Dan Brown’s bestselling THE LOST SYMBOL, featuring Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon, will follow THE DA VINCI CODE and ANGELS & DEMONS into theaters, but it won’t be written by Akiva Goldsmith, writer of the first two screenplays.

According to reports in Variety, Steven Knight (Eastern Promises) has been chosen to pen the 3rd movie.  Also, so far, Ron Howard, director of the first two, is currently only attached as a producer, and Tom Hanks hasn’t signed up to repeat his role as Langdon, but it’s hoped that the duo will continue the successful relationship that helped turn the 1st two movies into box office magic.   Hanks himself has said about doing a third movie, “I’d love to if they’re going to do it. I’m not going to walk away from that. If they make it again, I hope they ask me.”

ANGELS & DEMONS did not due as well as THE DA VINCI CODE at the box office.  However, THE LOST SYMBOL was the fastest selling adult fiction book in history (selling 1 million copies on its first day of release back in Sept 2009) so it’s no doubt hoped by Columbia that the new movie will kick the franchise’s revenue back up a notch or two. The new book (and film) take Langdon this time to Washington DC and up against Freemason mythos.  The movie has an anticipated release date of 2012.

Jim Harrison, best known for his book of novellas LEGENDS OF THE FALL which had the title story made into a movie with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, has a new book of novellas out, called THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER.  (And no, it isn’t a dirty jokebook, although it does have some sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in at least one of the stories.)

This new book includes three stories: THE FARMER’S DAUGHTER, a coming of age tale; BROWN DOG REDUX, a story of the continuing adventures of Brown Dog, a part Native American character from an earlier book; and THE GAMES OF NIGHT, a werewolf tale.

As Harrison’s writing has matured, it has moved more and more towards poetry, his preferred method of storytelling, and away from pure fiction, and this book is no different. In fact, if you’re not used to his style of writing, you may find this book a little hard to read.  It may be better to actually go back and find his earlier works, and read those first,  ”easing” yourself into his current style.

Here’s the final fiction writing exercise for this series – ideas for writing fiction #12:

12. Agony Aunt

Other good sources of fiction ideas include the agony columns and letters pages in many women’s, men’s and general interest magazines. Read about the problems described and see if you could work them into a story.

One other quick bit of advice – once you have an idea for a story, don’t be in too much of a hurry to start writing. Mull it over, develop it, see if you can add some interesting twists and turns. Don’t be too easily satisfied with your first idea, as often these are unoriginal. Aim to surprise your reader by confounding his or her expectations. Give your story idea time to mature.

(These ideas are adapted from the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )

To tweak your imagination so more when looking for story fodder, try the next Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #11:

11. Picture This.

Pictures and photographs can often suggest ideas. Try visiting your local art gallery, or just look in a newspaper or magazine.

Sometimes using an existing visual image can help you develop and/or enhance your ‘written’ image, helping you provide the reader with enough detail and background to help them ‘see’ the scenes and people who inhabit your stories, adding and using things you might not have thought of when relying on totally imaginary places that exist only in your mind. Rather than try to keep it all in your head, you can have an image or images nearby to help keep it straight as you write, i.e., what’s what and where everything is in relationship to each other.

Even if you decided to use a totally fictional locale, taking pieces of other places, say from photos, to ‘build’ your new one, can make it easier to avoid mistakes in continuity or accuracy, especially as your works get longer and more involved.

(These ideas are adapted from the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )

If you’re still stuck for an idea of something to write about after the first 9, then try the next Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #10:

10. Mining Your Past.

Consider using your past as a source of story ideas. To help prime the pump, get out your old school reports and school magazines. Was there a teacher you especially loved or hated? Maybe you could write a story about him or her. Similarly, did you have a close friend or a sworn enemy among your classmates? Maybe you could update the relationship and turn it into a story about two adults. Bring out your old family photographs and memorabilia. Do those photos of a summer picnic, a sports day or a seaside holiday suggest ideas for stories?

Sometimes it’s easier to get going when you start with something you’ve personally experienced rather than trying to make up something from scratch. The old adage ‘write what you know’ has worked well for people like Frank McCourt (ANGELA’S ASHES) or Pat Conroy (MY LOSING SEASON, THE PRINCE OF TIDES) who’ve based part or all their work on their own pasts and became bestselling authors doing it.

Just be very careful about using real, identifiable, people in your writing as not everyone wants to be immortalized in print and may feel a bit litigious over your characterizations – the family portrayed in RUNNING WITH SCISSORS by Augusten Burroughs sued, alleging defamation of character, invasion of privacy, and emotional distress stating that Burroughs had fabricated or exaggerated various descriptions of their activities…

So the idea isn’t to write a memoir, unless you really feel the need to share your life with the rest of the world, but is more to help practice writing stories that resonate with the resemblance of reality (or at least, as they say, ‘give artistic verisimilitude to [what would be] an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative’…)

(These ideas are adapted from the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )

Your stories now have people in them who have motives for what they’re doing (they do, don’t they?), and places to do them, so it’s time for the next Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #9:

9. Events and situations:

Here is a sample list of events and situations: a job interview; a pop concert; a telephone call; the arrival of a stray cat; a car breaking down; going on holiday; losing a purse or wallet; finding a body; an eye test; a party; going on a blind date; a birthday party; a child starting school; a circus arriving in town; moving house; starting a new job; a family meal; a football match; a car park; a long car journey; an argument; going back to your old school; a telephone call; attending a funeral; breaking an ornament; a diary or calendar; mowing the grass; visiting a fairground; writing a letter; going round a supermarket.

Take any two of these and think about how they could be combined in a plot. Ask yourself ‘What if..?’ or ‘Supposing…?’ type questions to help develop the plot.

Plotting is one of the hardest things out there for many writers. You may know how you want the story to begin and hopefully how it will end, but you need a way for the characters to get there. The plot becomes the events and situations that occur between the first and last paragraphs… You can come up with interesting characters, fascinating venues, but if the plot has major holes in it, or is too confusing, or doesn’t seem to serve the story’s needs in a way that makes sense, the rest usually won’t save it.

However, the plot doesn’t need to be highly convoluted (unless you’re writing an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery), but it does need to work for the characters and motives you’ve assigned the people who populate your story. Jarring readers out of their ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ by throwing in a plot twist or situation just because you can, but that doesn’t fit the things you’ve already established, tends to tick them off. You want the reader to follow along, staying with the story until the very end, whether it’s a screenplay, short story, a novel, or a Stephen King-sized doorstop, I mean, tome.

So, while asking ‘what if’ or ‘suppose’ this or that happens in the story as you build your plot, make sure you’re doing it from your character(s)’ point of view and motives, not your own, for a better fit.

BTW, one way to know your plotting has worked is when someone reads your stuff and says they couldn’t put it down until they finished it…

(These ideas are adapted from the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )

In the search for ideas to prevent the dreaded writer’s ‘blank page syndrome’, here are more fiction writing exercises – ideas for writing fiction #8:

So far we’ve used dictionaries to jump-start some new ideas, playing with words we might never have ever thought of using. Then we tweaked with other people’s stories to get our brains kicked up to an even higher gear, making up new endings and beginnings to get us past the next white page staring at us. We followed that up by creating characters, picking a strong trait or quirk or two to help us write a story based on those people so we can start to populate our work. For a few more ideas, we’ve been checking newspapers, using proverbs/quotations, and correspondence to help us find fodder for more stories/situations. And then we started ‘filling out’ our characters’ backgrounds/lives by providing them with motives for why they do what they do, working on one of a writer’s holy grails – creating 3-dimensional characters.

Now let’s find someplace interesting for them to do it:

8. Start with a setting

Write a short story with one of the following settings: a small seaside town; a pub, cafe or restaurant; a doctor’s waiting room; a hotel or boarding house; a factory; a busy office; a bus or railway station; a caravan park; a garage; a shop or supermarket; a theme park; a 13th story tower block flat; a school; a nursery; a college campus; a picnic. Perhaps the setting itself could provide the source of conflict in your story: for example, a wife wants to move to the country, while her husband prefers to live in town.

Setting can sometimes be one of the most memorable parts of a story: to me, classic examples of places helping to drive a story are WUTHERING HEIGHTS with its manor on the moors or REBECCA’s gothic mansion Manderlay with its hidden rooms and people. Another more recent one that shows how the ‘scenery’ can influence the plot (and most definitely the characters) is THE SHINING, Stephen King’s classic thriller where the hotel is a character in and of itself.

Whether you’re writing a story, a novel or a screenplay, where you ‘stage’ it can make or break the mood you’re trying to establish, so pay equal attention to the wheres when considering who and what to write about. Then play with the descriptions, adding and taking away as necessary to establish the scene so that the ‘background’ is ‘organic’ (fits the story without being in your face – unless you intend it to be that way, of course.)

You might try writing your story in one locale, getting the other factors, such as characters and situations in place, then try switching the action to someplace completely differently to see what a change in scenery would do to the rest of the framework. It might seem extremely more serious suddenly or you might find it hilarious to find those same people doing whatever they were doing in a wholely unexpected venue. (Think WHEN HARRY MET SALLY – what Sally does in one scene would be ‘predictable’ and ‘expected’ if done in a bedroom, but move it to a deli, and oh my!)

(These ideas are based on the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )

Here’s your next installment of Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #7. So far you (should) have been writing about what’s been happening to your characters using the various idea-generating techniques. Now, we want to start to fill out our stories with ‘why’ the characters are doing what they’re doing:

7. What’s My Motive?

Start with a character who wants something badly. It might be a new job, a new partner, a holiday, something else. Place obstacles in the path of your character and show how he/she overcomes these (or fails to).

Part of what makes a story good or even great is knowing why a character does what he or she does, or at least thinking you do, so you can either identify with that person, or if it’s not someone you came sympathize with, then maybe you can possibly live vicariously through his or her adventures, read about things you would never do, but have always been curious to experience, even if only in a book.

If the people in your work just walk around like robots (and they AREN’T robots) then your readers won’t connect in a meaningful way and probably won’t want to continue to read your story. You need to provide the why’s along with the how’s, what’s and where’s to keep it compelling, making the people in your work fully realized and at least somewhat recognizable to the general reading public.

But be careful. As a rule, you don’t want to just come out and say “So and so wants X, so they did Y.” (Or maybe you do…) However, that probably won’t engage your reader for very long. Generally it’s best to let the action or situations help the reader understand the “why” along with “how” and the rest, drawing the reader in as the story progresses. (As they say, “Show, don’t tell” for a more visceral, engaging experience.)

Depending on the strength of your characters’ desires, dreams and ‘motives’, they will help drive the actions your characters will take to achieve their goals or help accentuate any disappointments they will suffer when they don’t reach them (or both if you put in a few interesting twists.) The better you establish the motives behind the action, the better your overall story will be, especially as you create longer and more involved works.

(These ideas are based on the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )

Okay, so you should now have done the first 5 exercises and should be ready for Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #6. (No? If not, go back and see what you’ve been missing. Then come back to this one… =)

Here’s the next installment in the series:

6. Tales by Letter

Write a story in the form of a series of letters or postcards, faxes, official reports, (imaginary) newspaper stories, answerphone messages, e-mails, diary entries or a travel journal. Combine any or all of these in your finished story.

You may have used a little of this in an earlier exercise, but now you want to use it for your WHOLE story this time.

If you’re not sure how to do this, check out books like THE NOTEBOOK which uses a form of diary (journal) entries to forward the story along and which provide the ‘twist’.

One of my favorite examples of a story told in emails/official reports is Alan Dean Foster’s short story SWAMP PLANET CHRISTMAS (from …WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?) It’s funny, twisted, frustrating and a pointed commentary on bureaucracy all at the same time, done as transmissions between a colony and a home planet/government some time in the future. However, it’s so well written, it could just as easily be set today and still apply… Alan Dean Foster is a master of the short story and novel formats, along with many screenplay adaptations from STAR TREK to STAR WARS to ALIENS and even DARK STAR, so feel free to read any and all of his work to help you in yours, especially if you like to work in the Science Fiction genre.

(These fiction writing exercises are based on the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His audio book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )

Here is the next lesson of Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #5

5. Proverbs

Write a story based on a proverb or a quotation, e.g.:

• A fool and his money are soon parted.
• The early bird gets the worm.
• Waste not, want not.
• Rome was not built in a day.
• Necessity is the mother of invention.
• If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
• Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
• Cheaters never prosper.
• It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.
• Nice guys finish last.
• When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
• It’s Greek to me.
• There’s a sucker born every minute.

You get the idea… Now try to run with it, adding a twist, such as combining two proverbs or taking a proverb and turning it inside out. Think about the movie LIAR, LIAR – in the main character’s world, “cheaters (aka liars) DO prosper”, have great jobs, women, hot cars, etc. All that changes for our main guy, though, when his son makes a wish that makes dad tell the truth for a day. Suddenly, “honesty is the best policy” ruins most of what the main character THINKS is important in his life, causing disaster after disaster, until he finally realizes what he’s been missing and finds a way to turn it all around, which brings us to “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”

(These fiction writing exercises are based on the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com on CD.)