Humanities - Procedural Knowledge

"You should write something that you yourself would read"  ― Austin Kleon

Important to “School Yourself” – School is one thing.  Education is another.  Important to be curious about the world.  Web-search everything – your dreams, your problems.  Don’t ask a question before you web-search it. (Austin Kleon, 'Steal like an Aritst')

Novel Writing Process.
1. Planning
Read. Suggestions:  1) read everything from “Bunyan to Byatt” (even Kerouac, maybe), 2) “Bird by Bird - Some Instructions of Writing and Life” (Anne Lamont), 3) Public Library.  Read biographies, bibliographies.  “It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that the book leads you to”.
2. Write.  Write for the market and yourself.  Learn how to write (see “Bird by Bird”). Three Categories:
    1) Genre Fiction (Crime, Mystery, Suspense, Horror, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy)
    2) Literary Novels
    3) Mainstream Fiction
3. Revise.  Polish.  Rewrite. Polish.

How to Write Poetry
1. Free Verse.  No use of meter patterns (set number of syllables per line) or rhyme.  Tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech.  Personal preference; more expressive for some.  Examples: “A Noiseless Patient Spider” (Walt Whitman); "The Garden" (Ezra Pound); “Chicago” (Carl Sandburg).
2. Blank Verse.  Structured meter pattern without rhyming lines.
3. Haiku.  Structure: Three lines: 1st line, 5 syllables; 2nd line, 7 syllables, 3rd line, 5 syllables.
  The warmth on my skin.
  Fire falls beneath the trees.
  I see the sun set.
4. Rhyming Couplet and Quatrain.  Couplets are a pair of lines.  Quatrain are four lines.  Rhyming lines usually have the same meter. 
5. Sonnet. Iambic pentameter poem made of fourteen lines:  Three quatrains + one couplet.  Example: "Sonnet 18" (Shakespeare).
6. Limerick.  Five line poem: Two rhyming couplets + single line.  Last line rhymes with the 1st couplet.
  Writing a Limerick's absurd,
  Line one and line five rhyme in word,
  And just as you've reckoned
  They rhyme with the second;
  The fourth line must rhyme with the third.
7. Villanelle.  Complex scheme: Five tercets (3 lines) + one quatrain.  Example: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (Dylan Thomas)

Song Writing Process
1. Ideas Phase.  Songwriting is a very personal process. Ideas can ‘pop-up’ anywhere and everyone has a different way of getting the first hint.  Modern smart devices are useful recorders and note takers.
2. Draft Phase.  Purpose of the draft phase is to capture the raw emotion of the song.  Don’t need all the ideas at first. 
3. Development Phase.  Good idea is to connect melodies with emotion.  Possible starts: catchy short riff; let the emotion and your ear guide you.  Later work on structure development: chorus melody, verse melody, bridge melody, harmony.  After edit cycle, get critique for others.  Example process: 1) melody fragment, 2)  determine major scale, 3) determine major (M) &/or minor (m) chords and progression, 4) determine related chords, 5) ‘Shape’ the sound (human art) - ‘Harmonic Movement’, 6) Musical Dynamic – variations in loudness, 7) Writing the lyrics, 8) Song structure (verse/chorus), 9) that 'mystery' other stuff.

How to Write a Screenplay

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