Ty Unglebower

Fuel for Writing: Stealing the Hat.

tyunglebower ♦ April 5, 2012 ♦ 1 Comment

Most writers have heard the old formula when it comes to fiction.

Put your character up a tree, throw a bunch of rocks at him, and then get him out of the tree.

How succinct and clever. And void of creativity.

All right, I know I am not being totally fair. The message behind this metaphor is legitimate in most cases. It’s a quaint yet straightforward way of informing writers (especially new ones), that something must be at risk in a story. Something has to be solved, or pursued. You must have someone in an understandable predicament at the center of the narrative. All of this is useful advice, and it’s not my intention to belittle it.

Yet be honest. Isn’t it a bit obtuse? If one new to writing fiction isn’t thinking metaphorically, does the old “dude in a tree” thing ignite any immediate realization as to how to proceed? I say no.

I prefer the lesser known advice to steal someone’s hat.

Start with a character wearing his favorite hat. Then within the first paragraph, take the hat away from them somehow. Have him try to get the hat back. Make sure he fails three times for three different reasons. Then (for the sake of the exercise) make sure in the end, he has the hat back.

Now we have both a metaphor and a prompt, whereas the tree/rocks thing is just metaphor. Okay, one could indeed write a story that was literally about a guy in a tree getting pelted with rocks. But that is quite limiting, if one opts to avoid being surreal. A person losing a hat and getting it back both serves as a reminder of the author’s job, as well as a tangible perimeter within which an tentative author can proceed in unlimited ways to tell a story.

It’s not about hats, of course. The hat is just the mcguffin.  The point here is merely to make use of something that both educates the writer and invites him to create, all at the same time. Something that an author can relate to no matter how many times they go back to it. (One reason something as universal and flexible as a hat works so well here.)

Now, this isn’t the most creative, mind-bending prompt you are going to see. That is part of its effectiveness, however. Fiction can be daunting, even for seasoned writers. It can be down right paralyzing for new writers. And while the trippy prompts with a dozen requirements do serve a purpose and can be a lot of fun to work on, the clean simplicity of “stealing the hat” may be of more use when the goal is to just get the basic gears turning.

And don’t think it’s just for new writers. No matter how experienced a writer is, sometimes they need to just practice the mechanics without trying to get fancy. Much like simulated games thrown by baseball pitchers, “stealing the hat” isn’t the real deal. A huge market for stories about losing hats is not likely to materialize. But within the privacy of your own writing space, you go through all of the most important steps of your craft when you do this.

Of course unlike throwing a simulated game, something you create while “stealing the hat” may indeed lead to something great in its own right.

How Sprout Gets It Right, and How Writers Can Too.

tyunglebower ♦ April 2, 2012 ♦ 5 Comments

I don’t watch Sprout much. (Surprise.) Until this weekend it was just something I would pass through while channel surfing, stopping on it for a minute or two on occasion due to the oddness of the visual.

Yet my sister and her daughter (my niece, of course) spent this weekend here. My niece is nine months old and quite ahead of the intellectual curve in most categories. She is often enraptured by the programming featured on Sprout, and this weekend the television in the living room was tuned into that channel for large blocks of time. And for the first time, I got a sense of some of the programming. I discovered how beneficial it could be…for me.

Yes, me.

Obviously, without my niece being present, I wouldn’t be spending much time watching the likes of “Noodle and Doodle”, “The Super Sproutlet Show”, or “The Wiggles”. Yet as a writer, I try to give credence to anything that both makes use of as well as encourages creativity in others. While much of what one sees on Sprout is in fact educational in a traditional sense, (shapes, numbers, and letters are all covered at various times), the entire focus of the programming is  the expansion of young minds in a less direct but more powerful way-development and encouragement of imagination. It is in this mission that the true genius and nobility of Sprout, (and other child oriented television) lie. It is this that speaks to the writer in me.

If you’ve never seen these channels, I encourage you to take some time to watch them, even if you don’t have children. Yes, I am serious. You don’t have to announce that you’re doing it, and of course you need not watch hours upon hours of it. But if you have free time, and are secure enough in your adulthood, tune in and carefully observe what the show is doing, and how it’s doing it. You’ll notice several recurring elements which are not directly related to “book” learning:

–Asking questions of the viewers.

–Characters talking openly about feelings and ideas.

–Solving of everyday problems.

–“Visiting” characters during the show who live in different types of places, with different cultures.

–Encouragement of viewers to create and to share things.

–Appropriate optimism.

–Zest for living.

And the best part? All of these concepts are presented through the telling of stories.

Now by stories, I don’t just mean when a host sits down to read a book, or when they cut away to a cartoon episode. I mean that almost all concepts that are explored are done via the structure of a story, whether it is being presented directly as a story or not. (In fact, it is usually not labelled as such.) Whether the host of a program must find her missing shoe, or the character in another segment meets a new friend, the situations and concepts a program wants a young person to explore are presented as stories to be consumed.

There are no mundane parts to a show on Sprout. No pipe laying or navel gazing. Every minute is filled with something that engages the viewer in a story. In the use of imagination. Though we writers may not be able to duplicate this formula exactly in our own work, (unless we write for children’s TV), we can take something away from all of this. Namely, that places like Sprout have a luxury that we think we don’t have; they can pursue and share the fantastical 24/7. Wall-to-wall magical story telling, and firing up of imaginations, while still being 100% faithful to life and truth. (If you ignore the talking animals.)

The mind of a child knows no natural cynicism. No duplicity. It exists to absorb not only information, but wonder. Sprout plays to this, and makes no apologies for it. And it works. Even when the story itself doesn’t involve “magic” per say, the concept of presenting the story is infused with a sense of the magical.

So what can we as writers learn from this? What I come away with is that just because our themes mature, our character’s obstacles are more complex, and their worries are greater doesn’t mean that adult writers should steer clear of full-on engagement of our readers’ sense of awe at the universes we create for them. Like the hosts on Sprout, we can share our ideas and our adventures with exuberance. Even if tragic themes are explored in our work, we need not jettison that appeal to wonder in our readers.

We get caught in the trap of believing that our writing must be more intellectual. Tricky. Socially relevant. Thick and complex. That it must somehow upend the very nature of what it means to exist as a human being. That it has to shock, disgust, offend in order to be powerful. And perhaps in certain situations those concepts have their place. (Though I’m on the fence with that.) Yet to me, if we write good fiction,  such high minded intentions should never come at the expense of unabashed immersion in fantasy and imagination, even if our stories are not of the fantasy genre.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because you and your readers are adults, that awe and magic must be abandoned in order to assure quality or even significance. In the end, an effective use of magic in some form or another may be the most important factor in inspiring people of all ages to look at you, and, like kids watching Sprout, make the greatest of requests: “Tell me a story.”