Emma Coats shares storytelling tips based on her time working at Pixar.
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Category: Fiction
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The Jackal Girl (trailer fragment)
EXT. TAR HOLLOW STATE FOREST, OHIO DUSK The steady breathing of a large animal is heard as it races through the forest underbrush, weaving in and out among the trees. RAMONA SCHAEFER(voiceover) Some things should not exist. INT. SCHAEFER HOME NIGHT Ramona, 21, plain, tall, and slender, walks down the dark hall in her pajamas. […]
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Stopping to Ask for Directions
It’s becoming clear that I’m using the story, characters, and relationship dynamics in Jackal as a way to work things out in my personal life. I’ve gotten too close to this project, which is preventing me from getting any farther. I don’t wish to file Jackal away in my ever-growing story file. At the same […]
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Details, Details
Found this rotting in my Drafts folder: A self-sequestered night at Owen Valley Flooring while Russell worked at the drive-in a few months ago proved to be productive. I did some more exploring of Ramona’s character. I’m good about getting character traits but not always good about translating those into physical choices. Car or public […]
Whoa, BEDA 7! The excerpt below was written this afternoon in a rush, so please forgive the roughness. I wrote this as a way to get to know Ramona and Ciarán better. I learned a few new things about Ramona. Ciarán, however, is holding out on me. I still don’t hear his accent in my […]
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In Which She Learns More Wiki Markup
I’ve been working on beefing up wiki entries on all things Jackal, since I have been stewing on numerous points that really need to be written down somewhere that is not loose bits of paper or forgotten GoogleDocs. I got stuck when trying to frame out a timeline, so I let it be for the […]
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How to Break a Heart
I realized it as I talked out the relationship between characters with Tim yesterday: Ramona has to hurt Ciarán. Badly. That will not be fun to write. Not sure of the when or how yet. Ro just doesn’t have the life experience or maturity that Ciarán has, especially in the romantic relationship department. I’m trying […]
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Miscellany
Lately, the only chatter on this blog has been housekeeping-related or private (only because those posts were more very specific notes-to-self and incoherent). So I thought I’d update. I haven’t done any writing although I did some more character sketching over the holiday break (although sadly, I did this on paper so I will have […]
I forgot to follow up on my previous post on character naming woe (a minor woe in comparison to the ‘crap, I have writer’s block’ woe or the ‘crap, my laptop died and my novel is gone’ woe). Ciarán finally has a surname: McDonagh. So why did I get so excited about a surname anyway? […]
I decided not to tackle NaNoWriMo. I was secretly considering participating this year but, with most of my evenings in the month of October being eaten up by Rocky Horror Show, I didn’t have time to prepare an outline for Jackal. I’ve made the mistake before of writing without an outline. Some people may work […]
Playing in Puddles 