frankcreed.com Blog

Since my childhood in the 1970s, I knew I wanted to write. I cannot
recall when I first read that a writer always needs to carry a pen and
paper for inspiration’s lightning strikes, but a few months later I
was the proud owner of scrap paper piles. I said to myself “Wow, this
is helpful.” Then I heard about keeping a writer’s notebook; the
concept impacted my skull like a brick. This eleventh Commandment
(somewhere in Leviticus I think), inspired me to load a three ring
binder with two hundred sheets of filler paper and two packs of index
tabs. Many hours of scribbling later gave me a full trash bin and an
invaluable personal fiction reference resource: my notebook has become
a lifestyle.
Later I began writing in another genre: my first act was to split my
notes into a second notebook. Duct tape could not revive my original
binder, may it rest in pieces, but the system upon which I’ve come to
depend, lives on. It doesn’t matter if you write notes in a hard copy
folder or type in e-file, the important thing is your ability to access
your own catalog of ideas.

THE TABS:
These will vary depending upon one’s form and genre. I write
speculative and fantasy fiction so my own look like this:

MARKETING/BUSINESS PLAN
NAMES LIST
SLANG DICTIONARY
ONE LINERS & PHRASES
SETTING AND BACKGROUND
CHARACTER PROFILES
RESEARCH
RPG/COMIC NOTES
WRITING TIPS
WISDOMS
NON-WIP IDEAS
SEQUEL NOTES

I’ll detail each of these categories in coming months, but a recent
question from the Fellowship of Christian Writers Newsgroup makes me
focus on the last in this list: the nebulous SEQUEL NOTES.
gificor@gmail.com asked, “I am trying to organize some of my short
story ideas into coherent story outlines.  Does anyone have advice and
examples?” The following methodology serves either long or short
fiction:
I begin with a concept, an inkling of story-line and characters, then
turn to my SEQUEL NOTES tab to gather up some particulars. My loose
outline is left intentionally rough in order to accommodate brainstorms
that occur as I create.

Themes: this is where I start. Meaningful fiction carries messages.
List here the social concerns that have weighted your heart to address
in future fiction.
Plots: I’ve begun with a kernel, but this treasure of notes fleshes out
the skeleton.
Scene Ideas: little mind’s-eye concepts that add silk leather and
velvet to each tale.
Characters: the heart of any story. By now I have enough of the story
constructed that I can fill one page bios.
Concepts: The little things that would otherwise slip the cracks
between characters and construct: symbolism, misdirection, strategy,
etc.
Snappy Lines: a record of THAT’S-what-I-should-have-said. One of the
advantages of our craft is time.

Every writer’s bag of tricks is of unique cloth, but each of us dumps
it out our work must have details and depth.
“Trifles go to make perfection, and perfection is no
trifle.”–Michelangelo Buonarroti

To God be the glory,
Scott “Frank Creed” Morris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
e-mail: frankcreed@insightbb.com
Home: http://www.frankcreed.com
Blog: http://www.frankcreed.com/blog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

April third, 2006

The news yesterday of my father’s death obviously blew the day’s
creative productivity right off the itinerary. I am so thankful for the
sixteen years He allowed dad and I to have together.  My mom and dad
divorced when I was about five, and she kept him out of my whole
childhood. It wasn’t until 1989 when I was living in the Chicago burbs
that my sister located dad here in Lafayette Indiana, and set up our
first meeting in nearly two decades. Over the next five years we
visited regularly and developed a wonderful relationship. In May of
1994 I moved to Lafayette and stayed at his house until I got
established. Back then I was working on my fantasy work, White Iron.
Dad had focused his lifelong creative efforts into entrepreneurism, and
had started several companies, but never enjoyed any degree of success.
My bouncing ideas off the old guy nourished a drive that he never knew
he had, and in the late nineties, he funneled his creative energy into
his first fantasy novel. Like the work of any new fiction writer, it
was bad, but he had a natural gift for plot-development and in six or
seven years really learned how to turn a phrase. I’d been driven to
write my whole life, so my father’s new interest opened a commonality
that gave a new depth to our relationship. A few yeas ago dad
discovered elfwood.com, the web’s largest fantasy and science fiction
site. He made many friends there and after a year, founded Fantasy
Writers International, a writer’s club for aspiring novelists. In
January of 2005 he solicited FWI’s members for contributions to an
anthology of high fantasy. The anthology’s completion was delayed my a
family crisis involving his sister in California. He and my grandmother
flew to California to support my aunt. The trip dragged out longer than
anticipated, and the decision was made that dad would fly back to
Illinois and drive my grandmother’s car to San Deigo. On the evening of
April first, somewhere around Fort Worth Tx, the car left the road and
rolled. He was ejected from the vehicle and found some fifteen feet
away by paramedics. Dad was immediately alert and responsive, but once
in the ICU the only movement of which he was capable below the waist
was the movement of his big toes. Then he went unconscious. My brother
informed me that dad coded four times in the early AM hours of April
second and never regained consciousness. At about 7:30 PM my brother
again phoned phoned, this time with the news that dad had been declared
brain-dead.
C.S. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed after Joy, his wife of three years,
was taken by cancer. After weeks of his soul’s torment Lewis turned a
corner. At this point he wondered why he couldn’t see that there was
nothing to do with suffering but suffer it. In 1996 these words
comforted me when my mother died of complications brought about by
Multiple Sclerosis. Lewis’ same words sustain me now.
Dad was so happy in the last years of his life, and although he was not
able to hold the finished book in his hands, assembling this anthology
for his fantasy fiction club was his dream come true. My wife, Cynthia,
is the anthology’s editor and told me last night that she’s decided to
see this project’s completion. Dad’s dream will be posthumously
realized. It has, over the last twenty-four hours, slowly occurred to
me that this book will stand, in my mind, as a memorial. Regardless of
any future success that I may enjoy as a novelist, this secular fantasy
anthology will undoubtedly stand as my life’s most meaningful published
work. It will be a physical symbol to the years with my father with
which He blessed us.
Thank you Father for the time with my father.