How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School For Writers

What’s in a Theme?

by Texanne on March 9, 2010

Very often, what’s in a theme is a huge, humbling surprise.  Your you was working out plot details and making sure each scene had a proper structure and stressing over margins or typeface.

Your Muse was quietly revealing your heart, because that’s the beat she marches, slinks, bounces or tangos to.

HTRYN’s worksheets on theme have brought these writers some useful epiphanies.  There’s room for you, too.  Be brave and join in.

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Screenwriting Sideways?

by Texanne on March 6, 2010

In addition to the Writers’ Boot Camps, Holly offers downloadable clinics on topics vital to writers.  It’s a scrumptious and nutritious buffet–but where does the line start?

After downloading and devouring Holly’s clinics, this writer took the plunge and signed up for HtTS.  The question now is whether to work through the clinics first or HtTS.

Also, how do Holly’s classes work for screenplays?

Sideways Students chimed in with ideas and information.  What can you add?  What can you take away?  Hmm?

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Hey–How’d You Like to Build a World?

March 2, 2010

Don’t you love it when you learn how to fix a problem you didn’t even know you had?  That’s what happened for this HTRYN student:
Okay, I was guilty of the “I don’t need this, my story is set in the here and now” mindset when I first read this lesson material.   BUT, I figured I [...]

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Sideways into Suspense

February 27, 2010

His muse brought him a romantic suspense whose heroine has a job so mysterious even he doesn’t know what it is.   Hey, this is what you get when the muse brings you a story so superbly cool.
Using HTTS techniques this student is now teasing out his heroine’s job and story and the murder at the [...]

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Escalating Conflict–It’s a Good Thing.

February 24, 2010

When real life is peaceful, calm, serene, yet informative, we rejoice.
When fiction is peaceful, calm serene, yet informative, we yawn, put down the book and go clean the gutters.
Lesson 5 of How to Revise Your Novel analyzes the overall conflict as well as the scene conflict and then brainstorms it higher and tighter and more [...]

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Waking the Muse

February 21, 2010

Your Muse  demands to write in a lovely place with natural lighting, preferably while your grandmother bakes biscuits and your grandfather brews coffee.  Or in a secluded cabin beside a mountain lake.
However, the reality is that most of your time is spent on the job or in your affordable apartment.   How can you write when [...]

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Dreaming the Muse

February 16, 2010

This HTRYN student got an effortless insight, courtesy of the Muse who visits sleeping artists.
I had an experience last night/this morning that will help me explore a sub-theme and may illuminate a lot of threads in my revision novel. . . .
I dreamed. . . .
In the dream, I felt a sense-of-wonder jaw drop. I [...]

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Competition Deadline met with Grace.

February 9, 2010

This HTRYN student didn’t wait for the course to be complete–she has already begun to use her new insights in writing and submitting a short story.
I have read the materials about promises, and applied them to that story. It was an absolute revelation! I was so happy to see that in most places my intuition [...]

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First Draft vs. Revision

February 6, 2010

Quite a few HTRYN students are also HtTS students.  This makes for interesting thought convergences.  Here some students discuss their wish lists of elements  for first drafts and their plans for revision.
Log in and share your thoughts.

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Homage? Theft? Or something else?

February 3, 2010

This student loves a story written by someone else, and has felt inspired to try something similar to it.  But there’s a troublesome doubt  putting a hitch in his happy dance of creativity: is his story truly a new story or is it too much like the inspiration piece?
Hmm.
Sounds like a great topic for discussion.

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