, I read the last little bit first. And if the MC should happen to be dead at the end, I put it back without reading further. If I gathered that the MC had killed him/herself, I'd probably never read anything by that author again, due to past personal trauma. Once in real life is enough--I want my fantasy to be fantasy.

But that doesn't mean you have to give your MC everything she wants. How about having her remain and come to terms with living in the real world, rather than having her returned to her fantasy world? To me, that bittersweet sort of ending, where we have to grow up and face reality, beats the Cinderella-esque "Happily ever after," and the dystopian, "Death and despair," hands down. That's the real meaning of the last words in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

"Well, I'm home."

For better or worse, the adventure is over, and now I have to live the rest of my life in the world I used to know so well. But I'm not the same person...

It's often considered a big mistake to end a story with the protagonist committing suicide. I personally agree with Yeshanu--I wouldn't read another book by the author. It's one of those endings where you're apt to make the reader angry at you, as Uncle Jim puts it, and that's always a bad thing. It's also been done to death (no pun intended).

"Sad" or tragic endings are okay, it just needs to be the right tragic ending. If some of your protagonists die, okay--but I'd advise against killing all of them, and for the ones that do die, there should be a good reason for their death(s). Most people care about a novel because they care what happens to the characters within it. If there are no characters left that they care about, why should the story matter at all?

Calliopenjo said:

Does a story ALWAYS have to have a happy ending?

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No. A story needn't have a happy ending. What it must have is a satisfying ending. At once surprising and inevitable.

Yeshanu, I would like to express my condolences to you. I have known a few friends who took that dark road, and I feel for what you are saying.
That said, my first book is titled "A Birthday Suicide," and the impression is that the protag will end his life because of his involvement in crime, drugs, and murder. But he has redeeming qualities, also. And he (rightly) doesn't die in the end. I will not give away any more than that, but if you did read my book I would sincerely hope you wouldn't use that as a basis for all of my writing. That particular book is more of a drama. Most of what I am interested in, and what I write is horror, with good kicking evil's butt! Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.

The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe) ends with the protagonist committing suicide.

All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque) ends with the first-person narrator getting killed.

@Calliopenjo

triggered by a subject earlier on I've been throwing myself head over heels into the study of how to construct a good (=satisfying) story. I found that in the area of scriptwriting, there are strong opinions on how to craft a story that works with audiences. (With the huge budgets involved, they have no choice but to bring it to something of a formula). While there is dispute about the rigidness of that approach, many (including myself now) seem to agree on the basic elements that need to be present in a story in order for it to be liked by a larger audience. Therefore a lot of novel writer also read the books and take the classes of Vogler, Truby, Kin, Snyder and others to learn on the elements and plot points of a good story.

Based on my findings I would say: its not so much about what kind of ending but if it is true to the inner and outer story arc you have developed over the course of the book. In the beginning of most successful movies (and as far as I have found in my research, an astounding amount of successful books as well), you establish two story lines an "inner story" (the character development), and an "outer story" (something that actually happens, the main protagonist doing something fascinating or cool). In good films or books, these two are somehow related. An interesting example that adheres to that principle, even though you wouldn't expect it is the Indiana Jones film where Indy meets his father. Right at the beginning, while the outer story is established (him fighting the Nazis etc), the inner story line is set up (him not being able to forgive his father). Throughout the entire film Indy eventually learns to forgive his father and rebond with him. A vital element to close that development arc at the end is to setup an achievable element at the beginning. For example: for Wall-E, the main goal is not to win Eve's love, but to hold her hand. At the end, he achieves that goal and the audience is satisfied.

Your ending should fit to the inner and outer conflicts you have established. And then, at the end she should achieve her beginning goal. Maybe at the beginning you made her write a diary in which she confesses that she is lonely, in spite all the money and desperately longs for a true friend. In her adventures, she finally finds one (male or female, doesn't matter,), but that friend turns out to be gay. Maybe she even discovers she is gay herself? The idea of "going through mirrors" throughout the book is a nice "outer arc" story echoing the theme of internal transition. Which side of the mirror is the "right" one?). If she dies at the late end of the book it is then still a satisfying ending, because you have closed the inner arc and shown her reach her initially stated goal (find a friend), and change (transform to an open minded person). Even if you never mention that diary ever again throughout the entire story, even if she dies and the last chapter shows the diary getting thrown into the trash, or lies in the street, and the wind opens it to the confession page (where it is read by another girls walking by etc) it is still a satisfying (and nicely sad) conclusion, because she reached her goal before she died and her sprit (and the books spirit), come to a rest.

...That thing with the diary is just an example based on what you described about your book. There are probably a lot more appropriate things you could set up. Maybe she wishes she has blond hair at the beginning (at the start she is some kind of rich, nasty arrogant, superficial prom queen, right?), then, through all those mirror transitions, her hair does get light (and beautiful and wavy etc), but then it is not important to her any more, because she has outgrown her superficiality and she rejects the crown and gives it to another beautiful (but gay) girl that got kicked out of school and would have actually deserved it. (and in the mirror world, she is the real queen, anyway)

Uh. For some reason I find it easier to think myself into your book, than into my own. Damn.

Hi Pictopedia

Thank you for the insight. I just didn't want to fall into the same mundane same old same old thing. I'm not necessarily looking for a way out of that, it's me thinking what kind of ending would be appropriate for my story.