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Other Cool Blogs: Liana Brooks June 26, 2016

Erin Penn

50,000 words, Christmas. Hope that fist can type.

Writing meme created by Erin Penn

The Good Guys

Way back in 2014 Liana Brooks created a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWritMo) boot camp. When she migrated over to her new blog in 2016, the boot camp disappeared including Day 3: The Antagonist, which is perhaps the best ever explanation on how to create several levels of bad guys in a book. I contacted her, and she immediately dropped the material in her new blog, because she is awesome like that.

From her boot camp I have previously made posts about the Antagonist and Establishing a Baseline. As NaNoWritMo rears its head again, I thought to dip once more into the well of goodness and touch on Day 4: The Protagonist.

She has five exercises to help a writer define a hero. Not every manuscript needs every exercise, but someone thinking about writing a novel next month might want to try out one or two to level up their hero.

Exercise 1: Weaknesses; Exercise 2: Strengths; Exercise 3: Backstory (specific to strengths and weaknesses); Exercise 4: Personality; Exercise 5: One Thing

Of the suggested exercises, I found exercise 4 and 5 the most useful over the years. Knowing the characters Meyers-Briggs personality helps me come up with a decision-making process different from my own. Sometimes I post to my list asking for someone with the appropriate personality to contact me so I can run choices by them.

And “The One Thing” part is just pure gold. If you would like to see it, go here: http://www.lianabrooks.com/nanowrimo-boot-camp-day-4-the-protagonist/

WRITING EXERCISE: Choose one of the five Protagonist exercises suggested by Ms. Brooks, and implement it for your present Work-in-progress (WIP). If you are participating in NaNo next month, consider that your WIP.

Writing Exercise: Narrative Hook

Erin Penn

freedigitalphotos.net

REPRINT FROM OLD BLOG: 9/11/2013

I attended ConCarolinas for four years – 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Before that I attended two ConDFWs (2009 and 2010). During ConCarolinas 2010, I was lucky enough to attend my first writer’s workshop.

I have since gone on to attend two more at the 2012 and 2013 ConCarolinas. I published the results of the 2013 workshop on this blog. I thought you might like to see an earlier attempt.

My first one was hosted by Allen Wold. Sixteen writers participated. The instructions were create a narrative hook, total should be under 100 words, write it in ten minutes “… and go.”

Below is what I read to the critique panel and fellow attendees. . I only typed up what I wrote; no changes were added. And yes, I know that “daisys” is spelled wrong; it was spelled wrong then too.

Welcome (Writer’s Workshop Version)

The vampire smiled at seeing the welcome mat in front of the apartment door. Well, that saved a few steps of trying to get permission to cross the threshold. He glanced over his shoulder enjoying the last misty blue colors of sunset. The Florida haze hung low.

Maybe he should have eaten before coming he thought as his gut clenched, but life when he was mortal, (was it only a week ago?) he forced his body to obey his mind. Then he marshaled his emotions and rang the doorbell.

A grey-haired woman answered the door and he thrust the rapidly wilting daisys into her hand.

“Hi mom, sorry I haven’t called.”

(words 111)

WRITING EXERCISE

Your turn. Create a narrative hook – set your phone for a ten minute alarm. When the alarm goes off, the pen goes down. One hundred words for your hook. …. and go. 

Put your hook into the comments below.

Think about whether you have captured your audience. The object of the narrative hook in get them to read the first three pages. The longer narrative should then have enough bristles to stick with the reader so they read the first chapter, and so on. While the first narrative hook isn’t essential, it can make a difference.

Flash: Not Like That

Erin Penn

freedigitalphotos.net

“Where do you think you are going, young man?” His mother’s shrill matronly voice cut the air just as Merald cracked the front door.

“Out.” The teen rotated toward the kitchen on the heel of one foot. His mother stalked out of her personal realm, crossing her arms and tapping her foot, waiting. “To a friend’s house.”

“Not like that you’re not.”

“God, Mom.” Merald swallowed as his mother’s eyes glowed red at the oath. “Gosh?” Her nose flare stopped. Known to his friends by the nickname Bubba, Merald returned to full steam, forgetting his life had been in danger just a moment before. “I’m eighteen.”

Joannah shook her graying head. “That only makes it worse. You are not leaving the house with that on a Saturday night. Hand it over.” She put out her hand.

“It’ll only be the guys.” He whined, still stuck, as most high schoolers, between child and adult.

“To start,” the wrinkles on her forehead met as his mother scowled. “But not likely at the end. Promise not to leave the first house until you are ready to come home and not call anyone else to come over?”

Bubba eye’s dropped to the floor to study the hole in the toe of his shoe. “Ummm … yes?”

The older woman’s voice firmed to granite. “Hand it over.”

“Dad,” Bubba cried out as he saw his father start to step out of the living room. The older man ducked back a second, then shrugged and braced the family dragon in the hallway.

“Yes Bubba.”

“Tell mom I am old enough.”

Charles closed his eyes, sighed, and asked. “Old enough for what?”

“To leave with my dick intact.”

His father pinched the bridge of his nose. “Son, we have been over this. It is just better to leave that at home.”

“But all my friends get to go out with theirs.” 

“I’m not the judge of other parents,” the woman interrupted, “but no male in my house walks out the door with a penis in his pants. Men just don’t know how to take care of them and do stupid things just because they are attached.”

The father snorted a short laugh. “She is absolutely right. Once, and females weren’t even involved but beer was, I — Ouch!” Hopping on one foot, Merald’s dad banged around the hallway until coming to rest against a wall. He brought up his injured bare foot studying the top for marks. “Case in point, son, dicks, even in the house, can be dangerous. Damn it, I know better than brag about –“

The red-eyed death stare stopped him midsentence.

“I’ll go back to my crossword.”

Merald’s shoulders dropped as he lost his only possible ally. He unzipped his jeans and yanked off the detachable member and handed it over to his mom’s open hand.

“May I go now?”

“Yes sweetie, curfew is ten minutes past midnight.” Joannah kissed her oldest on the cheek. “Have fun.”

(word 495; first published 12/18/2013; republished new blog format 10/21/2018)

Blog: Six Year Mark

Erin Penn

October 21, 2012 I made a flash post based on a picture on someone else’s blog. Later, November 11, I transferred the story to Erin Penn’s First Base on blogspot.

As time has gone on, I continue to push myself, self-publishing my first romance in May 2013. 2016 saw me speaking at my first convention, in the science track. To help my writing, I’ve worked hard at editing and now have over fifty manuscripts with my fingerprints all over the internal pages. Working with the Falstaff team for the last three years has pushed this aspect further.

And central to all this is the original concept, blogging flashes. Getting words on screen. It’s been a great ride.

And you readers, your support makes it the ride even better.

– Erin Penn

Geeking Science: Internal Clocks

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Nasa

Our body has a clock. A crazy accurate circadian rhythm clock that hates stupid changes like daylight savings, which happens on November 4, and traveling by airplane, leaping ahead on the planetary rotation cycle. Or any of the other dozen things we human do instead of sleeping with the day-night cycle of the planet.

For each hour shift, our bodies need a day to recover. Until the body is reset through signals from our day star and temperature, we drag and snap and have ever so slightly poorer health.

The real question isn’t how long does it take to recover, but how do we recover at all? Scientists are studying this question for a lot of reasons: insomnia, health issues affecting sleep, night occupations, shift workers, and, for the purpose of this post, settling other planets. Think about it. Mars’ daylight cycle is 24 hours and 39 minutes, not a clean 24. Jupiter’s moon Europa is three and a half days. Saturn’s moon Titan, the best candidate for a way-station before the Oort cloud and The Big Trip to visit other planetary systems, is nearly sixteen days. The Moon, four weeks. Venus, over 116 days, one-third of an Earth year.

Normally our bodies would recover in a day when changing a time zone. Imagine if every single day shift things nearly 40 minutes. If we live on the extra-forty-minute-day of Mars, and not in tunnels set to an Earth cycle, we and our neighbors will suffer perpetual jet lag symptoms of: disrupted sleep cycles, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and functioning, digestive issues like constipation or diarrhea, and mood changes. Long-term health issues increase since the regular healing cycle of the body is disrupted, increasing cancer and heart issues. 

The human clock is not a perfect 24-hour clock, any more than an Earth day is always a perfect split of 12 hours day-12 hours night. We are built to handle seasonal shifts, including the up-to three minute shift in daylight per day, by resetting the clock with the sun every morning. (Staying up late at night staring at glowing screens screws up this resetting. Just saying, marathon Netflix watchers.) According to a recent study, our biological clock runs 24 hours and 11 minutes. with a 16-minute variation by individual.

We got wiggle room for small seasonal shifts. We can even make big shifts when required. The question is what happens when the entire planets is pulling a daylight saving’s change every single day. Humans are built for Earth; our internal clock screams it “Tick, tock.”

And yet. And yet.

We were built for Earth, but we are not going to stay here. Tick, tock.

 

Bibliography

Human Biological Clock Set Back an Hour. William J. Cromie. Harvardgazette. July 15, 1999. (last viewed 11/23/2017: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/1999/07/human-biological-clock-set-back-an-hour/)

The Hidden Impact of Jet Lag on Your Body. Sarah Digiulio. Huffpost. April 15, 2016. (last viewed 11/23/2017: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-hidden-impact-of-jet-lag-on-your-body_us_570ec6d5e4b0ffa5937e236d)

Watch Out: Daylight Savings Time May Cause Heart Attack Spike. Laura Geggel. LiveScience. March 7, 2005. (last viewed 11/23/2017: https://www.livescience.com/50068-daylight-saving-time-heart-attacks.html)

Welcome to Mars! Enjoy Perpetual Jet Lag Under An Eerie Red Sky. Rebecca Boyle. FiveThirtyEight. March 7, 2017. (last viewed 11/23/2017: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/welcome-to-mars-enjoy-perpetual-jet-lag-under-an-eerie-red-sky/?ex_cid=SigDig)