Brainstorming Week Six, continued

In addition to the fantasy-collides-with-real-life trope, I also love stories where a ragtag band of friends/people thrown together by circumstance have to find a way to survive and even thrive in their new reality: the Harry Potter series, the Belgariad series, The Chronicles of Prydain, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Chronicles of Narnia (again)... probably scads of others I can't remember at the moment. The Dragonlance Chronicles. Oh—and the Lord of the Rings, of course.

What I love about these is how the adventure not only shapes the characters but also their relationships with one another. I would gleefully read these books/watch these shows for as long as the story continued, so long as the saga maintains that same level of urgency and discovery.

How about you? Why do you enjoy these kinds of stories?

Brainstorming Week Six

[Yep. Still at the brainstorming stage. I had a business trip and then got a cold, okay? At least I'm being transparent about this...]

Some of my favorite stories feature scenarios that may have actually happened or may just be in the character's head, but more important than "was it real or wasn't it?" is what they experience and how that changes them: Calvin and Hobbes, The Chronicles of Narnia, Angels in America, The Life of Pi, and probably dozens of others that have shaped me in some way. Where the Wild Things Are. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lilo and Stitch, kinda.

That's the kind of story I want to write. Maybe not a literal journey into the "psyche" but a fantastic journey that is a metaphor of some kind for what our intrepid heroes struggle with. Did it happen or didn't it? Doesn't matter.

Writing advice from C.S. Lewis

Yet another timely contribution from Letters of Note:

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More people died" don't say "Mortality rose."

[...]

5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Read the rest here.

My first instinct when writing is always to dress up everything in big words, but I think most people are more formal in their writing than in their speech. (I'm speaking here of Writing, not emails and text messages.) It has to be unlearned.

(For instance, "timely contribution"? It doesn't help that I would probably say that in conversation, too.)