More detail! More words!

I am in the middle of what will amount to the thirdish and finalish draft of my novel, tentatively titled A Book of Ferryman's Heralds. What is most interesting to me about it, aside from how there seems somehow to be those weird "character" things and "story" things and even some "plot" things is that the third draft is already as long as the second draft. That would seem logical, except that the story is halfway as far in, and this draft has taken less than half the time to write. It's a fascinating thing to contemplate. While I feel that I haven't gotten as far, since the events I wrote today aren't even to the story's technical "midpoint"--an important storytelling term I learned recently--at the same time I feel like I've gotten much further. I think these are the reasons:

1) I'm using twice as many words. That doesn't mean I'm throwing in a lot of "gasps" and adjectives, which is what it could mean. What it means is that I'm taking my time to be thorough in describing things. I did not, as I usually do, rush through and assume that my brilliant images will communicate psychically, my concepts and designs will be clear even though there's no reason they should make sense. Rather I take my sweet time with all the little pieces and use sufficient words and time to describe how they all look, smell, sound, and fit together. Every moment can last a lifetime.

2) I'm giving my characters space to contemplate and to expand on their situations. In the past, I've always assumed that my characters would take care of themselves. I tended to write quite cinematically, just describing what it would look like people did and I'd assume that readers could keep up. That would work all right in the movie version when my characters are acted out as well as they are in my mind, with all the emotional states sort of dancing across their faces. My descriptive powers are not yet where they need to be to keep up with my imagined acting skills, however. And besides, I'm writing a mythologically inclined fantasy. Putting in poetic thought process lends itself to the storytelling.

3) I'm including damn subplots. I've always left subplots out of the novel proper, assuming that the hints and vagueness with which the main characters treated the subplots would be sufficient for the story. Subplots often feel less interesting to me than main plots. But when I started to explain the actions of my main characters to myself during my world-building kick recently I realized that the subplots I needed were really good and very interesting. In exploring my subplots I've managed to discover that my novel as it is can be a good conduit for me to expostulate and explore something I really like, which is various classical story structures. If I imagine character X as the main character, my novel is a classical tragedy--if character Y is the lead it becomes a stereotypical Hero's Journey with a personal touch--and the rest. I now enjoy subplots.

Those are the main reasons. I explain the doubling in words briefly as an increase in thoroughness.

Why I'm explaining: The way I see it, care and thorough treatment are often lacking in creative endeavours. Sometimes we meet writers with a proclivity toward intentional fantasy bloat, and we should not err in their direction. However, if you find that your attempts at novels often seem to stop on page twenty-four, and you don't know how the story goes from there, you may be leaving out half of what needs to be said. I suggest relishing the moments.

And some sweet tunes.

What He Is Not

Novel updated: http://lithnmark.blogspot.com/2011/11/chapter-one-part-three.html

In this chunk, Twig speaks for a while with his daughter, Widow Lockwood, and his granddaughter, Trilby. He explains a few things that he is not, and begins to hint by exclusion at what he is. He is not a Holy Assassin--one of that order organized of old to be in thrall to Ferryman and help him in his grisly work of collecting men ready to die. We learn by hints that Twig surely killed Holy Assassins who had been hunting him. From them, Twig got his clothes.

I had trouble writing the scene clearly because I forgot to introduce Widow Lockwood by name till half of the way through. Whoops. Must remember not to do that in the future.

Shyamalan the Mighty

When I heard they were making an Avatar: The Last Airbender movie my first thought was, "That's insane. It's impossible... I wonder how they'll do it." And when I heard that M. Night Shyamalan was writing and directing it I thought that seemed odd, and not in his genre, and the look of the TV show was not anyway similar to the look of his movies, and I was intrigued and I wanted to see what he'd do. I didn't know what sparks might come of bringing that franchise and that mind into friction. I heard, though, the following anecdote, and it got me twice as intrigued:

M. Night Shyamallamamama sat in a room with the Nickleodeon people, having just finished his draft of the adapted Last Airbender screenplay. It was roughly the size of a Latin dictionary, and it broke the table. So they asked him, "How the hell long a movie are you making?" Six hours, apparently. "You've got to trim the thing, M. Night Shyallamomanny." And he said, "Aw...but...aw..." and apparently looked really upset.

It was in good hands. Or caring ones, anyway. I was content with that. I'd know it was being adapted by someone who wanted to do good by the Avatar lore. What with coming off of various Marvel adaptations and feeling like the people handling many of those were probably Superman fans, and had never picked up an issue of Daredevil in their lives...after cooling off from that betrayal, it really did give me comfort knowing that M. Night Shilohmamainyofacellama was going to be at least as upset as me that adapting Avatar was impossible.

Because, of course, it was.

So far this has all been sort of history, and now I'm going to judge the movie. I find that, as usually happens, my opinion will probably annoy people. I'm going to defend this movie, and defend it with all my heart. Not because it was an especially pretty movie, not because it in any way maintained the soul of the Avatar franchise, and certainly not because it was the next big Shamanlawyermanna movie. It failed at all that.

I am going to defend this movie with all my heart because M. Night Shyamalan took on and did something impossible, and that makes him mighty. And what he did was give every single necessary fact in the Book 1: Water plotline to lay down exactly what the story of that season in the Avatar series is. Me mum, having never watched the TV series, was conversant on all things bendery after seeing the movie. Suddenly she had a topic of conversation with her sons. It was cool. That is what M. Night Shymanlamenoodle did.

People will complain. Oh, it's too short. Oh, it wasn't funny enough. Oh, they ruined bending. Oh, they ruined Sokka, and Zucko, and Kitara, and Suki, and Appa, and they mispronounced everything, and Iro was skinny, and they just didn't fucking put together a worthy representation of the Avatar legend. Yes, yes, yes. So the hell what? Guess what, kids. It was a movie! It was an adaptation of an already excellent TV series. The only reason the movie does or even ought to exist is to have badder-ass fight scenes, and to give just enough knowledge of the storyline of the legend to a layman so that he'll want to go watch the TV series. Sorry to say it, folks, but The Last Airbender movie was an hour forty-eight minute trailer for the TV series. Which would you prefer anyway: spending six hours of your life watching the TV series again except this time with funny looking actors? Or spending an hour and forty minutes of your life dragging your loser friends to see the movie, then them becoming curious enough that they start watching the TV series with you and then they become slightly less losery, and you spend six hours watching the first season of the TV series with them and have a grand old time?

Whatever, dude. I'll take my impossible adaptation and my Avatar conversant mother.

I tip my hat off to you, M. Night Shyllama.

First Submission of "Totem"

Stardate 16609.7/the Year of Our Lord 2009, June the 15th

Monday

Dear Aspiring Writers, Web Lurkers, and Fellow Nerds of the future,

Today is a notable day because this is the day on which I submitted the short story "Totem" to a magazine for the first time. From here we will track its progress. I'll write you all again on the day that it is rejected/accepted, or when I submit it again, or if I ever edit it again, or if it gets picked up by a movie studio, or something. So we'll have scientific evidence to actually see how long this stuff takes. If I forget to do so then feel free to remind me. I am talking to you. Yes, you. Not him. You. Okay, now we've cleared that up, on to the next thing.

This story has taken me a long time to get into the tube. The first draft was something like...what, last November? Been a while. Longer than is justifiable, I believe, with a short story. It's the second story that I've submitted to a magazine, and that one took a long time as well. I decided, however, to take my time with this one, just to allow myself to feel prepared and comfortable. The next one I'll take as drastically less time as I can, maybe try and shock myself, speed the process. That'd be cool.

Good luck, writers of the future.

Sincerely

Me

Fantasy Rock and Roll?

Of late, many of the science fiction ideas, characters, worlds, groups, whole stories, etc, that I've been making up have been characterized and defined, at least in part, by rock and roll. T. Volker and the Rough and Ready Corps, of Eve and Shenectady notoriety, for instance, are children of AC/DC, specifically "TNT" for Volker and "Dirty Deeds" for the Corps.

Right now I'm foraying into fantasy though. And I don't know what kind of music to listen to. Rock and roll speaks to my soul, somehow, and I believe there's rock and roll in my fantasies. I can't think at the moment, however, of any groups, songs, or eras that seem fitting to characters like Twig and situations like Finger searching for luck.

As I write this an ironic thought occurs to me. For a long time recently all of the rock and roll I've been listening to has been old, classic. Some of it has been dated, and all of it has been era defining or defined by its era, and all the eras have been markedly ancient, in a sense.

Right now I'm listening to "Girl's Not Grey" by AFI. It came out in 2003. And although it isn't really perfectly vibrating with ideas I have of fantastical ilk, it's closer to the right mood, better idea.

We think of science fiction, and at first blush we imagine the new, the shiny, the chrome, the cutting edge. First blush fantasy tends to evoke feelings of age and agelessness and the ancient. I'm finding it interesting, fascinating, and pretty peculiar that I'm identifying newness with fantasy and oldness with science fiction.

Another thought has just occurred to me, and that's the revolutionary qualities of a lot of the music that I listen to. The Beatles were almost the first people to do what they did; The Ramones invented an attitude; Hendrix revolutionized guitar; Thin Lizzy inspired practically everything; the Stones just went kablooie all over the place. The old rock and rollers were the inventors, the cutting edge musicians. They were the explorers, reaching for newness, not sure where they were headed and forced to create shiny exploration at every turn. But what have we got now? New kids inventing NOTHING. You read articles about the brand new shooting stars on the rock and roll scene and the article is just a list of names that these new kids remind us of--oh, yeah, Endeverafter is like Led Zeppelin with Thin Lizzy sprinkled all over the top. The revolution is over, and we are living in a time when rock and roll is old. Still magical, but not being discovered anymore: it's come, and it's old, and it has stuck and will not leave. This is where we live, in rock and roll world. The magicians of old have brought us to this point when young heroes are discovering dragons to battle and corporate mogul warlords to overthrow...

Demon of Air: inspired by a fright

I had this series of dreams about this dude. A green dude, not too big, who wore brown pants and nothing else. He was hairless, and had bitty horns sticking out his head, like a devil dude. He could fly around, had a huge sword, and like to terrorize nearby yokels. I don't know if he ate their cattle or stole their virgins or what, because I woke up pumping adrenaline before I saw the end. Scared me frightened.

Over the next few weeks I have some more dreams about this same guy. The Demon of Air felt like his name, although I thought it a pretty dumb name. More characters were introduced: an older guy in a suit who was chasing the Demon of Air for some reason, who had this younger woman with him. I figured it was his daughted, but I don't know just yet.

These two people chased the Demon of Air around, in a sort of Van Helsing, vampire hunt type deal, and I kept waking up with a start before the dreams ended, so I don't know why they were. I watched the action from trees, mostly, sitting on branches and looking down and things, so I guess I was like a fourth character. There was this one scene where the Demon sat in a white, plastic chair, in the middle of an outdoor basketball court--I don't know what that was all about--and the old guy and young woman caught up to him, and they talked. I sat in a tree nearby. I can't remember what they said, but I'm sure it was good.

These dreams woke me up in the middle of the night--scared me. It was the Demon of Air who did. And yet, I dreamed up in these dreams a scarier, feral version of the guy. Same size, same shape, but like...red and slimy.

Dreams are weird.

I want to write this story out as a story. So this blog is meant to get the juices flowing on this Demon of Air.