But then there are those other times when the opposite happens. No matter how hard I try, the words just don’t come. I sit at the computer, stare at the screen, and I’m lucky if I can barely eke out a paragraph, much less a page or a whole chapter. Not gonna lie, I’ve been feeling very uninspired lately and the past couple of newsletters have been a challenge to write.

So, how did I get through it? After all, I must’ve gotten through it somehow or you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter right now. To understand how to get into a state of creative flow, we need to understand where creative flow comes from. Specifically, creative flow is based on four central concepts: the mind-work cycle, skill-based learning, practice, and community.

Mind-Work Cycle

The mind-work cycle is this notion that when we write we create a feedback loop between our brains and our writing. Our thoughts, experiences, and emotions (i.e., things coming from our minds) will naturally influence the words we put on the page. At the same time, when we write we process our thoughts and emotions and we also metabolize our experiences. This means that the very act of writing will in turn influence our minds.

Sometimes this feedback loop has a positive impact on our ability to find creative flow. For example, suppose you are writing a story loosely based on something that happened in your early life. By writing about this experience, you might work through some of the difficult emotions and maybe even “rewrite” how some events played out. This creates a positive experience at the page, which will make you more likely to want to continue working on that story. This feeds the mind-work cycle and increases your creative flow.

On the other hand, suppose that the memories and past experiences impact your writing in a negative way. This might make the writing itself more difficult and you may be less likely to want to continue with the project, thus impeding creative flow. Note that just because a project might bring up negative emotions does not automatically mean it will create a negative cycle. (After all, for some writers, sad stories can be more engaging than happy ones.)

The key here is to be aware of that mind-work cycle, to understand that our thinking impacts our writing but our writing also impacts our thinking. We want to keep track of that cycle so that when it’s going in a positive direction, we can ride that wave and be in that state of creative flow. But we also want to be able to step back and assess that cycle, to make sure we’re not moving in a negative direction and getting in the way of our own creative process.

Skill-Based Learning

One of the biggest fallacies about creativity is that it’s mysterious and amorphous, that there’s no rhyme or reason to it. As my high school English teacher would say: “Bull-honky!” Creative work—like writing—can be as technical and precise as other more scientific fields. And this technique doesn’t just apply to the craft, all those more abstract mindset-related components can be just as skill-based. The key here is understanding how skills are put together and for this I have two major sources of inspiration: Suzuki Method and Montessori Method.

The Suzuki Method was developed by Shinichi Suzuki as a method for teaching very young children how to play a musical instrument. It is based on the idea that all children are capable of learning music and that those skills develop in a similar way as learning language. One of the things that is central to the Suzuki Method is this idea of breaking skills down into their smallest components. Children aren’t expected to simply pick up an instrument and start playing. Each microscopic motion—from hand position to finger moments—is practiced in isolation first, then eventually strung together with skills building on each other. Progress may be glacially slow at first, but suddenly, you blink and the child is playing Bach.

The Montessori Method is also focused on skill-based learning. In this case, the emphasis is on children working at their own pace (often in groups of mixed ages) and using specifically developed Montessori learning materials. These materials are deliberately designed to help children explore various abstract concepts in concrete, hands-on ways. Students often work in a self-directed way, exploring different stations around the classroom. The hallmark of a typical Montessori classroom is how quiet it often is, with students sitting on the floor with mats rolled out in front of them, doing various activities individually or in small groups. These activities teach children specific skills, like how to do a pincer grip to hold a pencil. 

If skill-based learning can be used to teach very young children how to play a musical instrument or how to understand complex mathematical concepts, it can certainly apply to adults wanting to develop their creative flow. The key is understanding that creative flow is not magic. It’s a teachable, learnable skill. All it needs is practice.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I’ve talked about practice here and here, and I’ve also interviewed experts on the topic of deliberate practice. You could say I’m a little obsessed with the idea of practice. But how does practice relate to creative flow?

In the words of my late, great violin teacher: “Practice doesn’t make perfect, Gabriela. It makes things permanent!” She’d often say this to me after I’d spent a week practicing the wrong notes and had to spend the next two or three weeks un-learning and fixing the mess I’d made.

As writers, we often practice things without even realizing it. For example, I know a lot of writers who practice the art of not finishing a project. They get caught up in what I call Perpetual Chapter One Syndrome, starting project after project but not finishing a single one.

Other writers practice the art of procrastination. They get into the habit of pushing back and postponing their writing, which makes it that much harder to get back on track. Or, some writers even practice the art of not writing. They hang out together in coffee shops talking about their writing projects but they never actually get around to putting words on the page.

As creative people, we need to take a step back and look at our writing practice with objectivity. Have we created any writing habits that are not serving us? Are there aspects of our regular writing process that don’t seem to be working? Where have we practiced problematic behaviors and turned them into bad habits?

If we identify any bad habits, we need to find a way to break them, which often takes longer than it did to create the bad habits in the first place. This is why it’s so important to assess our own writing practice and try to avoid creating bad habits before they become too ingrained in us. It’s easier to avoid a bad habit than it is to un-learn it.

Community

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and it’s one of the three pillars of DIY MFA. Community is an important part of harnessing creative flow. Social accountability makes us more likely to meet our goals, Positive peer pressure of writing in tandem can help us knuckle down and get to work. And having a community’s support can help us build resilience and bounce back from creative disappointments.

Interestingly enough, community is also an important part of the Suzuki and Montessori Methods. In a traditional Suzuki music school, students often participate in group classes where they all bring their instruments and play through the repertoire together. If one student doesn’t know a particular piece, they sit down and listen while their classmates play. This type of environment creates motivation, where students are excited to learn new pieces because they want to play with their classmates. And for the students who know all the repertoire, these classes are a space where they can reinforce their learning.

In the Montessori Method, classes often mix the ages of the students. This means you might have a preschool classroom with children of ages three through five together. From a developmental perspective, these are vastly different ages. Yet, having these children together in the same class serves a very important purpose. When the children work together in groups, the older students set an example for the younger ones and show the younger students how to do the activity. The younger child might be learning from the older child, but the older one is also benefiting from the collaboration because they reinforce their knowledge.

In this way, both the Suzuki and Montessori Methods use community to help students learn. But community is not just for teaching young children. We as writers can use community as a way to learn and grow as well. For example, when we see fellow writers succeed, that shows us what’s possible and can motivate us to keep working, even when we feel discouraged. Community can contribute to our creative flow in any number of ways, which is why it is such a crucial part of DIY MFA.

Conclusion

Creative flow is not some mysterious, abstract thing that you have to figure out through trial and error or guesswork. Creative flow comes from developing concrete, learnable skills and building them into our repertoire. To achieve creative flow, we need to be aware of the mind-work cycle and recognize that our creative work impacts our minds as much as our minds impact our creative work. This means, if we notice a negative cycle happening, we need to break that cycle and course-correct.

In addition, we need to be aware of what skills we are practicing in our creative work and make sure that they are serving us rather than hindering. Practice can make habits permanent, so we need to scrutinize our habits and make sure we are not developing any that might get in the way of our creative flow.

Finally, we need to understand the role of community in our creative process and find a way to use it effectively. Whether we draw on other writers to help us hone our focus, or we use social accountability to help us reach our goals, community can be a great motivator. It can also be a source of support when we run into creative obstacles.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Where Does Creative Flow Come From? appeared first on DIY MFA.

Scenes are an essential component of storytelling because they are the fundamental building blocks of any story. Without scenes, all you have is a string of exposition (“this happened, then this happened, then this happened”). That does not create an immersive story experience for your reader. Scenes give readers the feeling that they are right there in the story, experiencing the events alongside the characters. If you imagine a story like a movie playing in your head, scenes are what create that feeling.

Why Scenes Matter

I like to think of scenes as the lowest common denominator of storytelling. A scene is the smallest possible unit that still contains all the essential elements of a story: character, plot, world, and theme. Any smaller unit than a scene—a paragraph or a sentence, for example—might contain a couple of those elements, but likely will not contain all four.

To me, scenes are the cellular component of the story organism. Just like an individual cell contains all the same DNA as the full organism, a scene contains all of the story’s “DNA” by representing all four storytelling elements. And just as different cells may manifest the DNA in different ways—a brain cell is different from a muscle cell after all—different scenes will highlight different aspects of the story, but they still contain all four of the basic components.

In other words, a scene taps into all of the five W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. The “who” is the character (or characters) present in that scene. The “what” is what happens, or the plot events of that scene. The “when/where” represents the world as it appears in that moment, and the “why” is the theme and how it is infused into the scene at hand.

I’ve had a lot of writers ask me: “How can I tell the difference between one scene and the next?” While this is not a hard-and-fast rule, I like to look at the 5 Ws, and when one or more W changes, that’s often a clue that the scene might be changing as well. For example, if a character enters or leaves the scene, if we change location, or if a new plot event comes into play, those are often possible indicators that we are shifting from one scene to the next. While this is not always the case, it’s usually a sign that we should take a closer look at the scene and see if it has indeed changed.

Scenes vs. Chapters

Another question that often comes up for writers is this distinction between scenes and chapters. For some writers, scenes and chapters are one and the same in that each chapter is a single scene. Still, it’s important to understand the distinction between the two, because they are, in fact, different.

If scenes are the smallest unit of storytelling, chapters are an artificial construct created by writers to deliver a particular experience to the reader. This means you can have many scenes within a single chapter or one scene spanning multiple chapters. Shorter chapters make the pacing feel faster while longer chapters can stretch out the pacing and increase suspense.

For example, in the novel Sweethearts by Sara Zarr, there are two timelines, one in the present and one in the past. The present-day timeline is paced with moderate-length scenes while the past timeline is one long scene stretched out over the entire length of the book. This creates a sense of suspense. The reader wants to keep turning pages to find out what happened in that intense scene in the past timeline.

Another example is the chapter break during the Reaping scene of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The first chapter of the book includes a few different scenes—Katniss and Gale hunting, Katniss and Prim at home getting ready, and the beginning of the Reaping scene. The chapter ends abruptly at the moment when Prim’s name is drawn from the tribute jar. The scene then continues into the second chapter, where Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place. That chapter break (right at the height of tension) builds suspense with a cliffhanger at the end of chapter one. Readers want to keep turning pages to find out what Katniss will do.

As these examples show, while in some cases you might have scenes and chapters that are equivalent, chapters are an artistic choice and a tool that writers can use to create a desired effect in the story. Scenes, on the other hand, are a fundamental unit of storytelling, not an artificial construct. 

Scene vs. Exposition

If scenes are the “show” part of storytelling, then exposition is the “tell.” Many writing teachers hammer home the idea that you should “show, don’t tell” but I prefer to think of it as “show and tell.” The truth is that showing and telling are both essential parts of storytelling. Scenes and exposition both perform important functions and one is not necessarily better than the other.

Scenes, as mentioned before, have a certain immediacy to them. The reader feels like they are right there with the characters, experiencing the moment at hand alongside them. Scenes have an immersive feel to them and oftentimes we don’t even realize we are reading when a scene really pulls us in.

Exposition, on the other hand, is great for skipping time or zipping from one location to another. If scenes are like the basic cells in a story organism, I think of exposition as the connective tissue that helps to hold everything together. Exposition is what allows us to say “Five years later” or “The next morning in Timbuktu.” It allows us to skim over the less important (or less interesting) parts of the story, until we get to another section that merits a scene.

Consider this example. Suppose you have a character who walks to work every day by the same route. The reader doesn’t need to know about every crack in the sidewalk or every random stranger that crosses the character’s path. If it’s a regular, ordinary day, the story can just say “He walked to work that day” and then craft a scene when things get interesting.

But let’s suppose, on a particular day, something dramatic happens on the way to work, like they meet the love of their life. Now it makes sense to craft a full scene, so we can capture that dramatic moment. Exposition lets us skip over the mundane, everyday stuff, while scene lets us dive into an important moment for the character.

The Elements of Scene Structure

At DIY MFA, we consider scene structure as it relates to each of the four story elements: character, plot, world, and theme. I like to think of these story elements as mapping directly onto the four natural elements: fire, water, earth, and air. 

Plot, for example, represents water or the ebb and flow of the storytelling. The plot events are often a sequence of actions and reactions, where events happen and characters respond, prompting other events to happen, and so forth.

When you put the elements of a scene together, you end up with something akin to the image below. The bead-like shape is intentional because scenes are like beads on a string, each one building on the one before and helping the necklace take shape.

This four-pronged approach to scene craft is only the tip of the iceberg. In our signature DIY MFA programs (like Plan to Plot), we go much deeper into these story elements and how they intersect with each other. For example, key moments in the plot thread overlap with significant points in the character’s arc through the scene. This is not coincidental.

Do a Deep Dive!

If you’re curious about scene craft and structure, one of the best ways to understand the techniques is to do some close reading and analyze what you see on the page. Choose a scene from a favorite novel, memoir, or story and see if you can tease apart the four different elements.

What sections relate to the character’s arc through the scene? What components are the ebb and flow of plot events? How does the author ground the scene in place and time, and what symbols or thematic elements help bring the story’s theme to life? See if you can identify and analyze the different parts of a scene. After that, you’re well on your way to crafting great scenes yourself. 

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Scene Craft: How to Create Stronger Scenes appeared first on DIY MFA.

But there’s more to writing than just the writing itself. There are many elements that touch our writing but are not necessarily writing-related. Still, these elements can have a huge impact on how we get words on the page.

There are a lot of experts teaching about the craft of writing, but not as many who talk about the “other stuff” like resilience, focus, overcoming blocks, setting boundaries, and other such topics. This is why I created the DIY MFA FLOW Framework.

The DIY MFA FLOW Framework has four parts to it. These four components represent four different aspects of our creative lives. In fact, the word FLOW is itself an acronym. (And if you’ve been in the DIY MFA ecosystem for more than five minutes, you probably know we love our acronyms!)

• F = Find Your Focus
• L = Live Your Learning
• O = Overcome Your Obstacles
• W = Work Your Words

The idea behind the FLOW Framework is that all these ancillary skills which surround our writing are just that: skills. This means that they are teachable and learnable, not esoteric, amorphous concepts that are impossible to figure out. At DIY MFA, we believe that you can practice specific skills related to your creative life. Then you’ll have these skills in your back pocket, so you can implement them at crucial moments.

Find Your Focus

Focus is the foundational aspect of the FLOW framework, because without focus, none of the other FLOW components are feasible. In addition, focus is essential for getting words on the page and is a necessary first step to be able to write. No matter how many creativity hacks we might try, if we can’t focus, we can’t do our creative work.

Find Your Focus skills include how to:

• Set effective goals
• Find the right project that lights you up
• Make empowered choices
• Eliminate distractions
• Discern when to emphasize life vs. writing

Live Your Learning

As writers we are constantly learning. We like to learn new craft-related techniques. We also learn about our own subject matter so we can write compelling and authentic stories. In terms of the FLOW Framework, learning is the day-to-day maintenance piece. These are the skills we will draw on most often as we are living our creative lives.

Live Your Learning skills include how to:

• Determine our best writing process
• Handle failure and avoid guilt
• Use deliberate practice to learn new skills and techniques
• Develop ideas through imitation, improvisation, and incubation
• Structure your ideas and give them a concrete shape

Overcome Your Obstacles

Sooner or later, all writers hit bumps in the road. Whatever we might call it—writer’s block, resistance, “The Wall”—the result is the same. Sometimes we face a creative crisis and we need techniques to help us get through it. These skills are ones we may not draw on every day, but we want to practice them and keep them handy so that we have them when the need arises.

Overcome Your Obstacles skills include how to:

• Side-step obstacles by acting “As If”
• Use your creative identity to anchor you during tough moments
• Identify your creative monster and take away its power
• Craft a creative survival kit in case of emergencies
• Put together a Peace Corner to keep you grounded

Work Your Words

This element is the interpersonal part of the FLOW Framework. While the other elements address more individual aspects of the creative life, we must also accept that creative work exists in an ecosystem, and we must learn to navigate that system. This FLOW component is all about communication and using our words effectively with others.

Work Your Words skills include how to:

• Reframe language that does not serve you
• Use language for problem-solving
• Set boundaries with strategic word choice
• Ask for what you need effectively
• Redirect and deflect verbal attacks

Skill-Based Learning and the Importance of Practice

One thing to keep in mind with the FLOW Framework, is that the emphasis is not on vaguely understanding amorphous concepts. When I teach this framework, the main task at hand is for writers to learn specific, concrete skills, then practice them in a safe space—a journal, a worksheet, a virtual workshop—so that when the need arises, they have that skill ready.

This is not unlike how I teach the craft. Yes, there are certain aspects of writing that are very cerebral and abstract, but the goal is always to translate those amorphous ideas into concrete techniques that writers can implement right away. This is why so many of our programs at DIY MFA include a live classroom component, where writers can participate in real time.

It is difficult to practice skills in isolation, though not impossible. If you find you don’t have the opportunity to join a life workshop or take a class in real time, you can still learn techniques and practice them on your own. The key is learning to look at the work you do in practice with an objective outlook. There is one DIY MFA technique I find particularly useful for practicing both the technical aspects of writing and those ancillary skills represented in the FLOW Framework. It is called the Petri Dish Technique.

The Petri Dish Technique

The idea behind the Petri Dish Technique is that you identify the skill you want to learn, practice it in isolation, then put the technique back into context after you have solidified it. For example, imagine you want to learn how to write better dialogue. First you identify that dialogue is, in fact, the problem you want to solve. Next, you find some dialogue exercises online or in a book of writing prompts and you do those exercises until you feel like you’ve nailed down the dialogue. Then and only then do you go back into your work-in-progress and fix the dialogue throughout.

The reason this technique works so well is because it allows you to practice a technique outside the context of your current project. This lowers the likelihood of you tinkering your story to death and making your voice feel stilted and artificial. This is not unlike how scientists might take a cell sample from an organism, run tests on it in a petri dish, then infuse the cure back into the organism once they’ve solved the problem. The petri dish allows for a safe space to run those tests and not kill the organism in the process. The same is true with your writing.

But what about those ancillary skills from the FLOW Framework? How can we use the Petri Dish Technique with those?

In this case, we have to get a little more creative. Instead of doing writing prompts, we need to find some other safe space where we can practice those skills. I find journaling to be especially effective for this purpose. If I don’t have a circle of trust immediately handy where I can try some of the skills out on real people, I find that writing about the skill in a journal can be an effective alternative.

This is why, when I teach the FLOW Framework I like to have worksheets handy so writers can practice the techniques on the page. This is especially helpful because I find many writers to be introverts, and introverts don’t often want to practice techniques through roleplay or other more extroverted activities. For writers, processing concepts through pen and page is often more compatible with their introspective natures.

Reclaiming Your Creative Flow

If you’re having trouble finding your creative flow, start by using the FLOW framework to identify which area of your creative life needs the most attention. Is the problem that you feel scattered and can’t concentrate on your creative work (Focus)? Is it something relating to your everyday writing process (Learning)? Are you perhaps struggling with a creative crisis like writer’s block (Obstacles)? Is the issue one of setting boundaries or communicating your needs (Words)?

Once you have a sense for the overall cause of this lack of flow, look at some of the skills listed above and see if you can find one that might help address the issue. (Note: the lists of skills are by no means exhaustive, so you might identify something that’s not on a list. That’s okay!) After you’ve selected a skill, grab a journal and spend a little bit of time writing about it.

A great way to journal about this is with the “So What?” Technique. Start by making some sort of statement about the topic at hand, like “I don’t feel inspired to write.” Then write “so what?” Answer with another statement, then ask “so what?” again. Keep doing this for five or six “so whats?” until you hit on the core reason behind the lack of creative flow. After that, write a few paragraphs about what you’ve uncovered. The purpose behind the five or six “so whats?” is that they allow you to go deep and not stop at the most obvious answers.

There you have it: a step-by-step guide to reclaiming your creative flow, using the FLOW Framework alongside practical tools like the Petri Dish Technique and the “So What” Technique.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Lost Your Creative Flow? Use this Framework to Get it Back appeared first on DIY MFA.

This is one of the reasons I am such a huge fan of the Pomodoro Technique. If you’re not familiar with it, this is a method designed to help you eliminate distractions and get your work done. It originated in Italy in the 1980’s, where a young college student, Francesco Cirillo, was struggling to get through his studies. Using a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (hence the “pomodoro” in the name) he broke his study sessions down into short sprints where he would focus on the subject at hand until the timer went off. After experimenting for several years, he eventually found that the optimal length of time for each “pomodoro” (i.e. sprint) was 25 minutes with five-minute breaks in between.

The idea behind the Pomodoro Technique is that you set a timer and then focus on one thing until the timer goes off. After this focus session, you take a break, then come back for another one. You can keep doing this for as long as you like or until you have finished the task at hand. Every four or five sprints, you can also give yourself a longer break.

Why the Pomodoro Technique Works

There are two primary reasons why the Pomodoro Technique is so effective. First and foremost, it enables focus and helps you avoid multitasking. It also forces you to take much-needed breaks, which can have major health benefits.

(1) It Helps Avoid Multitasking.

The main reason the Pomodoro Technique works is because it eliminates multi-tasking, since you have to focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking may seem productive, like you are knocking out multiple tasks at once, but that is actually not the case. When you multitask, your brain can’t focus on multiple things at once so it’s constantly toggling between the various tasks. This leads to context switching.

Context switching is the phenomenon where, when you alternate between multiple tasks, your brain has to “reboot” every time it makes the switch. This might only take a split second but if you switch tasks enough times, those seconds will add up. You lose time whenever your brain has to switch tasks, which means multitasking is actually less productive than focusing on one thing at a time.

In addition, multitasking can lead to errors and can affect your brain health. When you multitask, it requires using more of your brain, which means that multitasking is less efficient than doing focused work. Multitasking can also create other health problems, like increased blood pressure or stress. Even if these problems are short-term, they can still have significant effects.

When you use the Pomodoro Technique, it forces you to focus on one thing at a time. Each pomodoro sprint is only 25 minutes long, meaning that if any distraction comes up—phone message or email ping, you can easily postpone attending to it until the 25-minute sprint is over. After all, it’s only 25 minutes. Then, when you have finished the sprint, you can catch up on anything else that may have happened while you were working.

(2) It Forces You to Take Breaks.

Another reason why the Pomodoro Technique is effective is because it forces you to take breaks. Many writers (myself included) love to immerse themselves in their writing, working for long stretches of time. But if you work for too long, you can end up injuring yourself. I speak from experience.

When I was in grad school for my MFA, I spent so much time writing that I eventually gave myself “golfer’s elbow” and ended up with my right (dominant) arm in a brace for several weeks. That definitely put a damper on my writing. If I had been more careful and taken more breaks during my sprints, I would not have injured myself and wouldn’t have had to postpone my writing for quite so long.

With the Pomodoro Technique, you take breaks every 25 minutes. This gives you time to stretch and move around, as well as rest your eyes, wrists, and hands. It may feel like you are wasting five precious minutes of writing time, but prolonged typing or staring at the computer screen can have adverse health effects. If you take care of your body, you will be better able to keep writing for the long term.

Not only that, but sometimes a break is just the ticket to help you get unstuck when you’ve written yourself into a corner. A short change of scene or activity can help your mind recharge and when you come back to your writing, you’ll be refreshed and more creative.

How to Use the Pomodoro Technique

Here’s a quick step-by-step on how to use the Pomodoro Technique.

1. Choose a timer. This should preferably be a dedicated timer that you only use for Pomodoro sessions. There are several Pomodoro apps out there (I like an iOS app called Focus Keeper) but you can also use a good, old-fashioned kitchen timer.
2. Set the timer for 25 minutes. During that pomodoro session focus on nothing else except your writing.
3. Take a 5-minute break. When the timer buzzes, stop and take a 5-minute break.
4. Rinse and repeat. Every four pomodoro sprints, extend your break to 15 minutes. 

Just remember that while you are in a pomodoro session, you should not do anything but write. No checking your email, no sending a text message, no logging into social media. All of these things can wait until the pomodoro session is done and you are on your break. If something comes up that is truly important—for example, you have a brilliant idea for another story—jot down a quick note to yourself, then get back to your focused work.

The Pomodoro Technique works best when the task at hand is big and overwhelming. If you choose a task that’s too short, you run the risk of completing the task before the pomodoro session is done. Doing pomodoro sessions is especially helpful when you need to break down a big, scary task (like writing a novel) into smaller, more manageable chunks.

For example, let’s say you are working on a novel or a memoir. It can feel daunting to crank out those 80,000 words, but with the Pomodoro technique, you can break that project down into smaller parts. Let’s do a little back-of-the-envelope math and see how you might map out those incremental steps.

Suppose that in a 25-minute Pomodoro sprint, you can crank out 500 words.That means you’ll need 160 Pomodoros to reach your 80,000-word goal. This may seem like a lot, but if you can do two or three Pomodoros in one day, that brings the number of writing days down to around 64. If you can work on your writing three times per week, you could have your first draft reach “the end” in around five months! Suddenly, that 80,000-word goal might feel a lot more doable.

I would also recommend, when applying the Pomodoro Technique to your writing, that you keep a log so you can track your progress. At DIY MFA, we are big fans of iteration and the best way to tweak and improve your writing process is to log your writing sprints. After all, you can’t modify what you can’t measure.

Make Adjustments to the Technique

As we wrap up this discussion of the Pomodoro Technique, I want to encourage you to give it a try, but also make adjustments as necessary. I find, for example, that for my own writing process, a 25-minute sprint is far too short, but 45 or 60 minutes gives me more time to immerse myself fully in my writing. If I was writing for longer stretches, though, I would also give myself slightly longer breaks, anywhere from 7-10 minutes.

In other contexts, 25 minutes might be too long. For example, in the past I used the technique with my children while helping them practice their instruments. (Little Man plays the piano, Lady Bug the violin.) What I found, though, was that 25 minutes was far too long for them to sustain their focus, so we dropped the length of the sprints to 10 or 15 minutes instead of the typical pomodoro sprint. We took shorter breaks between sessions (sometimes just 2-3 minutes) but they were able to sustain their focus for longer.

This is why I encourage you to experiment with the method and find the format that works best for you. There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to the Pomodoro Technique, so try some things out and see which combination of sprint and break lengths are most effective for you. Track your writing sprints and use the data to help you identify which variations work best.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Why You Should Try the Pomodoro Technique appeared first on DIY MFA.

Once I saw it, the obsession grew. I got the soundtrack (both Broadway and London Cast versions) and spent hours listening to my favorite songs over and over again, until the cassette tapes almost wore out. I would compare the different versions—who was the best Valjean? Which version was the best? Overall I preferred the London version (I mean, Patti LuPone as Fantine, who could beat that?), but I liked the Broadway Javert (Terrence Mann) better and his song, “Stars,” had a much better ending. The version in the London production was anticlimactic by comparison.

In honor of introducing my daughter to Les Miserables, I thought I would do a three-act analysis to see how the framework holds up with a musical. Note that I am basing this analysis on the original Broadway version, since that is the first one I ever saw. Note also that the three-act structure has three acts in it (obviously!) but the show only has two theatrical acts. I will refer to the acts of the musical as “parts” rather than “acts” so as to avoid confusion.

Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen Les Miserables, please be aware that there will be spoilers. You can probably figure this out just from the title, but things end badly for just about every character, with only a few minor exceptions. Unfortunately, the show is no longer on Broadway, but there will be a concert version coming to Radio City Music Hall later this year. You can also catch the film version, which is pretty close to the Broadway rendition in terms of songs and structure.That said, this musical is a hundred times better on stage than it is on screen.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Les Miserables.

PROLOGUE: Part 1 of the show begins with Jean Valjean doing hard labor in prison, a sentence he received for stealing a loaf of bread. He has served time for 19 years as prisoner 24601. The first song (“Work Song”) is where he gets paroled and meets Inspector Javert (who is then a prison guard) for the first time.

As part of his parole, he gets a yellow ticket of leave, and everywhere he goes, no one will give him honest work. When he is about to despair, he is taken in by a Bishop, who gives him a place to stay. In the night, Valjean steals some silver and tries to run away but is caught. The constables bring him back to the Bishop, accusing him of theft. The Bishop tells them that he gave the silver as a present and even gives Valjean an additional two candlesticks, saying that he left so quickly, he had forgotten to take them.

Valjean has a conversion of spirit, realizing that the Bishop has given him his freedom. He decides he must turn his life around, so he abandons his identity and reinvents himself as a new person.

ACT 1: Here we flash forward several years, where Valjean—in his new identity—has become a factory owner and mayor of a city. We see the workers in his factory, who are poor and unhappy. Still, they consider themselves lucky to have any job at all.

In the factory, the foreman wants to seduce a young worker, Fantine, but she refuses him. The other factory workers think Fantine is stuck-up, so when she brings a letter with her to work, they steal it from her and read it aloud. It turns out, Fantine has a child who is living with an innkeeper and his wife in some country village. She sends money to help support the child. A fight breaks out between Fantine and the other women. As the factory owner, Valjean steps in and asks his foreman to sort the problem out. The foreman fires Fantine, and she laments the sorry turns her life has taken (“I Dreamed a Dream”).

To survive, Fantine sells her locket and her hair, but eventually must turn to prostitution (“Lovely Ladies”) to survive and send money to her child. When a customer tries to take advantage of her and she fights back, he accuses her of attacking him. Javert (now a Police Inspector) arrests Fantine but as mayor, Valjean intercedes and takes her to a hospital

In another scene, a man is pinned under a runaway wagon and Valjean is able to lift it singlehandedly, saving the man’s life. Javert sees this work of supreme strength and thinks he recognizes Valjean. But, then another man is captured and identified as Valjean, so Javert abandons his suspicions. The Prologue and Act 1 answer the five story promises as follows:

Character: Jean Valjean is our protagonist. He begins in the Prologue thinking only of his own survival, but after the Bishop gives him his freedom, his goal shifts to protecting his identity and keeping his past a secret. What he ultimately wants is his freedom and to stop running from the law.

Voice: While there is no voice because this is a musical, what makes this show so epic is the way the various different melodies weave in and out of each other. The music clues us in, showing us which parts of the story are connected.

World: The story takes place in France in the first part of the 19th century. It begins in a prison in 1815 when Valjean is released. Next, it jumps to 1823 in Montreuil-sur-Mer where Valjean is the mayor. Afterwards, the timeline skips forward yet again, this time to Paris in 1832.

Problem: Jean Valjean is a convicted felon who has skipped parole. In order to continue in his comfortable life, he must hide his identity. He must constantly be looking over his shoulder and running from his past.

Event: At first, Valjean is very hands-off in his dealings with his employees and the poor. Then he meets Fantine among the prostitutes and realizes the consequences of him being so passive.

PIVOT POINT 1:  When the innocent man is captured in his place, the real Jean Valjean is torn between two choices. He can let this man be accused instead of himself and finally have peace of mind that no one will come after him. On the other hand, he can reveal his true identity and be imprisoned all over again. Eventually, during the song “Who Am I?” Valjean decides to reveal his true self as prisoner 24601. The event at this pivot point is the innocent lookalike being captured. The choice is Valjean deciding to reveal his identity.

ACT 2:  Valjean goes to the hospital where Fantine lies dying. While there, he promises her that he will take care of her daughter, Cosette. Javert finds him in the hospital and after a confrontation, Valjean manages to escape. He goes to the countryside and finds Cosette living with the Thénardiers, an innkeeper and his wife. The Thénardiers are con artists, stealing from their customers (“Master of the House”). They treat Cosette like a servant while their own child, Eponine, is spoiled. Valjean pays them 1,500 francs to let him take Cosette away.

From here, we skip forward again, this time to Paris in 1832. The poor are barely scraping by and General Lamarque is the only source of hope the people have for a better life. Unfortunately his death is imminent and there is much public unrest. Students, including Enjorlas and Marius, are getting ready for an uprising.

The Thénardiers have moved to Paris, as have also Jean Valjean and Cosette. Marius and Cosette see each other for the first time and instantly fall in love. At the same time, Eponine, the Thénardiers’ daughter, also secretly loves Marius.

Here we get to a point in the story where multiple things are happening at once. In “Stars,” Javert vows that he will finally find and arrest Jean Valjean. In “Red and Black” and “Do You Hear the People Sing” we see Enjorlas and the other students planning for their revolution. Finally, we get to the midpoint of the story arc.

MIDPOINT: The midpoint of the show does not line up with the division between the two parts. In fact, it comes four songs before. After seeing each other for the first time, Marius and Cosette are in love. In “In My Life,” Cosette starts by singing about her love for Marius but eventually she shifts to asking her father about the past. This section of the song is the midpoint.

This is a Temporary Triumph in that it seems like Valjean has finally escaped his past and found something resembling peace. The moment of introspection is Valjean having to confront the questions Cosette has about his past. In the end he holds fast and does not reveal his secrets.

The song “In My Life” follows an ABA format, in that we have sections about love at the beginning and end, and the middle portion is where Cosette confronts Valjean. The song begins with Cosette singing about her love for Marius. Then she and Valjean sing the next part together until Valjean ends the conversation without revealing his secrets. The last portion of the song is where Marius and Eponine are singing together, him declaring his love for Cosette and her revealing her love for Marius.

ACT 2 (Cont’d): Eponine takes Marius to see Cosette, and they are finally able to meet (“A Heart Full of Love”). Then Thénardier and his gang attempt to rob Valjean’s home, but Eponine is there and sees him. She screams, warning the house of the robbers and Marius runs away. Valjean is terrified that they have been found. He makes plans to leave Paris with Cosette. She does not want to go because she has fallen in love with Marius, but she has no choice.

At this point, we come to the last song in the first part of the show, “One Day More.” This song brings all the characters to the stage and combines several musical themes from across the show, including: “Who Am I?,” “I Dreamed a Dream,” “On My Own,” and “Master of the House.”

Marius decides to fight alongside his friends at the barricade. The students are convinced that the people of Paris will rise up and help their revolution. After joining his friends, Marius sends a farewell letter to Cosette via Eponine (“On My Own”). Valjean intercepts the letter and realizes that Cosette is in love. He decides to stay and eventually makes his way to the barricade to fight. At the barricade, Enjorlas, the revolutionary leader, asks for a volunteer to spy on the military. Javert—who is disguised as a revolutionary—volunteers. When he returns, he tells the others that there will be no attack so they can drop their guard. Gavroche steps up and identifies Javert as an Inspector and they capture him. Valjean is given the opportunity to execute Javert but instead he lets him go.

At the first attack, Eponine is fatally wounded. She dies in Marius’ arms (“A Little Fall of Rain”). The men sing “Drink with Me” and Valjean realizes that Marius is the man Cosette loves.

PIVOT POINT 2: As the men go to sleep, Valjean sings “Bring Him Home,” asking for Marius to be spared. He is reconciled with the fact that he may die at the barricade, but for Cosette’s sake, he wants Marius to survive. The event at this pivot point is him discovering that Marius is the man Colette loves. The choice is Valjean deciding that he will do whatever is in his power to help Marius survive.

ACT 3: The third act of this story is surprisingly short. The second attack happens and the people of Paris do not rise up and fight. The students at the barricade are left to fight on their own and all (except Marius) die at the end of the battle. Valjean survives the attack and is able to rescue an injured Marius and take him down into the sewers to escape. He collapses and Thénardier (who is looting bodies) finds the two and takes a ring from Marius’ finger. When Valjean is finally awake again and is able to exit the sewer, he comes across Javert. 

CLIMAX: Valjean asks Javert to let him take Marius to a doctor. Though it is counter to everything he believes, Javert lets Valjean go. Javert is shaken both by Valjean’s act of mercy in sparing his life and his own act of letting Valjean go. He cannot live with himself and commits suicide.

It is significant to note that the melody we hear in Javert’s last song is the same melody from when Valjean decides to abandon his identity after the Bishop has given him his freedom. This makes sense because both are moments that give Valjean his freedom, though they do so in different ways. In the first instance, Valjean claims his freedom by rejecting his true identity. The second time, Valjean gets his freedom more permanently because Javert has killed himself so he won’t be coming after him any longer. The irony is, of course, that Valjean does not know this. He believes himself to be a fugitive still.

Ending Type: Ironically enough, even though just about everybody dies in this musical, this show actually has a Happy Ending. At DIY MFA we define a happy ending not by the emotion, but by whether the protagonist achieves their goal. A happy ending is one where the main character gets what they want and they still want that thing by the end of the story.

Jean Valjean wants his freedom and he wants to live in peace. At first, he thinks he will achieve this by changing his identity. Eventually, he realizes that freedom is not a matter of identity but of being true to his principles. He chooses to show mercy to Javert, even though that will mean Javert will never stop coming after him. He also chooses to save Marius over running away from Javert and securing his own freedom. In the end, Javert lets him go and eventually kills himself, leaving Valjean finally free. By this definition, the show has a Happy Ending.

DENOUEMENT: Marius recovers from his wounds and grieves his friends (“Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”). Valjean confesses his secrets to Marius, and says he must leave to protect Cosette. He still believes the law is after him.

Marius and Cosette get married. The Thénardiers crash the wedding and try to convince Marius that Valjean is a thief by showing him a ring Valjean supposedly stole from a body at the barricade. Marius recognizes the ring as his own and realizes that Valjean must have been the person who rescued him.

Marius takes Cosette to see Jean Valjean, who is on his deathbed. Valjean dies peacefully, finally getting the freedom he has craved for so long. Knowing that Cosette has Marius and will not be alone allows him to die in peace. As his soul slips from his body, Fantine and Eponine appear, and he goes with them to the afterlife.

CONCLUSION: One of the things that I most love about this show is how the various melodies weave together throughout, making us associate different parts of the show with each other. “One Day More” pulls themes from various different songs in the show (“Who Am I?”, “On My Own”, “I Dreamed a Dream,” and “Master of the House”) but it is by no means the only instance.

For example, the moment where the Bishop forgives Valjean for his theft uses the same musical theme as “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.” This is significant because when Marius sings the latter song, he is effectively asking his friends for forgiveness because he survived and they did not. Both instances deal with the subject of forgiveness, though in different ways.

Similarly, Fantine and Eponine are linked by the theme of “On My Own.” While Eponine sings the famous song, Fantine sings the same melody with different words in “Come to Me.” Then, at the end, when Valjean dies, the two appear singing that same melody again as a duet. It’s significant that Fantine and Eponine would be thus linked. Both have unrequited loves and both suffered a great deal in their short lives. Most importantly, though, they both want things they cannot have. Fantine wants to be with her daughter, Cosette, and Eponine wants to be loved by Marius. In this way, the music of the show weaves various characters and significant moments together.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of Les Miserables appeared first on DIY MFA.

The truth about time management is that it’s not actually about time; it’s about other skills like choosing priorities and setting goals. The majority of time management boils down to assessing which tasks need to happen when, and how those tasks fit into a broader project. Time management is also about understanding which blocks of time are most efficient for you, so you can use your time effectively. Time on the clock is only a tiny slice of time management as a whole. Ultimately, time management has little to do with time itself and more to do with making effective choices and being strategic with how you allocate your tasks.

For the next few weeks, I want to delve into different facets of time management. In particular, I see time management having four different areas:

• Choosing priorities (so you know what to tackle first)
• Setting goals (so you can see how small tasks fit the big picture)
• Assessing time quality (so you allocate your time effectively)
• Using the clock (so you can be more efficient with your time)

Today, I wanted to focus on the first topic—choosing priorities. I believe this is the most important element of time management, because it’s all about knowing which tasks to tackle and when to do them. If you get good at choosing priorities, your ability to manage your time will increase exponentially.

But, how do you choose those priorities in the first place? How do you know what tasks to tackle first, and which ones can wait until later? This decision comes down to a couple of different factors.

Task Urgency

Which task has the earliest deadline? What step needs to happen first, so other steps can come later? Which part of a project needs to be done right now? These are all questions relating to the urgency of a given task, and often this is our greatest motivator.

Most of us are driven by urgency. It’s hard to ignore a task when you have a big, glaring deadline hanging over your head. Yet, while urgency is an important factor to consider, we sometimes let it overshadow other factors, like a task’s importance or ease. In other words, we may sometimes get caught up working on unimportant tasks, simply because they are urgent and calling our attention.

Task Importance

Instead of focusing purely on task urgency, we must also consider task importance. This means looking not just at a task’s looming deadline, but also considering why the task matters. In particular, it’s important to think about how a given task contributes to your greater goals. For writers, for example, we might get caught up worrying about immediate deadlines (“Oh no! That newsletter has to go out tomorrow”) instead of giving priority to more important tasks (“I should spend some time writing my manuscript.”) This is where the Eisenhower Decision Matrix can come in handy.

Eisenhower Matrix

Developed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, this two-by-two matrix considers both task urgency and task importance together. To understand where a task falls on the matrix, all you need to do is ask two yes/no questions: (1) Is the task urgent? and (2) Is the task important? (See the diagram below.) You can use this matrix to figure out what course of action to take with a given task.

Depending on where the task lands on the matrix, you will handle it in a different way. If the task is urgent and important, you need to do it right away. If the task is important but not urgent, you need to decide on a time when you will work on it. Important-but-not-urgent tasks are most often the things that will move you closer to your long-term goals, but they are also the easiest tasks to fall by the wayside. If a task is urgent but not important, you should look for a way to delegate that task if at all possible. This will preserve your precious time for the things that really matter. Finally, if a task is neither important nor urgent, you can simply delete it from your to-do list and ignore it altogether.

There are two additional categories that I add to this model but do not appear on the matrix itself. You see, sometimes there’s just no way to delegate or delete a given task. You simply have to do it. In that case, see if you can delay or divide the task so you can buy yourself some extra time. For example, suppose you want to sit down and write but you also have to clean the house. You could hire a housekeeper to do the cleaning (delegate) or simply let the house get overrun with mess (delete), but for many, neither of those options is feasible or optimal. Instead, you could try to delay the cleaning for a few days, or divide the task so you do laundry on one day, clean the windows on another, and so forth.

If I were to recommend the one area of the matrix where you want to spend the most time, it would be the important-but-not-urgent or “decide” box, because those are the tasks that make the most long-term impact, but they are also the ones that are easiest to put off. Because they are not urgent, it’s easy for these tasks to fall to the bottom of the to-do list.

The area on the matrix where most people spend their time is the important-and-urgent or “do” box. This is because these tasks are important (so they can’t be easily delegated) but they are also urgent, so they require immediate attention. I call the “do” box the “swatting flies” box because when we spend too much time there, it often feels like we’re knocking out tasks as though we’re swatting flies. The problem with swatting flies, though, is that the minute we get rid of one, another one shows up.That’s why so many people who spend a lot of time in the “do” box tend to end up burnt out.

Task Ease

A third consideration which does not appear on the Eisenhower matrix is task ease. Sometimes the difficulty of a given task will affect the order in which we tackle it. For example, some people might prefer to knock out all the easy tasks first, to give themselves that fist-pump feeling of accomplishment and to help them build momentum. On the other hand, some folks might prefer to tackle a difficult task first, to get it out of the way and while their mind is still fresh. Regardless of which approach you take, it’s important at least to consider task ease when setting priorities.

This consideration is easily ignored, because it’s not as objective task urgency or importance. Yet I would argue that task ease might just be the most significant of all three components because it considers how you best handle your priorities. You see, priorities are highly personal and what might be nonnegotiable for one person might be less significant to someone else. This is why, when we choose our priorities, we have to allow for a little subjectivity and individuality. Task ease allows for some of that flexibility, as does task preference.

Task Preference

Let’s face it, some tasks are fun and don’t even feel like a burden. Other tasks are about as pleasant as getting a cavity filled. Just like task ease, task preference will vary wildly from one person to the next. Unlike task ease, however, I do think there is an optimal way to handle task preference.

While with task ease there are arguments for either doing easy or difficult tasks first, with task preference, I think the most effective way to do it is to tackle the most unpleasant task first. It’s easy to procrastinate on things we don’t like to do, but if we don’t get those unpleasant tasks done, they’ll just hang over our heads like a sword of Damocles. Instead, what I recommend is to knock out those unpleasant tasks and then reward yourself with the more pleasant ones.

What does this have to do with writing?

As writers, we often have to juggle competing tasks, both in the writing itself, and in the areas of our life that compete with writing. For many of us, life is continually at odds with our creative work and it’s filled with pragmatic responsibilities like going to a day job, cooking meals, cleaning the house, and taking care of kids or aging relatives. With all these things on our plates, we can’t magically make time appear out of nothing, but we can manage our priorities and find ways to put our writing higher up on that to-do list.

Ultimately, time management is not about creating more time—because that’s impossible. Rather, it’s about being more effective in how we use the time we have. This starts with choosing priorities and deciding which tasks you will do when.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: The Truth About Time Management appeared first on DIY MFA.

For today’s analysis, we’ll be looking specifically at episode 20 from season 1, titled “Murder Takes the Bus.”  In this episode, Jessica and her friend Sheriff Amos Tupper are on a bus to Portland, Maine when they get stranded at a diner because of a storm.

One thing I love about this episode is that it’s a closed circle mystery, where the characters are all stuck together in one place and the murderer is among them. Closed circle mysteries take place in locations where the suspects have no way to leave, like a country house in a snowstorm or a desert island. The key characteristic of a closed circle mystery is that there is a limited number of suspects, they are all stuck together, and they all have plausible motives for murder.

Another thing I love about “Murder Takes the Bus” is that it’s a nod to one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes: “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” The premise is the same: a bunch of people stranded together in a diner during a storm. The only difference is that the Twilight Zone version involves Martians.

Not familiar with the DIY MFA approach to story structure? No problem. Check out this article for a detailed rundown of the framework.

Spoiler Alert!  As with any cozy mystery, we all know that the sleuth is going to solve the case in the end. The key, of course, is figuring out who the murderer is. If you haven’t seen this particular episode and you don’t want the ending spoiled, look for it on a streaming service. (I recently caught it on Prime.) Otherwise, be forewarned, there will be spoilers in this essay.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Murder, She Wrote — Season 1, Episode 20: “Murder Takes the Bus.”

ACT 1: Jessica Fletcher and her friend Sheriff Amos Tupper are going to Portland, Maine for a banquet. Amos is anxious to get to the banquet early because there’s a raffle and the grand prize is a big-screen TV. Before they can leave Cabot Cove, the car breaks down and they are forced to take the bus. They board the bus and we meet some of the supporting characters including fellow passengers and the bus driver.

As they drive, Jessica notices a car following them. The bus stops in front of a state penitentiary and a man gets on. When he boards the bus, he seems to recognize one of the passengers, but it’s unclear who.

The bus gets stopped by an emergency worker who says the power lines are down and there’s flooding up ahead. Nevertheless, the bus continues on. The car that was following the bus passes them, then breaks down and the driver also boards. As he is putting his bag on the overhead rack, Jessica notices he has a gun under his jacket.

In Act One of any story, we always have to fulfill five promises: the character, the voice, the world, the problem, and the event that kicks off the story. Here’s a breakdown of the five promises as they apply to this episode.

Character:  The main character in our story is Jessica Fletcher, a retired school teacher who is now a mystery author. She often stumbles across real life murders and uses her mystery-writing skills to solve them.

Voice:  As with movies, this show does not have a voice per se but a mood. The opening credits help to set that mood by showing a montage of scenes from different episodes of the show interspersed with clips of Jessica at her typewriter. The music is light and upbeat, starting with a tinkling piano and followed by a full orchestra, including bouncy tubas. This music and mood are perfectly fitting for a cosy mystery.

Note that once Jessica and Amos are on the bus and the storm begins, the music changes dramatically from the upbeat piano and tubas in the opening credits to strident strings, reminiscent of the music in the movie Psycho. This is typical of Murder, She Wrote, where the opening credits set the tone for the show as a whole, but each individual episode has a unique score that captures the mood and personality of that particular story.

World: The world of “Murder Takes the Bus” is fairly limited. We have two primary locations: the bus itself, and the diner where the passengers are stranded. 

Problem: The problem at the start of this episode is that the sheriff’s car has broken down and the only way Jessica and Amos can get to Portland is by bus.

Event: The bus has engine trouble and they are forced to stop at the diner.

PIVOT POINT 1: The bus driver needs to stop to check the engine. He pulls over at the Kozy Korner Kitchen and the passengers go inside to stretch their legs. Jessica forgets her book and goes back to the bus to get it. There she finds a passenger dead with a screwdriver plunged into his neck.

As I’ve mentioned in past analyses, the pivot points have two components: an external event and an internal choice. In this case, the external event is Jessica finding Stoner dead and her internal choice is to tell Amos, who is a sheriff after all (even though this is not his jurisdiction). Jessica thinks it’s obvious that one of the people on the bus must be the murderer and tells Amos as much.

ACT 2: This is the part of the mystery where we compile the clues and try to put the puzzle pieces together. We learn the identity of the victim (Gilbert Stoner) and that he had just been released from prison. Jessica says she remembers Stoner’s name from her research. He was part of a bank robbery where at least one of the three robbers was apprehended and an innocent bystander was killed.

SUPPORTING CAST:  At this point, we also meet our cast of supporting characters. Each of the characters introduces themselves and says where they were at the time of the murder.

Kent and Miriam Radford: Kent is a math professor who is fascinated by statistics. Miriam is a librarian. Kent claims to have been playing an arcade game when the murder happened and Miriam was in the diner the whole time.

Cyrus Sleffingwel: He is an older gentleman and a retired postal worker. Like Miriam, he has been in the main dining room of the diner the whole time.

Steve and Jane Pascal: Steve is a computer programmer traveling with his wife, Jane, who is expecting. He says he was outside on the payphone at the time of the crime, but Jessica says she saw him through the window, having an argument with Stoner on the bus.

Joe Downing: He says he is captain of a fishing boat and claims to have been at the bar having a drink during the murder.

Carey Drayson: This is the man who boarded the bus from the broken down car. He says he is a jewelry salesman and he carries a gun for protection because he has valuable jewels in his sample case.

Ben Gibbons: He is the bus driver and he says he was fixing the engine. He adds that he left his toolbox on the bus so anyone could have taken a screwdriver and used it to kill Stoner.

After the introductions, Jessica pulls out a photo that she found with the dead man and says Steve Pascal bears a striking resemblance to one of the men in the picture. Steve refuses to reply but Jane looks at the photo and says that one of the men in it is Steve’s father who died during the heist (along with the innocent bystander). Stoner was caught and the other robber got away. Police never recovered the money.

After this discovery, Jessica begins to explore the diner and figures out that several doors lead outside so anyone could have slipped out and committed the murder. She and Amos go back to the bus where Amos notices a light blinking on the dashboard. That light is for a damper switch. While Amos goes to the back of the bus to check the switch, Jessica looks around the diner to investigate the doors and finds Stoner’s open suitcase out in the rain.

MIDPOINT: Back inside the diner, Steve shares a newspaper clipping giving information about Stoner’s release. That clipping also reveals that the innocent bystander who was killed was named Julie Gibbons.

Amos makes a citizen’s arrest, saying that the driver threw the damper switch on purpose to stop the bus. It turns out that the driver is Julie Gibbons’ father. He confesses to stabbing Stoner with the screwdriver, but Jessica steps up and says that he is not the murderer. She gives proof that Stoner was already dead when Gibbons stabbed him and that he died of strangulation, not stabbing.

This midpoint is a temporary triumph because at first it appears like the murderer has been found, but soon thereafter we realize that there’s more to the case than we first expected.

ACT 2 (CONT’D): The phone lines are down but Ralph, the diner owner, says there is a CB radio in the back room. Carey goes to try to call for help, but he leaves his jewelry sample case behind. Jessica confronts him, asking why he would leave such a valuable case unattended. He reveals that he’s not a jewelry salesman, but that he works for the insurance company and his job is to recover the money that was stolen in the heist.

Jessica wonders why, if they found Stoner’s suitcase, they didn’t find his overcoat or the book he was carrying. She and Amos go back to the bus to look and find both items a few rows behind Stoner’s body. They go back into the diner.

PIVOT POINT 2: The power goes out. There’s a gunshot. When the lights come back on, Jessica rushes to the back room. Carey has been shot but is only slightly wounded. The CB radio, however, has been completely destroyed. Captain Downing helps to tie a bandage around Carey’s wounded arm.

Jessica conjectures that someone among the passengers wants to find something that Stoner had. She believes someone on the bus is the third man from the robbery. Somehow in those few minutes of darkness, Stoner’s book has disappeared.

The external event for this pivot point is the power going out and the possible killer taking Carey’s gun. The internal choice is that Jessica does not give up and continues trying to find the murderer, despite the heightened danger.

ACT 3: Amos starts to search everyone for the book and they eventually find it in Miriam’s knitting bag. Jessica examines the book and finds a key hidden in the binding. She turns and accuses Captain Downing, saying he’s not a real sailor because he used a granny knot to tie Carey’s bandage instead of a square knot.

CRISIS: Downing pulls the gun, but just as he is threatening everyone, the door blows open in the wind. Amos, Steve, and some of the others overpower Downing and take the gun. Downing admits that he had been looking for the key but insists that he did not kill Stoner.

CLIMAX: Jessica says she believes Downing. Amos was right all along when he first made a citizen’s arrest. Ben Gibbons was the killer from the very beginning. He strangled Stoner first, then stabbed him with the screwdriver later to hide his crime. Gibbons says that he didn’t mean to kill Stoner but got caught up in a rage when he confronted Stoner about his daughter’s death. He thought that by confessing to the screwdriver murder, he would draw suspicion away from himself when the coroner determined that it was death by strangulation. He reasoned that if he confessed to the stabbing, he would no longer be a suspect for the real murder.

Ending Type: This is a happy ending because Jessica wants to solve the crime, and she does indeed solve it.

DENOUEMENT: The storm clears and it’s the next morning. The police take Gibbons away and the passengers board the bus to continue on toward Portland. Jessica and Amos are getting ready to head back to Cabot Cove when Amos gets an update about the banquet. He says it was surely a shame that they missed that drawing. Jessica tries to console him but then he reveals that she’s the one who won the TV, not him.

This is a classic Murder, She Wrote ending, where we get a happy scene after the discovery of the killer, often ending with Jessica laughing at some sort of a joke.

ABOUT COZY MYSTERIES: These are among my favorite things to read. What fascinates me about this genre is that while they have to adhere to strict “rules” they are in no way formulaic. I’m always amazed at how authors manage to create variation and keep readers guessing, while still sticking to the format. Cozy mystery “rules” include:

No Death On the Page: While you can have other crimes in cozy mysteries (like robbery, blackmail, kidnapping, or fraud), murder is the most common. That said, we never see the actual murder on the page. The body is discovered after the fact and we never see any violence. (In addition to no violence, cozies also generally don’t have swearing or sex.) In the case of this episode, Jessica finds Stoner already stabbed. We don’t see the actual killing on screen.

Amateur Sleuth: The person doing the investigating is often not law enforcement, but an amateur sleuth. This person usually has some sort of special skill that makes them ideally suited to solving crimes. In the case of Murder, She Wrote, Jessica is a mystery writer so she knows how criminals think (because she has to write them).

Quirky Supporting Characters: While the amateur sleuth is usually a unique and interesting character, the supporting cast is no less fascinating. Often the supporting cast includes quirky personalities, particularly those of recurring characters (like the bumbling Amos Tupper, the witty Dr. Seth Hazlitt, and Jessica’s dopey nephew, Grady Fletcher).

Quaint Setting: Cozy mysteries typically take place in small towns or other quaint settings. You’re not going to find a cozy mystery set in a gritty city, though sometimes the sleuth might travel to other places and solve a crime on their trip.

Keep in mind, one of the challenges of cozy mysteries is what folks have lovingly come to call “Cabot Cove Syndrome.” This is the problem that when you have a small town and a lot of murders, you may eventually run out of possible murder victims (and suspects). Murder, She Wrote sidesteps this problem by alternating Cabot Cove episodes with ones where Jessica travels somewhere else for writing-related events or to visit friends and family. Yes, an inordinate number of murders still take place in that idyllic town, but they are interspersed with episodes that take place in a variety of other settings like a fancy vineyard, a luxurious cruise, or an archeological dig.

The key to cozy mysteries is that readers want some predictability while still being in suspense as to whodunnit. Readers love the quirky characters and the quaint setting, and they love following along with the sleuth, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. At the same time, they want variety. This is why cozy mysteries will play with different themes and sometimes branch out into new settings. “The same, but different” is the key to keeping cozy mysteries interesting.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of Murder, She Wrote appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I thought I’d share a few questions you can ask yourself in order to select the best POV for your story. This way, when you’re faced with choosing a point of view for your work, you can weigh the pros and cons and land on the best option. Here are five things to consider when selecting POV.

(1) Whose thoughts do you need to be able to access?

Ultimately, all POV considerations boil down to one thing: information access. Depending on which type of narration you choose, you will have access to different types of information.

For example, if you’re using a single first person POV, you will have access to all of the narrating character’s thoughts and emotions. Anything that goes through that character’s head is fair game and you can use all of it. The downside is that you won’t be able to do this with anybody else’s thoughts and feelings and your character will have to make inferences based on other characters’ body language, dialogue, and demeanor to deduce what they might be thinking or feeling.

The easy way around this limitation is to use a multiple first person POV, where you alternate between the first person perspectives of a handful of key characters. The advantage of this choice is that you have access to more than one person’s thoughts and emotions. The downside is that it can sprawl a little out of control and it can be hard for the reader to get a good sense of whose story this is.

The same considerations also come into play with the third person POV. On one hand, you  have a single limited third person, where the narration follows one character closely and gives you access only to that one character’s mind. You can also use the multiple third person, where the POV consists of a limited third person approach but alternates between different focal characters. We see the multiple third person a lot in epic stories with broad, sweeping worlds, where the reader needs to be able to follow what’s going on with different characters in different locations.

Both the first person and limited third person POVs have similar limitations in that you can only access one character’s thoughts and feelings at a time. The multiple POV options allow the author to be in multiple different characters’ heads, but it can present challenges. For example, the shifts from one character’s POV to another might be jarring if not executed well. Plus, you can’t “head hop” from one character’s mind to another in the same scene.

The place where multiple POV gets interesting is when we see the same scene from more than one character’s perspective. The TV show The Affair explored this contrast by showing the same segment in time from two different characters’ points of view. In one key scene, we see  the events unfold from the female lead’s perspective. She’s catering a party where the male lead is a guest. She is wearing a simple dress shirt and slacks and keeping a professional distance from her counterpart. When we’re in the male lead’s perspective, on the other hand, the female lead is wearing a short, slinky black dress and is acting very flirtatious. By showing the same scene from the different points of view, we get a sense for each character’s state of mind when they first meet.

(2) How sympathetic (or unsympathetic) is the main character?

Another consideration, when it comes to POV, is how sympathetic (or unsympathetic) the main character of the story might be. Often, when the protagonist is unsympathetic or hard to relate to, it helps to use another character as a go-between via the peripheral first person POV. We see this especially when the main character is larger-than-life, making it hard for the reader to relate to that character.

In DIY MFA terms, there are two types of main characters (not counting antiheroes, who are a special category all their own). These main characters can either be relatable (i.e. a regular person caught in extraordinary circumstances) or aspirational (i.e. a larger-than-life heroic character). Think of “relatable” and “aspirational” as opposite ends of the same spectrum and the author’s goal is to try and nudge that main character a little bit toward the opposite end of that spectrum. In other words, if a character is relatable, we need to show their heroic side, whereas if a character is aspirational, we need to show their softer side. This does not mean making your character go “out of character” but rather is about showing their potential for growth.

What does this have to do with POV? Sometimes when characters are so much larger-than-life, it’s hard for readers to connect to them. This is where the peripheral POV can be useful. For the peripheral first person POV, we have the story narrated through the first person perspective of a supporting character (not the main character). This supporting character is often more relatable than the protagonist, giving the reader a way in to connect with that main character. Examples of peripheral first person POV are The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

(3) Does the reader need to follow multiple story threads at once?

This is perhaps the most important consideration when thinking about a single versus multiple point of view. If you have a broad, sweeping world with lots of different things happening at the same time in different places, then the only way to capture all of those scenes is to use a multiple POV. A great example of this is the Prydain Chronicles (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, etc.). The first four books of this series are in a limited (single) third person POV following the character of Taran. Then the author flips the script.

In the final book, The High King, we see the epic battles across the kingdom from various different characters’ perspectives. I remember when I first read it and I came to a passage told through the POV of a raven flying in the sky, high above a battlefield. At first, I thought the author had made a mistake. But as I read the rest of the story, I realized that the author could not have done it any other way. There are different battles scattered throughout the kingdom, with scenes following each of the characters in each battle. If we had stayed only in Taran’s POV, we would have missed out on a huge part of the story.

For this reason, it’s important to consider the pragmatics of the POV you choose. Do you need to be in different places at the same time? If so, a multiple POV might be your best bet. Also, do you need to access more than one character’s thoughts and emotions? Again, you might want to go with a multiple POV option. The two key things to consider with a multiple POV are: (1) connection to the protagonist, and (2) transitions between different POVs.

In terms of connection to the protagonist, remember that when you have multiple perspectives, it becomes trickier for the reader to identify one character as the protagonist. Sometimes, the author does this on purpose because they want the reader to “latch on” to the character of their choosing. Other times, the author has multiple perspectives, but one character still rises to the top as the protagonist. Just be aware that when you play with multiple POVs, the reader may not know exactly who they should root for. That can be a good thing if you’re going for ambiguity, but it can also create confusion for the reader.

When it comes to transitions between different POVs, it’s important that the reader knows exactly which character they’re following and when. Some authors solve this problem by putting the POV character’s name in the chapter heading. Other authors don’t use headers in this way and instead, simply make it clear from the text which character’s POV we’re in. Whatever option you choose, it’s important to include a section break or chapter break when the POV changes so the reader is prepared for the shift. It doesn’t have to whap the reader over the head, but it should be clear who the POV character is. Some authors might even get extra creative by using different icons at the start of a chapter to symbolize each POV character. Or they might add additional information in the chapter heading, like date and time or location coordinates. This way, what can feel a little heavy-handed in using chapter headings to signify POV shifts, can actually become an opportunity for extra creativity.

(4) How realistic do you want the story to feel?

Realism is relative and different POVs capture realism in different ways. I once sat in on a lecture by David Morrell (the author of First Blood, featuring the character Rambo) where he talked about how point of view and realism are intertwined. He gave a historical overview of different point of view options, explaining when and why they came into play. As it turns out, depending on the type of POV option you choose, you can create a sense of realism in different ways.

The earliest novels are written in traditional (single) first person, which gives the story a feeling of being “straight from the horse’s mouth,” like we are hearing an unvarnished account from someone who experienced the events of the story first hand. The first person also lends that feeling of it being confessional, like you’re being told about the events directly from the person who was there. Of course, the limitations of the traditional first person are what we have already discussed—that it does not allow for access into anyone else’s mind or perspective. It also means that in order for the reader to experience a given scene, the first person narrator must be in that scene.

A variation on the traditional first person is the epistolary form, which makes it feel like the reader is spying on someone’s private correspondence. It has a voyeuristic quality to it, making it feel like we’re reading actual letters. Another, similar form is the use of diary entries to tell the story. Diary form has the same voyeuristic essence to it, but instead of the correspondence being between two people, it is more of a one-sided conversation with only one person’s perspective appearing in the diary. The primary limitation of this form is that certain things (like dialogue) don’t make sense in a letter or a diary entry. It can also be tempting to fall into the “tell, don’t show” trap, because both letters and diary entries lend themselves to exposition more than scene.

While authors began experimenting with traditional first person and epistolary form, not long thereafter they also began using the omniscient third person. This is the “eye in the sky” narrator who knows all and sees all. It gives the story a sense of objectivity because it feels like it’s just the facts. We see a lot of nineteenth century authors—like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen—using the omniscient third person POV. The key to making the omniscient POV work is to have a firm grasp on who the protagonist is. Yes, you can hop from one character’s head to another in the same scene, but make sure the reader doesn’t lose sight of the main character.

(5) How reliable do you want your narrator to seem?

Finally, we get to the question of reliability (or unreliability, as the case may be). I once heard an author say that all first person narrators were by definition unreliable. This is because the character acts as a lens and we see the whole story through that narrator’s perspective. If the narrator is opinionated, or overly naïve, or insane, those factors will influence how the character perceives the events of the story.

A great example of an unreliable narrator is The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. This short story uses what we call a “deep first person” POV because we are so deeply inside that character’s mind that we are immersed in his interpretation of events. His attitude toward the old man and his “vulture eye,” his insistence that he is not mad and is being perfectly reasonable, we take all of these things for granted because we are so fully absorbed by his perspective. Of course, we know that the protagonist is not sane and that his opinions and actions are far from reasonable, but we can’t help but get swept away by the events of the story because of this deep first person point of view.

Conclusion

There you have it, five questions to ask about point of view to help you pick the right choice for your story. Of course, if you choose one option and it doesn’t seem to be working, you can always experiment with something different. Make sure if you switch POV you don’t just go in and do something like swap out the “I” pronoun for he/she/they. That’s the paint-by-numbers approach to point of view and it will squash your voice and make your writing feel stilted. Instead, choose a scene to try in a different POV, read it through, then rewrite the whole thing from memory. Trust that your brain will hang onto the good stuff and that whatever doesn’t make it into the rewritten version was not all that important anyway. I call this process rebooting a scene and the reason it works is because it allows you to capture that energy and drive you get from writing something fresh, but do it with the direction of knowing where the scene needs to go. When editing for voice and point of view, the reboot approach is hands-down your best bet.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Which Point of View Should You Choose? appeared first on DIY MFA.

Not familiar with the three-act structure? No worries. Read this article for a detailed discussion on this topic.

Spoiler Alert! If you’re not familiar with Animal Farm, it’s a satire and allegory for totalitarianism. Even though it was published in 1945, many elements of that story may feel eerily familiar in this day and age. The book itself is a novella and quite short, so if you haven’t read it, grab a copy and dive in. It’s a quick read. And, of course, as with all our three-act analyses, there will be spoilers… so, there you go.

Okay, let’s dive into our analysis of Animal Farm.

ACT 1: The story begins with a vivid opening image: “Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the henhouses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.”

Right from the get-go, we get a sense for what the status quo looks like in this story. I often talk about Act 1 as being like a “before picture” in an infomercial: it shows us what things were like before the transformation so we have context and a basis of comparison. From this opening image, we get a sense of what life is like on the farm and we see that Mr. Jones is quite inadequate as a farmer and leader. This sets the scene for the animals to rebel against the humans and create Animal Farm.

Here’s how the five promises of Act One break down.

Character: Interestingly enough, there is no one character that we root for in this story. In fact, you could say that the true protagonist is not a single character at all, but the collective—every animal in Animal Farm, together as one. Still, there are a few characters who stand out and are worth noting:

• • • Old Major, the aged pig who convinces the other animals to rebel against the farmer.
    • Napoleon, the pig who eventually takes leadership of Animal Farm.
    • Squealer, a pig who becomes the spokes-pig for Napoleon’s regime.
    • The dogs, who become Napoleon’s private guard and secret police.
    • Snowball, a pig who at first collaborates (and also competes) with Napoleon, but is later exiled and scapegoated.
    • Boxer, the strong workhorse who is dedicated to the mission of Animal Farm.
    • Clover, the mare who begins as a true believer, but later begins to question.
    • Benjamin, the donkey philosopher who sees things for what they truly are.
    • Muriel, the goat who is one of the few animals on the farm who can read (besides the pigs, or course).
    • Mollie, the foolish mare who can’t let go of the old ways and eventually runs away.
    • Moses, the raven who represents religion and spirituality.

Note that we meet most of these animals right at the beginning of Chapter 1—with the exception of the pigs, who remain relatively anonymous until after the revolution. In fact, the spotlight at the beginning of the book is really on Old Major, and while Orwell name-drops many of the other characters (minus the pigs), it’s more to give us a sense for the vastness of the farm and the sheer number of animals represented in it. We don’t really get to know most of the animals until after the revolution. In this way, the collective (and not the individual) is the central character of the story.

Voice: Because this is satire, there’s a thread of irony—and sometimes even humor—throughout the story. There are certain things that are downright absurd (like when the pigs start walking on their hindlegs) and some things that are truly tragic (like when Boxer gets taken away).

World: The story centers on the farm—first called Manor Farm, then changed to Animal Farm (and then changed back). While we get hints of a world beyond the borders of the farm, we never see it on the page.

Problem: Mr. Jones is a terrible farmer and the animals are unhappy.

Event: That night, after Mr. Jones goes to bed drunk, Old Major calls all the animals together for a meeting. He teaches them a song called Beasts of England and gets them all riled up for revolution.

Overall, Act 1 of Animal Farm is relatively short (about a chapter), and soon thereafter we reach the first pivot point.

PIVOT POINT 1:  Old Major dies three days later in his sleep. The animals decide to rise up, start a revolution, and take the farm for themselves. (The revolution is the external event.)

Once they have won and taken the farm, the animals come together and make a set of rules, or Seven Commandments. (This is the internal choice.)

The making of these commandments is a pivotal moment. We’ll be reminded of these commandments again and again throughout the story, and at times, when it seems the commandments have been broken, it will turn out they have only been “misremembered.”

ACT 2:  At first, it seems like everything is going well. The animals are happy with their newfound freedom and the farm is productive and appearing to prosper. Slowly, the pigs begin to take on more and more power, with Snowball and Napoleon constantly at odds with each other and jockeying for leadership. As time passes, we start to see evidence of Napoleon’s power over the rest of the farm, as well as instances where the Seven Commandments are seemingly broken.

Napoleon’s Rise to Power

Early on after the Revolution, the dogs have nine puppies who mysteriously disappear into Napoleon’s care. (He claims to be taking charge of their education.) None of the animals give it a second thought until Snowball and Napoleon begin to argue over the windmill (Snowball in favor, Napoleon against).

In the midst of this argument, “there was a terrible baying sound outside, and nine enormous dogs wearing brass-studded collars came bounding into the barn. They dashed straight for Snowball, who only sprang from his place just in time to escape their snapping jaws.” These dogs are the puppies—now all grown up and acting as Napoleon’s secret police.

The dogs chase off Snowball, who runs away, never to be seen again. However, Napoleon continually blames anything that goes wrong on the farm as part of Snowball’s evildoing, claiming that Snowball is trying to infiltrate the farm from the outside.

A second, more dramatic instance of Napoleon showing his power is when he holds a series of public executions. Several animals are executed for admitting to treason and being in league with Snowball. These executions leave the surviving animals shaken and questioning. Yet, Napoleon’s power over the other animals has now been sealed. He has shown his ruthlessness by even executing a few pigs who had spoken out against him. (Not even fellow pigs are safe!)

The animals also fight two battles with the humans, one called the Battle of the Cowshed, in which the animals clearly win, and later a battle surrounding the windmill, where the animals are barely able to hold onto the farm. Napoleon (along with the rest of the pigs and the dogs) uses both battles as a way to maintain his power over the other animals. He claims the battles are examples of humans’ evildoings and creates an “us against them” mentality that distracts the animals from the truth: that Napoleon is slowly but surely making himself a totalitarian dictator.

RULE OF 3: The Seven Commandments are a fundamental part of the story, and with them we have an interesting Rule of 3 (with a twist). Throughout Act 2, we have three instances where the Seven Commandments are clearly broken by the pigs, yet when the other animals check, they find that the written Commandments have been edited. While some animals begin to entertain doubts, most of them chalk it up to misremembering the original Commandments.

Here are the Seven Commandments as originally stated:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes,
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.

The first instance of breaking the Seven Commandments is when the pigs move into the Farmhouse and start sleeping in the beds. Clover and Muriel go to read the original Commandments and find that Commandment #4 says: “No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.” Squealer, always the smooth-talker, manages to convince them that the objection was never to beds per se, but to the sheets.

The second example of breaking the Seven Commandments comes with the executions. The surviving animals are horrified and even Boxer (whose catchphrase is “Napoleon is always right”) begins to question how something so terrible could happen on their farm. When Clover asks Muriel to read her the Sixth Commandment, she discovers that it says: “No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.” They admit that they must have misremembered the Commandment and recognize that clearly Napoleon did have cause to execute those traitors since they were in league with Snowball.

The third example of breaking the Commandments is when the pigs get drunk. The pigs find some whiskey and drink to the point where they are so hungover, they think Napoleon might die. After a few days, Napoleon and the rest of the pigs recover, and when Muriel goes to read the Commandments, she finds that the Fifth Commandment says: “No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.”

What makes this third instance stand out from the other two is that it is the first time the pigs are breaking a Commandment not just to claim power, but without much good reason at all. The first two times they break the Commandments (and then edit them thereafter) it is clearly a strategic move from Napoleon to elevate his power. The third instance with the whiskey, however, is purely frivolous. He’s not breaking the Commandments as part of a strategy, he’s just doing it because he can and that is enough. This frivolity shows just how deeply entrenched his power is by this point in the story.

The twist with this Rule of 3 is that we actually have a fourth instance (which occurs in Act 3), and in this case the entire Seven Commandments get overwritten altogether. In other words, the Seven Commandments are not simply edited but completely replaced with one single Commandment: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

MIDPOINT: At around the midway point of the novella, we get a temporary triumph. The animals are working hard, but they are happy because they are free and not working for a “pack of idle, thieving human beings.” While they are working hard, things seem to be going reasonably well.

If they had no more food than they had in Jones’s day, at least they did not have less. The advantage of only having to feed themselves, and not having to support five extravagant human beings as well, was so great that it would have taken a lot of failures to outweigh it. And in many ways the animal method of doing things was more efficient and saved labor.

But then things start to change. Napoleon decides on a new policy: that Animal Farm will trade with neighboring farms. After all, if they are to build a windmill, they need materials and supplies that they can’t produce themselves on the farm. The other animals start having doubts. While nobody does anything about it, this is the first moment where the animals start to doubt and question Napoleon’s leadership.

PIVOT POINT 2: Boxer, the horse (and perhaps the most loyal of Napoleon’s followers) gets injured while building the windmill. He is close to the age of retirement and is looking forward to his days out in the peaceful pasture. Yet, one afternoon, a cart comes to take him away. It turns out that he is being taken to the horse slaughterer. This is the external event that marks the second pivot point.

The internal choice is how the animals choose to believe Squealer’s excuse that Boxer was not being taken to a horse slaughterer and was, in fact, being taken to the veterinary hospital. The animals choose to believe that Boxer died peacefully after receiving the best of care and all manner of expensive treatments (which, of course, Napoleon supposedly paid for without a second thought). This choice to believe the lie opens the door for Act 3, in which the pigs become so similar to humans that they are almost unrecognizable.

ACT 3: Like Act 1, Act 3 is also a single chapter in length. The beginning of Chapter 10 uses exposition to skip time, making the chapter seem longer than it is.

Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs.

Regardless of how things are going, though, the animals of the farm never give up hope. They find it a point of honor that they are part of Animal Farm, the only animal-run farm in the country. This pride and belief in what they are doing seems to sustain them and keep them optimistic.

CRISIS: Squealer orders the sheep to follow him to a deserted part of the farm, supposedly to learn a new song. Up until that point, the sheep had a habit of breaking out into chants of “Four legs good, two legs bad!” whenever the animals started getting antsy or possibly questioning Napoleon’s leadership. This chant was a sort of shorthand for the Seven Commandments. For a whole week, Squealer stays sequestered with the sheep, teaching them that new song “for which privacy was needed.”

Then one evening Clover sees something terrifying. “It was a pig walking on his hind legs.” Up until that point, animals were forbidden to walk on hind legs like humans. This fact was included in two of the Seven Commandments.

CLIMAX: Then Napoleon appears.

And finally there was a tremendous baying of dogs and a shrill crowing from the black cockerel, and out came Napoleon himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him.

He carried a whip in his trotter.

At this moment, all the sheep break out into a new chant: “Four legs good, two legs better!” We have seen throughout the story how Napoleon has slowly imposed his power over the other animals, but it is this moment where we see that he is no better than the human farmer before him. Shortly thereafter, the Seven Commandments are replaced by the one: “some animals are more equal than others.” After that, the pigs start wearing clothes signaling the last of the Seven Commandments has now officially been broken. It’s as though the Commandments never even existed.

At this point in the story, we have come full circle, with a new oppressor standing over the oppressed. From here on out, Napoleon (along with the pigs) only continues to become more and more similar to his human predecessor. 

Ending Type: Our protagonist is the collective of animals on Animal Farm and the thing that they want is freedom. They want to be free of oppression and live happily together on the farm. The animals still want that at the end of the book (at least, the ones like Clover and Benjamin, who remember what it was like before the rebellion).

But they do not have freedom at the end of the story. In fact, they are no better off (and are perhaps even worse off) at the end than they were at the beginning. Since they do not get what they want and they still want it, this would be a tragic ending.

DENOUEMENT: After Napoleon (and other pigs) start walking on their hind legs, things devolve quickly. The pigs hold a meeting in the farmhouse with the humans—the very same ones who they had previously been in conflict with. During this meeting Napoleon announces that they are changing the name of Animal Farm back to “Manor Farm.”

The animals outside the farmhouse look in the window and are confused because they can’t tell the pigs apart from the humans. The story ends with this closing image: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Three-Act Analysis of Animal Farm appeared first on DIY MFA.

I think the thing that got me tied up in knots about dictation was the tech. I had this idea in my head that the only way to dictate my writing would be to use some fancy microphone or elaborate software. In actuality, right now I’m just using my phone—regular old smart phone—and a little app called Bear. (It’s a notetaking app that’s super bare-bones and doesn’t have all the bells and whistles other apps might have).

The other thing that had me hesitating about dictation was this idea that I had to get it right the first time. I’ll admit it, I am a major perfectionist. If I can’t do something right then I often give up and try something else. It’s uncomfortable to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, but if you ever want to learn a new skill, you have to get past that hump.

Finally, this whole idea of dictating my work felt a little… weird. Not gonna lie. The idea of sitting around and talking out loud into my phone and then somehow ending up with a newsletter… that’s just bizarre. But now that I’m doing it—now that I’m on a roll—dictation’s actually pretty cool.

Let me share a few reasons why I’m enjoying dictation.

1) Anytime, anywhere.

The great thing about dictation is you can do it anywhere and you’re not stuck sitting at your computer. Right now I’m lying with my feet up, with office cat 2.0 curled up next to me, and I’m writing a newsletter all at the same time. How cool is that?

For a lot of writers this freedom can be game-changing. You can write while you’re walking . You can write while you’re doing dishes. You can write while you’re sitting with your feet up relaxing. This ability to write anywhere is especially important for writers who can’t sit at their desk for long periods of time.

By the time you read this newsletter I’ll be recovering from reconstructive surgery on my foot. At the time of this writing, I’m still a ways away from this surgery and I have no idea how I’ll be feeling when this newsletter goes out. Yet, now that I’m trying dictation, I have a hunch that I’ll be doing a lot more of it during those weeks when I can’t sit at my desk. Dictation may very well become my go-to during recovery.

2) It’s fast.

Dictating your work can go a lot faster than typing at a keyboard. For example, I’ve been at this dictation for about 10 minutes, and already I have almost 500 words on the page. This is mind-boggling. Keep in mind, I’m a reasonably quick writer at the keyboard. I can usually average about 1,000-1,500 words an hour, which I’ve been told is a respectable pace. But 500 words in 10 minutes? That’s almost twice as fast. I could never crank out this many words when I’m sitting at my computer.

I’ll admit, dictation does require some thinking. The words don’t just spill out on the page like magic. I have to pause from time to time to think about what I’m going to say next. Sometimes I lose my train of thought and have to backtrack. Even so, the writing still goes a lot faster when I dictate than it does when I type.

I’ve heard some pretty amazing stories of writers cranking out three, four, even five thousand words while dictating their work. But even if your word count doesn’t quite reach that level, there are some other big benefits of dictation. It’s easier on your wrists and your posture. It gives you flexibility to write whenever you want. Plus it exercises a different part of your brain, helping you to tap into other aspects of your creativity.

3) It’s easy.

Truth be told, dictation can be in some ways easier than writing on the computer. I don’t know about you, but I have a secret habit of talking to myself when I need to work out my thoughts. There’s something about hearing my thoughts out loud that gives me a different perspective and allows me to think more creatively than I would otherwise. Sitting at the computer is all silence. The thoughts stay isolated in my head, bouncing around kind of like they’re in an echo chamber.

Dictation is a way of tapping into that same creativity that comes from thinking out loud. You hear your ideas in a different way, and it helps you gain a new perspective on what you’re writing. So, here I am sitting with my phone, talking out this newsletter. Not only has it gone pretty smoothly and quickly, but I’ve also gotten ideas after the fact that I’ve been able to insert into this essay during revision. A lot of these insights have come from being able to hear my thoughts out loud.

4) It’s good practice at being a beginner.

Perhaps the best (and, in some ways, also the worst) part of dictation is that it forces me to sit with the discomfort of not doing things perfectly. Like I said before, I am a huge perfectionist, so this idea of being a beginner at something and having to learn a skill from scratch is really uncomfortable. And yet it’s only when we do uncomfortable things that we’re able to grow. If we stay perpetually in our comfort zone, we are never going to stretch ourselves and build new skills.

Here’s the funny thing about the comfort zone: it’s not a fixed space. When I think of the comfort zone, I think of a circle with me at the center. That circle represents everything that’s comfortable and familiar. If I want to stretch myself I have to move to the edge of the circle. That’s the edge of my comfort zone.

But here’s the weird thing about the comfort zone. If we stay by the edge of the circle long enough, that comfort zone expands and starts to look like a gigantic peanut. In other words, if we want to stay at the edge of our comfort zone, we can’t stay in the same place forever. We have to push ourselves constantly to the new edge, wherever that may be. We can’t stay complacent in the middle. We have to challenge ourselves to dance on that edge of discomfort.

One Caveat: It’s just the first draft.

As I’ve written this newsletter, I’ve gone back-and-forth between dictating portions of it, and then refining those segments on the computer thereafter. Sometimes I realize I’ve missed something, so I go back to my phone and I dictate a new segment. It’s been an organic process, moving from the computer to the phone and back again.

I share this because a lot of us have a misconception that when you dictate your work, it has to come out perfectly, with no revisions necessary. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. When we dictate, we stumble. We misspeak. We repeat ourselves. And that’s OK.

The whole point of dictation is to get the words down on the page so that we have raw material that we can come back to later. Dictation is where we crank out that messy first draft—Draft Zero. Then at the computer, we can go back and clean up what we have. It’s not supposed to be perfect. It’s just supposed to be. The whole point of a messy first draft is to exist. Nothing else. Every other refinement happens in revision.

Knowing that I could go back and revise my words took a lot of pressure off of trying this dictation experiment. Not only is it okay not to be perfect, but the whole point of trying dictation is just to get those words down as quickly as possible so that I can revise them later. That’s exactly how it has played out for me. 

I’m still getting used to this technique and it will likely be a while until I feel fully comfortable dictating my writing. Still I’m glad I tried it out this time. I might not use it in every circumstance, but having a new technique in my repertoire makes me a more versatile writer and that’s always a good thing.

Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!

P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.

The post Writer Fuel: Trying Out a New Technique – Dictation appeared first on DIY MFA.