weekly post 4

This week, I had an unusual creative spark that completely changed my perspective on the project.  I was working on my science fiction adventure story idea, and had been having troubles with the organization of all of my character ideas.  It finally struck me that if I used my two leads to acts as main characters, and added a small "A team" of others around them, then I could put everyone else on a sort of "B team".  By re structuring it this way, I have actually discovered tons of ways for everyone to interact in a way that keeps the spotlight where it should be, and makes sure each character is doing their job and their perspective is being utilized to its fullest.

My leads, of course, are two space pirates named Claire and Harris.  One of my first ideas was to make Claire more relateable, and really focus on making her a bit of an audience surrogate.  I decided to tone down her tough side, and that she would be a better point of view character if her toughened moments were things she has to slowly develop and work towards.  Also, this helps separate her personality as being more distinct from Harris.  Claire's main love interest, he is to serve as a foil to certain aspects of her personality.  He has a simple world view, and doesn't get bogged down in details.  His solutions to problems are very simple, albeit inefficient, whereas Claire is the opposite.  She is a very detail oriented problem solver, and prefers to be as creative as possible.  Her more down to earth, realistic world view helps keep his unusual idealistic ideas from going too far.  I think they will have more chemistry this way.

The other main revelation I had was to actually come up with a rival for Harris, who leads all of my other side characters together.  That way, they aren't directly connected, but I can still introduce everyone at once.  Just from a plot perspective, this is the mechanic I've been looking for all this time.  When I finally get the overall plot finished, I'll be able to dive straight into writing.

Weekly post #3

This week, progress on the capstone project comes along, but not as much as I had hoped.  I am still coming up with the plot events for the story, and despite my best attempts, I haven't quite had the spark I need to finish organizing all of my ideas into a finished whole story yet.  As I have mentioned before, my goal is to churn out as much of a novel as I possibly can, and to that end, I've struggled with a few problems.

Firstly, I have three strong story ideas, and picking which one to work on has taken me a long time.  While I have decided to save my superhero idea for a web comic my friend wants to draw, I still have two strong ideas left over that I haven't been able to pick between.  On the one hand, there is an idea for a space adventure novel that I was very invested in last semester.  I really enjoyed working on that story.  It features a very developed science fiction world that emphasizes both space travel across the galaxy, as well as cyborg enhancements for the people living in that galaxy.  I have had dozens of interesting ideas when I was making that world, but I did run into a road block of sorts.  Namely, I realized that I was writing my two central characters as having basically the same sort of voice, and I have been struggling trying to decide how to not only re-make them so they are more distinct, but also how to re-make the entire supporting cast so that they still are unique compared to the revised central characters.  This was a very great challenge.

On the other hand, my other story idea suffers from the opposite problem.  This idea is about a student-mentor relationship, explored through the characters of a group of medieval demon hunters.  In this case, what I have are seven very strongly distinctive characters who make up the main cast, and whom I am very excited to write about.  Unfortunately, I am struggling to come up with their world they live in.  What I have basically come up with is an alternate history for an ancient earth, so that the planet will FEEL old and medieval, but I am also exploring ways to advance certain aspects of technology so that the world is more unique.  That said, ideas for their world have been coming to me faster than anything else, so I believe this is the story I am going to be working on for the class.  I'll post next week about specific details.

Group work writing prompt

In my group (Lee, Shaun, and myself), the writing prompt we decided to work on was a an idea to create something that only used single syllable words, with a theme of describing and focusing on sounds.  In my piece, I also seem to have used a lot of color, but I enjoy the imagery the most.

Night in Styx
Time of black
Steel wall gates
Hell made soul

Winds to howl
At the gates
Scream a name
Choke out life

As it flows
Burns out life
Cries of pain
Boil in throat

Slayed in wake
No help found
All hounds growl
Pay deaths toll

Post #2

Thinking about genre this week has been interesting.  As someone who subscribes to and enjoys working within rigid genre constraints, I find myself a bit torn.  As much as I basically do subscribe to the ideas of genre fiction, I have always been most excited by anything that blends the science fiction and fantasy genres, and that's what I've been planning to do for this class.  These two genres have been blended thousands of times by now, so I admit I am covering familiar ground.  Ultimately though, I think that's where the appeal lays for me.  The stories I loved as a kid are something that I value above almost everything else, and i truly want to be able to connect with kids of the future with my own writing, so they can feel the same elation I did.  That's what my writing is about.

Keeping this in mind, a lot of my work is influenced by science fiction.  I love the setting of outer space, and all of the inherent possibilities it implies.  That said, there are a lot of conventions within the actual writing of the genre that do not really hold my interest as much.  Almost all fiction has elements that seem politically minded, but Science Fiction is among the least subtle, with its plot sometimes being a direct allegory to real world trends or events.  This kind of narrative is too heavy handed for my taste, and while advocating social change is important, its not an area where I am a particularly strong writer.  The furthest into this realm I will go is to make sure my characters offer positive portrayals of American minorities, especially women.  I consider myself a strong proponent of modern feminism, and I enjoy applying that influence to my writing, but as for things like critiques of capitalism, I find myself not as interested in making those themes a pivotal part of my stories.  In fact, I find I draw quite a bit of influence from another genre.

I've learned a long time ago that the character arc driven plots of the fantasy genre, with it's multiple characters and deep, rich back stories, are something that I really do love when I try to create a fictional world.  The themes of adventure, friendship,and perseverance are what really stick with me when I look to writing, and so these, more than anything else, are what I want to write about. 

Post #1

Hi everyone.  I'm Ryan Davis, and I'm a Language, Literature and Writing major with a minor in creative writing.  I am a writer of conventional genre fiction, and I have been practicing my craft for about four years now.  Admittedly, I am rather new to my chosen profession, but I have been a fan of genre fiction and its conventions for all my life. Moreover, I also began to examine my chosen genres with a critical mind for the very first time four years ago as well.  My experience in the creative writing program has been a very mixed bag, depending largely on each professors approach to the program.  By far, my favorite was Polly Rosenwaike, and I greatly appreciated all of her advice on how to improve my fiction writing.  She was very perceptive, especially on a language level, and she was incredibly open to any kind of topic I wanted to write on.

This interest of mine in conventional genre fiction gives me a deeply rooted position when discussing genre.  I think genre labels are an incredibly helpful tool for consumers, as it helps them understand what they are going to be reading, so they know what kind of experience they may be getting.  I personally support even obscure sub-genre's and sub labels, since they allow me to make my media consumption extremely specifically tailored to what I am trying to learn about. 

There are definitely problems with some of these ideas.  I know many creators feel like they are limited by genre labels and prefer to describe their works by only the broadest of categorizations.  While I understand where this idea comes from, I personally feel like they don't quite do the harm that others often accuse them of.  Ultimately, I think genre labels are, at their core, usually a way to see what influenced the author when they were creating a work.  The more complex the set of influences are, the more complex the genre label will be, and since all art is based on influences, I do not think coming up with truly well descriptive labels in and of itself is that hard.

That said, does a genre label do a work a disservice by not accurately explaining the details of what makes a work unique?  Perhaps it can. If a creator is doing their best to make something never before attempted, then simply listing all of the influences in a row and calling that a genre probably does not do a very good job explaining why the piece is still original.  That said, I don't think that's really what a genre label is attempting to do.  A genre label, I think, is designed to help people discover a new piece of art.  Especially nowadays, in the age of Google, being able to show up in these kinds of searches is exactly what a new genre needs in order to get any exposure.  While genre labels may simplify the complexities of a piece of work, they only do so in the name of accessibility, so art may one day reach a greater audience than before.