OYAN

OYAN, which stands for One Year Adventure Novel, has quickly become an acronym I use often, though I have to explain it every time. In essence, OYAN is a writing program for writers to teach them how to write an exciting, meaninful novel. It was designed by the author Daniel Schwabauer, who teaches with clarity and solid ideas, ideas that are building blocks to a story. Seriously, this guy's got it down to a science.

He starts out by having you watch a short lesson on the computer, in which besides explaining and teaching you face to face, he sometimes puts in clips of movies for examples. We're currently going through the movie Cyrano De Borjerac, and whoever wrote that book was a genius, by the way. After that, you read through a lesson in the Compass, which basically recaps what you learned in the movie. Then you answer questions in the other workbook, the Map, which helps you put down ideas for your story according to what you learned. Finally, he assigns you to read a chapter of Anthony Hope's book, The Prisoner of Zenda. And you wonder why I'm always talking as if I'm writing a story? All this literature is rubbing off on my brain, which I suppose is a good thing for an aspiring writer...

Besides the program itself, there is also a website for all the students. There it has character developement lounges, a chat room, places to knock around ideas, get critiques for your story, and just enjoy each other's writing. It's addicting like Facebook, and even more so for people who love to write. The people are incredibly kind, though I am sure a great percentage of them are Christian homeschoolers. So yeah, we all have a lot in common.

At last, for the lessons themselves, Mr. S starts out teaching about the 5 elements of a story: Someone to care about (hero), something to want (story goal), something to dread (villain) something to suffer (price) and something to learn (theme). On this foundation, he goes on to outline the supporting cast: the Mentor, the Villain, the Ally, and the Love. While on this topic, I have to say that the villain, named Grid, is a completely fictional character, and any resemblence to living people is purely coincidental. He discusses the two types of scenes (Disasters and Dilemmas) and the four defining scenes: The Inciting Incident, Embracing Destiny, The Black Moment, and The Showdown.

If nothing in this post interested you, that's okay. I thought I must explain so you would know from now one what in the world I'm ranting about all the time. Thanks!