I'll have a Good Story with a Twist, Please

I don't know about you, but I read the books I buy over and over again. If I've got a few hours to kill, or it's a rainy afternoon, or I wake up thinking about a character from a story I liked, I grab the book in question and dive back into it. Sometimes I'll just read a key scene or two -- my favorites or maybe the ones that got stuck in my brain and sent me hunting for the book in the first place. Sometimes I start at page one and read all the way through to THE END. Depends on my mood, I guess.

Reading a book the second time is very different for me than my first pass. So different, in fact, that I usually read everything twice right from the start, just to get the full experience. The first time through, I get completely caught up by the action. I plow through the story, desperate to find out how it all ends. The second time, I don't worry so much about the plot, because I already know what's coming. The second time through, I notice all those little details I missed during that first, very rushed, experience.

Now, because I read things over and over again, my favorite books are ones that offer me something new on the second reading, something that I couldn't have gotten on the first go around even if I had been reading carefully. I like stories that have a good twist, something that not only takes the plot off in a new direction, but also colors everything that came before it once you know the secret.

I want to give examples here, but I think it would make for an unnecessarily long blog post if I started pasting in excerpts from entire novels. Plus, I don't want to spoil things for folks if they haven't had the pleasure of reading those books yet. However, a solution popped into my head in the shower this morning (as it seems all solutions do) and I think I've got some examples I can use now.

And now I shall reveal to you all my bumpkin side. I listen to a lot of country music. I could blame this on my residence in South Carolina -- it's tough to live here and listen to anything else -- but the truth is that I've been listening to country music since long before I relocated to the Deep South. And, as with novels, my favorite songs are those with a twist, a line somewhere in the song that changes the meaning of every line that came before it, so that you end up enjoying the song in a completely different way the next time you hear it.

Don't worry, I'm not going to give you pages and pages of song lyrics. Just a few snippets here and there.

The first is a fairly new song, the one that was playing and got me thinking about this idea today in the first place.

Pray for You, performed by Jaron and the Long Road to Love, written by Jaron Lowenstein and Joel Brentlinger
Haven't been in church since I don't remember when
Things were going great 'til they fell apart again
So I listened to the preacher as he told me what to do
Said you can't go hating others who done wrong to you
Sometimes we get angry but we must not condemn
Let the good Lord do his job and you just pray for them

Chorus:
I pray your brakes go out running down a hill
I pray a flower pot falls from a window sill
And knocks you in the head like I'd like to
I pray your birthday comes and nobody calls
I pray your flying high when your engine stalls
I pray all your dreams never come true
Just know wherever you are, honey, I pray for you

The song goes on from there, with more examples of this guy's special brand of prayer for his ex and how much better he feels now that he's found his way back to the church, but I think you get the idea.

The second starts out sounding a bit more like a stereotypical country song. Man watching a woman dancing with another man, lamenting about how she used to be his. Oh, boy, it's another breakup country song. Um . . . or not.

I Loved Her First, performed by Heartland, written by Walt Aldridge and Elliott Park
Look at the two of you dancing that way
Lost in the moment and each other's face
So much in love you're alone in this place
Like there's nobody else in the world

I was enough for her not long ago
I was her number one, she told me so
And she still means the world to me, just so you know
So be careful when you hold my girl

Time changes everything; life must go on
And I'm not gonna stand in your way

Chorus:
But I loved her first, and I held her first
And a place in my heart will always be hers
From the first breath she breathed
When she first smiled at me
I knew the love of a father runs deep
And I prayed that she'd find you someday
But it still hard to give her away
I loved her first

I think this is now probably one of the most popular father-daughter dance songs at weddings.

And for my final example, I give you the chorus of one of my favorite fun songs.

Cleaning This Gun, performed by Rodney Atkins, written by Casey Beathard and Marla Cannon-Goodman
Chorus:
Come on in boy, sit on down and tell me about yourself
So you like my daughter, do you now? Yeah we think she's something else
She's her daddy's girl, her momma's world
She deserves respect, that’s what she'll get, ain’t it son?
Hey y'all run along and have some fun
I'll see you when you get back, bet I’ll be up all night
Still cleanin' this gun

Seems like a fairly benign conversation between a father and his daughter's date. Until you realize that he's been sitting there with a gun in front of him the whole time. I feel like all those questions got answered with a good solid "Yes Sir".

So there you have it, a few examples of the type of twist I'm talking about. Now if I could just figure out how to write twists like that into my novels, I'd be all set . . .

Ambidextrous

I'm a pantzer. I've discussed this before. I write by the seat of my pants. I don't plan things out in advance. I don't outline. I, on occasion, allow myself to jot down ideas for a future project in blurb form, but I usually only glance at them once before I start writing, just to point myself in a vague direction of the idea.

That is not to say I have not tried to plot. I have. It just doesn't work for me. I've talked on my blog before about how I'm getting more and more plotter-ish, but I don't think it'll go any further than it has. I like the freedom and the thrill of pantzing too much.

In fact, during this year's NaNoWriMo, I set an all time pantzing record for myself. I came up with my idea for my current project approximately 10 hours before the event started.

I've noticed something funny this year though. Perhaps it's been going on for a while, but because I'm more involved with other Wrimos this year than I have been in the past I'm just now witnessing it, but I've seen a whole bunch of people trying to mess with their method. I've seen pantzers try to bang out and then stick to an outline. I've seen dedicated plotters pick up a shiny new idea and try to just run off with it with no direction in mind at all.

I applaud them for their bravery.

I fear for their sanity, even more than I do for every Wrimo's sanity. (And I fear for us all a great deal, trust me.)

But I wonder if they will make it. Will those panzters trying to plot get a few weeks (or possibly days) into November and then suddenly toss the outlines out the window and take the story off in a whole new direction? Will the plotters giving pantzing a shot break down and take a few writing days off to outline and world build and character sketch?

Or will the event reveal an ability they never knew they had? Will they come away from it able to write both ways from now on, like a right-handed person who breaks their arm and has to learn how to do everything with their left as a result?

NaNoWriMo has always felt to me like a pantzer's paradise, but I know plotters who swear by it too. It really is all about getting out of your own way and letting the words rule the day. I've often toyed with the idea of using NaNoWriMo to experiment with writing in a different genre than I usually do, but it has never occurred to me to try a whole different writing style.

What do you think? It's too late for me to try it this year, but is it something to keep in mind for next year? Or are these plotting pantzers and pantzing plotters even crazier than I am?

Also, are you one of the switchers? If so, how's it going for you? Has it made you nuts yet? Have you given up and reverted to your familiar form? Or is it working for you?

Clustering, Collaging, and storyboarding! Oh My!

Last weekend, I attended Moonlight and Magnolias. For more details on what I did there, visit my post on the Columbia Writers Workshop blog.

The most exciting part of my weekend was the Friday night workshop on plotting. You see, I'm in the process of plotting my NaNo (Yea! I love NaNoWriMo!) and I haven't completed the process yet. At the workshop, we learned three different methods that could be used for plotting our novels.

1. Collaging - Collaging is easy and simple. Anyone with a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, a bottle of Elmer's glue, and a piece of poster board can collage. I think this would be an excellent method to use when the idea well went dry. Basically, you look through the magazines and when you see something that interests you, you rip it out. Then when you're done mutilating the magazines, you create your collage. You put the pictures, the words, or whatever you're using (you can use three dimensional or other items not found in magazines as well) on the board in a way that makes sense to you. You use it to write your story.
2. Clustering - Clustering uses even fewer materials than collaging. A large size piece of paper and a pen is all that you need to start clustering. You take your idea and you circle it in the middle of your page. From there, you web out, writing down whatever comes to your mind. NO EDITING!!! Just let your mind go and don't pick up the pen from the page. If you get stuck, keep making a circle around your words. The idea is that if your hand is still moving, your mind is still thinking. Eventually, you'll start thinking in a pattern and will be able to group like ideas together. I LOVE this method. I've been working on my current project using it since I got home from the conference. My book is being mapped out on a very large piece of butcher block paper. I have always used clustering (I called it spiderwebbing) when I created my characters. I never thought thought to use it when plotting. I've gotten so much done in less than a week. It is amazing.
3. Storyboarding- Storyboarding is what filmmakers use when they're making a movie. They draw out key scenes (maybe even all the scenes) and then write a short blurb about what is happening underneath the scenes. I think this would be a method you would want to use when you're almost done plotting. It is a great visual for a writer to have. The writer can look at the picture and see if they've written the scene or not. I was intrigued by this method.

I loved this workshop and got so much out of it! I loved all of the workshops at the conference. I plan on using all of them when I'm writing and then editing my NaNo.

Here are a few pictures from the Moonlight and Magnolias conference