Example 3 of writing and rewriting for clients; 2nd rewrite:
Perking Up Boring Romance (Action) Writing
By Neale Sourna
Are your stories of sizzling love fizzling out like tired champagne;
more flavored water than sparkling? Well, romance (falling in love) is
an action that needs to be active; so, ruthlessly search your bland
scenes to locate blah moments to reshape into tender moments that spark
alive your readers’ senses, imagination, and fears, by adding little
triggers that exploit, in a good way, your readers’ emotions and
expectations, by...
WRITING TO OUR SENSES
The easiest way
to slip deeper into your characters and readers’ minds and hearts is to
take individual editing passes through your stories, concentrating on
one sense at a time, to add when each lover can see, hear, touch, smell
(let’s say “scent,” sounds less odious), and taste. It adds flavor and
sparks sensory interest right away.
Why?
Because most of
us have five senses for perceiving the world around us. We know what a
fresh, crisp sweet apple or a fresh, crisp tart apple tastes like, know
the scent of hot bread, floral cologne, musk on a body that attracts us,
or musk from somebody who repels us.
Writing to our senses adds
instant tactility and reality; luring a reader deeper into your world.
We’ll feel the hug that relaxes us in a plump grandmother's arms or the
sharp bite of a sadist's whip drawing blood from our backs, while making
us bite our tongues against the pain to taste.....
This
technique is especially useful for writers who think excessively more
than allow the feeling and their story characters do too. They think,
they thought, they realize….
Stop.
Step out of your head and your
readers will follow into their sense body and emotions. Sounds and
scents and touch and sight can trigger emotions, both good and bad,
long-standing or passing. So, use all of your main characters' senses;
it makes them more real to us, turning them into real people.
The
first time I did this in a script it made everything pop and more rich.
Of course, don’t use it in every sentence, till we puke, unless that's
the plan; but, it helps add the sparkle of life, so do it.
BUT, DON’T FORGET SENSE #6
Depending on your genre and character types, your couple or one of them
may have a sense of “knowing.” I know many close relatives or friends
who actually do this in their own lives. It's when one has an
unexplainable knowing, from simply being able to sense their lover's
unplanned arrival or phone call, or to feel unreasonably agitated enough
that they must rush to make certain their wife, husband, child, or
friend is safe.
It may just be a feeling of assured faith and knowing the other will rescue them, love them forever, or hasn’t truly left them.
It can also be that “jinx” thing, when two people say or do the same
thing at the same time. I do this all the time with family members and
close friends. It's just two people feeling the same vibe, or recalling
the same shared experience. It is weirdly fun and adds a layer of
intimate bonding.
AND DON’T FORGET THE LACK OF OUR SENSES
“When I entered I couldn’t sense him, not even that gentle scent of his
cologne, and not that gentle vibration that always signaled that he’s
nearby.”
“Disconcertingly, although we were in the dance’s
embrace, I felt, sensed, whatever, her body harden and edge away from
me; the worse was holding her yet in my arms, but feeling I was abruptly
alone.”
DISCOVERY & RESPONSE
Here’s more help.
Your character people experience love, suffer, die, and some are reborn
as vampires or zombies in love. It's in your hands how your lovers
discover and rediscover what they feel, what they understand and when,
and how, when or if they respond to this stimuli.
In the novel
HOBBLE, the relationship of my main couple, Day and Benn, is highly
erotic, an instant bonfire, but a significant and more important and
binding part of their story plays on psychological levels of dependency,
on spiritual need both oppressed and heightened, and on discovering
their most romantically needy and protected selves, hidden even from
themselves, while their responses to having such needs met pulls each
deeper into emotional involvement and investment in the other.
Example, Benn has a hidden and unspoken desire for his lovers show him
PDA (public displays of affection). He's been in relationships with
professional women and also one who belonged to a religious cultural
background that discourages such openness; so he's never brought it up,
nor truly allows himself to expect it.
Day, however, as a woman
long abused and crippled (hobbled) on many levels has nearly a psychic
manner in knowing what they desire. So, Day understands Benn on levels
he doesn't understand himself, until his involvement with her.
In
turn, he instills in her a feeling of security and love, making her
discover that she needn't tolerate others' unwanted desires and that
she's worthy of more than being a sexual plaything, and responds by
demanding more.
Our senses are easy things to use, leading your
characters and readers into more interesting levels, perking up your
readers' sensory involvement in the intimate discoveries of your hero
and heroine.
Because when we better visualize and feel, it generates a
response within us.
_889 wds
Client kind of liked yet not satisfied with it and asked if I minded if they would rewrite to suit themselves. No, don't mind.
I've worked with with client a long time ago, but didn't mention it to them. It's nice to know it's just conflict of style.
My repeat clients and most of my single clients, well, we match and
complete one another. Sometimes not so much... End of this visual tale.
Showing posts with label client. Show all posts
Showing posts with label client. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Example 1 of writing for clients: Perking Up Boring Romance (Action) Writing
Example 1 of writing for clients:
Perking Up Boring Romance (Action) Writing
By Neale Sourna
Hey, are your stories of sizzling love fizzling out like tired champagne that’s more flavored water than sparkling? Well, let’s generate some sparks and flames. And it won’t be painful, not unless you make it so. So don’t.
You see it in films and TV shows, two actors standing together and supposedly in a budding or growing or full-blown relationship … and yet you don’t believe them. You feel nothing for them, not truly. You don’t care what really happens to them, especially not as two who should be together.
When someone writes this, you say you can do better: when it’s your own characters it’s … painful, and frustrating. Have you written…?
TO OUR SENSES
One of the easiest ways to get deeper into your readers’ minds and hearts and into your characters, because CHARACTER IS EVERYTHING, is to take several editing passes through your stories, concentrating one at a time, and add when your couple can see, hear, touch, smell (let’s say “scent,” sounds less odious), and taste. It adds flavor and sparks interest right away.
Why?
Because all of us, or nearly all, have all or most of these senses and know what a fresh, crisp sweet apple or a fresh, crisp tart apple tastes like. The scent of hot bread, floral cologne, musk on a warm body that you love. Or musk from a body that repels you.
Naughty right? Plus, you’ve just drawn us into your world that we feel the hug that relaxes you and the bite of a whip from a sadist that draws your blood and makes you bite your tongue to taste…?
This is especially useful for those of us who think A LOT and say our characters do too. They think, they thought, they realize….
Get out of your head, and theirs. Try using all of your senses for your people. The first time I did this in a script it made everything pop and more rich. Of course, don’t use it in every sentence, but you can add that spark, so do.
DON’T FORGET SENSE #6
Depending on your story and the type of characters, your couple or one of them may have a sense of “knowing” when the other is arriving or feel agitated that they must call home or get to wherever they are because their partner needs them badly.
Or it may just be a feeling of faith in which one or both KNOWS the other will rescue them, love them, hasn’t truly left them.
Or that “jinx” thing, when two people say or do the same thing at the same time. I do this all the time with family members and close friends. We’re just on the same track, feeling the same vibe, or recalling the same shared experience and now this is the another layer to it.
AND DON’T FORGET THE LACK OF OUR SENSES
“When I entered I couldn’t sense him, not even that gentle scent of his cologne, and not that vibration that signaled … him and his nearby presence.”
“Disconcertingly, although we were in the dance’s embrace, I felt, sensed her pull away from me; her body hardened, edged away from me; but, the worse was that, while still holding her, I abruptly felt alone.”
DISCOVERY & RESPONSE
Your characters, your people experience their world, like you and I and our family and friends do. They are real, in that world, and can be in your readers’ minds and hearts. Who hasn’t grown up and had to have it explained to them that, no, Sherlock Holmes who lives at 221-B Bakers Street isn’t and never was a living, breathing person. Are you certain?
Your characters live, love, suffer, die, and get reborn as vampires and zombies, okay, vamps and z’s are only in some cases. You, however, are our Guide in this individual world you have shaped, you are the Guide to who your people are and how they discover and rediscover themselves and react and respond to it.
Think about an historical era character who is rescued by a gentleman and, perhaps, now owes him her “virtue” and maybe even her life. And when he asks can he contact her family, she has no answer. Why? I don’t fully know yet, it’s a new work in progress for me; but, for her, his question:
Makes her stutter to a pause, and discover she’s uncomfortable giving him that information.
She also discovers she feels bad about withholding this from him because he’s been really nice, respectful, and he’s kind of really attractive.
And she’s not going to cave and give her private information now; it’s a can of crawly worms she doesn’t want to got into yet, or maybe ever. She will much later, but not now, which also helps your storytelling, postponing, delaying consummation and climax.
That’s only part of it, half of your writing because you are telling an intimate story of two (or more) people interacting and he’s in the scene, too, and he’s been gracious, kind, etcetera and he’s a man who commands respect and the world usually bends to his will and although he understands that she is afraid; still:
He’s gonna wonder what the heck is up with a woman all alone in the world who’s just survived multiple traumas and he’s giving her carte blanche to return to her family or at least contact them.
If you yourself helped someone escape a violent danger and took them home, wouldn’t you feel or think this is strange behaviour; especially in a time when most women never went farther than five miles from home their entire lives?
He’s also thinking he’s powerful and wealthy, or at least you are thinking and feeling these things for or with him and wondering if maybe she might just decided he’s a big, juicy catch of the day for her and she’s got, hm, who or what she’s avoiding as family?
Now with all our SENSES involved with them and your layering of your possible or actual lovers DISCOVERY of their own confusions, senses, and sensuality in conflict with themselves in wanting to be attractive and tractable but, instead, generating a negative RESPONSE….
WATCH YOUR TONE!
Okay, you don’t want to get too naughty, or you do; you don’t want to fall into erotica, and just want to stay in romance or romantic. Fine. That’s your choice, it’s your story make it your style(s), done in your way.
I and my friends can read Dr. Seuss like it’s porn; it’s all in the tone that you control as soft or hard, making it merely romance, harder romance, erotica romance, romantic erotica, or erotica. “What’s in a name?” What is your tone?
Some stories require an austere, upright, aloof manner. Others require an open friendly, “Here, dude,” or “Here, girlfriend,” sense to it. Hm, another SENSE, people.
Stream or watch a recording that you can control, by going back and listening and watching and listening for how words are said, which words are used (because differing education levels and other matters can alter or change that.
I love theater and work as a stage manager sometimes, which gives me the chance to watch actors choose, discard, and make new choices in rehearsals how to express those words, or the hidden meaning or a contrast of them, and what movements or stillness, how LOUD or how softly whispered, or intensely hushed….
You don’t have to work backstage, but you should have the eyes and ears of a stage manager who has scrutinized over many hours and many weeks the many ways to express what the writer wants AND what the director wants as a layer of that director’s expression of the material.
If you can go to live theater dramas, comedies, and tragedies done in our local area. Yes, we all watch television and all watch films but you don’t always ACTIVELY LISTEN for HOW actors or “real” people caught on the news SAY things with their mouths, SAY things with their eyes, or just with their mute expression or body attitude. HOW they move their bodies, HOW they express with and without words.
Does a character hum when they are nervous? Sing when they are happy? I’ve been known to hum “Whistle While You Work” when I’m intensely annoyed at work but must still handle many people or difficult ones.
===
Client's requested rewrite changes in next post.
Perking Up Boring Romance (Action) Writing
By Neale Sourna
Hey, are your stories of sizzling love fizzling out like tired champagne that’s more flavored water than sparkling? Well, let’s generate some sparks and flames. And it won’t be painful, not unless you make it so. So don’t.
You see it in films and TV shows, two actors standing together and supposedly in a budding or growing or full-blown relationship … and yet you don’t believe them. You feel nothing for them, not truly. You don’t care what really happens to them, especially not as two who should be together.
When someone writes this, you say you can do better: when it’s your own characters it’s … painful, and frustrating. Have you written…?
TO OUR SENSES
One of the easiest ways to get deeper into your readers’ minds and hearts and into your characters, because CHARACTER IS EVERYTHING, is to take several editing passes through your stories, concentrating one at a time, and add when your couple can see, hear, touch, smell (let’s say “scent,” sounds less odious), and taste. It adds flavor and sparks interest right away.
Why?
Because all of us, or nearly all, have all or most of these senses and know what a fresh, crisp sweet apple or a fresh, crisp tart apple tastes like. The scent of hot bread, floral cologne, musk on a warm body that you love. Or musk from a body that repels you.
Naughty right? Plus, you’ve just drawn us into your world that we feel the hug that relaxes you and the bite of a whip from a sadist that draws your blood and makes you bite your tongue to taste…?
This is especially useful for those of us who think A LOT and say our characters do too. They think, they thought, they realize….
Get out of your head, and theirs. Try using all of your senses for your people. The first time I did this in a script it made everything pop and more rich. Of course, don’t use it in every sentence, but you can add that spark, so do.
DON’T FORGET SENSE #6
Depending on your story and the type of characters, your couple or one of them may have a sense of “knowing” when the other is arriving or feel agitated that they must call home or get to wherever they are because their partner needs them badly.
Or it may just be a feeling of faith in which one or both KNOWS the other will rescue them, love them, hasn’t truly left them.
Or that “jinx” thing, when two people say or do the same thing at the same time. I do this all the time with family members and close friends. We’re just on the same track, feeling the same vibe, or recalling the same shared experience and now this is the another layer to it.
AND DON’T FORGET THE LACK OF OUR SENSES
“When I entered I couldn’t sense him, not even that gentle scent of his cologne, and not that vibration that signaled … him and his nearby presence.”
“Disconcertingly, although we were in the dance’s embrace, I felt, sensed her pull away from me; her body hardened, edged away from me; but, the worse was that, while still holding her, I abruptly felt alone.”
DISCOVERY & RESPONSE
Your characters, your people experience their world, like you and I and our family and friends do. They are real, in that world, and can be in your readers’ minds and hearts. Who hasn’t grown up and had to have it explained to them that, no, Sherlock Holmes who lives at 221-B Bakers Street isn’t and never was a living, breathing person. Are you certain?
Your characters live, love, suffer, die, and get reborn as vampires and zombies, okay, vamps and z’s are only in some cases. You, however, are our Guide in this individual world you have shaped, you are the Guide to who your people are and how they discover and rediscover themselves and react and respond to it.
Think about an historical era character who is rescued by a gentleman and, perhaps, now owes him her “virtue” and maybe even her life. And when he asks can he contact her family, she has no answer. Why? I don’t fully know yet, it’s a new work in progress for me; but, for her, his question:
Makes her stutter to a pause, and discover she’s uncomfortable giving him that information.
She also discovers she feels bad about withholding this from him because he’s been really nice, respectful, and he’s kind of really attractive.
And she’s not going to cave and give her private information now; it’s a can of crawly worms she doesn’t want to got into yet, or maybe ever. She will much later, but not now, which also helps your storytelling, postponing, delaying consummation and climax.
That’s only part of it, half of your writing because you are telling an intimate story of two (or more) people interacting and he’s in the scene, too, and he’s been gracious, kind, etcetera and he’s a man who commands respect and the world usually bends to his will and although he understands that she is afraid; still:
He’s gonna wonder what the heck is up with a woman all alone in the world who’s just survived multiple traumas and he’s giving her carte blanche to return to her family or at least contact them.
If you yourself helped someone escape a violent danger and took them home, wouldn’t you feel or think this is strange behaviour; especially in a time when most women never went farther than five miles from home their entire lives?
He’s also thinking he’s powerful and wealthy, or at least you are thinking and feeling these things for or with him and wondering if maybe she might just decided he’s a big, juicy catch of the day for her and she’s got, hm, who or what she’s avoiding as family?
Now with all our SENSES involved with them and your layering of your possible or actual lovers DISCOVERY of their own confusions, senses, and sensuality in conflict with themselves in wanting to be attractive and tractable but, instead, generating a negative RESPONSE….
WATCH YOUR TONE!
Okay, you don’t want to get too naughty, or you do; you don’t want to fall into erotica, and just want to stay in romance or romantic. Fine. That’s your choice, it’s your story make it your style(s), done in your way.
I and my friends can read Dr. Seuss like it’s porn; it’s all in the tone that you control as soft or hard, making it merely romance, harder romance, erotica romance, romantic erotica, or erotica. “What’s in a name?” What is your tone?
Some stories require an austere, upright, aloof manner. Others require an open friendly, “Here, dude,” or “Here, girlfriend,” sense to it. Hm, another SENSE, people.
Stream or watch a recording that you can control, by going back and listening and watching and listening for how words are said, which words are used (because differing education levels and other matters can alter or change that.
I love theater and work as a stage manager sometimes, which gives me the chance to watch actors choose, discard, and make new choices in rehearsals how to express those words, or the hidden meaning or a contrast of them, and what movements or stillness, how LOUD or how softly whispered, or intensely hushed….
You don’t have to work backstage, but you should have the eyes and ears of a stage manager who has scrutinized over many hours and many weeks the many ways to express what the writer wants AND what the director wants as a layer of that director’s expression of the material.
If you can go to live theater dramas, comedies, and tragedies done in our local area. Yes, we all watch television and all watch films but you don’t always ACTIVELY LISTEN for HOW actors or “real” people caught on the news SAY things with their mouths, SAY things with their eyes, or just with their mute expression or body attitude. HOW they move their bodies, HOW they express with and without words.
Does a character hum when they are nervous? Sing when they are happy? I’ve been known to hum “Whistle While You Work” when I’m intensely annoyed at work but must still handle many people or difficult ones.
===
Client's requested rewrite changes in next post.
Thursday, April 07, 2016
My answer to a possible client. Actually, I seemed to have worked for this person....
My answer to a possible client. Actually, I seemed to have worked for this person / group before; and they were unpleasant in the work last Aug and I had to arbitrate at Guru.com in early Sept last.
The same client I.D. invited me last Sept. I reminded them we were apparently in dispute.
The same client I.D. invited me again this month, we've been talking amiably. I've finally had to ask, if they have more than one person using the ID. Or the person is.... What?
My answer to this possible client, re-client? about not playing CYOA games:
CLIENT: ...but you don't seem to play at all.
NealeSourna's Writing-Naked.com:
Gaming is not calming to me. I find limited personal fun and interest in them. That goes for card and table games, even chess, as well. It's just the way my brain functions.
I bore easily with playing the system; but making the puzzle of a well-told story about great characters that a client can come back to again and again is of high interest, though.
Other game companies have not even asked about play activity before ordering, they answer my questions from my game research and guide me with their corrections to suit what they specifically need and want, especially for new genres and then publish the stories I crafted for them.
There are a LOT of different styles and platforms, after all. Story and how to entertain are the cross over between RPG, CYO, and other successfully published online or card games I've worked on.
Thank You,
Neale
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Client Relationship Article_Words: "It's Only Words" by Neale Sourna
Words, "It's Only Words"
Our words, expressing ourselves, and what we may be really saying
I'm guilty, which can actually get me dead because I've been accused of quibbling about the subtle meanings of words; semantics. "That's just semantics, Neale." Well. "We are what we eat." "Garbage in, garbage out." "If I didn't know better…." I find words to be fascinating and the blatant and especially subliminal ways people choose them and use them even more so. Many seem to think imprecision of word choice and the subtle tones behind them, as they deliver them to another's ear is wholly inconsequential.
Hm. About as unimportant as too million dollars? No, that's not a typo. Or try this: you for dinner in lieu of ewe for dinner. Are the right words important to you yet?
Anger and rage.
Curse someone out quietly, with or without expletives and you'll stun your victim a little, sometimes a lot. Calm rage, contained hostility takes more energy for them to engage; they wonder is he really pissed, is she just playing, is my life on the line or not—I can't tell, exactly.
Because the accepted tone for anger and rage is loud, hysterical even.
Love is spoken in dulcet tones, like cooing to babies and kittens, but say hostile words in dulcet, soft, warm and cooing tones and you befuddle and frighten. Leaving them stunned long enough for you to run, punch them out, or come up with a third more brilliant and creative action to your pending conflict.
Marvel versus DC.
Words are a main reason I always, in general, preferred Marvel Comics over DC. Words and character. Marvel had the best "real" characters with real problems, everyday problems—that's why Spidey and "The X-Men" rule...http://stories.neale-sourna.com/article_words.htmlWednesday, October 19, 2011
NEW Client Game Script by Neale Sourna
Game Script by Neale Sourna Be a game detective sleuth following a sexy, cheating bisexual wife, who may be horny for what you've got, too, not to mention a high cash bonus payout for your results. Or maybe not, if you fail. Go on a (Seven) "7 Day Quest" with private investigator Jack Wells . Get your Lesson of Passion and see what the hot ladies and gents in this sexy little town, massage spa, hotel, bar, and other locations swing! | "Good story line,good girls, great graphics 5/5!" "really fuunny game;) very nice" "wow, amazing game, one of the best.. hotty girls and good storyline" "story in the game is awesome, and dead line of 7 days makes it more interesting" "a great story, a great game, and great graphics" "the story line is great" "a great story, a great game, and great graphics" |
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