My writing partner and I embarked on a new screenplay project titled, “Sinister.” Like all writing endeavors of length, creating a solid first draft requires an outline. Regular readers already know that I’m a big fan of outlines. In fact, several Writing Tips regarding outlining are in the works.

Creating an outline is a bit like a carpenter building a dresser. He’s going to need a few tools; hammer, sandpaper, nails… I’m going to spend the next few hours carving a story out of air and I need a few tools, too. Some of mine are standard issue like a notebook for ideas and brainstorms. Others are unique to me and my own odd style. One or two may benefit your next outline and I’d like to share them with you.

The tools are:

• Old Guitar – this  isn’t really a writing tool, but everything is better when there’s a guitar nearby.
• Index Cards: I assign every scene a name and every Scene Name gets its own index card. This allows me to arrange plot points and see the big picture at a glance.
• Favorite Pen: Mine is silver with a medium point and blue ink. Somebody important gave it to me and it has sentimental value.
• Brainstorming Notebook: When plot points aren’t coming as easily as they should, I make notes about possibilities to nudge them into the world. I’ll post some samples later.
• Candles and lighter: In case the electricity fails…
• Character Sheets: All fiction begins with a character. An e-book I’m writing, “Flesh and Bone” discusses creating characters in greater detail. The Character Sheets give enough information to know who I’m writing about from a broad perspective.
• Location Sheet: Setting is so important it’s almost another character. It must be interesting and appealing. The Location Sheets allows me to grab specific details about the location quickly.
• Scene Worksheet: Important scenes deserve more than an index card. The Scene Worksheet details who’s there, where the scene takes place and the scene’s objective.
• Eyeglass cleaner: Smudged lenses are no excuse for a bad outline.
• Sharpies: These are for marking index cards with different colors related to plots and sub-plots. Red for a romantic story, Purple for the internal struggle, etc.
• Top Hat: Yes, a top hat. It’s tall and black and looks like something from the 1800s. For reasons unknown to me, it fuels the creative process… More on the top hat later.

I’ll upload PDFs of the three worksheets for Character, Location and Scene sometime soon. Keep an eye on the site for them as well as many other changes and developments.

Have a great holiday weekend.
LL

While on my way to the Saints & Sinners Lit Conference, a flight delay left me stranded in a Texas airport, (the one named after a controversial ex-president known for flubbing speeches). I’ve done a bit of traveling. I like the hustle of airports and the change of setting an airplane ride brings. But I’d been lucky for ages and forgotten how BORING an unexpected delay can be.

So, what’s a writer to do when he’s longing for Zydeco music and seafood gumbo but stuck in terminal 37? Write – that’s the obvious answer. I like writing in usual places, too. Sometimes it triggers new creativity and sometimes it gives one new story ideas. Either way, being able to write in a noisy and unfamiliar environment is the mark of a pro. So I found a good spot in a corner, pulled out my old-fashioned laptop (blue legal tablet and silver pen) and began…

Distraction One was a very old woman with hair colored blonde and a big crocodile tat. The croc had seen better days. So had she. At some point in her life she’d taken up drinking. I knew this because I caught a buzz off her fumes when she asked, “ What are you writing there?” (It’s a mystery to me that writing in public places attracts attention. It will happen just when you get warmed up and the words start flowing. That’s for a different blog, though.) We have a polite conversation about her nephew who, “…Is a writer but drinks a little too much.” I think, “I’d like to write a story about a family of writer-alcoholics. It would be entertaining.”

Distraction  Two was a mom, dressed as if she was in her 30s but looking much older. Her eyes were those of the recently traumatized. She had two kids with her, both boys. The oldest wore bright red shoes and bounced a basketball with a blank stare. He was methodical about it and the beat of inflated rubber on airport-carpet and palm was steady as a metronome. The youngest was overly-clingy and refused to sit down or play with this brother. He demanded constant touch, keeping one hand somewhere on his mom at all times. The sight really freaked me out.

Distraction Three was a nice looking group discussing a family member who’d just been caught smuggling contraband into the US. “I sure hope they just let her go,” one of them said. “Hell, they should, lot of people done worse,” another one added.

And this is where I gave up. With all the drama and story material going on around me it seemed a shame not to record it. Writing is more about finding the right people, places and things, after all; and not every second of productivity must be actual writing.

(This blog is one day late – please blame the airline! And keep good thoughts for my fellow travelers.)

I’m a fiend for movies. I can watch them in a theater or at home. I’ve lost sleep to watch them! I like television, too. Sitcoms aren’t my thing, but the documentaries on NatGeo and SciFi fare grab me. It’s important for a storyteller to watch other people’s stories and, let’s face it, television gives us instant access to them. However, watching television is not creating!

Watching television, regardless of the production’s quality, will not make you more creative. (Studying a great movie can make you a better screenwriter (or director or actor) but that’s a different topic we’ll explore later.) Don’t kid yourself that it will. Television is passive entertainment that provides little long-lasting value to your life. If you want to be a writer and you’re addicted to six hours of passive viewing, you have two options:

1. Examine your priorities and elect to limit your viewing.
2. Accept that you don’t really want to be a writer but rather an audience member.

I’m not saying that you should throw your tv in the trash. Our high-pressure, hectic lives need passive engagement. Plus, as I mentioned, it’s important to enjoy other people’s creativity. I am saying that for writers television is a lot like alcohol – best in moderate doses.  

Try these exercises to limit your tv:

Make the tv room the least comfortable room in the house: Today, Zeppelin sized television sets are the centerpiece of most homes. The enormous sets are not cheap and require a significant investment. The “family room” then shapes itself around the television. To break this addiction move the couches and chairs so that they face each other and the television is an added bonus. When people sit and look at each other they will begin to do a remarkable thing – talk to one another.

Cut back on Cable: The more options you have, the more time you’ll spend watching them. If you allow only important channels into your home you’ll automatically limit your passive viewing. Seriously, nobody will die if they don’t have 306 channels showing reruns from shows popular from 1972.

Watch the Show: Next time you’re going to watch something, sit down and really watch it. Don’t answer the phone or send text messages. Don’t Twitter while you view. Simply sit and stare at the digital images. Unless it’s truly compelling, you’ll find yourself bored and uncomfortable. You’re creative soul will rebel against this torment and drive you back to you what matters most - your own creative project.

Life is short. You’ll enjoy it more if you’re not stationed at a desk writing all the time. You’ll enjoy the hours you do spend writing if, at the end of them, you have a stack of pages to show for it. In order to do this you must write fast!

I didn’t always write fast. I used to delay writing through an elaborate ritual I called Summoning the Muse. This ritual entailed that I was at my desk, make that my sacred writing desk, at a certian time. A cup of coffee had to be near and at least two packs of cigarettes hands. It wasn’t until I quit smoking that the ritual really faltered and I couldn’t write a single word. It was a blessing however as I learned to write in whatever space I was at. Grabbing coffee at Borders? No problem – add pages to the novel! Got a break between meetings? Throw down a page of dialogue.

Writing fast is more than avoiding ritual, however. It’s also avoiding the awful second-guessing that causes us to revise a sentence 1,297 times before being satisfied with it. Seriously, the reader wants to be entertained. If the story is engaging, he/she won’t fret about your sentence. Your best bet is to put it on paper using a basic Subject – Verb and go on.

The bottom line for me was realizing that writing didn’t require hours of tormented thinking. Remember, if it’s fun to write it will probably be fun to read. If writing it was akin to chopping granite into pebbles, well, the reader’s going to take a pass. Simple as that.