creativity to grow on

Good morning, Brigit's Flame!

Today is the final reading list for February's Drabble mini-contests. I hope you all had fun writing your tiny tales.

This list is made up of submissions written for the drabble prompt - “Ha!—would a madman have been so wise as this?”.

Title: End Game
Author: ayumidah
Word Count: 100
Warnings: none

Title: At Last
Author: darlinleo
Word Count: 48
Warnings: none

Title: Wiseman
Author: missflyer
Word Count: 14
Warnings: none

Title: The Path
Author: Bluegerl
Word Count: 92
Warnings: none

The voting will not be open all week, so get your reading done early and cast your votes by 11:45pm on Thursday. There will be only one winning drabble, but we'll give you three votes to weigh in with the other readers.

Don't forget to drop a note to your fellow writers to let them know they are appreciated. If it's an off-site blog and you have trouble with commenting, feel free to share your comments here and we'll pass them along. In fact, I encourage you to share some public thoughts below with the community. Let's talk about what we read, together.

We love it when our Embers write, but we also need the community to come together and read what's being submitted. Even if you didn't have time to write this week, please take a few minutes to read and encourage your friends to read as well. Share our fire!

VOTING POLL

Good morning to you, Flamefolk.

Do your characters get along?

I have a novel I started back in 2008 that is a far-future, full sci-fi, epic adventure through the stars. It is very precious to me as it was the first work of long fiction that I was ever able to commit myself to intensely and it was my NaNoWriMo project for that year. I reached a word count of about 165k after NaNo (without an ending). Exhausted, I put it away for a bit. When I took it back out I saw that it was not an unfinished novel but a great word beast that needed cropped, tamed, trained, deloused, and quite possibly exorcised.

My solution to this was to start rewriting the tale in snippets that condensed scenes to the best parts I'd written the first time around. I shared one such snippet with Boyfriend, my official beta reader, who (upon reading it) grabbed me by the shoulders and demanded to know why he had never heard about any of this before. Or he may have texted the question, the whole shoulder thing sounds a bit dramatic for him. I explained about the beast and the Catholic church's unwillingness to send a priest. Boyfriend dashed his stein to the floor and demanded I send him the entire work so that he might judge its worthiness. In the end, he didn't like it. The really boring stuff I was writing around with the new snippets intrigued him, but the parts and characters I loved he didn't.

One of his major complaints was that everyone got along.

To explain, I have two complete story tracks following one main character each. Main 1 is alone on her track and provides much of the history of the story in her reminiscences. The other is the hero who picks up stray humans he finds in destroyed or unsuitable ships as he travels across the Milky Way. The population on his ship goes from one to about eighty over the course of his journey and there are about twelve key players who provide the meat of the story in dialog and interaction with Main 2. These are the people who get along in a way that bugs my reader. I contend that they are being polite and respectful after having been rescued and that they are working together as a team against a common enemy. He says there's no way those twelve people would all play nice with no interpersonal conflict.

I figure there's a way that we are both right in this, but I haven't found that mix yet so I haven't rewritten the scenes. Since he brought it up, it's something I've started paying more attention to when reading or viewing TV shows and movies. The Walking Dead is a great example of a group of people who are bonded in adversity, need each other, and are always surfing through interpersonal conflicts while dispatching their enemy as a team. I need those guys on my spaceship. We are also watching our way through one of the Stargate franchises where all of the characters are trapped aboard an ancient Ancient alien vessel that is something like seven billion light years from Earth. They are in constant interpersonal conflicts and the four key characters are always scheming in ways that make me dislike them. I don't really want any of them on my crew, but if I maybe had one of them things might be more interesting.

This novel has a long way to go to get from beast to writer's best friend.

What are your thoughts on interpersonal conflict between characters in your writing and in your chosen form of entertainment intake?
Does that conflict happen naturally as you write or do you have to work at it? Do you have an ideal ratio?

Enlighten me :)

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Just a few reminders and announcements and such -

February series of mini-contests 1 of 4 was won by RicoChey for the topic "Curioser & curiouser".

February series of mini-contests 2 of 4 was won by RicoChey for the topic "PBJ".

February series of mini-contests 3 of 4 is in the voting phase right now. Please put an end to RicoChey's reign of terror when casting your vote for the topic "Heart-shaped Paper".

Do you want to do more in the fight against RicoChey? Then join us for the final week of writing drabble in mini-contest 4 of 4. Submissions are due Sunday by 11:45 pm. The topic is "Ha! --  would a madman have been so wise as this?"

There are also a few workshops for dialogue if you want to work, work on the talking in your writing.  You really need to stop procrastinating and do that. (Note to self.)


#gowrite #fiction #writing #nonfiction #poetry #drabble #brigitsflame

Bonjour mes amis, mes flammes!

Week two of the drabble extravaganza is far less extravagant, but that's okay, I'm guessing the PBJ challenge wasn't for everyone. Here's hoping our week three topic of "heart-shaped paper" re-ignites their imagination.
Let's jump into the week two reading.

This list is made up of submissions written for the drabble prompt - PBJ.

Title: Different
Author: ayumidah
Word Count: 100
Warnings: none

Title: When The Time Comes
Author: darlinleo
Word Count: 16
Warnings: none

Title: PBJ
Author: missflyer
Word Count: 9
Warnings: none

Title: PB&J
Author: RicoChey
Word Count: 100
Warnings: Trigger, dark material. I don't believe in spoilers, so I won't be specific. Sorry.

Title: Into the Great Maw
Author: urb-banal
Word Count: 100
Warnings: none

Title: PBJ
Author: bluegerl
Word Count: 100
Warnings: hurt?

Title: Pro Bono Justified.
Author: bluegerl
Word Count: 100
Warnings: none

Title: PB-Just for Fun.
Author: bluegerl
Word Count: 100
Rating silly. well. factual but JFF.

Title: Tradition
Author: cedarwolfsinger
Word Count: 100
Warnings: none

Title: Breakin' Up Is Hard To Do
Author: cedarwolfsinger
Word Count: 100
Warnings: none

Title: High Society
Author: cedarwolfsinger
Word Count: 100
Warnings: mild profanity (the F-word once)

The voting will not be open all week, so get your reading done early and cast your votes by 11:45pm on Thursday. There will be only one winning drabble, but we'll give you three votes to weigh in with the other readers.

Don't forget to drop a note to your fellow writers to let them know they are appreciated. If it's an off-site blog and you have trouble with commenting, feel free to share your comments here and we'll pass them along. In fact, I encourage you to share some public thoughts below with the community. Let's talk about what we read, together.

We love it when our Embers write, but we also need the community to come together and read what's being submitted. Even if you didn't have time to write this week, please take a few minutes to read and encourage your friends to read as well. Share our fire!

VOTING POLL

Heart-shaped Paper

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Please refrain from metaphors
Made of heart-shaped paper,
And I will know your love was real.
Describe it glistening with viscera,
Not rose-scented.

Authentic emotion is far removed
From that bloody muscle laced with blue veins…
It’s down beneath the pasty brown stink
Of the liver, in the vicinity of the appendix,
That love throbs and twists–where it thrives
Or dies.

That muscle to the north
Keeps pumping on, uninterrupted,
Unaffected, as love gets ripped from the gut.

I Will Know Your Love Was Real by Kathy Boles-Turner

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For the month of February, we will be hosting a series of weekly mini contests for drabbles. If you are unfamiliar, a drabble is a short work of fiction of around one hundred words in length (not including the title). The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author's ability to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.

For our purposes, we will require 100 words or less. You may submit up to three per week as long as they are all related to the theme, but not to each other. You do not need to single one out for competition, they are all eligible.

Your topic for mini contest 3 of 4 is "Heart-shaped Paper", interpret it however you like.

Concurrent with the contest, we will have a workshop open for anyone who would like to practice their drabble prowess for a live audience before the deadline hits. Share your thoughts and difficulties with fellow embers and the mod team a dedicated drabble forum.

Enjoy!

Submit your entries here - this phase ends Sunday, February 22nd at 11:45pm EST



#gowrite #brigitsflame #wehaveourownpoet

Good morning to the fine Flamefolk out there.

Not long ago, Bardi asked you guys if you've created a place of your own within your writing. I'd like to know how you feel about world-building in general, as a writer or a reader?

I know that not all of our writers are science-fiction or fantasy writers, which are the genres one might immediately associate with the idea of world-building, but I believe world-building is something we see in novels across genres. It is not just space ships, alien landscapes, and shires, world-building can be any limiting setting that is as integral to the story as your characters.

Those corset-busting Harlequin romances set their breathless little vamps in 15th century Scotland or 18th century France - even if it's an era passed with accurate historical markers, it is still a world the author built in order to control the characters and events by the rules or mores of the day. In my tweener years, I read several books in a series called "Sweet Valley High" - the "world" in that case was a modern, middling town and the high-school all the town kids attended. In Veronica Mars the world was Neptune Beach California. Is the real Neptune Beach anything like the corrupt and seedy place in the TV show? Maybe, maybe not, but if it weren't for that seedy side the protagonist might have grown up to be an accountant instead of a P.I. and then there would be no interesting story to tell.

When it comes to worlds within the pages of a book, I am an advocate, as long as it is done well and correctly. Tolkien is labeled as the first author to create a complete world in his novels - with maps and languages and lore - and I do love what he did. (For me finding a map inside the cover of a book is the promise of a true adventure.) But this is not the only option when building a world, and not every reader has the patience for it. I would argue that Tolkien was the first to create an elaborate world of that kind. You cannot deny that the dingy, orphan-hating London of David Copperfield or the stormy Moors of Wuthering Heights were any less encompassing of their stories and players for lack of orcs and Rivendell.

So let me bring this back around to the point. (I'm a bit scrambled today, I apologize.) In longer works of fiction, to what level do you flesh out your worlds? Do you paint them as you go with a roll of the dice here and a "I need more tension" over there? Or do you build it first and then unleash your characters on the world? What's your ratio of world known by the author to world revealed to the reader? As a reader, do you prefer minimalist worlds or elaborately constructed ones?

Talk to me.

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And now for our reminders -
February Series of Tiny Tales 1 of 4 is available to read and vote on. Please go show your support and appreciation for your fellow Flames. Deadline on voting is tomorrow night.

February Series of Tiny Tales 2 of 4 is awaiting your submission(s). If you or someone you love is a writer, please pass on the link and join the fun. It's good for you.

Our darlin' Kathy lioness has updated the dialog workshop with some new exercises, don't miss out.

I have set-up a little nook for you guys to interact over your 100 words. It's not a formal workshop with assignments and such, but it is there for you if you need some flamecrunching.

#gowrite #flamechatters #brigitsflame #govoteflames