Musing On the Muse

So far we have talked about Milieu or Setting and Inquiry or Investigation in storytelling, this time we'll dive into Character. That is what the "c" in MICE stands for. This is an absolutely critical attribute to most stories. Characters are the vehicle in which worlds are revealed, plot is moved, conflict is resolved or escalated and lessons are learned. Basically, without a character arc in your story you are paddling in your canoe around and around in circles. You can build an amazing and/or complex and intriguing setting, but without characters to interact or be awestruck by that setting it will be like watching paint dry. you are pretty sure something is happening, but it's not very engaging. Sometimes, downright boring. You also need to have a character to really delve into any mysteries or ask the questions as a reader surrogate to figure out your who-dunit. Basically, there is no story without at least some character component. Quite a while back I actually h...

 As mentioned in the prior edition of this creative blog, MICE is an acronym for a creative process/tool first proposed by Orson Scott Card that has been propagated and endorsed by Mary Robinette Kowal. The tool breaks down storytelling into four categories of content within your tale. Milieu or Environment, Inquiry or Investigation, Character (That one needs no alternative answer) and Event or Occurrence. The MICE theory actually has a specific mathematical formula which you can research on your own because I don't tend to get that precise when I am creating. It will even tell you how many words you should spend on each element. I use MICE sort of like the Pirate Code, "they're more like guidelines" to keep me on the right track. In this blog we will talk about the I portion of MICE: Inquiry. We have all experienced an Inquiry based story. Fans of Columbo, Jessica Fletcher, Monk, Hercule Poirot, or Miss Marple or as far back as Sherlock Holmes know the formula for an...

 It's 5:15 in the morning and I can't sleep. It's not that I have a new story in my head that needs to be told. That does often happen at 5AM, but less so these days. My unrest is due to the realization that I am quite late in my most recent blog entry. A few weeks ago, I embarked on this creative focused relaunch and so far all I have said is what not to do. While that may be instructive, it is looking back at mistakes rather than planning for what you want to create. So today it is time to talk about a concept coined by the famous Orson Scott Card and then championed by the author Mary Robinette Kowal called "The MICE Quotient". It is not about little furry animals that infest you house in the winter; MICE is an acronym for Milieu, Inquiry, Character and Event. Each of these four items are ways you can approach a creative endeavor, mostly narrative fiction, or fiction that tells a story. I recently watched a lecture on MICE give by Mary Robinette Kowal on You Tu...