The Ben Franklin Method For Getting Better At Writing: A Forum Game

It's simple. It is also hard. It also worked very well for a lot of people, and Benjamin Franklin is the one who came up with it. I found it here. I share it with you:

• Find a piece by an author whom you acknowledge as a model.
• Sum up the essential points of that piece.
• Leave it alone for a while, until you've forgotten what the piece looked like.
• Come back to the summary, and try to to write something equivalent, in your own words and in your own style, starting from there.
• Compare it to the original piece, see what you did differently from the author, figure out which alternative is best, and why.

This last part is the hardest and most crucial, and you might gain a lot from the help of an external eye.

So, here's my suggestion. How about we make a forum game of it? Each one of us will present pieces from authors that we like, and summaries, and we say why we think the authors should be emulated. Then each one of us take the works someone else posted, of which we have not read the original, and try to come up with something good just from the summary and some minor other guidelines. Then we submit it to everyone's critique, even as we go and read the original. And we discuss the differences and improvements that can be made.

Sounds good to you?

—

P.S. For the sake of practicality, I think the pieces should be short. Short stories, journalistic essays, poems, that kind of stuff.

Of course, one can do it by myself, but I thought it might be more fun in group, and would also help circumvent the waiting part.

edited 5th Sep '12 9:45:10 AM by TheHandle

Sounds very interesting! I already have an idea for a passage; I'll come back to this thread when I'm a bit less tired.

Hey, I think it sounds fun! I have an idea for one. Hope y'all like Diana Wynne Jones. :P

Please go ahead and show us!

If you say we can officially start, then I will!

Oh, drat, I wanted to use Diana Wynne Jones.

I'm going to put up Peter S Beagle, then.

There's no exclusivity clause, you know?

We can start anytime.

Alright. I hope I'm doing this in the method you expect.

1. Author: Diana Wynne Jones
2. Work: Dark Lord Of Derkholm'
3. Summary: The inhabitants of a Magical Land are suffering. Why? Because a businessman from Earth found a portal to their realm, and is now exploiting it for his "Pilgrim Parties." Every year, the wizards of the world are forced to put on a fantasy adventure for hundreds of rich tourists, and to do so, they must hide all traces of their world's progress, send their towns and villages into disrepair, use up all their resources, and devote all their time and energy into making life "exiciting" for the tourists. The wizards want him gone, so they devise a quiet rebellion: Appoint Derk, a bumbling outcast wizard, and his family the "Dark Lord" and head of this year's tours. They all expect Derk will do such a horrible job that the businessman's reputation will be ruined, and he'll give up on their world. But unexpectedly, Derk and his family do many things right—and, accidentally, end up fixing many outstanding wrongs in the world, going right back to the start of the businessman's career. With Derk doing such a good job, the other wizards begin to oppose him. And with some of his accidental actions, Derk makes a very powerful enemy out of the businessman. Will Derk survive his tenure as Dark Lord, and if he does, who will come out on top: The wizards, the businessman, or Derk?
4. Why I Believe It Should Be Emulated: Dark Lord Of Derkholm is a fantastic Decon-Recon Switch, which begins as a scathing critique of the more shallow types of heroic fantasy, as well as a hilarious observation of many of the tropes around it. However, as the story progresses, it becomes a true-blue tale of accidental heroism. The writing and dialogue is witty, and the characters are quirky and lovable—quite a feet, considering that there are so many of them. The worldbuilding is unique and fun. It's socially aware, and social science-types will enjoy the book's depiction of a tourism-focused industry and the long-term effects of tourist exploitation. But even aside from the witty writing and clever characters, the story is immensely satisfying, with lots of intricate plot threads, stakes that never stop escalating until the end, and plenty of action and adventure that never loses sight of its intelligence. It's a fun book that's also smart. And that's something I think the world needs more of.

So, uh... anything else I need to do?

How long is it? Could you give us a general structure or plot skeleton/outline?

About eight inches. But in all seriousness, it's difficult to sum up all the salient points of it. It's got a lot of plot threads and characters; it's the sort of work that resists an easy synopsis. At least the kind that explains everything in great detail for people who don't know it. If it's your intention for other people to make use of these summaries, instead of the ones who make them, I think you might've made the game a bit to difficult. How are we supposed to emulate what we haven't read?

... That's why I specifically said they should be short pieces. If you're going to submit this story, only submit, say, the first chapter, structure and all. This is obviously a challenge for you as a submitter: it develops your ability to summarize and clarify even complex pieces.

Ideally we should use Public Domain literature, or even fnfiction that is easily available on the net, otherwise we'd be forcing the others to buy stuff.

I presumed you meant we'd be writing short pieces, not using them. And it seems like you're kind of going back and forth as to whether this is a challenge for submitters or writers—you say it's a challenge for the submitter, but then talk about other people needing to buy things? I'm getting sort of a confused message here. But if we have to work solely from the public domain, then that kind of limits what people can choose as "inspirations."

Look, sorry if I confused you, it was perfectly clear in my head.

The original method was:

• Read a short piece.
• Sum it up. This is not a trivial effort.
• Forget about it.
• Try to do it again from the summary.
• See how it's different, why, and which is best. That's why the original piece must be short: what's the point of comparing two works of radically different lengths? Also, if there's too many events going on, cramming them all in a short piece will probably just result in a trainwreck.

The forum game method is:

• The submitter chooses a short piece. Story, poem, whatever.
• The submitter sums it up. It's a bit more of a challenge than when you're doing it by yourself, because you've got to think ahead and put in enough clues that someone can recreate something approximately similar.
• The challenger, without taking a look at the original work, takes the summary and makes a valiant effort to reproduce something equivalent to the original work. And by that I mean a valiant effort.
• Everyone gets to compare the two works together, rather than just one person having to do son on their own. Lots of fun is had.

I'm not saying it needs to be public domain, but with that you can make sure the work is available to everyone instantly. If you post something no-one has and which requires a trip to the bookstore or the library, your submission is just going to remain un-picked, which is kind of sad, after you went through all the effort of making it.

Then again, I suppose you could wait until you've forgotten about the original piece and then pick up the submission yourself, so, hey, it's no big deal, it'll just take more time is all.

I'm not sure I'm a good fit for this, then, count me out.

Still, it sounds like an awesome recommendation, so I will definitely be buying that.