StoryTelling – Page 14 – Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog

Throughlines

a recurring character/setting/element anchoring the reader in the story that keeps the reader interested

I use throughlines in my own writing and mentioned them previously in Using One-Line Summaries to Write Better Stories and Writing Mentoring.

Recent conversations demonstrated confusion; some people thought a throughline is the same as a plot line, some thought a throughline was an expanded TOC (Table-of-Contents), some thought…

I appreciate the confusion.

I also appreciate Einstein’s “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

Therefore, I’m either about to explain throughlines to a six-year old or demonstrate I don’t understand it myself.

Let me know which I achieve.

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Linda Seger’s “Making a Good Script Great”

Linda Seger’s Making a Good Script Great is one of two books I recently picked up on scriptwriting/screenwriting because…well, basically because I like to learn, and learn I did. There are more pages dogeared, highlighted, and marked up than there are pages untouched.

Begin with the concept that storytelling is storytelling is storytelling and it doesn’t matter the medium because regardless of medium you want a strong, visceral reaction from your audience/reader.

Now recognize that any medium will touch on all aspects of getting that strong, visceral reaction to some degree; a character is a character is a character, a scene is a scene is a scene, dialogue is dialogue is dialogue.

Go one more to specific mediums emphasize specific aspects more than others due to that medium’s limitations. Literature can handle 1st Person POV handily, script/screenwriting not so much.

Recognize that and the next item is to learn ways to fake 1st Person POV in a medium designed for 3rd Person Limited/Omniscient POV.

And if you stop there and say to yourself, “But I don’t have to do that when I write a book” you’re missing out on an incredible learning opportunity. Sure, you may never have to do that in a book but learning how to do it and – more importantly – how to work with such a constraint gives you the flexibility to use that technique, parts of that techniques, concepts from that technique, modify it, et cetera, to make your own non-script/screenwriting work sing.

15 Days of Harveys Day 15 – Peter James Martin’s “Kuchisake-onna On Teesside”

Kuchisake-onna On Teesside

by Peter James Martin

They often say that there’s no place like home. I would often agree to this, except for the times where the job makes me want to wish I was somewhere else. The case of the Kuchisake-onna is one of those times.

The above is from Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 8 (the famous “No Dragons” issue). You can read the rest of Peter James Martin’s Kuchisake-onna On Teesside along with several other amazing stories between its captivating covers (and we both hope you do!)

Follow Peter James Martin on Twitter.

Have you been Harveyed?

The kind, wise, and wonderful folks at Sixth Element Publishing included four of my flash pieces in Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 8 and I’m repaying that kindness by showcasing the opening from each author’s work for the last few weeks.

Read

Day 1’s Adrian Bagley’s “The Beast at Bay”.
Day 2’s Alex Minns’s “Sides of the Mirror”
Day 3’s Alexandrina Brant’s “Cartography, Creatures, & Craquelin (A Melina Short)”
Day 4’s Bruce Connelly’s “Hare Today, Gone…?”
Day 5’s Christine King’s “The Child, The Witch, and The Werewolf”
Day 6’s Crysta Coburn’s “Smoke”
Day 7’s Davia Sack’s “The Curse of Beauty”
Day 8’s Muriel “iPad” Blytheman’s “Ye Olde Ship Inn”
Day 9’s Jack Pentire’s “Time will say Nothing”
Day 10’s Me! Four Flash Pieces
Day 11’s Kate Baucherel’s “Firebird”
Day 12’s Liz Tuckwell’s “Some People Smell Roses”
Day 13’s Mark Hayes’s “Mandrake”
Day 14’s Melissa Wuidart Phillips’s “The Rainbow Has Many Colours”

Enjoy!

15 Days of Harveys Day 14 – Melissa Wuidart Phillips’s “The Rainbow Has Many Colours”

The Rainbow Has Many Colours

by Melissa Wuidart Phillips

Zara crouched down behind the pile of crates on the airship’s deck, the wind fiercely whipping at her blonde hair, making her wish she was inside the body of the ship with the other passengers, not out here in the dark night at the mercy of the elements. Her fingertips were turning white where she clutched at the metal rim of the container, fiercely holding on, knowing it was her only choice. This was the only way she got to live.

The above is from Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 8 (the famous “No Dragons” issue). You can read the rest of Melissa Wuidart Phillips’s The Rainbow Has Many Colours along with several other amazing stories between its captivating covers (and we both hope you do!)

Watch Mellisa Wuidart Phillips’s amazing short film (3m19s) Unbroken and listen to her internet radio work on Chapel FM.

Read

Day 1’s Adrian Bagley’s “The Beast at Bay”.
Day 2’s Alex Minns’s “Sides of the Mirror”
Day 3’s Alexandrina Brant’s “Cartography, Creatures, & Craquelin (A Melina Short)”
Day 4’s Bruce Connelly’s “Hare Today, Gone…?”
Day 5’s Christine King’s “The Child, The Witch, and The Werewolf”
Day 6’s Crysta Coburn’s “Smoke”
Day 7’s Davia Sack’s “The Curse of Beauty”
Day 8’s Muriel “iPad” Blytheman’s “Ye Olde Ship Inn”
Day 9’s Jack Pentire’s “Time will say Nothing”
Day 10’s Me! Four Flash Pieces
Day 11’s Kate Baucherel’s “Firebird”
Day 12’s Liz Tuckwell’s “Some People Smell Roses”
Day 13’s Mark Hayes’s “Mandrake”

Next up, a taste of Peter James Martin’s Kuchisake-onna On Teesside.

Enjoy!

15 Days of Harveys Day 13 – Mark Hayes’s “Mandrake”

Mandrake

by Mark Hayes

“Hendricks? He’s dead, I believe. Murdered, if I recall correctly, a month ago. By members of his own coven, or so I am told.”
This was a reasonable summing up of the facts. Which is to say, to the best of my knowledge that Jacob Hendricks, third Earl of Cleethorpes and mediocre occultist, was indeed deceased. As such, until any evidence to the contrary was presented, I laboured under the assumption that this was indeed the case. One does not as a rule presume notices of death in The Times obituary column to be falsehoods.
It is The Times, after all.

The above is from Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 8 (the famous “No Dragons” issue). You can read the rest of Mark Hayes’s Mandrake along with several other amazing stories between its captivating covers (and we both hope you do!)

Read

Day 1’s Adrian Bagley’s “The Beast at Bay”.
Day 2’s Alex Minns’s “Sides of the Mirror”
Day 3’s Alexandrina Brant’s “Cartography, Creatures, & Craquelin (A Melina Short)”
Day 4’s Bruce Connelly’s “Hare Today, Gone…?”
Day 5’s Christine King’s “The Child, The Witch, and The Werewolf”
Day 6’s Crysta Coburn’s “Smoke”
Day 7’s Davia Sack’s “The Curse of Beauty”
Day 8’s Muriel “iPad” Blytheman’s “Ye Olde Ship Inn”
Day 9’s Jack Pentire’s “Time will say Nothing”
Day 10’s Me! Four Flash Pieces
Day 11’s Kate Baucherel’s “Firebird”
Day 12’s Liz Tuckwell’s “Some People Smell Roses”

Next up, a taste of Melissa Wuidart Phillips’s The Rainbow Has Many Colours.

Enjoy!