Writing Excuses 9.45: Tools for Writing from Oral Storytelling

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Writing Excuses 9.45: Tools for Writing from Oral Storytelling

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2014/11/02/writing-excuses-9-45-tools-for-writing-from-oral-storytelling/

Key Points: The hat pitch starts at the beginning, and is seeded all the way through. You want your climax, your "hat pitch," to be the same way. Seed the little things early to inform your ending. Set the audience's expectation, then beat it. Avoid jingles, so beware cliched phrases and make sure you vary the sentence structure. Rhythm, pacing, voice and body language help the storyteller direct the audience's attention, in fiction, you can do the same thing with punctuation, sentence structure, paragraphing, and what the character pays attention to. Especially, pay attention to the way punctuation can enhance or break a sentence. Read your text out loud, to make sure it works. Notice how often people tell each other stories? Do that to help make your stories come to life, too.
( You'll notice this handsome hat right here... )

[Brandon] We are out of time. Dan, you have the writing prompt.
[Dan] Yes, I do. Cloudy. Okay. So. What I want you to do is, I want you to take the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Okay? The book, not the movie. Where it is an ongoing, permanent, normal thing, rather than a crisis. I want you to present a world, the nitty-gritty realities of how that society could actually function if like giant pancakes fell out of the sky every day and we just have to deal with it.
[Brandon] All right. Thank you again, M. Todd Gallowglas for being on the podcast. Thank you, Fantasy Con, for hosting us, and Fantasy Con crowd, for listening.
[Cheers]
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.