Work In Progress: Thursday's Children

Showing posts with label Thursday's Children. Show all posts

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Thursday's Children - Ikebana

Or: Things Left Unsaid

A weekly blog hob where

Writers share their Inspirations.

Join, yo!

Much of the beauty of an Ikebana arrangement comes from the space between the branches.

The space in between feels like silence.

When writing dialogue, it's such a temptation to fill moments with words, to let the characters explain everything, reveal their motives. It would be so easy for MC to profess "eternal love" to Love Interest. Or for Parent to reveal Big Secret to Child.

But real life doesn't work that way. Unless we're with someone 24/7 from the moment of their birth, we can never fully know everything that happened to them, nor everything they think or feel.

It's the same thing with finding a branch or twig or particular flower. We can infer what happened to it by how the branch bends, how a twig curls, the scars or perfection of a bloom.

Stuff a bunch of them into a vase and you can get a decent bouquet.

Displayed in an Ikebana arrangement, though, individual components blend into a story.

Stems, branches, flowers.

But the spaces in between, the silence, holds the things that can't be said or emotions that defy words.

And the things we can't or don't say can define us as much as the things we choose to talk about.

Silence is a form of dialogue.

What are topics that are taboo for you? What are topics your characters can't or won't talk about? Do your characters have words they would never use like Faith, Son, God, Penis, Dong, Caulk, Love?

(I had some Ikebana photos but couldn't find them on my PC. I'll take some new ones. In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of a puppy.)

Here are some links to some of my favorite Ikebana photos on the interwebz:

Ikebana is like Jiu Jitsu.

Eco-friendly floral designs.

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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Thursday's Children - TEDtalks

Or: Don't Shoot Yourself in Your Louboutins

A weekly blog hob where

Writers share their Inspirations.

Join, yo!

You can't win if you don't play.

This is my mantra right now.

I just finished the Last Looks revision of a WIP I've been working on for a few years.

Doubts are poltergeisting my thoughts. No one will like it. No one will read it. No one will get it. No one will want it.

It's the first story I've done longer than a poem, longer than a flash fiction, longer than my longest short story.

Which people seem to like.

I've even won a few awards.

But here's the crack on that soufflé. Can I bring my A-game to a longer work. Who knows?

Gawd, I want to gouge my eyes out with an ice pick.

I want to delete the whole thing. I want to print it out and set it on fire. I want to pretend I never wrote it never thought it never even dared dream it could be done by someone like me.

I'm no one.

I'm nothing.

I'm just another minnow flash in a swift stream.

But TED says I'm not. TED keeps telling me that anybody can be somebody. Sometimes, TED reminds me that I need to live the life I'd envy someone else living.

TED inspires me. When I'm down about #firstworldproblems, TED tells me "Look at your life, you disgusting, over-privileged, over-spending, consumer whore." Not in those words, mind you, but I get it. I get it, TED.

There's more to be done. Messages that need spreading. TED inspires me to talk to people. Find out their stories. Learn what they mean when they say things under or over or around their words.

TED inspires my dialogue - with other people, with characters in my stories.

TED tells me what people care about enough to fight for. What dialogues need to happen in the great big story of Humanity.

And if those people can change the world, then by the transitive law of mathematics, I can change my own goddamn life.

Or at least, attempt to.

Many great inventions came out of an attempt to invent something completely different.

But, you can't win if you don't play.

No sirree, you can't win if you don't play.

Don't shoot yourself in your Louboutin's, for chrissake! You can't win if you don't goddamn play.

Here are the TEDtalks that have motivated me recently:

Dan Pink on Motivation

JJ Abrams on Storycraft

Bryan Stevenson - Injustice

Have you watched a TEDtalk? Have any TEDtalks inspired you?

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Thursday's Children - In the Cut

Or: Finding Inspiration in Directors' Cuts and Series Commentaries

A weekly blog hop where

Writers share their Inspirations.

Join, yo!

I obsess.

The depth of my obsession for TV shows? The Series Finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer set off a two month binge-drinking emo-fest.

Enter DVDs and BluRays, which not only have complete series, but "director's cuts" and Special Bonuses and Unaired Pilots/Episodes.

What I focus on, though, are the director's cuts and actor commentary specials.

Sometimes in revision, I come across a dialogue scene that lacks something: Oomph, Subtlety, a certain je ne sais quoi that would vivify the moment. (This month's WIPblog module is on Dialogue!)

I think back on series' director's cuts and commentaries I've seen, or I'll pop one into the player, and dissect what made a particular scene memorable.

Was it the words?

Was it how the actor said the line?

Now, the trick is to isolate the moment or the scene from the movie because there could be other factors making the moment pop: movie soundtrack, lighting effects, camera work, etc. Commentaries provide this isolation, often adding insight as to why an actor said a line a certain way, or why a director chose to use a certain take.

But! You don't have to go out and buy all the discs. Some excellent commentaries can be found in blogs, by series viewers who've picked out themes or patterns.

Some of my favorite shows have given me the best inspiration for how to vivify dialogue in my stories.

These include:

Dexter - Helped me craft true-to-character interior monologues and direct thought.

"There's a moment sailors call slack tide. When the tide is neither coming in nor going out, but perfectly still. It's a moment frozen in time. When all is calm and peaceful." - Dexter Morgan, Season 4, episode 7.

Firefly - Regional/cultural, character-specific dialects.

"Look, you got a little stabbed the other day. That's bound to make anyone a mite ornery." - Malcom Reynolds, episode 9, "Ariel".

Downton Abbey - What to reveal, when to reveal it.

Her Ladyship's Soap.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Perspectives.

"Look, I realize that every Slayer comes with an expiration mark on the package. But I want mine to be a long time from now. Like a Cheeto." - Buffy, Season 5, episode 7, "Fool for Love."

Mad Men - How a statement can evolve and take on new meanings for a character later.

"Advertising is based on one thing, happiness." - Don Draper, Season 1, episode 1, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."

What are some of your favorite series? Have you ever been inspired by disc or blog commentaries?

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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Thursday's Children - Alternate Reality

Alternate Reality

A weekly blog hop where

Writers share their inspiration.

Join us!

Mostly, I write about people trying to find their identities because I'm still trying to find mine. Nearly XX number of years in this skin-bag, in this flesh-mold, and there's still the occasional dissonance between what's real and what's not, who I am, who I might have been. Like movement is one nanosecond behind what it should be.

Sometimes I trip over a crack in the universe and fall into another dimension.

There! There I am! See how red the bottoms of my shoes are, like I've just come from a lipstick field, as I sprint to catch a bus that's already pulling away.

Or I'm sipping a mimosa on the back patio of a that cafe and a bag lady hobbles by, stench of piss and vomit in her wake. Is that me? Couldn't be.

Or I walk through a boutique doorway and catch sight of myself in a mirror. Only it's not me.

That elegant, plastic-faced woman with the ethnically-ambiguous husband couldn't possibly be me.

Only it is, and not, and maybe still could be.

In alternate universes, I made different choices. Those choices led to completely different lives.

When I see myself in these people, in this way, I give them histories. Backstories, if you will. This inspires me to reexamine my characters when I come to a point in the story when their actions ring false.

They come to me with their stories, but it's my job to figure out how they got to this state. What the fuck makes them so special? Who do they think they are, trying to change the world?

The signal that they're lying is their hesitation, which translates into what some people call "Writer's Block." They can't tell me what happens next because they have tripped on the crack and slipped into another dimension. They've seen what could have been if they'd made different choices. Or if different choices had been made for them.

Bring them back to the here and now. Find out why they didn't choose x,y,z to end up in one of those alternate realities. What they say will show you their motivations. And lessons learned in the past can illuminate what choice to make in the present.

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Thursday, March 28, 2013

Thursday's Children: The Unwritten Journal

Inspired by the Unwritten Journal.

A weekly blog hop where

writers share their inspirations.

Join, yo!

I keep journals. Most of them are written. One is not. The Unwritten Journal.

It contains every second-hand kiss, every turbid memory, every elusive emotion. When cloudshadow dulls the window or prickly silence permeates the house, I sense one of those thoughts stalking me, lurking in the periphery. Turn too quickly and the thought scurries into the line where walls meet. Too slowly, and it transforms into the jerking tick of a second hand.

Stay still, don't breathe.

Let it infuse you, possess you, compel you to scrape off your scars, gouge out your mouth, score your heart until you spew forth a million molecules of vitriol.

We could call such a thing divine inspiration or a gift from the muses. But this type of inspiration needs no mythification. It's the things we don't want to remember, think about, or talk about. Often, they defy words.

In that defiance I find the reason why they need to be written down. Then they need to be cleaned up a bit so I can understand them, so I can understand myself, so I can share it and we can understand each other just a little bit more.

This inspiration, found within your secret regrets, powerlessness, horror, lust, grief, desire, covetousness, and rage, can unlock motivations for the most heartless villains and humanize the most valiant hero. Or it can simply inspire a bridge of communication like the poem it inspired below.

For Lack of a Better Word

Would you give it up?
That somber silence stealing sound,
So complete, so perfect, so absolute zero in its
Weather. Would you give it up?
That darkness, for lack of better words
To describe a unique affliction. That
Miasma of color as black as your father's hair and
Genetics, it must be genetics that you can blame it on.
But would you

Give that up, that cave of boundless isolation,
That masochistic promise of solitude,
Borne inside you despite the crush of bodies
And the thrum of voices
And the Whats and Whys of living.

If you gave it up,
If you give over and listen up,
If you turned over and swallowed it up,
And let the meds fill you like the undesired
Cum of ones that burn your shell with claws like fire,
(for lack of better words). Just so you could
Not be so empty, and alone, and all those
Adjectives so profanely small to

Describe how sacred your
Potential can be.

Then you could have it,
That other type of quiet they call
Normal. That other type of darkness they call
Safe. That other type of life that you call Boring, Pathetic,

Pointless.

You could lose it, that wondrous silence
That makes each word gleam like teeth in dusklight,
That lovely darkness that makes each sight blinding
In its sudden lucidity. So losing that, but gaining the other,
You could have what they want for you,
At the cost of your Self,
And you could have, with that medicated, sedated emptiness,
An easier acceptance of
The lack of better words.

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