be the story

Would you tell your story to help others?

Pam Stewart, er, I mean, Pam Slim from the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog posted a link to her interview with Glenda Watson Hyatt regarding her autobiography, I’ll Do It Myself.

“What’s with that title?” you ask?

Well, Glenda has Cerebral Palsy. According to her blog:

Her parents were advised to institutionalize her. She wouldn’t amount to anything, the experts said.

Yet, this gutsy redhead proved them wrong. Glenda was integrated into a regular classroom long before mainstream was a buzzword. She went on to earn the Canada Cord, the highest award in Girl Guides, and the Outstanding Junior Student Award. The girl who could not walk won a gold medal in horseback riding!

Glenda is telling her story in order to give inspiration and hope to others with the same challenges. Somehow, though, I expect it will inspire us all.

-TimK

Better Character Ideas: Throw Two Away

Here’s a simple way to generate better character ideas, or story ideas of any sort. This isn’t so much a source of story ideas as a way to improve existing ideas. You can do the same thing with setting, plot, or whatever story idea you need. It’s exceptionally simple. Just throw the first two ideas away.

“What?!” I can almost hear you saying. “You want me to throw away my ideas?”

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Spotlight: Smilla’s Sense of Snow (the movie) (Review)

A review of Smilla’s Sense of Snow, the movie.

I first encountered this underappreciated sci-fi mystery flick when Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave it two thumbs up in 1997. Smilla’s Sense of Snow stars Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne and is based on the novel by Peter Høeg of the same name. And of course, now we can see it on DVD.

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Writing Great Ezines & Blogs

I need to disclose to you what this post is about. I subscribe to the LinkedinBloggers group, which is for bloggers who are on LinkedIn. (By the way, if you want to link to me via LinkedIn, here’s my profile.) One of the projects of LinkedInBloggers is called Blog Boost, in which group members post links on their blogs to one of the other member blogs.

This week’s Blog Boost is Patsi Krakoff’s Writing Great Ezines & Blogs at www.CoachEzines.com. Now, normally I wouldn’t post a link to another blog just because it helps me network. But this one actually looks kinda interesting.

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What’s So Great About the X-Men? (Astonishing X-Men Review)

My first exposure to the X-Men was on a Saturday. I was watching the movies, directed by Bryan Singer, both X-Men and X2 in a mini-marathon. Sometime in the middle of the first film, I remember leaping from my seat in a fit of upset over the way our heroes were being treated. Now, reading the Astonishing X-Men comics reminds me of all those same feelings.

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A Necessary Step to Creativity

The brain is a marvellous thing, the most complex organ in the human body, and the most important for everything we do. Why do we so often treat it like a drill press?

During my years as a software engineer, I’ve seen more brain abuse than I care to think about. (How’s that for irony?) And I’ve even committed a little myself.

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Anatomy of a Story Game 2

This is part 2 of “Anatomy of a Story Game”.

This week, we’ll complete the basic story design and discuss some implementation issues in various media.

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Inexcusable (Review)

Beautiful does not mean wishy-washy.

Today, I’m posting a rant. I don’t usually rant, but this is a story rant. And I’m fired up enough that I can’t concentrate on anything else until I get this out of my system.

On the adbooks list, we’re discussing Chris Lynch’s novel Inexcusable. It’s a literary novel, with one feature that literary novels are allowed to have: You can’t figure out what it means.

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Spotlight: A Certain Slant of Light (Review)

“Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.”

If I tried really hard, I might be able to find something wrong with this story. But why would I want to work that hard? After just finishing A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb, already I want to start over again from the beginning. So seldom do I run across a story this well put together, I can’t help but gush a little. I even emailed Laura Whitcomb to tell her how much I enjoyed it.

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“Show; Don’t Tell” Works for Ads, Too

Here’s another lesson the best advertisement writers learned a long time ago. Show; don’t tell. Writers will recognize that lesson as being one of the foremost rules of storytelling.

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