Branching Out - Blogging Another Way

I recently came upon several thought-provoking posts about the whole concept of the digital platform as applied to fiction writers, with a specific focus on the notion of blogging as a means of building a reader base ("A Follow's Not a Book Sale" and "Author Blogging: You're Doing It Wrong").  It caused me to revisit something I'd been thinking about already - writing a new blog.  Not in place of this one but in addition to it.  A blog not for fellow writers but for potential readers.  A blog about the themes that interest me and that simmer at the heart of so much of my writing.

The fear:  How to focus that blog without limiting myself?  How do I identify those themes and prevent the blog from being wishywashy or lost in a sea of other blogs?  I suppose I will have to experiment.

So, what are my themes?  Well, spirituality for one.  Complex notions of God and religion.  People's relationships to God and religion.  Grief, loss, parenthood.  How society treats children.  God and Other Big Stuff.  And that's the name of my new blog.

As of now, it's an experiment.  We'll see if it lasts and where it goes.

White Space - The Impact of Paragraph Indents

When I was in elementary school, I learned about paragraphs through nonfiction writing.  We learned that a paragraph had a topic sentence, supporting details and a conclusion.  I don't remember how or if I learned about using paragraphs in fiction, other than the rule that a new speaker means a new paragraph.  

When I became a teacher and started working with the Lucy Culkins writing curriculum (which I've mentioned here before), I learned some good basic rules for paragraph breaks in narrative, rules I was probably following without even realizing it.  When there is a change in time, place or speaker, or when a new character enters the scene, you generally start a new paragraph.  

Of course, since narratives are about people, and people don't follow rules very well, the rules can only get you so far.  On my last round of revisions for SPARROW'S SECRET HEART, I found myself obsessing over the impact of paragraph breaks, the way that white space at the end of one line and the beginning of the next affected the rhythm and pacing of a scene and changed the emotional focus.  I realized paragraph breaks are a way to create beats.  

Just as a book is made of chapters and chapters are made of scenes, scenes are made of beats.  "Beat" is a term I first learned in theater.  According to Wordreference.com, a "beat" is "the smallest unit of action in a scene. ... It involves a shift in the action, thought, or emotion of the actor."  (I invite my theater and acting friends to chime in here with better, more nuanced or experience-driven explanations).  

Are you on a late revision round and running into a moment that's just not working?  Maybe it's time to look at the beats and the paragraph breaks.  Within the rules, there's some wiggle room that just might make the difference.

Words of Wisdom on Revision, from Kent Brown at Highlights Foundation

The following came from Kent Brown at Highlights Foundation, with a tag at the end inviting folks to share.  I especially like Raymond Chandler's comment!:

"Revision is where the real story lives." 

Editorial consultant Eileen Robinson provided us with this thought. We wondered how many people in the children's book business feel the same way about revision. We found thousands of quotes from authors and editors alike, who, like Eileen, know that "revision is where the real story lives." 

"I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like best . . . once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put the pieces together to make a picture." —Judy Blume 

"If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!" —Naomi Shihab Nye 

"Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain." —Elie Wiesel 

"Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon."—Raymond Chandler  

"Get your first draft done any way you can. Then the real work starts: revision." —Harold Underdown 

Jargon Part 2 - "High Concept"

I recently posted about the term "literary fiction."  Well, here's another one of my favorites - "high concept."  I turned once again to my trusty dictionary, but, alas, there were WAY too many entries for "high."  "Lofty"?  "Rich and luxurious?"  "In a high manner?"  "Elevated?"  "Socially superior?"  "The excited or stupefied state produced by a narcotic substance?" The one that came closest to the explanations I've heard for this puzzling term was "advanced toward its acme or fullest extent."  "Concept" was a little more straightforward:  "thought, idea or notion."

So, where did all this leave me, besides "in a stupefied state"?  I inferred that "high concept" meant a story whose idea was taken to an extreme.  But that still seemed pretty vague to me.  Off to the magical internet in search of useful blogposts to which I could  refer any loyal, or newly arrived, readers.  

Many of the links I found are directed towards scriptwriters.  Turns out "high concept" is a Hollywood term that has made its way from films to books.  That realization took me a long way towards an understanding of "high concept" applied to books.  It means "blockbuster movie potential."  

Perhaps that's just a tad cynical.  For more in-depth explanations, here are a few links:  My favorite, from a non-script-writer perspective, is the one at FictionMatters.  This explanation is fairly simple, acknowledges how annoying and befuddling this term can be, and speaks to us book types and the darker anxieties this term might stir up.  If you want the scriptwriter's explanation, try Writers Store, Absolute Write, or The Dark Salon, among others.

Personally, I'd like to see "high concept" and "literary fiction" thrown into the bin of overused and useless terms.  But that's just petulant little me.  Got any terms you'd like tossed in with them?