Krissie: There was basically a rave review of Dark Shadows in the NYT today, and there was a fascinating line. In the midst of all the praise, it said that Burton had never been big on narrative, he was more interested in the telling, not the tale.
I found that a fascinating concept. What do you guys think?

Jenny: Isn’t “telling” what narrative is? Narrating? Are they saying he’s more style than substance?

Krissie: He’s saying the journey, not the destination, I think. Which I think is extremely interesting in terms of narrative. It’s the way to live your life, to write your books, concentrating on the journey and taking joy in it.
It just fascinated me that such a notion could be applied to fiction. The narrative lines in some Japanese movies are like nothing Joseph Campbell ever thought of.
Read the review. Makes the movie sound divine. If you can’t get it, I’ll see if I can cut and paste.

Jenny: I think that’s the reason his Alice in Wonderland failed for me. Gorgeous, gorgeous movie but no there there. It was all about the show and not the story.
But there are other things I think he’s done that are fabulous. Beetlejuice had a great narrative. The Corpse Bride was very tightly told. Nightmare Before Christmas.
I don’t trust the NYT critics. I think they’re all about show and not substance.

Krissie: Here it is. As for the NYT, it depends on the reviewer. This sounds like someone who understands Tim Burton. It’s a very thought-provoking review.

Jenny: Huh. Seems a long winded way of saying, “He was an art major, not a drama major.”

Krissie I was thinking more about the telling and not the tale. In a way, that’s what romance writing and my writing (and most genre writing) is. We know where the story is going to go, that the hero and heroine will meet, have conflicts, resolve them and live HEA. It’s the telling of the story that makes the difference.
I don’t know why I was so struck by that.

Jenny: I think you’re right about romance writing and the telling not the tale. I think what I object to (if I’m interpreting that right) is that this is what literary fiction uses too often to excuse the fact that there’s no damn plot and nothing happens, and it’s also what’s at the basis of so much bad romance fiction. But then to me, fiction is storytelling and that’s an almost sacred calling. Telling the tale beautifully is important, but if there’s no solid, lasting tale in there, it’s the emperor’s new clothes.

Krissie: I agree with that, completely. But I’ve read a number of romances with nothing new in them, but the characters are so delightful and the writing so charming that I’ve loved the books. And when you said storytelling I was again thinking it was the telling. Not the punch line.

Jenny: I agree, not the punch line. But I think sometimes people coast on delightful characters and how much fun the romance is, and forget that there has to be something underneath there. Not theme, that just gets in the way, it has to emerge organically, but solid story, somebody in trouble fighting back. I think the great stories of the world all have that, I think great storytellers always know that. I think that’s why people who aren’t particularly good at beautiful writing are more popular than the people who really can write. Stuff like Bridges of Madison County, or The DaVinci Code or Twilight (although I haven’t read either of the last two so they might be really good writing, I’m just going on what other people have said), I think that stuff hits big and sells like crazy because there’s story in there. I don’t know much about Bella from Twilight, but I know there’s a story there.
The best of all possible worlds is beautiful writing AND story, but I think if you can only do one, it’s story. I was ANNOYED by Alice in Wonderland. It was visually enthralling, but I didn’t give a damn about it because the visuals overwhelmed the nightmare it should have been. Everything was so stylized that the story went.

So taking as a given that the best stories are both great writing and great storytelling, if you can only choose one, which do you go with?

“Times are t-.ard,” Darla said. “-;\nd of course you get all the football and baseball games fr‚Ǩe. There’s a pius.” She’d stuck out her tonguP to show how much of a plus she thought that was, and Quinn had laughed and told her how nee Bill was. And the sex ‚Ä¢.vas goo:!, she’d told Darla, deafl, healthy, athletic, coach-like sex. At the time, she’d really thought it was a plus. Three years latÙÄǧr, he was beginning to seem like a curse, but it was hard to complain at Ytt a man who was unfailingly generous, considerate, protective, under<;tanding, successful, and who'd shelled out hundreds of dollars in fossil fuel f01 her since 1982. Really, the dumba.ss was the perfect man.

I wrote that paragraph and I have no idea what some of those words are. Fortunately I have the original scans so I can check, but I can’t believe publishers are just scanning books and then throwing them out there without at least a read through, knowing that this is what happens. This thing is practically hieroglyphics.

Small rant over. Back to translating.

A proposal is the package you send to an editor (after she’s answered your query letter with a “yes” if you’ve never worked with her before) to give her an idea of what your finished book will be like. It has two parts, the synopsis, which is just a description of your story and shows the editor that you have a plot, and the first thirty or so pages, which shows the editor that you have characters that breathe on the page and, beyond that, that you can write. If it’s your first book, she’ll have to see the finished manuscript before she buys, but if you’ve worked with her before, she can buy the book straight from the proposal.

So as the intro to the thesis says, after Tell Me Lies I offered Jen a book that she turned down, which left me in a minor panic since I didn’t have a back-up plan. Then, according to the intro, I remembered all the stories I’d been writing for MFA exercises, all about women in the same small town, especially the ABC exercise I’d really loved, and I built the Crazy For You proposal from those stories. (I’d remembered writing all of them knowing I was going to be writing the novel, but I think the truth is both: Some of the stories inspired the novel and then I wrote others as exercises for classes that would deliberately build the characters for me. Basically, Crazy For You is my real MFA thesis.)

So I’m thinking that putting that proposal (synopsis and first pages) into the appendices in the book might be fun for people, to see the big differences between proposal and publication. We already had the first chapter of the published book in there so people could see what the stories led to, and the proposal pieces would be the link between the two. The thing is, though, I’m not sure people who aren’t writers would be interested and it might seem like we’re padding the book. I mean, I find it interesting, but then I would, I wrote it.

The other surprise in there was in the introduction. I talked about finishing some of the stories I’d been working on: “Bank Slut Blues,” “Meeting Harold’s Father,” “Wedding Toast,” “Loop,” “You’re Going To Love It Here,” “At the Sound of the Beep Leave A Message Unless You Are My Mother,” “Insanity is Hereditary,” and “Like Lucy.” “Bank Slut Blues” is now “Necessary Skills and in the collection; “Meeting Harold’s Father” is in the collection; “Like Lucy” stunk on ice and I buried it in the backyard; but the rest of those I have absolutely no recollection of. I’m sure I wrote drafts of them, I just don’t remember them. And since in 1997 I was working on floppy disks, I’m fairly sure they’re gone forever. Which may be a good thing.

So Mollie’s sorting through the stuff Aleta gave us (THANK YOU, ALETA), reading the two short stories to see if they’re good enough to go into the collection and cogitating on the proposal-as-another-appendix question, and I figured this would be a good thing to ask Argh:

Should the proposal go into the appendix or would that just be annoying?

Eric Selinger and the magnificent people at the Journal of Popular Romance Studies have put essays about my work online, and they really are fascinating. Better than the books they talk about, really. I meant to do a blog post on this but I couldn’t get around the idea that I’d be talking about people talking about me. It seemed so arrogant. Anyway, the essays have some very interesting approaches to my work (see? ARROGANT), so you really should read them just for the ideas. Not because they’re about me. Plus that whole site is terrific. You can get on an e-mail list for notification when the next issue is out and I highly recommend it. Other issues won’t be about me, so I can talk about them.

Aleta Dodson of Central Ohio Fiction Writers invited me to speak at their RWA chapter meeting so that’s where I’ll be Saturday:

Monthly COFW meeting – May 19, 2012
Grandview Heights Meeting Room
Grandview Heights Public Library
1685 West First Avenue
Columbus OH 43212

12:30pm-1:00pm Networking
1:00pm-2:00pm Business Meeting
2:00pm-4:00pm Speaker

Speaker:Jenny Cruise
Topic: How to Craft a Scene

Join renowned author, Jenny Crusie, on May 19, 2012, from 2:00 to 4:00 at the Grandview Heights Library, 1685 West First Avenue. Jenny will demonstrate how to dissect a scene, craft a scene and revise the same scene.

Also there’s a booksigning that Lani and I will both be signing at:

A book signing will follow the meeting from 5:00 to 7:00 at Barnes & Nobles, 3685 W. Dublin – Granville Road (161 & Sawmill).

And speaking of Aleta, she went above and beyond the call of friendship and trekked all the way out to the OSU Library, braving the awful parking there to get me a copy of the my MFA thesis (I had the stories, not the thesis). I knew I had a copy of the original proposal for Crazy for You in there, but I hadn’t remembered it was so different. So we’re adding that to the Crazy People collection which will put that publication off again. I know, I know, but it’s interesting (to me, at least) to see how radically that book changed between proposal and publication.

And then there’s Writewell. I put together the 211 lecture on classic story structure, and then re-thought it. I think the workbooks and exercises in these packages are crucial to learning, but 211 is so global in its scope that I didn’t think the current workbook was enough. So I pulled a chunk out of the lecture (which made the lecture much better and much shorter) to do as a separate video in the same package, this one called “Revising Wilbur,” an exercise in how to revise a novel using the stuff in the lecture. I think it’s a really good idea, and I think it’ll be valuable, but it means I’m way off schedule on Writewell. I think that’s okay; we’re still figuring Writewell out and I’d rather be late with a really good lecture then on time but knowing I could have been better. Which also describes my fiction career, so it may just be the way I work.

And then there’s Liz. I can’t tell now if the book is as flat as I think it is, or if it’s just because I’ve been working on it for ten thousand years. The first act goes off to beta readers some time next week, shortly to be followed by the second, so that should give me a better idea. I’d put the first scene or chapter up here, but I’ve slapped so many versions of that scene into Argh by now, you all must be as sick of it as I am, so maybe not.

So that’s what’s happening now. Real blog posts resume this week. Actually, since this is such a miscellany, this might be a good post to put something you’d like to see on Argh in the comments. Questions, suggestions, things you’re dying to know about (that I can answer), here’s the place. Over to you, Argh People.

The topic for today, class, is why books you thought were simply splendid twenty years ago are completely awful today. I’m not talking about thinking Nancy Drew is the height of literature when you’re eight and then trying to read it at forty-eight and realizing she was a Barbie doll who surrounded herself with sychophants and bearded for Ned Nickerson. I mean the stuff you read as adults, those of you who have twenty years of adulthood under your belt. Case in point: Fletch.

If you who follow PopD, you know we did a podcast on Fletch the movie on Monday. We actually watched it on Saturday because Alastair needs time to turn it from two Audacity tracks into a podcast, taking out my wheezing and sneezing and the places where we stopped to talk about something else. (I haven’t heard it yet. Is the discussion we had on what a fortnight is still in there, with the crack I made about Alastair being the only human being I know who talks with footnotes? If that’s still in there, the guy’s a saint.)

Where was I? Oh, right. Fletch. I bitched long and bitterly about what Chevy Chase did to a great character, the wily, iconoclastic I. M. Fletcher, switching from smart and dedicated to a buffoon who sticks straws up his nose, and I believe I waxed eloquent on how good the books were. Then the podcast ended, and I treated myself to a re-read.

What kind of idiot was I in the seventies? Oh, wait, that’s when I was 21 and got married. So there’s been some growth since then. But honest to god, the guy sleeps with a fifteen-year-old girl who’s hooking for drug money. Never even attempts to save her. Really, I’m not a prude, but that’s statutory rape, you bastard. I read the second one, Confess, Fletch, and it has not improved with time, although Francis Xavier Flynn is still a keeper. Then I read the first Flynn book. Still liked the character, kinda, but the plot was frustrating as all hell. And that’s when I gave up on Gregory McDonald, who used to be on my keeper shelf.

Okay, so some time has passed since 1975 when the book came out, but not that much. What happened? Have things changed that much that people didn’t blink at the sex-with-the-fifteen-year-old then? The Grand Sophy is marred by anti-Semitism which is definitely a product of the time, so I just skip that part because the rest is still good. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so it is no longer my favorite Heyer. The Nero Wolfe books hold up, thank you very much, but Ellery Queen is damn near unreadable. I’m afraid to go back to Andre Norton, I loved her so.

I’m non-plussed. (Great word. I must have gotten it from Alastair.) Has this happened to you? What books? Why?

Discuss while I go get more Sudafed and Benadryl. Next topic: Allergies. WHY????????

We have an introductory video here (it’s free), and there are two lessons available for download for a small fee (well, ten bucks), Lani’s Discovery Lecture and Jenny’s Conflict Lecture.

Also the School Store is open.

All questions answered by Alastair and Lani from the website or by me here on Argh in the comments.

(I can’t believe we finally did it. Well, we had to. I wrote “established in April of 2012″ in the intro video, and we weren’t doing that sucker over again.)

Questions, comments, complaints, requests, general nattering about . . . put it in the comments. Thank you.

The Faculty

Isn’t that a great graphic? Somebody in Oregon thought so, too:

Nobody in Crazy People has an STD (that I know of; I really don’t trust Ronnie), but of course nobody in Oregon will believe that now.

Stock Art, the bad boyfriend of the graphics world: It’s cheap and untrustworthy. And yet, still attractive.

All we have to do is stay within the rules of the world and pick a fairy tale character that nobody else has called dibs on, and then we can write whatever we want and show it to the others and tweak it to make sure we haven’t violated any world rules–it’s a complicated world–and we’re good. And the best part is, we’re having such a good time making up the world together that we’re sparking all kinds of ideas in each other. I even started three little collages for my first three stories, which I would take a picture of but it’s night and it’s dark, so no for that. Then because I am obsessive I found an old frame engraving and made a banner for the website and used it to mock up book titles which is when I really had fun.

I love the way we gravitate to the kind of fairy tale that fits us. We put Krissie’s name on Beauty and the Beast because we knew she’d want it and then she came back and asked for Bluebeard and the Robber Bridegroom; she loves a Dark and Dangerous Hero, and murder is no bar to romance in her world. She also wants to do Anderson tales even though they’re dark and Danish because she’s Danish and, uh, dark. I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do.

I had called dibs on Red Riding Hood right away because I wanted to tell the story I was originally going to tell in FTL, the one about the older (grandmother) Red who goes into the woods after her granddaughter to keep her from making the Family Mistake and runs into this wolf she used to know . . .

But then I started to play around with fairy tale titles for me and came up with “The Frog Principle.” I didn’t know what the hell that meant so I kept poking at it and there was this blonde princess–blonde in every sense of the word–who kissed a guy who turned into a frog, so she had to call the EMTs–Emergency Magic Technicians–but she can’t tell them she’s a princess because somebody is killing off the royal family (that’s in the back story for the novel), so . . . (The EMT are really Lani’s invention, a kind of a magic bomb squad who show up to defuse magical disasters. If the defusing goes wrong, the blowback turns them into chickens, so their mascot is not a dalmation, it’s a rooster. Named Geoffrey. Geoffrey wasn’t always a rooster . . .) Anyway, now I want to write “The Frog Principle.” I’m thinking Jane Horrocks for a placeholder.

Then I came up with Slow White for Lani, and she said, “Uh, probably not,” so I went downstairs and watched my favorite Leverage episode (“The Rashomen Job”) and there was “Sloe White and the Seven Alibis.” I think her name is Sloe Virginia Fizzwilliam White (hey, I can stoop as low as the next girl for a joke, although not if the next girl is Lani who is stocking up on chicken jokes as I type this), and then I looked up what “sloe” meant and got “the small, sour, purplish fruit of the blackthorn.” Except for the “small” part, that’s my Girl. I need somebody sort of . . . waspish for that. Maybe Claire Foy. She was fabulous as Adorabelle. Hmmmm.

I love brainstorming with the sisters.

Okay, your turn. What fairy tale title would you write?

The example is Edna and Bernie and if you’ve heard me talk about goals before, you’ve heard me talk about how Edna is waiting for this cup of tea that Bernie makes her every night at six, serving it in the special teacup he gave her for a wedding present. Here’s the cup:

Of course, it wasn’t that SIZE when I put it all the way through the video as the cup Bernie gave Edna. I kept looking at it, thinking “What the hell is that in that cup, an egg?” but did I blow it up to look at it? Noooooooooooo.

I am not doing that video over. I have replaced the cup in the new video, and I’m counting on nobody noticing. Which of course they will. Especially now that I’ve told you guys, you keep secrets worse than I do. I keep thinking I can explain it away as an aspect of Bernie’s character, but basically . . . no.

Edna’s new cup is lovely:

And the lesson for today, class:

Look at your illustrations closely.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

And it’s not just research that leads to another thing. I had the rough Keynote presentations done for my first three lectures, so I was feeling pretty cocky. Then I started writing the script for the first one–thirty-two slides–and realized that I’d missed some good details, so I went back and added some more slides. But then I realized that some of the graphics I’d added could be really good illustrations of those concepts so I added some more slides. Then I did an outline and realized that I could focus those concepts better, so I rearranged and edited slides. Then I rewrote the script and added some more slides. Then I did the notebook and realized that I could add a couple more slides for clarity. Then I did the workbook . . . . One hundred and eighty-one slides. In half an hour. Most of that is from animation, but still, it’s a whole new world of teaching: words on the screen, spoken words, pictures . . . fingers crossed it’s not just a mess.

I’d forgotten how great it is just to learn new things–Pages is infinitely superior to Word, by the way–to make new things. One of the problems with writing novels is that they take so damn long. The thrill of finishing something in two weeks is addictive. I don’t know how much anybody else is going to learn from these lectures, but I’m learning a lot. I’d tell you what I’ve learned in detail, but I must go add slides to the next lecture.

So far for this project, I have learned Photoshop and Audacity, found where the Mac keeps its special characters, become a passionate devotee of Graphics Fairy and Dover Clip Art, and realized that my voice is so nasal that I sound like Fran Drescher. Lani finished her 102 lecture day before yesterday, but it’s taking me longer because of the learning curve and my distaste for my own voice. She’s had a lot of experience in broadcasting, plus she has a great voice. I don’t even like to leave messages on answering machines. But I have just now finished my sixth attempt at recording a half hour audio track for Lecture 103: Introduction to Conflict, and this one is a keeper (still nasal, though). The slideshow is done. The audio is done. I’m going to tweak the notebook and workbook some more because they don’t look right to me, but the content is good. I’m thinking my first Writewell lecture is pretty much finished.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s good. Lani and I kind of egged each other on in the graphics department. I had a lot of clip art in mine, and then I watched hers and thought, “Man, she’s good,” and went back and reworked mine. Eventually, we’ll be the death of each other but at the moment, it’s good for us to raise each other’s bars. I may, however, have gone overboard on the clipart. The last frame of the lecture, before the end credits, is a compilation of all the examples in the lecture. I like it, if I used a mousepad, I’d want it for my mousepad, but that’s a lot of stuff for thirty minutes of lecture. On the other hand, there are 180 slides. You be the judge:

We don’t have a definite launch date yet, but it’s soon. The website is pretty much done, Alastair has figured out the pay-and-deliver system, and by the end of the week, we should have the first three lectures ready to go. Oh, and do not search for Writewell.com because that’s somebody else. We’re WritewellAcademy.com. or we will be once the site goes up.

I can’t believe that audio is finally finished. I think Wolfie’s barking in the background on it, but that’s just extra texture right? Because I am not recording that sucker again.

Edited to add: It wasn’t. There was so much heavy breathing on there, it sounded like an obscene phone call. I recorded it again, but still, since I’m stuffed up, too much mouth breathing. Maybe I’ll do it again pretending to be Marilyn Monroe. She was a heavy breather. ARGH.

I start with the slide show which is pretty much a visual outline of what I want to say, words on a screen. As it occurs to me, I add images that I hope will make the concepts stick. Then the images change the content because they’ve clarified the idea. Then I write the script to go with the slides, and as I write the slides expand to follow trains of thought, and the images shift to illustrate what I have to say. And then the images change the script . . . I’m so far into the 4 Act Structure slide presentation that I don’t even know if it makes sense, but I know it’s much better than it was before I worked with written words, pictures, and sound.

I’ve always known that pictures helped in fiction writing because I made collages that were vital to the books. And I knew that sound made a difference because reading my stuff out loud as a final edit is really effective. (Actually reading it on paper is completely different from reading it on screen, too.) But I don’t think I’ve ever put all three together like this. it’s really exciting. Add in that Lani is teaching me to manipulate the slide show so that it matches up with the recording, and it’s been an illuminating two weeks.

I’m trying to think how I can do this more directly with fiction, and I’m not seeing a way. But I think when I finally do my non-fiction books, I’m going this way, lots of graphics and sidebars, presenting the information as many ways as possible.

Anybody out there have experience with this? And does my plan sound like a good thing in a book? (It’s a good thing in a video slide show for sure.)

Bell, James Scott, The Art of War for Writers
—, Conflict and Suspense
—, Plot and Structure
Bell, Susan, The Artful Edit
Bickham, Jack. The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
—, Scene and Structure
—, Writing and Selling Your Novel
Block, Lawrence, On Character
—, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit
Bradbury, Ray, Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity
Bright, Susie, How to Tell a Dirty Story
Brooks, Terry, Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life
Browne, Renni, and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Burroway, Janet, Writing Fiction
Card, Orson Scott, Characters and Viewpoint
Dixon, Deb, Goal, Motivation, Conflict
Dunne, Peter, Emotional Structure
Evanovich, Janet, How I Write
Frey, James H., How to Write a Damn Good Novel
Gardner, John, The Art of Fiction
George, Elizabeth, Write Away
Goldberg, Natalie, Writing Down the Bones
Hauge, Michael, Selling Your Story in Sixty Seconds
—,Writing Screenplays That Sell
Hayden, G. Miki, Writing the Mystery
Hood, Ann, Creating Character Emotions
Horton, Andrew, Writing the Character Centered Screenplay
King, Stephen, On Writing
Klein, Cheryl B., Second Sight
Knost, Michael, ed, Writer’s Workshop of Horror
LeGuin, Ursula, Steering the Craft
Lukeman, Noah, The First Five Pages
Lyon, Elizabeth, Manuscript Makeover
Maass, Donald, Writing the Breakout Novel
Masello, Robert, Robert’s Rules of Writing
Mayer, Bob, The Novel Writer’s Toolkit
McClanahan, Rebecca, Word Painting
McKee, Robert, Story
Mernit, Billy, Writing the Romantic Comedy
Peck, Robert Newton, Fiction is Folks
Pressfield, Stephen, The War of Art
Rasley, Alicia, The Power of Point of View
—. The Story Within Plot Guide for Novelists
Ray, Robert, The Weekend Novelist
Schmidt, Victoria, Story Structure Architect
Linda Seger, Making a Good Script Great
Snyder, Blake, Save the Cat
—, Save the Cat Goes to the Movies
—, Save the Cat Strikes Back
Sokoloff, Alexandra, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors
—, Writing Love: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors II
Stein, Sol, How to Grow a Novel
—, Solutions for Writers
—, Stein on Writing
Swain, Dwight, Techniques of the Selling Writer
Truby, John, Elements of Story
Ueland, Brenda, If You Want To Write
Vogler, Chris, The Writer’s Journey
Watts, Nigel, Write a Novel and Get It Published
Weiland, K. M., Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success
Wheat, Carolyn, How to Write Killer Fiction
Whitcomb, Laura, Novel Shortcuts
Williams, Joseph, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace
Williams, Stanley D, The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success
Wood, Monica, Pocket Muse

What always amazes me is how, no matter what I teach, getting ready for a class affects the story I’m working on. It’s impossible to think about these concepts without applying them to the story in my head, and I’ve had any number of lightbulb moments since I started this. They’re such basic concepts until you use them as lenses to see your stories through, and then they’re like one of those prism kaleidoscopes: what they mean depends on what you’re looking at. If I can make that happen for other people, that’ll be a good, good thing.

We have hit a couple of small snags, one of which is that there is no automatic download feature, so evidently after Paypal gets the cash, it sends us a notification and then we send the lecture on. Since we’re all on the computer pretty much all the time, there shouldn’t be much of a lag time, but it isn’t as swiftly automated as I’d have liked. On the other hand, it’ll work. I can’t imagine it ever taking longer than twenty-four hours for us to see an e-mail, so that’s probably what we’ll promise.

Still a lot has been fun. Getting the clip art together for the first lectures has been a blast. Once I decided that the only aesthetic guideline I needed was black and white drawings, I’ve been mixing and matching illustration styles and periods with abandon. My Virgo heart clutches sometimes when I see how much abandon, but since I’ll probably be using the same protagonist and antagonist clips throughout all my lectures, and since I love them, I’m stifling my inner iron-out-all-the-wrinkles and going for it. I’m counting on people liking dorky illustration and animation, but I also know that everything I’m putting in there really does make the concepts clearer, so I think I’m safe. Kinda. Maybe.

Also, we’re working out a way to have Writewell forums within the Cherry Forums structure, and they’ll launch when the lectures go live and the Cherry revamp is complete. Lots of new stuff here, but then it’s spring. New growth! Or something much like it.

We may not make the April 1 launch date (that’s only five days away ARGH), but we’ll definitely be up and running soon, and it’ll be a much, much better thing because of all of you. I am grateful as always to Argh Nation. You have the patiences of saints and the revision skills of surgeons. Thank you all so much.

Edited to add: This is sort of what a sample notebook page will look like (much better margins): One of the main slides (not all of the slides) with a grid underneath for taking notes (because I like quad-ruled better than regular ruled paper when I take notes):

Lecture 103: Introduction to Conflict

Conflict is the fuel of story . . .
and this lecture tells you how to use it. The lesson can also help in writing a first draft as long as you’re still focusing on your story and not on craft, but it’s probably most useful for analyzing a finished draft.

The 103 Lecture is divided into four parts:
1. The Definition of Conflict
2. The Major Players: Protagonist and Antagonist
3. Analyzing Conflict in Story
4. Revising for a Conflict Lock

The Lecture Package has four parts:
1. The Slideshow Lecture with voiceover
2. The Audio of the voiceover alone.
3. The 103 Notebook (thumbnails of the slides with quad-ruled spaces for taking notes) in PDF
4. The 103 Workbook (exercises to analyze your story in progress with the concepts of the lecture) in PDF
5. Certificate of Completion.

How to Use the Lecture Packet Suggested Plan of Study:
1. Push the Paypal button and download your packet. [I'll get the exact instructions from Alastair later.]
2. Watch the video without taking notes to become familiar with the basics of conflict as an introduction to the material.
3. Watch the video again, this time using the Notebook to take notes of the important points.
4. Using the Workbook, analyze your story-in-progress to understand the conflict and revise for a conflict lock.
5. Fill out the certificate and tape it to your wall. You worked hard; you deserve it.

Or

Lecture 211: The Four Act Structure
Structure is the spine of your story . . .
It really doesn’t matter what structure you use as long as you have a structure, but the classic linear plot is the most common in storytelling. The four-act approach to linear storytelling is adapted from Aristotle and screenplay structure, so it’s both classic and modern, referencing the basics of structure for thousands of years and the way most people get their story today.

Pre-requisite*:Lecture 103: Introduction to Conflict

The 211 Lecture is divided into four parts:
1. The Definition of Story Structure
2. The Importance of Turning Point Scenes
3. The Use of Acts in Building Story
4. The Crucial Role of the Climax

The Lecture Package has four parts:
1. The Slideshow Lecture with voiceover
2. The Audio of the voiceover alone.
3. The 211 Notebook (thumbnails of the slides with quad-ruled spaces for taking notes) in PDF
4. The 211 Workbook (exercises to analyze your story in progress with the concepts of the lecture) in PDF
5. Certificate of Completion.

How to Use the Lecture Packet Suggested Plan of Study:
1. Push the Paypal button and download your packet.
2. Watch the video without taking notes to become familiar with the basics of conflict as an introduction to the material.
3. Watch the video again, this time using the Notebook to take notes of the important points.
4. Using the Workbook, analyze your story-in-progress to understand the conflict and revise for a conflict lock.
5. Fill out the certificate and tape it to your wall. You worked hard; you deserve it.

*Note on pre-requisites: You can take any lecture at any time, nobody’s checking. But there are particular concepts that are taught in lower level classes that we will take for granted that you know when you sign up for a later level class that has a pre-requisite. For example, any course that says “Pre-requisite: 103″ will be an extension of 103 and will not explain those terms and concepts in detail again. So if you skip the pre-req and take the more advanced course, it may be confusing and frustrating. This applies to all the pre-requisites listed. Please note that not all courses have pre-reqs.

Does that tell you enough? Is there too much information there? Help.

I may have been a junior high teacher for too long. I’m big on colorful and moving.

So here’s my question for the day. These lectures are going to be a filmed slideshow with narration. A basic PowerPoint presentation (except we use Keynote, of course) with voiceover that plays like a movie. In your experience with this kind of presentation (yes, I know 95% of slide presentations suck, we’re trying for the other 5%), what works? What doesn’t? What would you like to see? What should be avoided at all costs?

Because otherwise, you’re gonna get a lot of stuff like Morrie.

I did do one teaser ad, but it was more because I was having such a good time learning Photoshop than it was because I thought it would be effective or had any idea what we would do with it. The website is not up yet, but . . . (Click to see it larger.)

Yeah, that probably won’t work. How should we market this thing?

The 100 level lectures would go up first:

The first one describes the overall approach of the lecture series and gives people a chance to experience the format we’re using. It’s free so that people can find out what they’re getting into without spending money.

The second one is the only lecture that we recommend before you have your story draft done. It’s about finding your story in the mass of ideas, different ways of accessing the girls in the basement, etc.

The third one is about the essence of story: protagonist/goal/antagonist/goal/conflict/crucible.

You should know the stuff in the 100 level courses before you try 200 level courses:

The 200 level is a closer look at the different basic components of story. The first column is character, the second is structure (two different approaches to classic linear structure) and scene, and the third is everything else. (I just checked the third column and the numbering is all off there because we were moving stuff around. Ignore the course numbers in the third column. They are wrong.)

The 300 level is stuff from the 200 level taken to a more abstract and in-depth level. It’s a good idea to take whatever 200 level course comes before the the 300 level you want because we’re going to assume you know that stuff, unless you already know that stuff, of course.

Then there’s the 400 level, but it’s going to take a year to write and record these, so later for that.

Tuition: All classes are $10. We’re not going to get fancy with the pricing. You want a lecture, that’ll be ten bucks, thank you. Hit that PayPal button.

Forums: None to begin with. We’re both swamped as it is, and while we’re really enthusiastic about this project, the enthusiasm is limited to the lectures at the moment.

Certificates: Sure. They’ll be fabulous certificates, too. Lani suggests a certificate for each section, so a 100 level certificate, a 200 level character certificate, a 200 level structure certificate, etc.

Merchandise: Clearly there’s an interest in merchandising, so sure you can have V-neck T-shirts. It’s going to take some research because we want good quality stuff–I like Skreened for t-shirts but that’s all they sell, so maybe not–but we’re designing the website as I type this, so merchandise design can go right along with that.

Okay, opinions, questions, complaints, suggestions?