workshops

Getting to the Story

December 19, 2014 by Danika Leave a Comment

I am developing an online course called Getting to the Story to begin in February 2015. This blog post features a sample from the coursework. If interested in taking the class, contact me HERE.

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According to NaNoWriMo stats, about 23% of their participants finished their 50,000 words by the end of Nov. If you were one of them, congratulations. You have a big pile of words to play with!

And if you were one of the 77% (hi there!) who didn’t finish, whatever you wrote you still have, and whatever you learned you’ve still got on your tool belt.

The joke around here is that my NaNoWriMo became a DecNoWriMo, and now I’ve succumb to the fact that it’s really a JaNoWriMo. But that’s fine by me, because when I started my NaNo this year, I realized I didn’t know this story at all. During NaNo month, I didn’t have the time to figure it out, so I just started telling my story, rambling down a long summary.

In the end, I have to start somewhere, and it’s always new.

After NaNoWriMo was over, I took a look at what I had and went, “Ugh.” It was the literary equivalent of waking up to a pot of crusty half-cooked noodles I’d left in the sink the night before.

I know from experience that I couldn’t just think my way out of my lumpy noodly mess. If one thinks and thinks and thinks about the mess, it doesn’t magically become a story. I believe the only way the story gets written is to write it.

And so, I set the mess aside and pretty much started at the beginning again.

First thing, I had to get to the story…

GETTING to the STORY WORKOUT
Part One

I teach an outline style called Sequence and Beat. I teach my students to write out the major sequences of their stories and then divide those up into “scenes” or “beats.” But how do I figure out what those sequences and beats are? Usually by writing exercises where I discover it on the page. (NOT AT THE COMPUTER — these exercises should be hand-written)

Think in terms of Big Action

In the following exercise, you’ll divide your story into three parts (Beginning, Middle, End). In each of these parts, there will be a BIG ACTION that crucially changes the status quo (some call this a reversal). There will be other minor reversals and complications. The Big Ones are the set up of the story (conflict) and the journey (trials and tribulations) that result in achieving (or not) the over-arching goal. If you keep these Big Actions in mind, it will help you move your story forward cohesively.

For instance, if the over-arching goal of the entire story is for a man and woman to be together, there will be things that drive them apart. Maybe small things at first, but then something that seems insurmountable to them both happens. Maybe the Big Action by the end of the first section is the woman marries someone she doesn’t love. Bummer. Boo.

In Book Four of my White Forest series, the over-arching goal is for Narine to “reset” the world’s balance. Before she can do that, she has to find the one character who knows her destiny. That character is in mortal danger and Narine has to save her. The Big Action in part one is saving this character, but there’s a lot of things that stand in her way.

All the sequences that lead up to the Big Action make sense

The sequences that lead up to this point – the woman marrying someone she doesn’t love, for example – need to make logical sense and/or force the character into this position. What things get in her way and redirect her into doing something she would not have done at the beginning of the story? Did her kingdom become enemies with her lover’s and another kingdom demand her hand for their prince for their allegiance? Or was it more subtle – neither party recognized what the other felt and the man took a job in another country out of heartbreak?

EXERCISES

Please write without too much thinking, without stopping, and without rereading & editing

1) Start with the line below and keep writing for 5-7 minutes OR until you think you’ve covered all the events leading up to the Big Action.

The first section of my story all leads up to __(Big Action)___. This event is inevitable because . . .

2) Repeat the exercise for parts Two and Three using the following start lines:

After the events of Part One, my protagonist is left to . . .

In Part Two, the Big Event that propels/ignites my protagonist into taking action is . . .

In Part Three of my story, the over-arching goal is achieved after . . .

Weekend Writing Workout: Add a Little Magic

April 19, 2013 by openchannel 2 Comments

I’ve developed a course called Introduction to Speculative Fiction and there’s a particular brainstorming exercise where students do sub-genre mash-ups to generate stories.

Once when I was teaching the class there was a woman in the front row who spent most of the class scribbling in her journal. She was a contemporary fiction writer working on a semi-autobiographic story. I thought she wasn’t interested in the class and was off on her own adventure. Turns out she had been inspired by the exercise.

She told me later that she had been stuck in her writing and depressed about it. She had been having trouble letting go of parts of the story that weren’t serving it because they were “true.” Even though it was a work of fiction, she was attached to these “truths.”

After our genre exercise, just for the heck of it, she decided to add a magical realism element to her “real world” story. She said not only did it make her story more interesting, it freed her from this need to stick to “reality.” She apologized after class for spending the whole time working on her story and I said, “by all means, it was a perfect use of the time!”

from Wikipedia:

As recently as 2008, magical realism in literature has been defined as “a kind of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastical events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains the ‘reliable’ tone of objective realistic report … fantastic attributes given to characters in such novels—levitation, flight, telepathy, telekinesis—are among the means that magic realism adopts in order to encompass the often phantasmagorical political realities of the 20th century.”

YOUR WORKOUT

1) SET YOUR TIMER for 10 minutes.

Think about a moment in your life when you had to say good-bye to an inanimate object (a car, a dress, a book, a couch).

Start with the line: It was time to say good-bye to …

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

2) SET YOUR TIMER for 12-15 minutes.

Now make the object animate in some way. Give it a magical property. Have it visit you in your dreams. Give it some way to communicate with you.

Start with the line: The (object) looked at me and …

3) SET YOUR TIMER for 20 minutes.

And now write the SCENE between you and the object if you haven’t already.

Start with the line: In this scene …

Write without stopping, crossing out, rereading, or editing.

Have a great weekend!

The Ojai WordFest and Writer’s Conference

February 25, 2011 by openchannel 2 Comments

The Ojai WordFest is just around the corner. A nine-day celebration of Words, Ideas, and Stories in Majestic Ojai Valley, the WordFest kicks off with a BookFair (March 19), includes an “extravaganza” of individually-hosted events, and features a conference of Master Classes for Writers that spans 2 weekends.

I will be teaching three master classes over the course of the event as well as facilitating a day long writing excursion with poet and blogger Gwendolyn Alley, MCing a book launch event, and hosting a few early morning poetry mini-bootcamps.

REGISTER TODAY and SAVE $75 on any Full-Day Master Class!

(Enter My Special Promo Code: Danika | Offer Expires March 8, 2011)

For more information or to Register, visit OjaiWritersConference.com

The Accidental Novelist Gives Two Purposeful Poetry Readings

March 10, 2010 by openchannel Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since I’ve given a poetry reading, so I’m pretty excited to be heading down to Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR in a few weeks. Not only that, I’m teaching a brand spanking new Imaginary Worlds workshop. This one is for poets. I have another for kids and one for fantasy writers as well.

Thursday, March 25, 2010:

7 PM Poetry Reading @ Cover to Cover Books
1817 Main Street, Vancouver, WA
(360) 514-0358
Contact: Christopher Luna christopherjluna@gmail.com

Friday, March 26, 2010:

7 PM Poetry Reading @ St. John’s Booksellers
8622 N. Lombard St., Portland, OR
503-283-0032
contact Nena Rawdah thebookgeek@yahoo.com

Saturday, March 27:

4:30 PM Imaginary Worlds Workshop (young adult to adult)
@ Cover to Cover Books in Vancouver, WA (address above)

Imaginary Worlds with Danika Dinsmore: As we grow older, we tend to spend less time looking at our world via our imaginations. In this workshop we will explore the imaginary worlds of our daily lives, discovering new and magical experiences in the “ordinary” occurrences around us. Be inspired by an afternoon of creative writing exercises and lively discussion and leave with a bag of tricks to return to whenever you want to re-enter those worlds.

Hit n Strum Wraps… on to PitchMarket 2010!

October 27, 2009 by openchannel 4 Comments

Last week we wrapped on Hit n Strum… for the most part. There are still a few minor scenes that need picking up, but for the majority of our team, it’s time to move on. Other gigs are calling, our spouses and loved ones want to see us, and the volunteer members of the crew are down to their last boxes of cereal.

I have to say this was one of the best things I have ever done in my life and I can’t wait to see how it all comes together in the editing room. Half scripted, half spontaneous guerrilla shoot, and all magic.

See the older couple on the far left? Those are the director’s parents. His Dad drove the cast and crew around. And his mom (in the sunglasses) made the crew breakfast every morning during the shoot. I’m gonna miss her.

Oh, and that’s their CAR… the one we used in our stunt. They were pretty good sports.

Reporter Glen Schaefer from the Vancouver Province was there on Stunt Day. CLICK HERE for the great article he wrote about our shoot. Very nice spread.

AND NOW…

In addition to getting back to editing my latest feature script, I’m the Program Director for PitchMarket 2010, a professional networking and pitching event happening here in Vancouver on March 6th and 7th. CHECK IT OUT! It’s going to be great. Register now, cuz the first 50 registrants get extra special bonuses you won’t want to miss.

Inside Story on the Inside Passage – Part Three

August 30, 2009 by openchannel Leave a Comment

NOTE: It is harder to blog on a cruise ship than I anticipated. Internet Access is not only expensive, it’s spotty. This entry was written during my cruise, but I didn’t get a chance to post it until I got back.

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Today we’re in Ketchikan, Alaska, our first stop on the journey. There are three cruise ships docked here, dwarfing the town. It’s a lovely spot, isolated and friendly. They obviously cater to cruise ships because there’s no shortage of art, clothing, jewellery, and tourist attracting goodies.

I asked a local how she felt about it and she said she liked that it brought more people into town. The only way anyone can get here is by boat or plane, the mountains and glaciers are impassable, so I can see how for many months out of the year, it could feel a bit lonely.

The only thing she doesn’t like, she said, was when tourists from the U.S. ask her if they take American dollars there. Doh! Sadly, she explained, it happens more often than you might think. Yes, Alaska IS part of the U.S. folks.

Yesterday afternoon we started some of the real workshop work. Dara has a PhD in mythology and uses myths to get to the heart of the Feminine Heroic. According to Dara, and I wholeheartedly agree, one of the reasons we have become so dissatisfied with contemporary films is that they have become unbalanced, over-stressing the Masculine Heroic – the external journey.

The masculine heroic journey is about the ascension to greatness, the individual staking claim, standing up to power structures, etc. The Feminine Heroic is about the internal transformational journey, going deeper into the place we call “soul.” And just as our own abductions into the underworld are essential for personal growth (i.e. our “dark years” – points of grief, sadness, depression), so these abductions are vital in creating authentic characters and stories that stay with us.

Dara’s lecture was supplemented by Deb’s writing exercises. Deb uses a combination of exercises to recall personal stories and physical sensations (i.e. where on our bodies do we feel our memories). As you can imagine, sharing these stories was quite emotional for several of us. Did I mention that we each got a pack of klenex at the start of class? I think everyone had theirs open by the end of the day.

Inside Story on the Inside Passage – Part Two

August 29, 2009 by openchannel 3 Comments

I’ve never been on a cruise before. If I had been given a choice of vacations, it’s not the one I would have picked. And ironically, this was the year I was going to go to Burning Man. A cruise to Alaska is about as far away from that as I could get. Dara Marks thought it was funny, Burning Man vs. The Feminine Heroic (the name of her workshop on the cruise).

To tell you the truth, I find all this to be a bit surreal. Right now I’m sitting in the deck chair of a moving city, levitating above the ocean, staring out as the Canadian coast rolls by. When I’m in the belly of the ship, I feel like I’m inside an enormous hotel and easily forget we’re moving. I mean, there’s a casino, a library, a huge theatre, cinema, and miles of long halls that remind me of The Shining.

I’m in an inside cabin; not the original plan. The group did some trading around of rooms yesterday and I just said put me anywhere, I’m easy. If I ever in my lifetime take another cruise, I will not book an inside cabin. I realize some people get sick watching the world move by, but I get claustrophobic in a windowless room. So, a note of caution if you ever book a cruise and you’re at all uneasy in small spaces.

In any case, it was so dark and disorienting when I woke up this morning that when I hit deck 10 and saw the coastline, I started to cry. Okay, I tend to cry at the drop of a hat these days being pre-menopausal and all, but it was just so stunning. So much wild, untouched land. I was reminded, once again, that I’m part of something much larger than myself.

We all met up for the first time last night. Fourteen women workshop attendees and our fearless leaders: Dara Marks and Deb Norton. As we each introduced ourselves, Dara handed us a present: a workshop binder, journal, pens, crayons, coloured markers, and chocolate – all inside a beautifully decorated gift bag. We’re loving it already.

Most of us are over 40, but we’re not all writers. We have a few brave visual artists along for the ride. And even as writers, we have differing backgrounds. Dara’s background is in story development for screenplays and Deb is a playwright and theatre actor. The title of the course is Engaging the Feminine Heroic and the idea is not to negate the masculine side of story-telling, but to understand the differences and how to use them together for a fuller, deeper, richer story.

More on that later… right not it’s time to do my homework. 🙂