Tag: Writing

Musings

Weekly Musing: Look at This

DH Hanni

I’m not sure how many people know what an infographic is yet I’m sure we’ve all seen them somewhere on the internet. Infographics are those images which present bite-size pieces of information on a variety of topics. Usually the images look like that would make a great poster and many are available for downloading and printing.

I recently found an interesting reading and writing related infographic. I thought it would be fun to write about my thoughts on the one shown below. One caution is the information presented doesn’t cite its sources so don’t take it or my reactions as 100% truth.

Infographic about reading and writing
Infographic about reading and writing

 

Let’s start the information about the brain. In what seems like a duh type of statement, the physical act of writing something down triggers something within the brain to remember what it better. Probably why many of us had teachers who yelled at us to take notes. Or why the older we get the more important it is to write information down. It’s interesting to learn that the connection our body makes from the mental to the physical is something that can’t be replicated any other way.

Also according to the infographic, when we engage our body and brain in the act of writing we pay more attention to what we are doing. Perhaps this is way one a piece of advice given to writers is to carry a notebook or notepad around in case a name, story idea, dialogue, anything pops up we can commit it down before it leaves our minds.

Moving down the graph let’s next look at the information presented about why telling a story is better than presenting just facts. I find this perhaps to be the most interesting because telling a story doesn’t have to be limited to a novel or short story. Thinking back to my school days I originally didn’t have an interest in history. In elementary school it was only about dates, people, and places. Just the facts, ma’am. I found this boring and dry. It wasn’t until 8th grade that I began to appreciate history and that was due to having a teacher who presented it not as simply a collection of fact but as a story. After all history is about people and events in history have several sides of a story to tell.

The same is true for storytelling. While a pared down reporting style can work to tell an effective story, Ernest Hemingway comes to mind, a reader is more engaged if it is beyond just the facts. Even non-fiction writers have realized this. Memoirists in particular must still tell a story even though everything is rooted in real life. Reading is its most pleasurable when the reader can feel an emotional connection to the story which is hard to do when the author just reports what’s going on.

What is also fascinating about the infographic is how our brains engage more when there is action in the story. That doesn’t necessarily mean a complicated action sequence reminiscent of James Bond, but even a little bit of action stimulates our brain. We respond well to what we can visualize if what the author includes well-written action.

Next we come down to why clichés should be avoided. I’m not going to spend much time on this since yeah, makes sense. The first few times we hear a phrase, and it’s memorable, it sticks in our brains. After a while of reading or hearing it, it becomes white noise. Got it.

Finally we come to some miscellaneous facts about writing and reading. Nice mixtures of fun facts, like an overwhelming majority of us write our name when trying out a new pen. And more disturbing information like many UK teens only have the literacy level of a ten-year-old. Maybe if they read more books their vocabulary and reading comprehension would improve. Not really anything too earth-shattering there either.

Musings

Weekly Musing: WIP Update

DH Hanni

Since last November 1st I’ve been consumed by writing the rough draft of a novel I’ve had in my head for years. More than once I’ve attempted to write it but with disastrous results. A lot of what I considered to be past failures was due to not having enough confidence in my abilities as well as being intimidated by the story itself.

Feeling slightly more comfortable in my abilities and with the idea that the rough draft is going to be a mess, I took the plunge. I knew the novel would not be done in 50,000 words nor would it be it completed in November. That was okay. At first I thought it would be done by the end of December but well, December being what it is, I missed that deadline. So then I pushed my deadline out to the end of January. But January 31st came and I was still nowhere near being done. Finally, I set an absolute deadline of February 28th. No matter where I was at I would call it good for now and set it aside to marinate.

Writing is hard work both mentally and physically. It may seem like easy work. After all it’s just pen to paper or fingers on a keyboard, but when I say it is physically demanding it’s the sore wrists and fingertips. It’s the sore back and shoulders from sitting in a chair, no matter how comfortable it is, for hours at a time. It’s the blurry vision from staring at paper or a screen.

Mentally, and yes, emotionally, writing, especially a rough draft of a novel is trying. I prepared as best I could before November but even that wasn’t good enough. What seemed to be like a simple scene, something I thought I could write in a day or two, often snowballed into several days. It felt like there was no end in sight. Emotionally it’s taxing to do justice to the characters. To try to put myself in their shoes and see life as they do is exhausting and frustrating. In a good way.

The biggest thing that slowed me down was about midway through January I had a plot epiphany. It was a biggie, too. So big that it essentially rendered worthless most of the middle section I’d already written. However, in terms of the overall story, it worked a lot better. It was great but also disheartening to think of countless hours, numerous days, and thousands of words already written as useless. It also meant there would now be hours, days, and thousands of words needed to redo the new middle section. It took me a few days to be okay with the idea that no, those weren’t wasted days and words. If I hadn’t done those I wouldn’t have been able to get to a better plot.

It was at this time, too, fatigue started becoming an issue. My mind was becoming saturated. I also began doubting if it was all worth it. I knew all the glaring errors with the story as it stood. I knew there would be a lot of additional research which will likely change the story further. With all of this floating in my head, motivation to just finish the damn thing got more difficult. To help with story fatigue I started taking some days off and tried to work on a short story. That seemed to help some but when I came back to my WIP, I simply didn’t have much left in the gas tank.

Even though February 28th came and I hadn’t completely finished the rough draft (it has a beginning, middle, and end at least), I was okay with that. At this point, it is over 155,000 words. Bloated but a fair amount of that will be excised due to it not working with the new middle. There are also a lot of redundancies due to how I approached writing it.

Now I let it sit for a few months while I work on other things before beginning the even slower revision process. I also learned that no matter how well prepared you are before tackling that rough draft the unexpected will pop up to mess with your plans. It’s not a quick or easy road in writing.

Musings

Weekly Musing: From Where I’m Sitting

DH Hanni

Time for a bit of armchair writing. An idea I found for a blog post was to write about a favorite TV show or movie from a writer’s POV. That doesn’t mean to look at it from a screenwriter’s POV necessarily as I have no experience in writing a screenplay. However, I don’t think that means I can’t appreciate a TV or movie screenwriter’s work. After all, I’m first a viewer with my own initial reactions which differ from my reactions as a writer.

It was a daunting task trying to pick a favorite TV show or movie as my favorites change all the time. Instead the angle I’ll take is to analyze a new show I’m digging at the moment. Although it debuted just last month, FOX’s Empire has blown me away.

In a nutshell, Empire centers around the Lyon family headed by Lucious Lyon who is President of Empire Records. His ex-wife, Cookie, has just been released from prison after spending 17 years for selling drugs in order to fund the startup costs of Empire Records. In that time, Lucious has built it into a very successful company, so successful that they are planning to launch an IPO (in other words, they would be a publicly traded company on the NYSE). But upon Cookie’s release, she isn’t happy to be shut out of the company since it was her money that started it.

In addition to business differences, both Cookie and Lucious have tenuous relationships with each of their 3 children: Andre, the oldest and the one with the business degree, Jamal, the middle son who is all about the art, and Hakeem, the youngest and the one raised in wealth who dreams of superstardom. Add in Lucious’ girlfriend who works at Empire in a high profile capacity and you’ve got elements for a hurricane of a show.

What draws me in the most from a writer’s POV are the characters. For me characters are what drive a story. It’s sometimes why I can forgive weak plots or even gaping plot holes. At this point Empire has an incredible set of characters.

First I’ll quickly talk about the women on this show. Talk about a strong group of women. A common thread I’ve noticed is the women are just as competitive and cutthroat as the men in both business and personal affairs. It’s my secret hope the women will all get together and start their own label leaving the men behind.

You have the loud, assertive, vulnerable, keen-eared Cookie Lyons who loves music and the artistic expression of it rather than the business side although she does value one should get paid for their hard work. Her relationships with each of her sons vary from cold and rather non-existent with Andre to warm and loving with her favorite Jamal, and strained with Hakeem whom she missed most of his childhood.

Then there’s Andre’s wife, Rhonda, whom upon first glance appears to be the stereotypical white trophy wife of a rich black man but by the end of the first episode it is clear she is willing to help her husband in any way she can in his goal of being named the heir apparent. She has her own career and apparently is very good at hacking celebrity gossip websites. Together they have no second-thoughts about pitting the younger two Lyons against each other.

Annika Gibbons is Lucious’ fiancée and much like Rhonda, you think she’s just there for window dressing. But again, just like Rhonda, she is sharp, smart but thankfully a little warmer in that she doesn’t try to pit any of Lucious’ children against each other as they fight for dad’s blessing. She keeps her hands out of that as her real problem is with Cookie’s presence.

What I find intriguing about the women is they can all handle business and do it well. They aren’t running around looking for a man’s validation although the men are more than free with giving credit where credit is due. They are respected, smart, are on equal footing, and haven’t had to resort to sex to get ahead something that is very refreshing to see. For example, Lucious flat out tells Annika in one episode that Cookie knows what she’s talking about when it comes to music from an art perspective. He also drops a rapper from the label because he called Cookie a bitch when she was giving him her honest criticism of his music. There’s also one scene where Lucious’ assistant asks if she could start shadowing him on a particular project as she would like to learn the business more which he quickly agrees to.

Like the women, the male characters on Empire are complex creatures. You have the artist in Jamal, the young, wild, and in desperate need of some kind of guidance in Hakeem, and the quiet, in the background, and smart Andre all of which represent different aspects of their father, Lucious.

Lucious Lyon is devious, stubborn, a family man, conflicted, loyal (up to a point), and a fighter unwilling to give into a newly diagnosed illness that will ultimately take his life. That diagnosis is what fuels the cruel and unfair competition he’s set up between his sons. With the possible exception of Jamal, each of the sons has so far successfully jumped through Lucious’ hoops.

I wanted to root for Andre Lyon to be named successor as he is the one with a degree in business and has been an active part of the company for a long time. He has the ability to talk to bankers, lawyers, the NYSE, etc. and Lucious frequently relies upon him to fix any possible road bumps Empire encounters on its way to its IPO. However, his philosophy is divide and conquer. He’s more than happy to encourage the competition between his brothers in the hopes that they will take each other out leaving him the clear choice. He’s very much his father’s favorite.

Besides Cookie, my favorite character is Jamal Lyon. The middle child, he has the strongest musical ability but probably the least ambition for the kind of success his mother sees for him. He’s content to write and play songs at small clubs. Cookie favors him the most out of her three children as he is not only the most talented but also because he’s somewhat closeted homosexual who’s been almost completed rejected by Lucious. For example, in a flashback we see a young Jamal walk into the family living room wearing a pair of Cookie’s high heels and one of her scarves. Instantly Lucious picks the boy up, takes him outside, and puts him in the garbage can. Despite the fact Jamal and his father do not really get along, Lucious still pays for Jamal’s apartment until Jamal announces he’s thinking about going public with his sexuality. It is then that their relationship, both personally and professionally, ceases.

I feel bad for Hakeem Lyon. He’s the youngest and grew up without Cookie or really any mother figure in his life. Directionless, he thinks the only thing he can be in life is to be a successful rapper even though his mother points out how can he appeal to the masses when he grew up rich in a genre that usually prides itself on how ‘real’ their music keep it. He definitely has mommy issues which manifests itself in a relationship with a woman clearly old enough to be his mother. He’s starved for some kind of comfort and true guidance which he covers up by acting liking a spoiled, entitled little rich boy. Cookie knows he hates her and doesn’t try to push a relationship knowing she needs to give him time.

In addition to the characters, I think the writing is quite excellent especially since this is a network show. Usually networks play it safe by producing show after show about cops, doctors, and lawyers. At times I think I am watching a cable show because the themes explored feel more like what I’m used to seeing on network. Granted, FOX has usually had the reputation for taking chances with programming and pushing the envelope so it’s not a total surprise to me.

What I appreciate most about the writing is that the writers try to give the viewer complex characters and storylines to keep the viewer guessing. Expectations of what you think a character is going to be are instantly shattered. I’ve always liked stories with morally gray characters and not insulting the reader of viewer into passing automatic judgment. The dialogue is honest and what I find fascinating is that while most of the characters are actively plotting against each other, they all sort of honest about it. It’s a power grab rather than a money grab that drives the games people play with each other. A chess game of who can outsmart who?

This is a family drama in which I find myself unable to root for any one particular character although as I’ve already mentioned, I’m probably rooting for Cookie and Jamal. Through complex characters, complicated storylines that keep the viewer guessing, honest dialogue, and emphasizing the relationships that make me admire FOX’s Empire as a writer.