back to basics: propp's functions, pt. 4

Today, we dive back into Propp’s Fairy Tale Functions. As always, to read any previous posts in the Back to Basics series, just click the “writing help” navigation tab. So, the next four stages are First Function of the Donor, Hero’s Reaction, Receipt of a Magical Agent, and Guidance. Again, we’ll use the films Aladdin, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Stardust for example material. While the examples are mine, the comments on each stage are paraphrases—sometimes verbatim—of the material in Christopher Vogler and David McKenna’s book Memo from the Story Dept.

As noted before, Propp’s Functions are not a rigid structure. The “stages”, as I call them, can be swip-swapped around to your heart’s desire. These functions should serve the story, not the other way around.

a few words from neil gaiman

Short post today since I had a really late start. Also, I’ll be continuing the subseries on Propp’s Fairy Tale functions next week; there are about five more posts to do for that.

I know most of you have probably seen this video, but in case you haven’t, here that is.

me talking about persiany stuff

For lack of a better title.

Over the past week, I’ve been busy brainstorming. Ideas have been bouncing all over the place—not all of them good, mind you—and I’ve made a bit of progress with the story. I’ve read up on my Ancient Persian history, just to remind myself of the culture. I don’t want to get too caught up on being accurate since the story locale is based on Ancient Persia, rather than actually being Ancient Persia. Still, I love this sort of thing—reading up on religions and cultural practices and science and such. 

new project of awesome

This is a follow up to Monday’s post, in which I announce my decision to put The Guild Conspiracy on hold to work on something else. I was a bit vague on the details of that new project, but only because I didn’t want the post to run any longer than it had to. And now, I have an entire post to devote to it!

So, like I said before, this new project is an old one. It’s the book I was working on before starting The Clockwork Giant, a book I had spent fifteen months on before finally deciding to put it aside. I think I’ve mentioned it a few times over the course of having this blog. I’m not sure whether or not I’ve ever gone into extensive detail about it, and I really don’t want to click through old posts to find out.

i'm back! with news...

So, I’m back from... we’ll call it medical leave. I’ve slowly made the foray back into social media, even Facebook—gasp! While I’ve been away, however, I have done some productive things. I met all fifty achievements for Skyrim on the Xbox 360. Oh, and writing related things… I finished the new cover and back cover copy for The Clockwork Giant, updated the book’s content to include an excerpt from the second book as well as my new bio, and I made a difficult decision about the second book, The Guild Conspiracy.

I’m putting it on hold.