The french cover for Rent is an upside down bat like that. It's called "peste" meaning plague for some reason, maybe they think they'd fool some Camus readers.
What old crippled man doesn't want to wake up to be a hot female in her prime? He only then realizes his mistake when he goes to open his jar of favorite pickles and fails.
haha! The concept of walking a mile in someone else's shoes is fascinating to me. And the possibility of doing so in fiction is what makes my heart beat faster
Question about the ‘IS gerrund construction’: Which other words fall into that category? I follow on the ‘was wearing’ comment, but I have a hard time knowing what terms fall into that box?
Another question for Chuck. It's not about writing this time. I just wanna know...how have you been? Anything new in the Chuck world? Start any new projects? Write down any ideas in your notebook? Building anything with stone? What's up?
Also, do you have any upcoming interviews planned? I don't even care if you talk about the same topics, I just wanna see you in another form other than text haha
Almost done with an arched stone bridge across a ravine. This involved hauling stone by hand up a steep hillside, followed by buckets of wet concrete and mortar. Glad to have that done. Cooking a half dozen story ideas.
And I'm waiting for that story you promised to post.
Oh gosh...last line, that made me laugh. Okay, here's an update. The story I'd like to submit isn't finished because...I'm just stuck. It's currently at around 1200 words. And I keep going back and rereading what I have.
I do have other ideas though which aren't fleshed out but might make interesting pieces.
Thanks for holding my feet to the fire. I needed that.
Just...be patient with me. I really want to give you my best effort and not something half-assed. Which is why I'm going so slow.
Here's something new I'm trying when I get stuck at the halfway point: Go back through and make a list of all the objects you've used. Then try to "morph" those objects for the second half of the story.
Chuck, thank you so much – I'm lacking the words to accurately express my appreciation! I'm printing the notes and will start working on this right now.
I love how much clearer it is to me now what I needed to do in order to sound like Bela – and I am so excited! Of course this is just an opening scene, but my idea is to explore this clash between a male who primed in his 30s in the Hollywood of the 30s, known to be a womanizer, married five times, and a woman who's struggling with her own femininity in the current days.
Not to make an excuse, but I also speak English as a second language and am an immigrant myself, which is probably one of the reasons why I pulled Bela literally out of a random YouTube rabbit hole. So I was scared to do the burning you've suggested and sound like I was having a stroke while writing – but now I feel very much encouraged and with some tools to get started.
I guess before I started to invest my time in this project, I needed some external validation – but I couldn't have asked for THIS thoughtful, honest and extremely clear analysis of what I was trying to do. I didn't know if the idea was just silly. But it came to me in such a mysterious and magical way (just like Hyde described in his book, The gift), that I even thought I was just going bonkers. haha!
Hey, all ideas are silly. Can you imagine the elevator pitch for "Fight Club"? It's the execution that redeems the idea, and you can enchant the reader with the right voice for this story.
The elevator pitch for “Fight Club” is actually quite sinister -- beat up man walks around dilapidated house talking to imaginary friend and occasionally makes bars of soap using human fat.
It was one of the first one i read when i joined substack, the title made me wanna read it. Bringing Bella Lugosi from the dead is a really cool idea and i think a good idea beats a good plot anyday, maybe that's just me.
I also love to struggle with an idea that is complicated to turn into a story, it's such a great feeling when you finally find a way to write it and make it interesting.
Chuck's comments about unpacking, like when Bella is in front of the mirror makes so much sense and when i read it i was kind of frustrated that it went so fast and felt that you missed a great scene.
It makes me wonder how come the unpacking missing in somebody's story feels kind of obvious for the reader but as a writer you don't see it.
It happens to me all the time.
I don't know much about Bella Lugosi apart from what i've Seen in the Ed Wood movie.
You got a really cool thing to play with here, i really hope you'll work on it and share it with us.
And once again, both the story and the comments are inspiring, i'm off to my pad and pen now.
Can you write the upcoming scene as a short story? As people read they remember the most fully formed scenes with the most emotional impact. If you put together your key scenes, then you can set them in series and look for what's needed to link them. And you can experiment in mixing up the sequence in which they occur.
In this way the entire novel rises from the ground as a whole, instead of being a linear series of things you can easily anticipate. If the whole novel suddenly crystalizes from several points (scenes) that each branch out to connect to other scenes, you have a three-dimensional matrix which is far better than a linear chain of events.
So, yes, write your big scenes, but make them as complete as possible. Make them stand-alone short stories.
I've never seen it that way, and i always wrote my stuff the linear chain of events way. Considering the key scenes as stand alone short stories is a great advice. You just flipped my brain upside down. Merci!
Hi Chuck, apologies if you've addressed this before, but does this approach do away mostly with plotting, and instead, allow a more organic (and surprising) story to develop on its own? Or is plotting still involved at some level? Or should we even worry about plot? Also, I find that when I'm stuck for something that's the next 'link,' I hit the Random article link on Wikipedia. It's weird how something will turn up that leads me to the next thing in my story. Thanks!
Random thought but I’m curious to see how a writers workshop would work if it had the relationship Gordon Ramsay has with the contestants on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.
“Oi! Oi you! Look at it... five thought verbs in one paragraph. Come on... You bring me this story like this again and I’ll shove the pencil you used to write it with up your arse sideways. Now fuck off, you.”
Hi Cris! Thank you for sharing "Bela Lugosi’s Not Dead" with us.
Such a cool concept!!!
-I really enjoyed the way you conveyed Lugosi's experience with the "black brick." Haha! That was so neat to have the perspective of not knowing what a cell phone is. And I liked Chuck's suggestions about how to rephrase with the different tenses Lugosi's pondering of "is it a bomb?" Like maybe Lugosi lived in a time where people were always worried about bombs, so this is what first comes to mind?
-I love the end, when the man comes to the door and recognizes him as "Eva." Here I was really biting my fingernails.
-I'm curious about what happened to Hope.
-Amp up Lugosi's voice and bringing out things Lugosi would notice because of who he is, and I think this story will go out with a bang!
Chuck--thank you for discussing tension/breaking of tension. For me, this is a concept I'm going to need you to stuff into my ears several thousand more times. I also love how you've pointed to burning the voice in a way that is appropriate to the narrator, and the example of the German sentence structure. And the example showing how switching between first, second, and third person tenses would work really nicely.
Thank you, Megan. I was aware that I needed to express Bela's voice in a different way, but had no idea how to do so without butchering the whole thing... So I wrote it very plain, trying to sort the scene out first and then figuring out the specifics of his voice. And Chuck gave me such clear guidelines in how to do that! I can't believe I'm this lucky to get this kind of insight. I had never felt like a writer as much as I do today... Now to detailing the set-ups, fixing the tension and then breaking it more appropriately, polishing the mirror part (which is a fundamental part of the whole story) and showing Bela what we're up to these days! :)
Dear Chuck, I'm a pretty new subscriber, but I must say everything you're doing here has been incredibly helpful and inspiring. I'm quickly internalizing your lessons (as best I can) and incorporating them into my writing. The idea of eliminating "abstractions" has been revelatory. I write about Wall Street/Corporate America so tend to use a lot of numbers in my fiction. Leveraging your feedback has already greatly improved the clarity of my work. Thanks so much. I'm very happy to be a member of this community.
Before I even read this one, I just wanna say one thing...
TWO GLOVES OFF IN WITHIN...24 HOURS?
You spoil us too much.
Hey, nothing's too good for you guys.
Love the title. Here are some bats filmed upside down while theyre upside down, dancing to Bauhaus. https://youtu.be/G9A8PFlqM4U
HAHAHA! This is hilarious - the only problem is how short it is!
The french cover for Rent is an upside down bat like that. It's called "peste" meaning plague for some reason, maybe they think they'd fool some Camus readers.
That's wonderful. I'm sending everyone I know links. This should be the next Depeche Mode music video.
The song in the vid is ‘Sudno’ by Molchat Domo -- quite an ear worm.
This is great stuff. Thank you for sharing this lesson. Hopefully part of this group will use it to make something to excite the imagination.
What old crippled man doesn't want to wake up to be a hot female in her prime? He only then realizes his mistake when he goes to open his jar of favorite pickles and fails.
Well that is why I didn't tell you the trick.
haha! The concept of walking a mile in someone else's shoes is fascinating to me. And the possibility of doing so in fiction is what makes my heart beat faster
hahaha I love this! Will definitely try to to put a pickle jar scene in there somewhere!
Question about the ‘IS gerrund construction’: Which other words fall into that category? I follow on the ‘was wearing’ comment, but I have a hard time knowing what terms fall into that box?
Really it's any time you see "was walking" or "is sitting" or any is-verb/gerund construction.
Another question for Chuck. It's not about writing this time. I just wanna know...how have you been? Anything new in the Chuck world? Start any new projects? Write down any ideas in your notebook? Building anything with stone? What's up?
Also, do you have any upcoming interviews planned? I don't even care if you talk about the same topics, I just wanna see you in another form other than text haha
Almost done with an arched stone bridge across a ravine. This involved hauling stone by hand up a steep hillside, followed by buckets of wet concrete and mortar. Glad to have that done. Cooking a half dozen story ideas.
And I'm waiting for that story you promised to post.
Oh gosh...last line, that made me laugh. Okay, here's an update. The story I'd like to submit isn't finished because...I'm just stuck. It's currently at around 1200 words. And I keep going back and rereading what I have.
I do have other ideas though which aren't fleshed out but might make interesting pieces.
Thanks for holding my feet to the fire. I needed that.
Just...be patient with me. I really want to give you my best effort and not something half-assed. Which is why I'm going so slow.
Here's something new I'm trying when I get stuck at the halfway point: Go back through and make a list of all the objects you've used. Then try to "morph" those objects for the second half of the story.
Nice suggestion. Definitely going to use that.
Ctrl c + ctrl v :)
Wow, this has made my day!
Chuck, thank you so much – I'm lacking the words to accurately express my appreciation! I'm printing the notes and will start working on this right now.
I love how much clearer it is to me now what I needed to do in order to sound like Bela – and I am so excited! Of course this is just an opening scene, but my idea is to explore this clash between a male who primed in his 30s in the Hollywood of the 30s, known to be a womanizer, married five times, and a woman who's struggling with her own femininity in the current days.
Not to make an excuse, but I also speak English as a second language and am an immigrant myself, which is probably one of the reasons why I pulled Bela literally out of a random YouTube rabbit hole. So I was scared to do the burning you've suggested and sound like I was having a stroke while writing – but now I feel very much encouraged and with some tools to get started.
I guess before I started to invest my time in this project, I needed some external validation – but I couldn't have asked for THIS thoughtful, honest and extremely clear analysis of what I was trying to do. I didn't know if the idea was just silly. But it came to me in such a mysterious and magical way (just like Hyde described in his book, The gift), that I even thought I was just going bonkers. haha!
Again, thank you!
Hey, all ideas are silly. Can you imagine the elevator pitch for "Fight Club"? It's the execution that redeems the idea, and you can enchant the reader with the right voice for this story.
The elevator pitch for “Fight Club” is actually quite sinister -- beat up man walks around dilapidated house talking to imaginary friend and occasionally makes bars of soap using human fat.
Yeah, Julia Roberts is going to pass on it.
Eh. I never saw her as Tyler Durden anyway
Thanks for sharing your story with us.
It was one of the first one i read when i joined substack, the title made me wanna read it. Bringing Bella Lugosi from the dead is a really cool idea and i think a good idea beats a good plot anyday, maybe that's just me.
I also love to struggle with an idea that is complicated to turn into a story, it's such a great feeling when you finally find a way to write it and make it interesting.
Chuck's comments about unpacking, like when Bella is in front of the mirror makes so much sense and when i read it i was kind of frustrated that it went so fast and felt that you missed a great scene.
It makes me wonder how come the unpacking missing in somebody's story feels kind of obvious for the reader but as a writer you don't see it.
It happens to me all the time.
I don't know much about Bella Lugosi apart from what i've Seen in the Ed Wood movie.
You got a really cool thing to play with here, i really hope you'll work on it and share it with us.
And once again, both the story and the comments are inspiring, i'm off to my pad and pen now.
Thank you, David. It is definitely a big challenge. A big challenge it is. I'm excited for this! Will post the reviewed version soon
Chuck, i have a question.
I'm working on a story and i had an idea for a future scene.
I'm thinking about writing that scene now because i know it's going to be great fun to write it.
But It feels like my characters have to go through the all story so they react properly then.
Basicaly, can i jump some parts and write it afterward or is it a bad idea? keeping a linear timeline i mean.
does it make sense ?
Can you write the upcoming scene as a short story? As people read they remember the most fully formed scenes with the most emotional impact. If you put together your key scenes, then you can set them in series and look for what's needed to link them. And you can experiment in mixing up the sequence in which they occur.
In this way the entire novel rises from the ground as a whole, instead of being a linear series of things you can easily anticipate. If the whole novel suddenly crystalizes from several points (scenes) that each branch out to connect to other scenes, you have a three-dimensional matrix which is far better than a linear chain of events.
So, yes, write your big scenes, but make them as complete as possible. Make them stand-alone short stories.
I've never seen it that way, and i always wrote my stuff the linear chain of events way. Considering the key scenes as stand alone short stories is a great advice. You just flipped my brain upside down. Merci!
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V to Advice from Chuck File.
I'm stuck in the middle of my novel at a crucial juncture. This is exactly what I need to do to keep the forward momentum.
Hi Chuck, apologies if you've addressed this before, but does this approach do away mostly with plotting, and instead, allow a more organic (and surprising) story to develop on its own? Or is plotting still involved at some level? Or should we even worry about plot? Also, I find that when I'm stuck for something that's the next 'link,' I hit the Random article link on Wikipedia. It's weird how something will turn up that leads me to the next thing in my story. Thanks!
Random thought but I’m curious to see how a writers workshop would work if it had the relationship Gordon Ramsay has with the contestants on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.
“Oi! Oi you! Look at it... five thought verbs in one paragraph. Come on... You bring me this story like this again and I’ll shove the pencil you used to write it with up your arse sideways. Now fuck off, you.”
I've done that. I doesn't really work.
I personally wouldn't mind having something like that. I'm very much into the tough love style of Ramsay. :P
"...And if this is your first time at Writer's Club, you have to read."
Hi Cris! Thank you for sharing "Bela Lugosi’s Not Dead" with us.
Such a cool concept!!!
-I really enjoyed the way you conveyed Lugosi's experience with the "black brick." Haha! That was so neat to have the perspective of not knowing what a cell phone is. And I liked Chuck's suggestions about how to rephrase with the different tenses Lugosi's pondering of "is it a bomb?" Like maybe Lugosi lived in a time where people were always worried about bombs, so this is what first comes to mind?
-I love the end, when the man comes to the door and recognizes him as "Eva." Here I was really biting my fingernails.
-I'm curious about what happened to Hope.
-Amp up Lugosi's voice and bringing out things Lugosi would notice because of who he is, and I think this story will go out with a bang!
Chuck--thank you for discussing tension/breaking of tension. For me, this is a concept I'm going to need you to stuff into my ears several thousand more times. I also love how you've pointed to burning the voice in a way that is appropriate to the narrator, and the example of the German sentence structure. And the example showing how switching between first, second, and third person tenses would work really nicely.
Thank you, Megan. I was aware that I needed to express Bela's voice in a different way, but had no idea how to do so without butchering the whole thing... So I wrote it very plain, trying to sort the scene out first and then figuring out the specifics of his voice. And Chuck gave me such clear guidelines in how to do that! I can't believe I'm this lucky to get this kind of insight. I had never felt like a writer as much as I do today... Now to detailing the set-ups, fixing the tension and then breaking it more appropriately, polishing the mirror part (which is a fundamental part of the whole story) and showing Bela what we're up to these days! :)
You can do it!!!
I guess it's a common thing, the fear of pushing it too far.
Dear Chuck, I'm a pretty new subscriber, but I must say everything you're doing here has been incredibly helpful and inspiring. I'm quickly internalizing your lessons (as best I can) and incorporating them into my writing. The idea of eliminating "abstractions" has been revelatory. I write about Wall Street/Corporate America so tend to use a lot of numbers in my fiction. Leveraging your feedback has already greatly improved the clarity of my work. Thanks so much. I'm very happy to be a member of this community.