CONTENTMENT COTTAGE

WELCOME! In the midst of each life's chaos exists a place of calm and sunshine. I call mine Contentment Cottage. It is the place where I write my stories and find the peace of God. I've posted my "Ice Pick" reviews and will continue to add some of what I call my "Ice Crystals": poems, articles, essays, fillers, and recipes.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

THE ICE PICK

Theme and Strategy, by Ronald Tobias. (The Elements of Fiction Writing Series) Cincinnati, Ohio : Writer’s Digest Books, 1989. ISBN 0-89879-392-0. $13.95.

"You have the freedom to create any world you want, but you also must make sure that the internal and external organization of that world is consistent. That fearsome task is accomplished by the use of strategy."

Unlike most how-to-write books which concentrate on individual techniques like dialogue, plot, or character, this book helps you put it all together. Basically for beginners, it explains how to develop your own strategy for writing a unified story and how to use that strategy to create patterns in your work that will shape your story and help you stay aware of and control the overall structure, direction, and results.

The basic overall strategy begins with picking a beginning, that is, your sense of where the story should start, not necessarily the first page. Then choose an ending, which at this point may just be your feeling about how the story might end. Set short-term objectives, which are nothing more than scenes or mini-stories within your overall story--the things you want to have happen or that you imagine might happen.

From that simple beginning Tobias goes on to discuss patterns in structure, style, place, character, plot, and action. Within each chapter, Tobias discusses the patterns that have developed in our literature over time and how you can use those to strengthen your stories and make them more satisfying for your readers. For example, he explains the tradition of "three" in our culture, how readers have come to expect it, and how you can use it in the beginning-middle-end pyramid of scenes, chapters, and stories; three-sided structures; three questions or challenges; three magic keys; and triangles of characters (like Kirk-McCoy-Spock).

Tobias also explains in each chapter things that you should keep in mind when developing characters, choosing a setting, planning action scenes, etc. And he gives good advice and many hints and suggestions.

If you’ve always wanted to write a novel, but were afraid to start because you didn’t know how to go about it, or you started one but got stalled out halfway through, this book may be the one you need to get you started or restarted on the right path.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter. Jan. 1999. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, May 2000.}

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