Writing From Scratch #5

Writing from Scratch #4: The Milieu Plot

The Milieu Plot

The problem of the milieu plot involves a problem of location or setting. The character is often either in a place they need/want to escape from or not in the specific place they need/want to be in. The try-fail cycles will involve traveling away from or to the location. Gulliver’s Travels, The Great Escape, and The Hobbit contain milieu plots.

The Lord of the Rings contains one very large milieu – the problem of getting the One Ring from the Shire where its been hidden for a number of years to Mordor where it can finally be destroyed. We can further break this down into smaller milieu plots. Let’s look at one: the problem of crossing the Misty Mountains. (And we’ll use the events as they occur in the movie, since more people have watched that than read the book)

A few solutions they could try are not considered because they already know they are too dangerous, such as the northern route, which is swarming with orcs and goblins, and the Gap of Rohan, which gets too close to Isengard for comfort.

First try: take the Pass of Caradhras. Fail: No, they can’t cross this way, and Saruman is actively attacking them.

Second try: enter the Mines of Moria. Fail: Yes, they are able to enter, but the Dwarven reception committee they were expecting to lead them through is not there.

Third try: search Moria for the Dwarves and a guide through. Fail: No, there are no Dwarves to guide them, and goblins have now been alerted to their presence and are attacking.

Fourth try: run like hell away from the goblins. Fail: Yes, they are able to run across a chasm to escape the goblins, but a Balrog takes out Gandalf.

Final try: follow Gandalf’s instructions to flee (or “fly”). Solution: they get out of the Mines of Moria, and are on the other side of the Misty Mountains, ready to continue with another micro-milieu.

Prompt: write a flash fiction with a Milieu in which your character’s plot-problem is that they need to go to their grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner. The character, setting, genre, and stakes, as well as what is preventing them from simply going to Grandma’s is up to you. This simple plot can create a story that is anything from family drama to international spy thriller.

If you want to read more of my 80+ posts, you can check them out on my website theferalcollection.com

How fucking annoying is it when you feel so restless with creative energy but you can’t decide what to do with it and when you finally try to create something it comes out shit so you just give up and sit there being all creatively annoyed and jittery.

Mr. Gaiman, I love your writing and your tumblr presence. If I can ask your advice, I’m a writer and I feel like I’ve lost inspiration for plot. I want to write emotions and relationships, but the story always escapes me. What do you do when you know your characters and how they relate to each other but not the story? Thank you!

The quickest way, if you have two characters you like and want to see succeed, is to have them want mutually exclusive things. And that’s a plot.

Writing from Scratch #1

Welcome to Writing from Scratch!

I’ve been writing a long time, and sometimes it feels like I lose the trees for the forest. Writing from Scratch is a chance for me (and you!) to get back to the basics of storytelling.

If you’ve never written a story before, if you’ve never felt like you could come up with one that would be worth writing, my hope is that if you follow along with me here, you will have the confidence and know-how to come up with an idea, build it into a story, and share it with the world.

These posts will be little, easy-to-digest nuggets. At the end of every post, look for a prompt and share your response in the comments!

What Is a Story?

A story can be defined by what it contains: at least one plot, character, and setting, and a style through which it is told.

Story Bits

To begin, let’s take a look at the second smallest unit of a story – the sentence. A sentence is a set of words that conveys a complete thought. And communication is fractal, meaning each part shares the same pattern as the whole. A story and its components, therefore, will also convey a Complete Thought.

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When writing descriptions, consider what you want to accomplish. Giving the reader an idea of the layout of a room will require different types of descriptions/different descriptive words than evoking emotions. Think also of who is giving the descriptions: a first person or subjective third person narrator should describe based on how they experience the setting, while an objective third person narrator may have more freedom to match the descriptions to your own preference.

Writing from Scratch #5

The Inquiry Plot

The problem of an inquiry plot involves a question that needs answering for its solution. The classic is Whodunnit? But any who, what, where, when, why, or how style questions can provide the problem for an inquiry plot. Traditionally, try-fail cycles in an inquiry plot come in the form of following clues which can lead to more clues (or questions) or end up being red-herrings that have caused a set back in solving the riddle.

Let’s look at the classic mystery “A Night of Fright is No Delight,” Scooby Doo! Where Are You? Season 1, episode 16. (I went a little overboard on this one, but it’s just too fun!)

If you haven’t seen this classic episode, then a quick background is that the gang has been invited to spend the night in an allegedly haunted house for the chance to receive a part of an inheritance along with four other possible heirs.

The Question: Who is the Phantom Shadow?

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Disney Princesses at their Current Ages

How do you do, fellow kids?

I have a homework assignment on color theory, and could really use your help! Do you have a minute to take a quick 7 question survey about the color in this picture? Follow the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZYD7MDK

Are there any works in the post-apocalyptic genre with post-apocalyptic librarians? People who worked in the public library and after the Bad Thing decide to stay and keep the library clean, safe and available for anyone who needs it. People can’t remove books from the premises anymore, because they’re too precious, but you can stay as long as you want and read them or copy them out–the librarians encourage making copies, so that the information can circulate beyond the physical boundaries of the library. 

After a while it becomes an unspoken reality of the post apocalyptic society that you Just Don’t fuck with the library. You don’t fight there, you don’t steal from it, you don’t allow harm to come to librarians when they have to leave the building for supplies. 

People donate food and books and paper with no expectation of reciprocity, because the librarians don’t ask for anything when you need a place to hide or information or, fuck, to read a schlocky crime novel because you need to escape reality in some purple prose. 

OCEAN’S EIGHT (2018) dir. Gary Ross