Only days away from the close of the year and so much to do, right? Well, when you get breathing room don’t forget that it isn’t the gifts, the cards, the meals, the parties, the kisses under the mistletoe or at the strike of midnight that is in your future – it’s planning what you’re going to do about the things you’d like to write in 2012!
They say that a bad, and easily broken, resolution is an unspecific statement. You know, something along the lines of “THIS year I will finish that book I’ve been working on”, or “I swear, I’m going to write SOMETHING every day (or week)”. While these sound like they are fixed on a goal, it isn’t nearly as specific as a New Year’s Resolution needs to be, nor as achievable because it is vague. Yes, even the one about finishing the book that has been in production for…well, for HOW LONG now?
Let’s focus on that story though. What’s the hold up? Is it that the characters aren’t acting as you expected or had planned? Trust me on this, they never do. At least really fascinating characters don’t.
Is it that you don’t know what happens next? Or that you do know what happens next but getting there is a problem?
So let’s settle on a better statement for this resolution, hmm? How about that you need a better game plan than in the past?
How about a resolution that says “I’m taking the BREAKING THINGS DOWN INTO THREES workshop at FF&P in February? Yeah, I like that one.
This workshop is a guide to help you along the way, whether when the story is running full out and your fingers are having trouble keeping up with it, or when it’s hit a quagmire and the rope you just tossed simply isn’t long enough to reach the floundering tale.
Have you tried breaking things down into doable or even changeable increments? The Rule of Three is a “law” of long standing and pops up in many disciplines, such as interior design, the composition of color (red, yellow and blue), the arrangement of scenes within plays, graphic layout, and even for Goldilocks and her view of the three bears’ beds (too hard, too soft, and just right). Heck, there are even three pigs, three golden apples, and third time’s the charm!
On February 6, the BREAKING THINGS DOWN INTO THREES workshop throws open the virtual FF&P classroom doors in welcome. Those doors will stay open and welcoming for three weeks (we have a theme here!) before coming to a close on the 26th. During that time we’ll be taking on the many stumbling blocks that pop up during the creation of a piece of fiction – rather like they were part of video game, really. We’re going to take pot shots at them, sometimes blast them all to heck, and stumble, fumble, and scramble our way into a better place when it comes to spinning this tale.
Whether you have a WIP that has been giving you fits or are just getting started on a new project and would like to overcome some of the hazards this time around or are about to launch into your first adventure in fiction writing, BREAKING THINGS INTO THREES could be the story building aid you’ve been looking for.
It sure was the first time I gave the “by the threes” plan a workout!
Breaking Things Down Into Threes, presented by Beth Daniels, runs from February 6, 2012 through February 26, 2012
Beth Daniels writes fiction as Beth Henderson and J.B. Dane and has seen 28 of her novels published. She is also the author of WRITING STEAMPUNK and numerous articles in various e-zines on writing fiction. She’s diversified because she gets bored reading or writing the same sort of tale. Therefore, while her career began with the publication of a romantic-suspense tale, she moved into historical romantic adventure, contemporary romantic comedy, YA, and more recently into the fantasy realm with “The Dragon’s Tale” written as J.B. Dane, which appears in the anthology MOTHER GOOSE IS DEAD from Damnation Books. She is the co-author of LOVING TRIXIE FINE, a Babyboomer fantasy where the heroine’s wrinkle reducer formula erases thirty years worth of hormonal rearrangement as well as those wrinkles. But currently Beth’s heart belongs to Steampunk where storyline deveopments require a gazillion bunch of threes!
Visit her at www.RomanceAndMystery.com.
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