Category: Writing Exercise

Writing Exercise: Black or White Hat

Erin Penn

Acquired from the Internet Hive Mind

ConGregate 2017 could have devoted a track to the Hero-Villain Spectrum. Panels included  “Bad is the New Good”, “Heroes, Anti-Heroes and Villains”, and “The Dichotomy Between Good and Evil”. With the Suicide Squad making villains into heroes, and Marvel’s Civil War and DC’s Batman vs. Superman where the heroes battle each other, keeping track of good and bad is no longer who is wearing the white hat.

In a world where we question our politicians, our parents, our police protectors, and our own morality, a simple black and white doesn’t apply. Writers get called out for the perfect good character (Mary Sues) or uncompromising villains (Snidely Whiplash); everyone is expected to have some shade of gray applied. Even when a person in real life appears to be pure, an investigation has to happen to find that one piece of dirt in their lives. Mr. Rogers can’t be real (*). Likewise everyone knows villains have a good, logical reason for their bad actions – within their own minds they are the hero of their life story. No one could possible look into the mirror and go, the black hat is the way to go. And even Hannibal Lecter has to have some good traits.

And yet … maybe not. Maybe this drive for everyone to be gray is as unreal as everything being black and white.

It certainly limits writing. Why does the bad guy have to be sympathetic? Why does the good guy have to be flawed? The Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain are becoming as worn out as the White Hat Hero and the Black Hat Villain.

My take-away from the convention is the Brightness Spectrum. Bright Hero/White Hat Hero; Dark Hero; Anti Hero; Anti Villain;  Gray Villain; Black Villain/Black Hat Villain. What does each of these people represent?

Bright Hero/The White Hat – Good hero. Righteous and true. Always acts above the board. Lives by morality. Examples: Superman, Captain America, the Lone Ranger, Hermione Grange, Rory Williams from the new Doctor Who series.

Dark Hero – Pushes the envelope but stays on the side of right and good. Lives by ethics and rules. Examples: Batman, Iron Man, Matt Smith’s the Doctor.

Anti-Hero – Straddles the line of good and evil. Breaks the law as needed. But at the end of the day wants the good to survive – the most people or the best government. Knows about morality, but those morals and their ethics may be traded in to help others. Often acts in a manner which would be consider bad if we weren’t on their side. Still they are the protagonist of the story, the one we are rooting for. Examples: Punisher, Captain Jack Sparrow, Oscar the Grouch.

Anti-Villain – Straddles the line of good and evil. Basically everything an Anti-Hero is, but we are not rooting for them. They are acting against the protagonist we are sympathetic with. But the fact is, if they were not acting against our protagonist we would be supporting their actions. Examples: The government in the Firefly television show, Magneto, Rob Pierre of the Honor Harrington series, Professor Snape.

Gray Villain – Has ethics, rules to live by which will not be crossed. Knows the actions are selfish or even bad, but kind-of likes seeing fear in people’s eyes so not going to stop doing bad – though will even act on the side of good on occasion. Examples: Draco Malfoy, Harley Quinn, Misty of the new Doctor Who series, River Song of the new Doctor Who series.

Black Hat Villain – Owns that Black Hat. Unrepentant in the villainy. Examples: Lord Voldemort, the Master of the Doctor Who series – all incarnations, Emperor Palpatine.

(*) – Reality check, yes, yes Mr. Rogers was really that good. He is a true Bright Hero.

WRITING EXERCISE: Choose two from the spectrum who must act together to accomplish something. Write a flash of at least 300 words.

READING EXERCISE: For your most recent read, where are the protagonist and the antagonist on the spectrum. If you were the government/legal system, where would you consider the characters to have fallen? If there is a difference, how did the author create a “hero” against “law”?

Writing Exercise: Expanding on Dialogue

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of jk1991 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The most common mistake I run across while editing is something I call “Screenplay”, where the writer goes into dialogue-only mode – forgetting to add location cues, speaker indications, action, exposition, and other narrative. Other people call it “Talking Heads”, and it is about as exciting as watching stick puppet talk without the puppeteer moving the sticks.

Now, when you are writing the first draft, you may find only dialogue occurs. This is fine, spew the information in your head on the page. You can’t fix it until it is written.

For the flash Grass, which came in just over 2,000 words, the initial exchange was 100% dialogue. The alien visiting my head asked “Why do you dedicate so much land to non-food?” while I was mowing the lawn, and the conversation devolved from there. After getting stung by a yellow jacket, I retreated indoors and decided to type out the exchange. Initially I tried to add some narrative while typing up, but nothing wanted to happen. I knew the exchange was between a human and an alien ambassador and nothing else. Two hundred words vomited from my fingers onto the page in 28 lines of dialogue. That was it.

Then the hard part. Adding in the narrative. Yes, I could have left it in screenplay or movie script format – that is the point of flashes after all, getting things out quickly -, but I wanted to know more. The end result was ten times as long as the initial product, and I did not add a single line of dialogue. If anything the dialogue shrunk a little when I modified the alien’s vocabulary – just a word here and there. The dialogue is substantially unchanged from the initial voices-in-my-head moment while mowing.

Since you are going to write dialogue sans any narrative (and, believe me, you are going to write dialogue sans any narrative) you should practice adding narrative to dialogue. Preferably before you send your manuscript off to a content editor.

WRITING EXERCISE: Either take dialogue already written in play format or create five to ten simple lines of your own without thinking of the scenario at all. You can find dialogue online by searching “screenplay examples” and clicking on images. An example of five simple lines of dialogue is “Hello” “Hello, how are you doing today?” “You know.” “Yep.” “Any suggestions on how to get the red out?”.

If you are using previously created dialogue ignore who the speakers are. Now that you have some generic dialogue, pick a genre and two characters: Fantasy with an elf and orc; science fiction with a spaceship captain and crew member; a mystery with the murderer and investigator talking, anything you want. Add the narrative to your dialogue. It should at least double the length of the dialogue. 

Here is a secret, just between you and me, dear writers. You want to increase your word count for a document, go find those “talking head” areas in your Work-In-Progress and flesh them out. You can even try that right now as a second writing exercise for today if you want.

***

Title: Red Cop

“Hello,” echoed through the empty store.

Jazz bit back a curse from popping her head against the counter top when she tried to stand. Stuffing bags underneath the cash register in preparations for next week’s sales had hid her from view. Standing, rubbing her head, she put on her best customer service smile and said, “Hello, how are you doing today?” before focusing on the customer. Correction, police officer. Who did not look happy at all; his uniform was a wreck. Another one stood in the open doorway of her little mall shop, her uniform pristine.

“You know.” He growled before glancing over at his female partner, who nodded and stepped outside.

Remaining overtly perky while reviewing her recent activities for any slipup which might have brought the officer to this particular store, Jazz replied, “Yep.

“Any suggestions on how to get the red out?” the officer asked, moving his right hand over his clothing from shoulder to waist in hovering indication.

Walking around the counter to lead him to the appropriate cleaning supplies, Jazz, sometimes known as the supervillian Prankster, smiled wide while no one was looking. (initial dialogue 19 words – final result 188 words.)

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words April 11, 2011

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Success

Starry-eyed teens in love with writing, new writers with a nearly finished manuscript at home, and people flashing and shorting their way to their first anthology all have something in common. They need to define when they succeed.

Writing is a tough business. Most success is measured in money. By that measure, few writers ever succeed.

David B. Coe, who by most writers’ measurements is successful, touched on this topic in More on Success and Rejection during a 2011 Magical Words posting.

When I talk to people interested in writing, I tell them to define their success now. Record it.

Otherwise when moving up in the publishing world they will continue to compare success to the level (or levels) above where they are, never seeing the success of the journey they made. The object of recording a first level of success is celebrating when reaching it, then setting another one – like graduation from high school then moving on to a first job or college.

Success in the writing world for a beginner isn’t about huge stacks of cash or being a best seller on the New York Times list. That is like telling a T-baller to shoot for the Hall of Fame, ignoring the millions of other T-ballers and the hundreds of other success levels between. If you only care about the fame and fortune, find a different aspiration. 

What goals would be a good first success? It depends on the person. For some, the writing goal is to complete a story, others is acceptance by a publishing company – any company, others it is having a real book with their name on the spine, others it is selling one book to someone else, and still others having a book signing is when they feel the success. Once a goal is clearly defined, choosing a path between self-published and traditional becomes clearer, or whether publication is needed at all.

Remember other people’s goals and success is not yours. For someone, they may want to make a living to be successful, but that might not be you. Getting a single book completely written, sold, edited, and published is pretty awesome.

Don’t be afraid to aim low. Taking a step on a staircase isn’t self-defeating – trying to jump up to the third story in one leap is.

Figure out what your goal is.

I’ve posted some of mine over the years. Starting a blog. Completing a self-published book. Setting up a website. Being a guest at a convention. Getting published by someone else. Participating in an anthology. Each goal isn’t big, but I have reached them. Future goals include getting more books published, getting into more anthologies, and editing a best-seller. 

WRITING EXERCISE: Create one simple goal to reach for this year. Does it depend on stuff entirely under your control or do others have an impact on it? Example: submitting to five anthologies is under your control, being accepted by one isn’t. Although, one (being accepted by an anthology) isn’t going to happen without the submission. Define your simple goal with activities entirely under your control; you can add a bonus for results requiring responses of others to your activities.

Blog: Fail (Part 2)

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So my Fail. I failed the Bechdel Test. This test was developed in 1995 to measure movies for inclusion. It goes like this:

  1. The movie must have more than one woman in it.
  2. They have to talk to each other.
  3. And their talk has to be about something other than a man (male).

Honestly and Threshold Sanctuary (the short published in WeAreNotThis) both fail at the first step. I tried to console myself with, well, they are romances where the main activity is between the romantic leads thereby limiting the cast. Except for Honestly, I have Dewayne, Fred, and Boulder all talking to each other about something other than the opposite gender, and they are secondary characters!

Further, during my recent sociological studies, I ran into two more terms “The Smurfette Principle” (1991) and “Women in Refrigerators “(1999). In both of my published works I have only one female appearing on screen, Kassandra and the witch. And the only offscreen character to suffer created solely for character development of an onscreen character was a woman for the male’s background (Troy’s mom).

(expletives) I am completely a product of my society. Especially the entertainment biz.

Therefore I am going to do a writing exercise right now to figure out how bad I am doing.

WRITING EXERCISE: Go over your body of work using the Bechdel Test, the Smurfette Principle, and Women in Refrigerators. If you need to understand the Women in Refigerators better, the video from Feminist Frequency explains it well.

READING EXERCISE: Watch two movies which passes the Bechdel Test and Smurfette Principle – one movie using these two tests based on gender and once based on melanin. If you watch movies in theatre, the movie should be in theatre. If you are NetFlicks watcher, then NetFlicks and chill. If part of your mind goes, but “I don’t wanna watch a chick flick” clearly you need to work outside your comfort zone. People always tell writers they need to read outside their genre; approach it with this mindset if it helps. Also who said anything about a chick flick? For example “Hidden Figures” could cover either the gender or melanin portion of the exercise.

ME DOING THE WRITING EXERCISE:

Remember, the point of these tests is not if one of your works fails but to study systematic problems over a body of work – a consistency of issues. So really my failing the Bechdel Test and the Smurfette Principle in two publications of romance isn’t bad. I will have a problem if I look at a statistically significant body and still have the issue. So 2016 blogs here I come!

First the 2016 non-fiction blogs related to specific people: 9 book reviews, 12 author spotlights, 18 magical word posts, and 12 other blogs – total of 51. (The book review included three multi-author publications which I am not counting.) Melanin split – one immigrant and one foreigner. No one of color. If going by appropriate ratios for American demographics at least 7 blacks, 2 Asians, and 6 immigrants.  Gender split – 33 to 18 (65% to 35%) favoring women (several of the blogs were by more than one person) with the author spotlight and book reviews by design and conscious choice evenly split between male and female. I had been working to have the magical words and other blogs also being an even split, but women tend to blog more than men about writing so the pool to draw from curtailed my options. So Fail on the Melanin and a “D” on the Gender splits for non-fiction even when actively trying to address the know issues.

For my 2016 flashes I am not including the one appearing in the writing exercises, just the flashes – a total of 52. I am limiting myself to on-screen characters who are more than scenery; they do not need names, but they do need to have a level of agency. Gender Split – In 52 flashes, I had 118 characters – 60 male, 53 female and 5 unspecified – 50%, 45%, 5%. Not perfect but not bad – a “B” grade. For the Melanin split I end up with the clearly defined whites at 57%, blacks at 11%, Asians at 2% and undefined at 30%. I often deliberately choose to not clearly define skin color. In addition I have 2.5% clearly defined as Hispanic and 1.5% defined as immigrants – the immigrant is a gray area since not all the stories are set in America. Melanin is fine. Grade of an A-.

Now the two I am really scared of – the Betchel and Smurfette tests. Since flashes rarely have more than two characters, this limits the options. For the Betchel test I have only included flashes with two people if both are the same gender, otherwise 3 or more people are needed. Twenty-one flashes meet this requirement and only 7 pass the Betchel test. A higher ratio than big entertainment, but less than 50% pass. On the other hand, I should see if we just switch the gender on the Betchel test, how many would pass. Ordinarily it would not be necessary, but because flashes restrict interaction so much, a better comparison in this case is seeing of the 21 flashes the female to male Betchel test passes. How many times do just men talk to each other? In this case 9 pass vs. the 7 for women. In only one case does a flash pass for both the men and woman Betchel test. Again a “B” rating because they are close, but I still am showing an unconscious preference for the dialogue to center on man-to-man. I will need to look over the statistics again next year simply because the statistical pool for the Betchel test was low.

Now smurfette. With only 17 flashes with 3 or more people, the pool is even smaller than for the Betchel test. It takes three to create an outnumbered gender. In this case I have 7 times where the story only had one woman and 6 times where the story only had one male. I pass!

Final review – For 2016, I did not do perfect with the flashes and non-fiction, but the larger review does indicate for first fears after the review of my published works are manageable. I do need to work harder. And I should review this next year; this is something I should monitor if only because I love numbers and sociology and the easiest person to “experiment” on is myself. Right now I give myself a C with a “B” for the fiction area and a “D” on the non-fiction.

Your turn – comment below on your Writers and/or Reader’s exercises.

Writing Exercise: Born Sexy Yesterday

Erin Penn

In May, the writing exercise took a trope and made it unique. Often writers take a troupe, flip it, and use that as a social commentary. After all, tropes exist because of expected action and situations, and expectations are instilled by society. So today I would like to take one of the more unquestioned one – Born Sexy Yesterday, and ask people to flip it around.

Born Sexy Yesterday is about an uneven power dynamic to a relationship, a teacher-student situation where the student has absolutely no knowledge and the teacher has all control of dispensing that knowledge, and then initiates a romantic or sexual relationship with the student during the instruction. Colonialism performed it when military leaders took the local (conquered) girls; sci-fi does it by having women emerge in fully realized adult female form with an untrained mind.

Born Sexy Yesterday is nearly 100% related to the woman being the weaker half of the relationship. The few times you see it with men, it’s played for laughs. I think the reason is, in American Society, women are the primary caregivers of children and it gets creepy thinking about making a play for a child-mind. They have been told by the culture to take care of the mentally young and ill. Men don’t have the training of “don’t touch children” banged into them beyond “check the ID for jail-bait”.

WRITING EXERCISE: So here is the writing exercise, write a story with the Born Sexy Yesterday trope turned on its edge. With the woman the teacher and the male the student but fully realized naive adult male (at least 24), but don’t play it for laughs. Make it as sexy and acceptable as Splash and Fifth Element, but with the guy needing to be dressed, hugged, and kissed. In this particular case the relationship must remain hetero, because the object is to study the socially ingrained dynamic American (and like) societies presently have. This is a social commentary piece. You can work it in high fantasy, sci-fi, urban fantasy, or other genre, even humor, so long as the relationship itself isn’t where the humor comes from. For example, in Splash much of the humor is based on her naivety, but the love developing between the Ordinary Joe and the Born Sexy Yesterday was not played for laughs. You might find it easiest to write the piece with the standard male-female setup and then reverse genders after the initial bit is complete. Aim for between 500 and 2000 words.

Further information can be found in the link below from Pop Culture Detective and from TV tropes: Born Sexy Yesterday.