Frankenstein That Stuff: Mixing Tropes for Dynamic Plots

Thursday, April 4

Time shown in-04:00 America, New York

Though every genre has its tropes, it’s hard to think of one in which the Trope Fatigue threshold is set lower than in horror. So how to get around the feeling that you’ve seen/read/written it all before? FRANKENSTEIN THAT STUFF.

As Orrin Grey has observed, one of the best ways to shake off a sense of boredom and spawn new ideas is often to take two (or more) things you enjoy and combine them. Werewolves and ghosts may be old hat on their own, but how about the ghost of a werewolf? Instead of a haunted house, how about a ghost that follows you home? Deconstructing and recombination can wake up even the most formulaic of subgenres–think about Victor LaValle bringing Lovecraft’s racist tendencies to the fore and then undermining them in The Ballad of Black Tom, or slasher movie super-fan Stephen Graham Jones turning the usual patterns inside-out with his Indian Lake trilogy. Or then there’s my own personal “one from column A, one from column B” of choice: A list of plots over here, mixed and matched with a list of writers whose styles I admire over there…let’s face it, most writing begins in pastiche, though it really only has to stay there long enough for you to rough out a first draft. Then turn around and make it fully yours.

The course will run three weeks, each week beginning with a lecture and an assignment.

Week One: Generate five ideas, figure out how to make them viable.
Week Two: Write five pages of draft, get feedback on how to complete your project.
Week Three: Finish the draft, get feedback on how to make it submittable.

ENROLL: https://reachyourapex.com/course/frankenstein-that-stuff/

Add to Calendar 2024/04/04 18:30:00 2024/04/04 20:30:00 Frankenstein That Stuff: Mixing Tropes for Dynamic Plots Though every genre has its tropes, it’s hard to think of one in which the Trope Fatigue threshold is set lower than in horror. So how to get around the feeling that you’ve seen/read/written it all before? FRANKENSTEIN THAT STUFF.

As Orrin Grey has observed, one of the best ways to shake off a sense of boredom and spawn new ideas is often to take two (or more) things you enjoy and combine them. Werewolves and ghosts may be old hat on their own, but how about the ghost of a werewolf? Instead of a haunted house, how about a ghost that follows you home? Deconstructing and recombination can wake up even the most formulaic of subgenres–think about Victor LaValle bringing Lovecraft’s racist tendencies to the fore and then undermining them in The Ballad of Black Tom, or slasher movie super-fan Stephen Graham Jones turning the usual patterns inside-out with his Indian Lake trilogy. Or then there’s my own personal “one from column A, one from column B” of choice: A list of plots over here, mixed and matched with a list of writers whose styles I admire over there…let’s face it, most writing begins in pastiche, though it really only has to stay there long enough for you to rough out a first draft. Then turn around and make it fully yours.

The course will run three weeks, each week beginning with a lecture and an assignment.

Week One: Generate five ideas, figure out how to make them viable.
Week Two: Write five pages of draft, get feedback on how to complete your project.
Week Three: Finish the draft, get feedback on how to make it submittable.

ENROLL: https://reachyourapex.com/course/frankenstein-that-stuff/ true MM/DD/YYYY 120 OPAQUE arpgeZtPlzFnXmoMRmOQ246858

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