today, mostly

This weekend is the Greek Oktoberfest for our church. I think it's the sixth one so far. So Tonight we (Mom, Dad, Blondie, Boo, and myself) helped to set up. it begins on Thursday, I believe and runs through Sunday morning, I think it is. so, if you live in the area, COME!

I mostly helped get together the kids' play room thing, where they can play games, eat candy, paint pumpkins, that sort of thing.

And I really think my theory about every other week of Shell being bad or good. I know, I know, I said I wouldn't blog about this stuff unless I had to. Well, I think I'll need some encouragement...again. And thanks again for all that encouragement from so long ago, and even though I never printed them out, and never read them every Monday morning, as was my original plan, they were still very nice. I really need to buck up my courage and just say something to one of them. I really want to know them a whole lot better.

On related but not so related note, Mom is having her writing classes do nanowrimo!!! I'm so happy for them! I'm sure they weren't too pleased to hear that they had only thirty days to write a novel, but I think they'll realize that it's such a great experience. Only one person I know of in my class was enthusiastic about it. (I am too if you didn't know.)

Also, to answer the Entertainer: Yes, as I said, you want to use the question "why", but also "what result".

For instance, Orson Scott Card used an example of a twelve year old for this process.

Card chose babysitting out of a list a possibilities from a fourth-grade class.

Next question: "what can go wrong?" (The what result question slanted for negative answers.)
The class came up with the idea of the baby crying.

eventually, after asking these questions enough, they got a story of a twelve-year-old babysitter. when the baby starts crying and won't stop. The babysitter does all she can, but still the baby won't stop. Soon the sitter calls 911, and by the time an ambulance gets there, the parents are home. It ends with the parents of the baby firing the sitter and letting the sitter's mother babysit. the same thing happens to the mother and it has a rather satisfactory ending.

Also added to this process are two other things: exaggeration, and twist.

Exaggeration - obviously exaggerating. Card exaggerated when he wouldn't let the baby stop crying, which gave the fourth-grade class limited options. If you have limited options it will usually added complexity to the story.

Twist - card uses a different example here which I would rather not explain. But he says to take an assumption of a character and give it a twist. (I rather copied that).

Entertainer, I hope this is more clear than before. I know it's not really detailed, but I hope it helps.

Also, i never went back through and edited this post so, yeah.