For the past year or so I’ve been going way deep with story structure. Books, podcasts, courses. I find the phrase “learning your craft” presumptive and cringy, but that’s what I’m doing, if I considered my book a WIP (a work-in-progress for the snooty snoots), and not an HMOUD (hot-mess-of-unrealized-dreams).
And for the past six months I’ve also gone way deep on dog training. YouTube, trainers, podcasts. We adopted a dog who is so much fun, but she and one of my current dogs hate each other.
What I’ve found is that for both of these things, there are a thousand ways to get to the truth of the matter. There are foundations that can’t be denied. Certain things have to happen or what you want to happen just…won’t. You can dress it up anyway you like – the path can be long and winding or straight and narrow, but you’re going to the same place.
For writing, there are foundational beats that a reader expects for the genre, and tension that has to exist. Your protagonist has to make hard choices, and for me that’s hard because I’ve made very few hard choices. But to my credit, the ones I made were biggies (even though sometimes it was the wrong choice).
For dog training, there are rules and boundaries a dog has to understand, otherwise they get out of whack and become a mess. Implementing those boundaries are hard for me (note the above bad choices).
So, for two things at the same time, I am learning that I and my life situation are not special, and if I want to get where I want things to go, I have to act like my protagonist and make things happen.
That’s all I got for tonight guys.
freckled crab 