Fashionably Late

I'm late this moonring, but for a good reason. Over the past months, I've become increasingly aware that while Facebook is an interesting place, it is quite stagnant in terms of content and creativity. "Fat Lady Falls Down Well", and cute videos and pictures of animals dominate the landscape and it has taken the Bumper-sticker School of Self Improvement to the end of the tracks. It barely functions as a method of communications, and it is definitely not a place to learn much.

So anyway, I went off looking for another form of social media where content is created. I may not have found the right place yet but I have to start someplace. I decided to start at Writingroom.com. I can read other people's work and put up some of my own. Maybe I can get some feedback and on what I'm writing and learn from what other people are doing. I can still go to Facebook for dog pictures and straw sentiment, and the news for information about things that interest me, so I can be a well-rounded individual.

In the meantime, I must warm-up and get to my exercises. Already I got an idea by reading a short piece at one of the places I visited, about character arcs. I hadn't given them much thought until I read the piece. It was by an editor and it pointed out the importance of building change into a character. That the reader expects the protagonist to change from the beginning to the end of their involvement. Imagine building an arc into each character you introduce. Wow. That would be pretty cool. You would definitely have to have to plan ahead. The protagonist would have the biggest one, but every character could have one. Some would arc downward and some could kind of wobble.

There's a lot to think about in the world of fiction. Plot, exposition, conflict, arc, action through dialog, what else? How about character development? My characters are very one-dimensional and arc-less. Today's Rising Gorge piece will practice the arc. It doesn't have to be a big one, but I need to build it into the story. Maybe today I should also try a story with a little bit of supernatural twist to it. Everything I've done so far is gritty life, which I think is good, and necessary for me to work on. I think that anything less than real-world could be a little cheaty for me. Kind of the short-cut way, where I get to make up the rules as I go. Of course, that's kind of what fiction is itself.

I'm kind of a made-up guy and so I should probably just stick to the methods which work best for me. Lying, making things up instead of researching them. Taking the short-cut whenever popssible, and relying on luck, rather than preparation and skill. Those have been my guiding principles so far and I don't think I should stop using them now.

I've dragged this out as far as I dare. I had better get on with the exercise, exercise, exercise, exercise. right stinking now. NOW!

More later,