Creating emotional depth in the transformative character arc

A continuation of part 2. Sometimes the sound widget doesn't work, and the easiest way to fix it is to refresh the page--no clue why. Probably a glitch in the system.

Thoughts from down in the trenches

Working on cleaning out my Practical Emotional Structure workshop (getting ready to retire it) and had to write some extra bits to tighten it up. Feeling kind of weird going against the whole, "If your character is always reacting to story events, you need to make them more active" mandate. But my thoughts? There is no such thing as a non-reactionary character. Everyone reacts. People don’t just—out of the blue—do something totally random that isn’t connected to something else, at some level, even if it’s buried in subconscious motivation.

Free post Nano workshop

Need some help after Nano? I know it's kind of early, but hey--it's free if you belong to savvyauthors. One solid week of focused help. Sign up now, 'cause it's starting to fill up and probably won't last long. It might be May, but Christmas always comes too soon.

Jodi Henley, the Help Desk 12-9/12-15

The Transformational Character Arc Part 2

All right, only...I dunno, maybe six more to go? Sometimes I'm very happy with the way they turn out, and sometimes I stutter. But, I'm happy the stuttering isn't as bad as it was.

Some thoughts on different kinds of arcs

A few examples, a little rambling. Hopefully it all ended up in the right place.

The Transformational Character Arc: Part 1

lol, last time I talked about the transformational arc, I made people glaze over almost instantly. Guess it's an acquired taste, or maybe I just need space or something, because I tend to wave my arms around. Hopefully this works, doesn't have a lot of scratchy noise, and doesn't drone. I worry about droning.

If it does, I'm going to do my entire transformational arc workshop--in audio! With comments! And asides, and probably a huge amount of meandering here and there. Bear with me, there are still a few bugs, but I'll get them out, you bet.

Once more with artichokes

I suspect I hide from strong emotion, or at least it spills out and then I sort of run away and worry I said too much, and here it is a month or so later, and well...yeah. I'm at 122, and I'm feeling pretty good. No salt, no caffeine, little sugar. I've discovered the wonders of Mexican food, habanero peppers and corn tortillas.

The bad thing is that I tend to fall asleep. The good thing is that I've managed to control my salt cravings. I've had a couple of really good workshops where--thank God, my brain was with me at least part of the time. And I put in a garden. A big one with artichokes, four kinds of peppers, way too much corn and lots of tomatoes. I suspect I have some pent up veggie lust, because there isn't an inch of garden that isn't utilized. I knew I was in trouble when I started poking walla wallas into the sides of my raised beds after reading something that said rounded tops give you four more inches of planting space.

As wonderful as I feel, I'm not in great shape, and my beach chair is getting serious use. Dig a little, sit down, dig a little more--move the chair into the shade. Seattle has been hot for the last couple of weeks. Maybe not for the rest of the country, but in the Land of No A/C, anything over eighty is a heat wave.

I've been kicking around the idea of podcasts. My kid was against it a couple years ago when I first brought it up, but I think it'd work. I recorded a few things to check out the sound quality, and considering I'm working things off Windows Sound Recorder and a headset, it sounds pretty good.

I'm not much at short blog posts, well--except for the ones about me, which tend to be on the short side, and I kind of hope with the new format, I can cover some of the stuff I've been working on over the last couple of years more consistently.

If anyone has some questions, I'd love to hear them because I'm not sure where to start and it's going to be awkward the first few times. It takes awhile to get comfortable in any new media.