The end of BEDA

That's it, 30 consecutive days of blogging.

I'm glad that I participated in BEDA but daily blogging is not something I want to do long-term. I enjoy writing different kinds of things, not just blog posts, and making sure I posted here every day meant that some days, I didn't have time for something else I wanted to work on.

So I'm going back to my usual blogging schedule with one or two posts per week.

Thank you for reading!

Choose Your Own Adventure in digital space

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? They were interactive books written from a second-person point of view. You assumed the role of the main character and made decisions for them throughout the book. The story outcome changed and depended on the decisions you made. The books were popular in the 1980s and 1990s and you can still find them in bookstores.

I love those books because you could re-read them, make different decisions, and end up with a completely different story. That sort of interactivity could work in other mediums as well. Some YouTubers have made interactive videos in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure. YouTube works well for this because creators can set up the decisions as annotations. Choose option 1 if you want the characters to do this and option 2 if you want them to do that instead, and then the next video plays.

Netflix's run of Arrested Development is going to be somewhat in the spirit of Choose Your Own Adventure because the order in which you watch episodes won't matter. But we aren't going to be making decisions for Michael or anything like that (x).

I think Choose Your Own Adventure stories have great potential on a platform like Netflix. Each story would essentially be a mini-series with all of the episodes released on the same day (much like Netflix is doing with Arrested Development). The episodes would be written so that you can watch them in consecutive order, or you could jump around and experience a different story.

YouTube and Netflix have changed how we watch video content, but the format of TV shows hasn't changed that much in response to internet technology. There are opportunities for experimental, non-linear series. It's only a matter of creating them.

On planning stories

George R.R. Martin says there are two kinds of writers, architects and gardeners:

I've always said there are – to oversimplify it – two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. The architects do blueprints before they drive the first nail, they design the entire house, where the pipes are running, and how many rooms there are going to be, how high the roof will be. But the gardeners just dig a hole and plant the seed and see what comes up. I think all writers are partly architects and partly gardeners, but they tend to one side or another, and I am definitely more of a gardener. (x)

When I'm writing fiction, I like knowing the basic elements beforehand and figuring out everything else in the process of writing. I'm an architect at the beginning but then I take the gardening approach.

I like seeing how other people organize their notes, and maybe you do too, so here are a few ways I have organized story notes.

In my head

When I first have an idea, I keep everything in my head. I've always had a good memory for stories, so it's easy for me to figure out characters, places, plot points, even structure—and keep it in my memory. This method lets me have my "notes" with me all the time and I can work on the story wherever and whenever (nice), but it's also possible I'll think of something and forget it before I fit it into the story information I already worked out (bummer).

Paper

When things get more detailed, I move to paper. I draw diagrams, flow charts, maps, and webs. I use a notebook for this method, so it's portable (nice), but I tend to take notes haphazardly so it can be difficult to search through my notes (bummer).

Evernote

I keep one digital notebook for a story with separate notes for characters, a rough outline, locations, and ideas. I can access Evernote from any internet connection and it's searchable (nice), but digital notes means that I don't see them all the time (bummer). They don't have a physical presence on my desk to remind me that I should be writing (instead of scrolling through Tumblr).

Index cards

Using index cards is a hybrid method of Evernote and physical paper. I just started using these for the story I'm working on. I have cards for characters (one on each card, adding details as I write them into the story), locations, and scenes. I use different colored cards to separate information (character cards are blue and scene cards are white). Hole-punching the cards and keeping them on a ring makes them portable. (So would wrapping a rubber band around the stack, but I like being able to turn through the cards.) I can rearrange the cards however I want, whenever I need to (nice), but card size is a limitation, so I might need a notebook in conjunction with index cards (bummer).

How do you like to organize notes?

Weekend Roundup - April 28

A different list this week: blogs and feeds that post creative writing prompts.

On Tumblr

FY Writing Prompts
I Dare You To Write
Odd Prompts
Photo Prompts
To Write Prompts
Writing Prompts That Don't Suck
Yeah Write!

On Blogger

Prompts for Writers
Easy Street Prompts

Lists

CreativeWritersPrompts.com
25 Creative Writing Prompts (Writing Forward)
Thirteen Writing Prompts (McSweeney's)
The Daily Prompt (Reddit)

Why doesn't Nick talk to Juliette?

After all the weird stuff that has happened to Juilette, I'm still surprised that Nick hasn't told her that he is a grimm.

Nick doesn't know about Juliette's hallucinations. From his point of view, Juliette is getting her memories back, but she is having a rough time. She asked him to leave her alone, which is fine, but the self-imposed isolation isn't helping her.

I like Juliette, but at this point, I'm waiting for a wesen to attack the house. She won't be able to respond because she won't know what's going on. Hopefully Nick will be there to save her because the way her character is, Juliette won't be able to protect herself.

Hank found about about wesen and is still a detective. He can better help Nick with research and fighting wesen. The writers should give Juliette the same chance.

Community: Switching bodies and teaming up

Spoilers for Season 4, episode 11, "Basic Human Anatomy."

I loved the Freaky Friday homage. Abed and Troy have always been paired off as best friends, even within the study group, but each character maintains his own identity. Troy is friendly, a movie fan, and sometimes slow on the uptake. Abed is obsessed with TV and movies, socially awkward, and usually the most insightful person in the group. When they switch bodies, they are obviously different people. The credit goes to Glover and Pudi for mimicking each other's mannerisms and speech patterns so well. You can tell that the person who looks like Abed is talking like Troy, and the person who looks like Troy is moving around like Abed.

Troy and Abed are the perfect choice for two character switching bodies, but the Freaky Friday trope made something else obvious: Annie and Shirley are basically the same character now.

Both are up for valedictorian, as we've been hearing in every episode. They team up against the rest of the group (in this episode, as the banner approvers), and they say the same things at the same time ("Awww, that you remember?" and "Sorry."). Shirley even tells Annie to use "we" and "us" because Annie uses first person pronouns when she actually means both Shirley and herself.

The writers keep lumping Annie and Shirely together, and it stagnates both women. Neither character can develop when they keep sharing roles and goals.

"Basic Human Anatomy" is a fun episode, but the interesting developments with Troy and Abed are diminished by the redundancy between Annie and Shirley.

I want movies loosely based on novels

The major problem with making a movie based on a novel is, most people expect the movie to be very close to the novel and it's difficult to do that because stories in books and stories on screen work differently.

You'll never be able to fit everything from a 300-page novel into a 2-hour movie. You have to cut scenes, maybe eliminate characters, and probably rework parts to make the story work for the movie.

I wish instead of seeing "based on ", we would see more movies "inspired by" novels. Instead of trying to recreate the book on screen, take the characters and some plot elements and run in a new direction. 

This is how the Bourne movies were made. I watched The Bourne Identity, liked it, and then read the book, expecting it to be similar to the movie but with more fleshed-out parts. But the book is so much more than the movie. More scenes, more locations, more challenges. The movie took the essential characters and one thread from the plot and that's what you watch on screen. You don't need to have read the book to understand the movie, and watching the movie does not spoil the book for you. They are separate but related, and each great stories in their own mediums.