Coffee & Conversation: Popcorn or candy at the movie theatre?

12 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by Emmi Lawrence in Coffee & Conversation

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answer, FAQ, question, questions, Writing

Here’s a silly question for today, especially given our theatres have been closed for quite some time because of world events.

Popcorn, in all its salty, buttery goodness can be incredibly messy. Plus, multiple hands all reaching into a bucket can be a massive dissuader. Course, I could get an individual bag, but that doesn’t stop your hands from being gross or your teeth filled with kernals no amount of tongue-twisting can remove.

Candy, depending on what you choose, can be less messy. Chocolate will still melt in your hand, yet you can tip the box directly into your mouth. I would personally get something like skittles to counteract this, but then you run into the problem of not being able to tell what color/flavor you’re about to eat on account of the darkness. Which is a problem when lime is a digusting, no good, awful flavor.

[I met a gal once who didn’t like the orange ones–we should have been best friends!]

So if I had to choose just one, I would probably go for the candy. It has a longer shelf life so I don’t have to throw it out after the movie.

But really, I mostly don’t eat anything during movie outings because the snacks are too expensive and just make you feel poorly. Here’s to hoping going to the movies becomes a thing again! :)

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: Do you ever talk to yourself?

13 Monday Jul 2020

Posted by Emmi Lawrence in Coffee & Conversation

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answers, argument, Fantasy, FAQ, monday morning, perspective, questions, reading, writer, Writing

All the damn time.

I think this question can be considered in two different ways. Firstly, just at face value: I do the typical talking to myself. The arguments in the showers (that I always win), the walking myself through a process (this goes here and that’s what I do next), and the mumbling to myself whenever some horrible memory rears its head and I just want to sink into the ground never to be seen again.

You probably do something similar (and if you don’t, what is your secret?)

Secondly, I could read this as a writer would, because let’s face it, us writers are ALWAYS talking to ourselves.

Our characters are literally just figments of our imagination, dreamt up and put down on paper. So whenever those characters argue, it’s like I’m having an argument with myself. I’m literally standing on both sides of that argument, documenting the conflicted emotions from one perspective and then swapping sides to do the same for the other perspective.

It’s like Quicksilver playing ping pong with himself, running back and forth before the ball bounces.

Only each side of the table needs to have a completely different personality, a completely honest and real reason for everything they believe and every action they make. Because of this complexity, it’s not rare to read stories where the characters fall into a couple different traps. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What’s your favorite saying?

22 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by Emmi Lawrence in Coffee & Conversation

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answer, FAQ, questions, quote, reading, saying, Writing

“Everything’s okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”

I think, not only does this give insight into me as a person, it does an honestly great job at describing the vast majority (if not all of) the stories I write.

Because, let’s face it, even if I do awful, horrible things to my characters, I want them to be happy at the end. I like seeing them accomplish their goals, discover how to be better versions of themselves. I don’t like killing people off. Even when I try to kill people off I tend to immediately write up an outline as to how they still get their happy ending (remember Wes from Haunt of the Wilds…heh. How he got those fiery abilities comes back to haunt him.) I just can’t help it.

On the other hand, I do all those awful, horrible things to my characters… And sometimes people don’t like that. They’d prefer a much cleaner, safer zone, and I understand that. But I don’t want to write clean and safe; I want to write dragons eating people and secret assassin guilds…but have it all end up with some sort of happy/hopeful finale.

It gives me hope whenever I’m done in real life too. That hey, it might be the hellish middle chapters at any given point, but there’s always a point when the try/fail cycle becomes a try/succeed. As long as you don’t give up.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What is something you continually procrastinate on?

04 Monday May 2020

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answers, edits, FAQ, formatting, prose, questions, reading, social media, Writing

Okay, I thought this a suitable question.

When it comes to writing, the writing part is actually the easiest. It’s just you and the blank page. No one watches. No one sees the mess-ups. No one sees the tangential paragraphs where you go on for two, three, four hundred words about how you have no idea what the next plot point is or repeatedly asking yourself why this character is even in this story. It’s a private affair. Where doubts intermix with excitement.

On the other hand…

Edits require you to dull the creative part of your brain. Force it into a little box with air holes that it might leak out, but only at appropriate times.

Formatting requires you to completely lock the creative side of you away. Forget it exists. Staunch it until it’s just a murmur begging to be let free.

Social Media requires you to plant your feet firmly in the here and the now, in a place where the date matters and the story is just a story and never an overactive part of your mind where you just want to linger forever.

Synopsis writing requires you to take your entire story, every living, breathing part of it, and turn it into something bland, dry, and dull that fits on two pages.

These are the things I procrastinate on the most. They are antithetical to everything writers tend to love. The clean-up at the end of the party.

Oh, we know we shouldn‘t procrastinate on them. The longer they sit needing to be done, the larger they loom. The more stories you complete in the meantime, the more end work accumulates. Yet, they sit out there still, demanding to be done by you and only you because someone else might do it all very wrong and you know it.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What was your biggest “Ah-ha!” moment?

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by Emmi Lawrence in Coffee & Conversation

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answers, audience, FAQ, hooking, learning, prose, questions, readers, reading, Writing

I’m going to think about this question as pertaining to my writing journey because I think we all have plenty of Ah-ha! moments in our lives that it would be difficult to talk about just one in particular as being the biggest.

When I first sat down to get serious about my writing, I made all the mistakes every newbie makes: no understanding of point-of-view, lack of consistency in tense, white-walling, stilted dialogue, as-you-know situations, purposeless prose, rambling scenes, tangents galore, zero conflict/tension, inability to differentiate character voices, etc., etc.,

Some of these mistakes are naturally solved merely by the writing of the stories. For instance, you cringe when you read your dialogue out loud, you can’t imagine the world when reading back the scene, your head-hopping becomes confusing even to yourself. However, one problem in particular kept eluding me because I couldn’t understand it: Hooking.

A hook, like in fishing, is that barbed piece that claws into the reader and doesn’t let go. It makes sure the reader turns the page, scrolls down, doesn’t get distracted. And for a long time I thought ‘hook’ was synonymous with ‘interesting.’

You might be thinking, “but shouldn’t a hook be interesting? Wouldn’t I want the story I’m about to read be interesting? Why wouldn’t I keep reading if the story isn’t interesting?” And those are all the questions that I harbored that made me continue to not comprehend hooking for an obscene amount of time. Continue reading →