Thanks to all who showed up at The Loft for the inaugural Paragraph Party class. Going over the evaluations I declare it a success with room for improvement.
Thanks also to the brave souls who participated in the online version. Double kudos for stepping up and claiming your grafs in the columns. Courage = awesomeness.
I’m definitely doing this again. I feel like I learned a ton and the student became the teacher, etc., etc.
Final thought:
I noticed that the majority of the paragraphs I received involved a character thinking, wondering, musing, postulating, anticipating, considering, planning, observing, noticing or describing. They did all this BY THEMSELVES.
Giving all ya’ll the benefit of the doubt I’m going to chalk this up to the fact that dramatic work happens in scene and dialogue, which isn’t going to give you much bang for your paragraph-evaluating buck.
NOT giving all ya’ll the benefit of the doubt I’m going to chalk this up to conflict avoidance. Putting two distinct people in close quarters and having them square off in a interesting, meaningful and non-melodramatic way is scary and difficult. Hence all the solo pondering, anticipating and noticing.
One way to cure yourself of conflict avoidance is to never leave your characters alone. I mean this literally (let them stroll through the woods on their own time) and figuratively (ease up on the action, but never relent on the conflict).
And if they must be alone, have the City or the Ocean or Memory dog them wherever they go. Your characters can take far more punishment than any human being could ever handle. So dish that sh*t out, chief!
I just took a class recently and the teacher said that dialogue without conflict has no place in fiction. That really resonated with me. My characters spend very little time alone. They might want to be, but they’re soon interrupted.
Of course, I’m not big into reading or writing internal narrative. It often rings too close to telling to me. And, incidentally, I think internal narrative is most interesting when it conflicts with the character’s actions and dialogue.
Thanks for hosting the party, Dennis. I learned a few things. Particularily I’m thinking about the sentences I have that are standing alone pretending to be paragraphs. Also, I appreciated the point about looking at the last line of paragraphs–making that last line mean something instead of just ending it wherever…
Your observations on the types of paragraphs submitted are interesting too. I scanned through the first chapter of my WIP to find a submission graph, and the first one I came upon was near the end of the chapter. The rest is dialogue and stand-alone sentences (or two sentence-paragrpahs). Hmmm.
Much to think on as I prepare to do another draft of my manuscript.
The image of never leaving the characters alone is useful too.
Party on.
Hm. So much to learn….I didn’t realize quite how much my characters vant to be alone. Figuring out how to get them to interact ought to keep me out of trouble for a while.
Thanks again for providing such a helpful, fun, and friendly place to increase awesomeness, Dennis. It’s great.
you know i think that tendency to have a character sittin’ and thinkin’ alone happens because we, as writers, are sittin’ and thinkin’ alone. so yeah, always at least two people in every scene is good advice, and i would also suggest that when things flag (the story — or the writer’s energy) then, what the heck, just bring a third person into the scene and see what happens.