Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Snort Story

In the comments of my last post, Travis Erwin pointed out the obvious: nobody likes a deadbeat. You have to blog relatively often if you want people to keep coming back.

So, I'm going to make an effort to blog every day. This will likely make my posts shorter (Hey! I heard that sigh of relief) but might also increase the incidence of random brain-fluff being inflicted upon the masses (who consist of, what, like two people? Ha! I shall call your pain "collateral damage" and thereby make it invisible.)

Welcome to that light-headed feeling you get from too much OxyJen! Have a good snort.

I'm reading a great resource on writing - Story by Robert McKee. It's actually for screenwriters, but it dissects the process of writing an engaging story so precisely that it's invaluable. I've never read any other reference that concerned itself so completely with the mechanics of what makes a story work. To a large extent, he's explaining the psychology that makes human beings want to know what happens next, i.e. what keeps them reading/watching/mentally engaged in the story.

I'm finding this book a bit of a tough read (but soooooo worth it), in that it's extremely technical. It's one of those books you read with a notebook handy for scribbling the important points into. You're essentially taking lessons from the prof and desperately deciphering what he says (in technical terms) into words and concepts that make sense in your own head.

I'm only a third of the way through, but I would totally recommend this to other (fiction) writers. Check your library for a copy.

Have you got a great reference book on writing you'd like to recommend? I'd love to hear about it! What did you find so potent and useful about it?

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