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Mr Slot
Note:
The original version of this post can be found at Okay, I guess I might as well say something about the Mr Slot school of creative writing. My method doesn't work. Yup, it's true. I've read reams of pages on how to write and they mostly tell how you should do a character synopsis, write some guidelines, and just generally prepare. The only preparation I do is to make sure there's enough Coke handy (the drink, not that other stuff). Seriously, when I sit down to write a story I have something in my head, an image maybe, a phrase, sometimes even a song. This image, phrase or song might be the begriming of a story, or a middle, or an end. Either way the mind is ready and I begin to write. Yup, I just write. The story just pours out of my fingers and into the keyboard (Now there's a yucky image). Damn, this is actually hard to explain. It's like a reflex, or an instinct or something with me. I'll try to explain why this is so, if you'll excuse the tangent. When I was young, stuff happened. Unfortunately a lot of this stuff was things I couldn't handle (a personality thing really, my brother went through the same but did a lot better than me) so I tended to draw into myself a lot. A real lot, to the point where the A word was bandied about. While I was like this my mind would make up stories, adventures for me where life was really pretty cool. I still do this, make up "what if" stories in my mind and let them play out. Now then, where was I? Oh yeah. I start to write a story, with say character A. Character A needs motivation so I "ask" them. "That guy at the table, the one with the four blondes hanging off him. How do you feel about that?" "Pretty pissed off actually." "Why is that?" "Well, because he has all those women with him and I have nothing. It's not fair." And so on. The characters build their own personality, which I let them do, I don't try to force personality traits on them, otherwise their growth would be stilted. This works pretty well for me. It has some very interesting side effects too. Fer instance, in the last story I wrote something happened which took me by surprise. A plot twist in the story that I didn't see coming until it was on me. Another thing that happened was that some of the characters displayed traits that were, well, not nice. I found this to be quite strange as these characters where supposed to be the heros. Turns out they were not as nice as I first thought. Now I know that some of you are thinking that Mr Slot has a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock. That's ok, I can live with it because it has it's benefits. If you're also thinking, "Hmm, looks like Mr Slot doesn't know what's happening in his own stories until he writes them" then you would be right, I don't. I feel like I'm getting to read a new story before anyone else. And for this privilege I just have to write it down so others can read it if they choose to do so. So that's pretty much my technique. I don't set guidelines, I just let the juices flow. It works for me, but I doubt it works for everyone. If someone were to ask me how they could learn to write a story I couldn't tell them. I could make suggestions, offer advice, but I couldn't tell them how to actually write stories because I don't know how they think, or how their creativity works. I do know one thing though, and it may upset some people but here goes. It's entirely possible that you can't write. Well not creatively anyway. This is not a bad thing, it's just the way life is. I wish I could draw, I really do. I also wish I could play guitar, write music and be a famous sports star. It's not gonna happen though.
Find what you're
good at and enjoy it, because that's your special talent. And take satisfaction
in the knowledge that people will be jealous of you. |
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