GHASTLY To-mourn/tomorrows sulphur laden clouds dead trees black limbs filtering burned bulb of sun sick pools floating apocalyptic babies who grin, stare-stuck into forever amputated from yester-era futurepeek...hellyuh GIRL LANDING A foreign body is lovely you think finger-climbing up twin hills plunder valley cleft tangle in thicket entwine and orbit cosmic fall in reflecting -self -reflecting mark your claim watch it shift from under your grasp no path for your trumpeting footprint TENDER ABUSE tender abuse this tongue of flame saying, speaking, ordering do something about yourself after the words brand a seal enclosing a scored heart he becomes chill as wax smoking silence has frozen him grotesque as a half melted saint
Feeling dark. My poems are coming out weird and dark. Skull-Castle My head, My castle, My torture chamber cavernous, cobwebbed, carved with jaguars Conclusions all dark Watch the monsters sink beneath my eye moat. Epitaphs Tongue like a tombstone carver’s chisel gouging dreadful things: how are you? Slamming all advent doors. Pleasure-wrong A tongue bridging between mouths as ash from a corpse blows red across the water A thought-bred briar rose blooming/pricking rejoice Blood petals rejoice
A question on the forums had me dragging out my first book to see how far I’ve come ( or not *gulp* ) in my writing. It was definitely eye opening. I took some pictures. Check out this behemoth. I wrote it back in the early 90's when I was around 14. I’m having issues trying to date this ( I never wrote dates on anything. And there are about 4 10-30 page outlines I had done of the story previous to writing this draft which is throwing me off on the dates. ) I got inspired by Twin Peaks which was inspired by old movies and my ms bares a lot of similar themes ( both with old movies and Twin Peaks ) - There are serial murders, and a quirky detective, lots of strange folklore, an amnesia theme, and a sort of horror/surrealism. It took a year or two to write ( dates evade me. ) But the final result is a block of paper almost as high as your average Dr. Pepper can. Lol. Ew that yellow paper, you can tell I just grabbed anything because chapters written after look older. But I had a habit of grabbing any paper I could find. I’m really going to have to transcribe it onto a computer or something - Some of the paper is so cheap, ditto the pens that some of the words are pretty faded. Notice how I tabbed the chapters, I kinda like that. I’m terribly organized so I not only tabbed the chapters, I named them to keep track of things. There are 44 chapters. In later drafts I tried to whittle them down to 32 but they ballooned up to 53. Every time I got rid of something it seemed like some new character took it's place or a new scene filled the gap. The shortest chapter is 3 pages long and the longest chapter in the world - look at that sucker was - 665 pages. A novel within a novel. One thing that made me nostalgic for the time when I wrote this was how into the writing I got. I wrote so much so fast that the ink would run out in my pen and rather than search for another I’d grab anything that I could find- in this page it happens to be a navy pencil crayon - and kept going. Gah! The dedication. Here's the pen starting to fade - but it picks up and - says Nice to meet you Farrell is now in navy pencil crayon. And rather than loose momentum - here's the next page in pencil crayon ( lol ) - - *Groan* That dialogue! So cheesy. Notice the random note at the top of the page to remind me of something I missed. Ragged Robin, a flower, happened to be some important clue in the serial murders. Not quite sure what's it doing on this page. At first glance over my story, I cringed ( and am still cringing over that dialogue ) , then I kinda gave myself a break. It wasn’t the day and age ( for me anyway ) of computers, or backspace, erase, or delete. I just flooded the page and to hell with coherency. Plus, I wasn’t the best student in the world, I wouldn’t know an adverb or modifier if they angrily bit me on my skinny behind. On the page below, I circled and underlined some stuff. Note how I was doing the present tense thing back there ( doesn’t sound half as good though. It sounds very script-y. ) And apparently I loved hammy ideas - - lol. - Also, I loved the dash. Rather than indent a paragraph I just used a dash, same for the start of dialogue which I never bothered to use quotes on. And I hated speech tags ( huh, still do ) so they didn’t always show up, clouding who the hell was speaking. Notice the circled Help...me that's actually supposed to be a thought but there's no distinction. I didn't bother printing in italic. I attempted a second draft of this story and got as far as the 26 chapter - 600 pages in, oh I didn’t tell you how long this book was - 2178 pages. I decided to hunt up some paperbacks to show you the equivalent size wise. I chose some hefty horrors approx 400-500 pages a piece, but despite the fact that there are four paperbacks - I’m still 90 pages over them in length. I would love to say I got much more word concise but when I attempted a second draft - it wound up running almost parallel in length. Which doesn’t sound too bad until you learn that I ditched five characters, lots of scenes and I developed a nastier habit than the dash. Instead of using the dash I wrote everything in a huge block on the page. No paragraph indents, no distinction in dialogue patterns just words. That second draft is more unreadable than the first draft. Fortunately this all took place in the early to mid 90's. And I've gotten better with my layout, word choices and hopefully grammar. Good things I noticed - despite my awful spelling, fluky grammar, and tendency to slip into present tense - were those quirky touches I love which I thought had only come about recently. A lot of things didn’t work but I love that I tried and that I keep on trying. - Here’s one line - Just wanted to show everyone that even a bad, overwinded draft is better than nothing. I'm glad I kept it all these years. There were times when I wanted to burn it or throw it out but it's shown me that I was on the right track in finding my style, there were many years when I wanted to cave but somehow that same quirky voice has fought it's way through. And at the very least it's shown how much I've grown in my writing.
* Short poem I'm working on after being caught at my grungiest during an introduction. Ha. Chipped polish Sum of me today; Chipped lilac nail polish, Lank hair, Feeling like a squirrel has taken fussy residence in my chest. Over there is a woman with satin nails and satin hair no squirrel, but a smile that suggests a song bird flutters in her heart - Sum of her. What can I do? re-polish fluff kick out the squirrel, coax in canary birds? Why must I always feel like the chipped polish? - Something must be done about it.
** This is a cut and paste poem I did a while back taking phrases from vintage Harlequin novels -- I love doing cut and paste. Then it happened; they kissed. Shock was like a needle to the irresistible pressure of his mouth sensual lips that knew no mercy Caught in the slowing down of time resistance took a tumble that shattered her fury So intense were her emotions Flame flickered deep burning, burning with a deep fire bodies were melting together to form a throbbing duet she knew the real danger lay within herself and tried to escape the hard demanding mouth “You brute!” she cried “Give in,” he growled. “You are aching to be my wife.”
Bought a vintage Queen-sized Gothic book at a flea market last week and read it a few days later. Don’t laugh. It’s kinda like sneaking a Snickers chocolate bar after a diet of high-grade stuff ( think Nabokov ), a total guilty pleasure but not a complete loss as I did manage to hone some inadvertent tips from it. The author Dana Ross aka William Ross had this annoying habit of tagging his characters with blurb-like traits, for instance there are three main characters, other than the heroine Judith - Dr. Travis Wood , his son, Dr. Martin Wood, and Martin’s daughter, Betsy Wood. When Dr. Travis Wood is introduced, he is described as an aristocratic man with thinning gray hair but least you forget, don’t worry, for many of his speech tags he becomes - the gray-haired man, or the gray-haired doctor, or even the gray-haired surgeon. Over twelve times, he’s dubbed the old doctor , senior surgeon , old surgeon - as in the old surgeon said. This becomes increasingly annoying as another character pops up, a doctor as well, and he too is called the old doctor. Dr. Martin Wood fares the worst of the trio, first described as a young man with curly brown hair - he is than tagged - the young doctor - so many times, I lost count after 20. Once he was idiotically , described as the young man in gray pantaloons. Say what? As for little Betsy Wood she goes through mind numbing variations of the little golden-haired girl , as in the golden-haired little girl , or blonde Besty ( as opposed to what a dark haired Besty?! ) ,or the golden-haired girl ,even his golden-haired sleeping daughter. Ugh! It’s a little like reading vintage comic books promos, ah that caped crusader , that felonious fiend! This wasn’t just an issue for the main characters even the minor characters suffered the same fate. Just after Mr. Loring is introduced ( the second old doctor ) instead of repeating his name ( that’s obviously too boring ) instead, this lulu is attached to him - ‘the bald man with the black beard sighed.’ Considering there is only two people in the scene distinguishing him thus , only made things confusing. Brian Craig the love interest is usually always called Brian Craig or the Australian - even the heroine thinks of him in terms of Brian Craig like she reading from a stage play. And a creepy handyman Mr. Parker , who has one eye is later predictably dubbed - one-eyed Parker or the one eyed man. Even the others pay homage to this as Brian Craig ( still the full name status ) notices Mr. Parker has been spying on Judith and remarks I see Mr. Parker’s got his one eye on us. Yuk yuk. But Parker’s wife doesn’t fair much better she’s known as the heavy-lidded Mrs. Parker - both have eye issues , I see. The bad guy Timothy Dobbin has the subtle tag of that villainous Timothy Dobbin and with that moniker, he should be twirling the ends of his black moustache! Although most people could dismiss gothic romance as junk , I don’t. It’s genre fiction like anything else. I’ve read good gothic romances , this just wasn’t one of them. But it wasn’t just the character tags that sabotaged this read, it’s Dana Ross’s style in general. I felt as though he was talking down to the reader - oh I know you, idiot ladies, can’t remember that so-and-so’s old , that so-and-so is a doctor so, I’ll have my character talk like this - ‘“My examination of that body told me as a medical man the corpse couldn’t be more than an hour old.”’ As a medical man ... gee whiz with all those young doctor tags flying around I had practically forgotten he was one- not! As for the story itself , well after slogging through all those character tags , I found that this queen sized gothic should’ve been a junior. 100 pages could’ve been eliminated without any affect to the story. The action , what there was of it kept stalling out. The heroine had a couple of spooky attacks in the mansion , told everyone who would listen , was typically written off as a hysterical woman and found herself buried under a mountain of oh, so subtle hint droppings from every new character - that nobody had seen Martin’s wife buried. Gee, I wonder where this one’s going. Interesting to see that even published books - this one was published in 1973 , could have so many flaws. This is definitely going on my how-not-to-write list - 1. avoid annoying character tags. 2. Make every scene count. 3. Quite rehashing , you’re reader is not the idiot , you seem to think he is.
So far this is just jottings that I made coming home one misty day in late November. They're relatively unconnected but I'm trying to tie them all together. Apricot moonbeam in October distills a haunting light, stirring heart whispers of things that only a jack-o-lantern with his savage grin can comprehend. Grapevines are hair-netted after last leaf has dropped. Pink clouds shoulder the sun to bed. Mists obscure a violet escarpment. A bonfire in the distance curls it’s incense. Green has faded to yellow. Naked black trees stand lonely in the distance their limbs like their beginning. Wild and wanton shoots endlessly reaching. A hawk wheels over an motionless windmill. The mist rides in like an apocalypse erasing a world, starting new. Swallowing up violet mountains, barren trees, lonesome fields of barley and the tongue of road so that there is no tomorrow in the windshield and no yesterday in the mirror there is only now. Threatening to be engulfed. Snow twinkles at twilight aglitter over black pavement like fallen diamonds. I walk on stars and hear them crackle beneath my feet. If I close my eyes I can taste them crisp burning a flash out on my tongue. The iciest of fire.
Usually I check out the contest theme. Sometimes it sparks a good idea, sometimes not. But if I go with it and start a story I - A. - never finish it in time or B. It's always too long and I can't enter. Today C. happened - I finished it! and ( wonders never cease! ) it was short. I've finally made a deadline and kept a word limit! Definitely a cheesy smile moment -
Fishstix In the shadow of a bearded mangrove, the scuba diver tips backwards into black water silvered with coins of moonlight, making no noise, though he doubts if he did, the guard would notice. Since the two weeks, after the town of Sunny Beach had flooded, the guard rarely left the booth they erected John turns, righting himself, waiting for the bubbles of his entry to clear. The drowned town shimmers like a view through a wavy window with streams of moonlight striking its edges in silvery chalk outlines. His hand light illuminates little: a startled eyed snapper, the murky motes drifting in a constant powder-fall, a wink of reflecting glass. Pushing with rubber fins, he vaulted downward, swimming toward rooftops, and came hovering above a backyard. Currents’ play ghost with a swing-set and lace curtains billow from a neighboring window. Eerie unsettling illusions in a snow globe world. He pulls himself along, grabbing a corner of the house, turning his head when he glides over the front yard. Down there, confused candytuft, turning mushy and discolored, still line the walkway to a swallowed street. He floats over Palm Avenue allowing this midnight world to imbibe him. Waterlogged rose bushes splinter in slow motion at his wake. And undulating toward town, he spies the glitter of coins flashing on a sidewalk, hanks of slimy vegetable flesh float from the open door of a market like dead minnows. On toward Crocker street, he kicks, with its prize, the widow Matherson’s house. The water clear of shapes leading up to her drive cast the house in a luminescent hue, indigo edged, lighting the way. But up close the gabled relic grew dark, foreboding, causing John to hesitate. He wasn’t a person that scared easily, and the childlike fear of haunted houses, was drowned by the need for money. Turning the doorhandle, he drifts in, hovering a moment in the Victorian fossil. Not quite as creepy inside, as out he thought. Which place to search first? John slipping sideways into a drawing room, ran his fingers over piano keys, the notes struck him as currents, not as sound, bringing to mind childhood days, sunk in a bathtub repeatedly striking his finger against the porcelain to hear the dull ping as aquatic echo. A soggy poster under a fridge magnet shed it’s paint creating a misty swirl of colors to hang before it like clouds stained at sunset, dusty pink, mauve and blue. John drags his finger through the ribbons causing them to turn about and kite-tail. He floats up a staircase and into a bedroom. It’s as untouched as a dollhouse expecting its owner to return. The chenille bedspread pulled tight over sodden pillows, flickers as the pile twitches in the movement of water. The fringed canopy sways lazily, while some curtain bubbles and flutters at an open window. An awkward turn. He jerks in fright, catching movement out of the corner of his eye - there! He sends up a flurry of exhaust bubbles to roll along the ceiling and nearly laughs. It’s his reflection in the vanity mirror. But what’s this? A murky haze of lilac dusting power drew his curiosity, for it swirled above the vanity like a conjurer’s trick. Something has set it off and recently. He pokes the soaked powder puff releasing a lackluster surge of motes. He turns. His mouth lunges open to scream. His hose falls out. A corpse? No! Black, demonic eyes, tilted like distended teardrops, glittered at him from within a corpse white face, whether with curiosity or malice, he can’t tell. Now, a slash of red mouth gapes showing shards of teeth, overlapping, broken, razor edged teeth, with a moving tongue as blood-red as a wound. A skee sound hits him like a shove, tilting him. It came out of this, this... thing like a roar. Sinewy arms reach out. It had arms, not tentacles, and hands! Hands that snatch his arm, digging in nails sharp as broken sea shell, but glowing like pearly undersides pink, dusky gold and deadly. The head of the creature darts down, as cutting a move as a shark. The teeth sank, ripping into his arm. He howls, gulping in water. He pulls trying to escape. Feathery wisps of his blood thread the water. Need air. Got to surface. He yanks a handful of swirling black hair, kicking out with his flippers. The thing lets go , turning so quickly, the current sends him reeling. He catches the glitter of blue-black scales and a caudal fin, transparent as a wedding veil, disappearing through the window spiraling off into the dark depths. Kicking and clawing, he fought for the surface. Breaking into air. Choking, til he was sick, he paws toward the bank, pulling himself ashore by the root of a cypress tree. Whatever it was, it had torn through his wet suit. His arm’s bleeding, bad. He heads for home. Sylvia , his wife works wordlessly, sowing up his wound. She’s a nurse, recently laid off and the sight of his blood doesn’t frighten her, but her disgust sparks when he answers her question - “Did you get it?” with a very quiet, No. He’s annoyed by her calmness, her disgust. He takes a sip from her beer. “Hold still.” She complains. Tying off the last stitch, she puts up her feet on his lap and takes back her beer. “Okay, what happened? ...Don’t tell me Sunny Beach is now infested with sharks?” “I don’t know. I didn’t get a clear look.” What could he say, it was a demonic mermaid? “Gallagher stopped by today-” “Don’t start.” “What? Am I starting, something? You’re the one who came back empty handed. Don’t think that scratch is going to keep you -” He rises leaving the sunny, too bright kitchen with its fluorescent wallpaper, naked lights, as raw as Sylvie’s complaints and heads down the hall to his son’s room. “Don’t you wake him up!” Sylvia’s threat fades like a shout into the wrong end of a cheerleader cone. John opens a door, a shaft of light brightens his son’s face who sleeps rather like a fish with lips open, gasping breaths, over the chewed on cheek of a teddy bear. He shuts the door and goes to bed. It was ridiculous. There had been no murderous mermaid. And nothing, no fantasy, no reality was going to stop him from finding Matherson’s jewels. * * * His wife had the same idea. Despite his loss of blood, and the threat of infection, she fingered a stack of bills in the morning and gave him a look that said, you’re the man, make them disappear. He sighs breaking off a piece of hush puppy, eating slowly, tasting nothing. His arm throbs but the pain is muffled, not quite what he was expecting. But the wound pulsed with heat, flaring up whenever he touched the bandage that Sylvia wrapped around it. After finishing his coffee, and the last of his hush puppy, he gives his son a quick kiss goodby. Timmy is squalling under roving cotton, Sylvia is practically sanding his face with a washcloth and in protest he throws his paper lunch sack to the floor, and kicks off one sneaker. John smiles leaving Sylvia to handle it, and heads for the bathroom. He locks the door before unraveling the gauze. A stomach lurching stench of pus hits him, not just pus but decomposing fish matter like scales under fingernails, days old. The wound is puffed up, bruise black, with yellow green pus burping out from between the stitches. He takes the end of his wife’s toothbrush and gives it a poke. The pain flares hot for a moment but the action rent only relief. He presses down until the wound heaves, squirting out a mess of pus till in runs clean. The wound mollified, simmers like a rotten tooth pulled. He douses the wound with antiseptic and winds on a clean bandage. High noon, he returns to the lake, sneaking past a guard, who’s chewing his lunch of fried fish caught from the lake and cooked over a hotplate. He slips in and with the sun gleaming a path makes his way to Mrs. Matherson’s house. He flutters around it cautiously, peeking in through her upstairs window just to make sure. Fish or figment, he doesn’t want another run in. He slithers about - opening drawers, sheets of paper take flight, and like some crystal octopus an overturned bottle shoots an ink-cloud into the water but his ransacking of the den isn’t a total loss. He finds a small lockbox and smashes it open against a brass doorstop. Inside is a wad of bills, coming close to three hundred bucks. Twirling in victory, he returns to the second floor. Opening a jewelry box, which tries in vain to tinkle forth a tune in this plethoric underworld, he scoops up a mass of dripping, tangled baubles; necklaces, earrings and bracelets like a jumble of pirate booty and crams it into a pillow case. Dammit. His tanks are running low. He would have to come back at night. Sylvia paws through the jewelry with a critical eye - “You know this is mostly costume don’t you? Can’t you tell the difference?” John sweeps the last bit of bread around his plate, soaking up dribbles of clam chowder and puts in his mouth, taking the time to chew. “I know that.” He says, finally. But she insists on holding up a tangled necklace, “You don’t think anyone would treat real jewels, emeralds like this, do you? Not even an old bag like Mrs. Matherson.” He wishes she wouldn’t sit like that. One leg propped up on her chair, with the crotch strip of her underwear for anyone to see. And would it kill her to run a brush through her hair? It was more tangled than the waterlogged roots of a mangrove tree. “I’m going back, later on tonight. I’ll try again.” “Damn right you will.” She hadn’t even asked about his arm. Behind a locked door, he removes the bandage and his stomach plummets - gangrene! Don’t panic. He tells himself, examining the wound. It isn’t gangrene it doesn’t even smell bad, and the flesh isn’t rotten, but the skin had gone hard. Right up to his elbow. Hard and slightly green and shiny. Also, it itched. “Everything all...
Over generalization is a voice killer. It can dilute your scenes, obscure your meaning, and worse yet, it can bore your reader. Generalizations are unclear words that settle for an idea rather than a concrete item or place. Think of it this way - do you ask a family member ( see there’s a generalization - family member ) to go grab you some fruit from the kitchen or do you say - Bring me back a banana. The notion of fruit rattles off so many possibilities that the reader has to wait for you, the author, to clarify it - and then if you decide to peel the now clarified fruit as a banana, the reader may be a little miffed that it wasn’t made clear in the first place. That’s another problem with using generalizations. By the time you clarify - you’ve added several extra sentences. That may not seem like much, but if you continue to use this technique they’ll add up, and explaining obvious things will take precedence over description or action, bogging things down. Why waste precious words? Here are some generalizations - fruit, man, woman, female, male, car, clothes, flowers, accessories, jewelry, hat, purse, animal, dog, drink, dishes, elegant, fantastic, excellent, wonderful, lunch, luggage, make-up, material, nick name, musical instrument, ornament, parent, spouse, perfume, pet, bedding, toy, snack, religion, restaurant, wealthy, rumor, art, toiletries, sibling, soap, stationary, talent, charm, candy, transportation, coat, vandalism, sports, meat, vegetables, young, old, kitchen, bedroom, nationality, etc. * It’s not that you can’t use these words. In fact some of them are downright necessary. It’s to know when and how to use them. Take the word fantastic - what’s wrong with it you say. First off it’s a great word for conversation, because it’s an expression that gives vague praise. That meal was fantastic. And it’s real meaning - as - yummy, delicious, exotic, tasty etc. is easily grasped by the reader. But to lean on it to describe something - like he had fantastic eyes - if your protagonist isn’t a 14 year old school girl, than Fantastic eyes is rather vague and lame - so is fantastic car, fantastic wife, and fantastic boy friend. None of these things are quite clear and unless it’s used in conversation where the real meaning can be quickly discerned, why bother? Better to say - His eyes made emeralds look like slag heaps. ( corny but memorable. ) He’s driving the new BMW, the lucky bastard. Or, Jim’s wife not only makes homemade lasagna, she also rubs his feet after his hard day at the office. These are concrete ideas that make clear pictures in a reader’s mind. This is every writer's goal - absolute clarity. Even if you don’t keep the sentence of a wife who makes lasagna from scratch or eyes that make emeralds look like slag heaps, the idea is to reach beyond cliches and generalizations. Paint a picture don’t give the reader a dot-to-dot and expect him to fill it in. Colors can become generalized if you let them - does a red t shirt fulfill a descriptive need? Or is it a cop-out. It can be either or depending on your style. It's the different between pink shoes and pink Converse sneakers. Remember every time you eliminate a generalization it helps you foremost before a reader even sees your work. When you snatch for something easy like flowers you box yourself in. Think of a scene - your protagonist Larry is wandering through a field of flowers and stops to pick some. - Larry wandered through a field of flowers on his way to Debra’s house. He picked some that caught his eye, some that he thought Debra would like. It’s okay, if a bit dull. What if I just change a few words. Larry wandered through a meadow on his way to Debra’s and lured by their scent, he picked some lily-of-the-valley. Perfect for Debra. I’ve managed to bring in some vibrancy with a few subtle changes. Anyone can use flowers, anyone can pick something by sight, anyone can dress up a field by adding the word flowers. But by eliminating generalizations you give your piece flavor, you give it voice. Lily-of-the-valley, meadow, scent. Notice how the new words even sparked a fresh verb - lured and punched up the final sentence. And the interesting thing is people assume being specific means more words when that can’t be further from the truth - even by counting every word in lily-of-the-valley I’ve still managed to eliminate four words. Whether or not those few sentences can stand on their own or need elaboration doesn’t matter - what matters is to get rid of generalized thought. Generalizations can dance around ideas - Harvey’s wife sent him to the store to pick up some toiletries. rather vague - Or - Harvey couldn’t believe he got talked into making a Tampax run. quite clear. Brand names can also help define things - The sheriff sat on the sagging porch drinking a bottle of cola. The sheriff sat on the sagging porch sucking on a bottle of Coca-cola. There is a warning with brand names though, remember when and where to use them. When you’re writing an action-packed scene or emotion fueled melodrama, the hero can hardly start rhapsodizing about the make and model of his car. To avoid generalizations start getting familiar with types of things - different flowers, different animals, fabrics, foods. This will stop the generalizations in their tracks - lunch will become anything from a greasy Big Mac at McDonalds to Jambalaya with a slice of lemon ice box pie. Anything but just lunch. And that is the biggest advantage of eliminating generalizations - it can stop you from telling your readers who your character is - the showing becomes so much easier. Instead of telling your readers that Elaine is fastidious - put her in a high class restuarant and have her send back the angel hair pasta for being gummy. Put two school boys David and Eric in McDonalds, Have Dave, a rather husky boy, continuously point out the pretty girls coming in knowing Eric will turn to look so Dave can steal Eric's french fries. The scene could easily show Dave is more interested in food and Eric is more interested in girls and it's all based on eliminating the generalization of a mere lunch - By giving it an exact place McDonalds and an exact food - French fries - it gives the reader a concrete visual.
“A metaphor is the act of the imagination, figuring one thing to be another.” Lord Kames. This wonderful quote kicked off an urge in me, to find some tips on metaphors. I scoured my how-to-write books only to discover, not much is said about them. Odd. I consider metaphors to be the life blood of an authors work. A great metaphor, allegory, simile - they’re all limbs from the same body, can carry your piece. They can give it tone, vision, atmosphere and when they go wrong, they can sabotage all three of these things. Here’s some rules to keep in mind - * Metaphors need to relate to your subject - Although in themselves, metaphors are a juxtaposition, a jumbling of an unrelated object to another - such as when Edgar Allen Poe says The past is a pebble in my shoe - remember that time and place are important. His metaphor is timeless but lets tweak it, say I'm still writing in Poe’s era , the 1800s, could I than say - The past is a pebble in my Reebok? No, I couldn’t. But it would be fine in a modern novel. * Metaphors should relate to your characters - Would a tween say “I feel like a tax write-off.” Probably not- they don’t know what a tax write-off is. But a guy with his overbearing blind date, ( who has just yanked the bill out of his hand ) might. Keep your characters interests, social status, personality in mind before creating one. * No Mixing - metaphors are like placing one image over another to highlight the initial object and give it a fresh vision. Imagine likening a big old Cadillac to a boat, rocking it’s way through the current of traffic to the coast. You can’t jam another image in there without confusing the reader. If you suddenly say - The big old boat of a Cadillac rocked through the traffic towards the coast where it plowed up the beach like a tank storming Normandy - the reader goes say what? What is this a car or a transformer? It was a boat and now it’s a tank. Here’s another metaphor to describe what goes on when you mix your metaphors - Imagine you, the author, are a witness - describing a criminal to the police sketch artist ( the reader ) as he is poised to add up all the info you’ve given him, you start waffling - He had ears like mini satellite dishes yeah, yeah, real elf ears. The sketch artist will go hold on! Are they elf ears or satellite dishes? Don’t be stubborn and say both. The reader will toss you out of there and pick up someone with better vision. Don’t mix. Keep your initial vision clear. Okay that’s basically it for the rules - now on to the good stuff. How to cultivate a Metaphor. * First things first - you have to plant metaphor seeds. Seriously. All a metaphors is, is a substitute image - likening one thing to another. The easiest way to generate oodles of comparisons is to start filling up your brain with images. Pictures, visuals are the easiest things to relate to because that’s exactly what’s going on in writing, you write a word which paints an image in the readers mind. Say I write - Green Pear - you can hardly stop the image from appearing. Scour the internet for images - Gather things pertaining to the earth, to animals, to houses and architecture, to tools and appliances. To pop culture and art. To history and space. To toys and nostalgia. To machines and vehicles and...and.. You get the picture. Go to the library - buy their discard books - like wildflower or gem guides, scan the local thrift stores for National Geographics - a superb mix of social studies and wildlife. Remember even if it’s dated - it can still spark off relevant comparisons. * Have a fresh outlook - when you look for images be diverse - don’t think well I’m not writing a fantasy so I won’t look up castles. That’s a problem, you’re thinking a castle image is only pertinent to fantasy - however a castle image could be the key to a story about a disillusioned housewife who is hardly living a dream life and baking cookies using castle cookie cutters. This could revolutionize the whole scene. Don’t label ideas or items - that in itself is a sheer cliche buster - spooky doesn’t have to be a creepy old house, cobwebs, and crypts. It can be anything if you have the vision for it. Don’t just look at objects and see them as they are, but as what they could be, and have been. A good way to explore this is go to a sell sight like Ebay - type in something like Chinese Blossom and all kinds of diverse objects will come up. I looked up matadors the other day and came up with a drinking cup made from a bull’s horn - interesting image! And something I never would have thought of. * Images are all fine an dandy but knowing about the image is a huge bonus - A picture of a rose is beautiful and can spark metaphors for tightly wound inner layers, - a rose-within-a-rose-within-a-rose, to it’s color, down to it’s sharp thorns. But that doesn’t help for the scent of a rose, field work or gathering some funky history about your object is a must. That way you can surprise your reader with a rose petal jam metaphor - It was as pretty and fragrant and flavorless as a spoonful of grandma’s rose petal jam. Learn the science of objects, learn their history. * Study metaphor rich poets - it will help you discover the lyrical beauty of a metaphor - read them out loud, hear harmony of syllables. This is wonderful for creating quick, precise and often elegant metaphors.
IS - WAS - A SENTENCE KILLER? I'm starting to think so. Yesterday, in Chapters I flipped through Douglas Glover’s Attack of the Copula Spiders - it looks interesting as writing manuals go. Not that any of them ever really help you creatively, per say, but some help you avoid writing down a dead end. This looks like one of those. The book rallies against the use of dead verbs - to be, was, am, is etc. which the author found an abundance of in his students writing and by circling each dead verb, he could link them into a visual spider hence the title. It’s not that was, am, to be, is etc. can’t be used, it’s that they’re over used. If you look up was in the dictionary - Was means - to exist or live - to take place, happen or occur - to occupy a place or position - to continue to remain as before - to belong, attend, befall ...All of which can provoke a static sentence. I.e. - The bottle is on the bar. I am chief of police. I was at the dance. It can even pull the reins on an active verb .i.e. I was dancing. I was sledding. Retuning my creative mode I began to rethink openings should I enter a scene on a flat statement, creating a stagnant image or a moving one - and wondering how many was's are plaguing my work? I dug up some books to see how the great ones handled verbs and made this list. Here are some amazing verbs all of which could’ve been killed by the virus - was. In Gravity’s Rainbow a man threads himself into a robe Another gobbles down croissants and coffee He sprints towards laughter People gargle wine Pinball machines writhe under their handlers In John Updike’s short story collection - a jet engine is haloed by a rainbow Lake water swallows two bather’s flesh up to their knees A bed is sluing like a boat on a wave Young girls throng a man’s vision A card shark sandbags with three kings A beer to soothe my mouth A woman’s agitation consumes a chrysanthemum ( by her Plucking and rolling the petals ) Hickory trees are clangorous The protoplasm of a house ebbs in stages Margaret Atwood - A mind shambles A car crunches to a halt fingers of snow creep over a road float ( in a hammock ) Bedsprings mourn Couples slither through slush a voice prods a thought is censored a woman clamps her skirt between her knees dancers whizz and careen Angela Carter pistons thrust a train forward A woman beggared herself for love sausages hiss in a pan a woman is unwrapped (undressed ) An opal spurts green flame ( a color in the firelight )
I'm re-reading Pia Pera's novel Lo's Diary a kind of sidequel to Nabokov's Lolita only from Lolita's pov. It was written back in the 90s and she takes it more from the angle of a mother's hatred for her daughter and also incorporates some riot-grrl feminist vibes into the text - Emily Prager did a much better job of this with her Lolita-take book - Roger Fishbite. But it is an interesting read. I'll do a longer post but for now I'm just stunned that Pera took 90 pages to set up Lolita's life prior to meeting Humbert only to have him enter, takeover and this realization isn't shaking up Lolita. She's as acerbic before she met him as his complete takeover of her life. Huge mistake. What's your thoughts? Should major events shake up the mc even if they're a bit twisted or should you maybe tone down the twisted side of your character so you can have them appear shook? I feel like Pera is doing everything she can to have Lolita avoid a victim label.
( Before I get a razzbery for focusing on film - take note most of Hitchcock’s films are adapted from books - some of which are by top notch authors like Patricia Highsmith , Daphne DuMaurier , John Steinbeck and Robert Bloch. ) As an experiment, I decided to sift through some Hitchcock films to see how he handled his stories. I decided to stick with 15 movies even leaving off some good ones ( including his oscar winner Rebecca. ) to keep focused. But these show a good range of how he dealt with plot twists , story lines , formula , even some flubs. *** Warning - If you’ve never watched Hitchcock films this deals with major spoilers **** 1. Family Plot -the intertwining plot - Interesting mystery has two dueling mc’s in two contrasting plot threads that eventually intersect. The first plot thread features Arthur and Fran, lovers , who kidnap men for ransom, payable by jewels, before retiring to their upscale home where they stash the loot in a chandelier. Fran frets over their 'career', while Arthur likes their life the way it is. The second plot thread features a phony medium , Julia, whose about to hit paydirt when a wealthy client asks her to find ( using her powers )a lost heir. The medium enlists the aid of her taxi-driver boyfriend , George posing as a pipe chomping , private eye. The characters fates eventually collide via mistaken identity , and irony giving this nifty set up some black humored punch. The same idea was used outside the venue of the thriller with Sleepless in Seattle. 2. Notorious - freshening up an old theme - the love triangle - There’s nothing more old hat , more dreary than yet another love triangle. But Notorious breathes life into these old bones with three characters whose true nature is hidden behind masks. To make up for her father’s traitor status , Alicia agrees to spy on the Nazi’s mainly because she has fallen for her recruiter Devlin. But Devlin learning Alicia will have to seduce Sebastian one of her father’s contacts , pretends indifference. Meanwhile Sebastian eagerly agrees to marry Alicia. There you have it a three way triangle in which each one is trying to con the other. Devlin is trying to hide his love in lieu of a loyalty to the cause, Alicia is trying to hide hers to risk getting her meanwhile pretending devotion to Sebastian and even though Sebastian might be the only one who really feels anything, he’s pretty quick to agree with disposing Alicia , and hides his Nazi activist status behind a veneer of suave elegance. 3. Strangers on a train - When the Hero resembles the villain - Guy the charming tennis pro bares more than a passing resemblance to Bruno the la-di-da madman in SOAT. ( which is a theme Patricia Highsmith uses in a great deal of her stories the hero is another shade of the villain or vice versa. ) When Bruno suggests they swap murders , Guy can’t help but be intrigued, he’s got a slutty wife who won’t give him a divorce which he needs in order to climb the next rung in his social ladder. I n fact Guy’s situation is more desperate than Bruno’s. But Guy’s images has been given the Hollywood polish , in the book my point is nailed home when Guy actually does murder Bruno’s father something that never occurs in the movie. The shading between them becomes not their mutual sin but their contrasting regard for it. While Guy is torn with guilt and remorse. Bruno is virtually unrepentant. 4. Psycho - killing off your main character - Is it okay to kill off your main character? Yes - But only if what follows, surpasses, what came before. Take Marion, Psycho’s main character whose starts the movie having a tryst in a dumpy motel with her boyfriend. They’re at a crux in their relationship , smothered by debt , bills, the past. Marion takes the opportunity to steal a large sum of money from the office where she works and runs. But her flight is mad hampered dash , till she finding herself caught in a downpour seeks shelter at the Bates motel. For now the story has been about Marion’s rash decision , and how she’ll get out of it. Will she be caught? Will she meet up with Sam? Should she turn herself in? But before the reader can reflect on any of this, she’s killed. By the proprietor, Norman Bates’, crazy mother. The reader’s goal vaults from resolving a theft to resolving a murder. The suspense has been boosted from Marion’s flight , to Norman’s protection of his daft mother. The character exchange has been a gain, not a loss with a whiz-bang shocker of an ending. 5. The Birds - the unexplained - In the Birds it’s never explained why our feathered friends attack. In Daphne DuMaurier’s novella the family speculated wether the attack was organized by the military , but in the movie the characters stay away from such frank ideas - theirs are more cosmic , more fairy tale, more Freudian. The main character Melanie is an aloof practical joker , whose intrigued when her recent prank bombs on a handsome decent lawyer , Mitch. Determined to start fresh , she buys a pair of love birds for his sister , and heads out to Bodega Bay to present them , the deed itself an elaborate prank. Rather than present them in person she sneaks them into the farm, leaving them alongside a note. Soon birds are swooping , diving , clawing through the town like sharks in a body of water. Nobody knows why by the speculations run rampant. An old drunk declares it’s the end of the world, another hysterical woman believes Melanie brought them, witchlike, cursing them all. And even the reader , could imagine that perhaps the birds are messengers of doom orchestrated by Mitch’s mother’s jealousy rather like Samantha Egar’s giving literal birth to her anxieties in The Brood. 6. Marnie - Psychological whosits - When the heroine behavior is a mystery , even unto herself or - Why do I do the Things I do. The book Marnie differs slightly from the movie paring down the cast of characters and actually ditching Mark’s popular brother. But I’ll focus on the movie which starts with our title character Marnie a thief , who blows threw jobs , alias’, and safes like a klepto in a candy store. Her life is dull and loveless, and the relationship with her cold mother is strained. Mark a handsome , young business owner , hires her knowing her to be a thief from a brief encounter at one of her previous ‘jobs.’ Allowing her to rob him , he now has the upper hand and blackmails her into marriage. However Marnie is far from cooperative and her morbid frigidity has him reaching for the psych books. Surreal hints drop like Hansel and Gretel crumbs leading to the showdown, with a flashback to Marnie’s past, in which all is unveiled. A top notch psychological mystery. 7. Lifeboat - Controversial ideas - Never a big hit , some believe it’s due to it’s claustrophobic title setting others think the cast wasn’t up to snuff. Than there’s the movie reviewers who might’ve hit the nail on the head - It was just too controversial for it’s own good. Over the credits a boat sinks - a torpedo victim of World War 2. A straggle of survivors pull themselves into a lifeboat already occupied by a husky voiced- mink swathed, rich reporter. The survivors appear to represent every American, at the time, from an easy-going hoofer ( dancer ), to nurse , to a mother with a dead baby , to a cigar chomping shipping magnet and a tattoo strewn, coke-stoker whose communist views bare an uncomfortable resemblance to the most controversial survivor, the German captain who bombed their boat. While the American’s bicker, remain disorganized and grow weaker , Willie, their enemy, captain’s their lifeboat , with the goal of rowing them to their doom , and his victory a German supply ship.Though the American’s manage to defeat this foe it’s only through mob violence and sheer numbers rather than rules or organization. Rule of thumb - Touchy subjects could touch off your audience. 8. Stagefright - lying to the reader - This bombed some say due to the eclectic i.e weird cast. Others attribute it to the outrageous twist. The story follows Jonathan a haplessyoung man whose affair with a vixenish actress, Charlotte, gets him framed for murder,when she asks his help in removing evidence, after she killed her husband. He’s caught at her residence with the body and flees, begging the help of his friend , actress wannabee Eve, who jumps at the intrigue. Going under cover as maid to Charlotte in order to find some evidence to save Jonathan , she falls in love with detective Ordinary Jones. The film comes to a head when Eve runs and hides with cornered Jonathan only to discover , that he is the killer. Flashbacks dishing up the ‘Truth’ were actual lies. The flaw with this story , and a note to keep in mind when pacing a story with a twist, is that when your ‘hero’ ( Jonathan ) disappears for half the story , and is denied the romance angle - the viewer can guess that he’s not the hero but the psychotic killer. 9. The Lady Vanishes - humor - Hitchcock always had a sly sense of humor and uses it to great effect in this movie which fluctuates between intrigue , mystery and laughs. While this could’ve been an ordinary spy thriller it’s given a buoyant boost by using humor to derail our sense of detection. The story starts with an eclectic bunch of travelers stranded on their way home to England pre World War 2 . It’s quick with the comedy to pan over the characters and keep everything light - Our heroine is a freewheeling upscale young woman whose having one last hurrah before she marries. Her ‘love’ interest is a quirky young man who collects folk songs - both argue, bicker and flirt. This is to put us...
How do I find the Perfect Book? Usually I don’t - there’s no great book divining rod , no game caller to shout out - your hot , your cold , basically it’s a pick of the cards. But after a recent spree in a used book store, I sat down to figure out my book picking habits. Or why do I choose the things I do. Occasionally I’ll go by word of mouth , though I was never an Oprah pick fan. Shivers of delight don’t roll down my spine when I find a book with an Oprah’s choice emblem ,which reminds me of those 90's video store staff pick shelves, always good for a warning - remind me never to ask Steve’s opinion on a movie. I’ve never been much of a joiner so those things usually put me off, even when I see a Stephen King blurb extolling the talents of a new writer, I can only think , lets hope his endings are better than yours. The word of mouth thing, though is usually in reference to another book - I’m the type of person that when the band wagon comes rolling round and everyone’s jumping on, I kind of go what’s that noise , what’s all the commotion. By the time I’ve figured out what’s going on the hoopla is kaput. I didn’t run out and read a Million Little Pieces or Harry Potter , But I did read Sarah by J.T. Leroy , after it was mentioned in Entertainment Weekly. And when he was later exposed as a fraud I wasn’t all that surprised. I just laughed , what suckers us readers can be! My favorite hunting grounds is this great used bookstore - It’s labyrinthine, packed into a musty old house , each room gutted for a special section , floor to ceiling shelves , stacks in front of shelves , wavering stacks , every time I’m in there I hear the avalanche of a stack falling - hands grope to catch it in time , they fall just like a rock slide with one lingering book that topples long after the rest have landed like a wait-for-me- trailing behind boulder. With that in mind , my options of finding the book , the search for the perfect book are narrowed. A spine alone has to intrigue me , has to yoo-hoo call to me. This isn’t easy. Do I go by color - that has happened. A vintage book on the history of Bosie , Oscar Wilde’s ahem friend was a lovely mauve and caught my eye. Sometimes it’s a title - Slanguage , Feminist in the Dark, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, sometimes size does count - Movies and Methods was such a cereal box wedge that I had to have it or even a ridiculously tiny cube, nothing more than a stream of conscious list- 14,000 things to be Happy About. Sometimes even the publishing logo will flag me down - this especially happens when I’m seeking out books for my 80's ya series collection and I swoop down upon a First Love From Silhouette like a lost and found heirloom. Or maybe it’s just another Zebra Horror , or Taschen art book. Then there’s the authors - oh ho! An entire row of Nabokov books - Pale Fire , Invitation to a Beheading , The Eye , Pnin, Despair , Laughter in the Dark, Transparent Things , The Gift all in a little bookshop loaded with pricey beatnik treasures. I can’t resist A Picture on the Wall as well , I spill my loot onto the counter feeling like pirate with his first mighty haul. Another bookstore another time - an entire row of J.G. Ballard, end of the world paperbacks. Couldn’t get enough of those. High Rise, Concrete Island , The Crystal World , The Drowned World , The Burning World , The Drought - awk I’ve been tricked - the Burning World and The Drought are one and same - oh, why did he have to go and get serious and win prizes , couldn’t he linger in the land of what if? There were so many apocalypses yet unturned - freezing and jellifying and liquifying. That brings me to subjects - a huge quest for books pertaining to color and jewels or horror stories with hero’s stalked by lunatics in the woods, prairie romances, beatnik bios, a vintage guide to Baton Twirling. But all that of course takes time. I can spend hours in the bookstore crawling on hands and knee , shifting stacks of books like Jenga towers to find something of interest. I’ll pull books at random scan the blurb - but more often than not I scan the inside. This is where I get a little peculiar - most often I don’t read the first paragraph , I flip. If the book uses an extensive variety of words , I’ll buy it. Odd , huh? If it’s too low key for my taste - then I’ll go back to the blurb and see if the subject has caught my interest. I’ve found many an interesting book this way , books I would’ve skipped due to the back blurbs rather hohum description - case in point - The Girl in the Photograph by Lygia Fagundes Tells. Wow. The prose is jaw-dropping good. But to boil down the story with a description, it’s like describing Moby Dick as a story about a big fish - like , whoopee. Not exactly inspiring a wallet reach-for. That’s my usual method for literature or general fiction but with genre I’m more la-dee-da. Sometimes a cover will nab me -a man carrying a female robot, like a bride over a threshold with a rose clamped in her iron teeth - must have, but most often it’s the plot. Marauding rats descending upon the survivors of a bombed world - how could I not snatch up James Herbert’s Domain? However, new books are a whole new crapshoot. The cover art is much more symbolic , provocative - what exactly does this one promise I ask myself noting the doll-likeness to Mark Ryden. I move gingerly , take my time, unfortunately - they’re more pushy in the local Chapters - there is no crawling around on my hands and knees or skim-reading a chapter or two. Someone is always on the lookout for a potential buyer and she'll swoop down on you like some 18 century peddler, the only thing missing is a gi-normous bell to ring with her crowing Books for sale , lovely , lovely books for sale. Only last week I made my pick, We the Drowned by Carsten Jensen, when one of the ‘helpful’ staff darts over. She picks up a glossy paperback , and says in a conspiratorial manner , “These are on sale right now , all three for only...” She trails off as she holds up her book and I hold up mine. They don’t match. See , the problem is I’m next to the Fifty Shades of Porn display - which are everywhere mind you, and she assumed I was ready to ride the bandwagon. I’m not. She backs up real fast , practically apologizing. I say no problem - but in my head I’m thinking - go away , I’m a big girl , I can blunder through my book buying with out any help. I’ve got the towering , double stacked shelves to prove it.