Stinklings Never Lie

The first meeting of The Stinklings went really, really well.  Haley, Bailey, and I met with Emery at a Korean place called Bee Wan.  I’ve never had Korean, and to be truthful, was a little reticent.  Haley and I brought our stories; Bailey just wanted to say goodbye to Emery who left this morning for a six-week trip to China. 

We chatted about Vampire and Changeling, laid out plans for the next genre(urban fantasy), had some rather tasty food(that’s what I get for being close-minded), and talked our stories.

I got a lot of good feedback from the two of them.  Apparently, my technical ability has survived the years of atrophy with minor decay, which is very comforting to me.  The story, however, definitely needs some tightening up.  I need to find out what I actually want to say with the story, and I need to draw some of the periphery more clearly.  I need to address motivation and have the main character do something; as it is, he is the passive agent in the story.  Basically, I need to make the story work better than it does now.

Through the course of the discussion, we discovered something interesting relating to how people read stories.  When I wrote mine and when Emery read it, we concentrated on the male lead.  I wrote a female supporting character, but she was sort of an element of the main character’s life, rather than a character with her own life.  So, he and I both accepted her and her actions and her level of interaction.

Haley read it and sort of latched onto the woman, and so she was waiting for some big reveal to happen, which never did.  She pointed out little things that the character would logically do in real life that I neglected to have her do in the story, which led Haley to construct a different narrative while reading.  Part of the reason for this is that I simply didn’t find her as important as the story I was trying to tell.  Emery and I both accepted the sketch of the character.

I found it pretty interesting, and it made me wonder if it was a gender thing- as in, do boys and girls read things differently and assign different narrative weight to different characters? 

All in all, it was a very good meeting and I’m already revising the month one story and am plotting out the month two.

Also, we started our SWARMiversary week with Minecraft.  We fought the Ender Dragon and thumped him soundly, then went on a wonderful TNT spree, blowing up certain eyesores that had been constructed in the world.  It was so much fun.  I think I had forgotten how much I really like that game.  And the SWARM makes everything so much better.  To quote TA.  ‘I’m glad the SWARM was here with me, at the End of all things.’