Tales of Woe and Wonder

Just a short post after a long silence.

Here’s a review of a book I recently finished reading:

Tales of Woe and Wonder by Jeff Chapman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Tales of Woe and Wonder” is an excellent title for this collection of short stories. I didn’t quite know what to expect when I dove in, but I’m glad I did. There’s darkness here — as there was in the old fairy tales — but also much wonder.

Sometimes I stopped to re-read a sentence or a phrase, enjoying the way the words sounded, how they fit one another. Enjoying the actual writing in a novel is a rare thing for me these days, so when I encounter it, I share it with the world.

I highly recommend this book.

View all my reviews

 

Ryan Runs for His Life: untitled screenplay

In effort to re-ignite creativity, I’ve been rummaging through old story ideas — novels, short stories, screenplays — and found a few things I’d forgotten. Below is an excerpt from my first attempt at a screenplay. Might make good story fodder for another project in the works.

———————————————–

Ext.Artist’s porch.Day

Sound of motorcycle roaring down the dirt road from the cabin to the highway.

RYAN, arms crossed, is leaning against the railing, his back to the view. He’s looking down at an old willow rocking chair; the tip of his boot on one of the rockers keeps the chair in motion.

Coffee in one hand, an old paint rag in the other, THE ARTIST watches him through the screen door, shakes his head, then pushes open the door and steps onto the porch, letting the door slap closed behind him. THE ARTIST steps to the rail, tucks the paint rag into his back pocket, and sips his coffee while looking out at the view.

THE ARTIST
Everything?

RYAN
(not looking up)
“Thanks for your loyalty. You’re the best person I know. And, oh, by the way, I hired the hitman.”

THE ARTIST
Yeah, but did you tell her everything?

Ryan looks aside, toward the dirt road. The motorcycle’s roar has faded almost to nothing. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Ryan steps to the side of the porch.

THE ARTIST
Clouds are more colorful than people think.
(gestures with his mug)
There’s white, sure, but then there’s blue, pink, gray, ocher…

Ryan looks up at the sky. It’s pristine, not a cloud in sight.

THE ARTIST (CONT’D)
…a little red, umber, maybe some green…

Ryan looks over his shoulder with a quizzical expression.

THE ARTIST (CONT’D)
…a hint of purple. And black. Definitely black.

Frowning a little, Ryan turns around, leans against the rail, wanting to ask what the heck the old man is talking about, but

THE ARTIST
Without the shadows, there’d be no dimension, nothing to give the clouds shape.

c2013, KB

The artist sets the coffee mug on the top rail, takes a chunk of wood from a collection of rough shapes lining the lower porch railing, then pulls a folded knife from his pocket. He opens the knife, holds the wood close to his face, and starts shaving off pieces.

Ryan watches for a couple of beats.

RYAN
What’ll you do when you finally can’t see?

THE ARTIST
(chuckles)
Pottery.

He runs a thumb over a surface his knife has just smoothed, then he turns the shape, studying it, and starts carving again.

RYAN
How much do you get for one of those?

THE ARTIST
Fifteen, twenty dollars.

RYAN
A couple years ago, I bought one of your early landscapes. _________ Mountain. Quarter of a million.

THE ARTIST
I heard about it.

RYAN
Had to move a doorway to hang it.

THE ARTIST
You know where my money went? Everybody else. I drank. Gambled. Other stuff. Landscapes looked more and more like abstracts, and portraits could have been painted by children. I lost my family. But when I started losing my sight, that’s when I remembered how much I missed the details.
(a beat)
I came home.

RYAN
So going blind is a good thing.

THE ARTIST
(shrugs)
My hands still work.

Ryan strides to the opposite end of the porch and looks up the hillside. The peak of a weathered shake roof rises from the ridge: the old studio.

RYAN
If he’s anywhere around, he’ll follow the bike. He’ll know the rider isn’t me, but he’ll follow her anyway.

THE ARTIST
If he’s around, he’s probably up in those trees somewhere with a rifle, and you’re giving him the perfect shot.

RYAN
If he was here, he would have already done it.

The newspaper lays headline-up on the porch swing, forgotten from the earlier argument: “Playboy Billionaire Still Missing”, and a smaller headline, “No Ransom Demands”. The caption under a photo of Ryan’s distraught housekeeper includes the phrases “survivalist hike” and “presumed dead.”

He picks up the paper, looks up at the hillside again, drops the paper back onto the swing.

RYAN
Got any plans for that studio?

THE ARTIST
Give it back to the forest.
(pauses his carving)
Why?

c. KB

 

“Lost” and Trust in Storytelling

Below is a re-post of something I wrote in May 2010, after the television series “Lost” completed its run. I decided to pull it out of the archives after reading a fellow writer’s comments on Facebook regarding flaws in the story. This post isn’t lengthy or particularly erudite, but springs from a writer’s frustration and a viewer’s disappointment.

——————————-

I can hear the chorus: “All right, enough already!”

But here’s yet another commentary on the series finale of that crazy, mind-bending television series, “Lost”.

If you’ve never followed the series, nothing I can outline here can clarify the storyline in a succinct fashion. If you’re already a fan, there’s no need to rehash the series.

Shortly after “Lost” first hit the airwaves, I was at a writers conference and overheard a clutch of writers debating the series. They were gathered in an alcove, but the conversation was loud enough that most of us standing in the noisy hotel lobby could follow the debate with ease. One woman repeated, “They’re gonna write themselves into a corner! I tell you, there’s no way they can untangle it!”

I laughed to myself, and figured I was hearing the voice of someone who had never read fantasy or science fiction, or she just couldn’t let a story unfold without knowing all the answers up front.

Turns out, I was the naive one and she the sage.

For the first couple of seasons, I was an avid viewer then lost interest for the next two seasons, only catching an episode here or there, but returning at the end of Season 4 and hanging around until the end. I was re-hooked, you might say, but was waiting for the finale before deciding whether or not to add the series to my DVD library. After all, an excellent last chapter can mend a lot of ills in the preceding story.

The end matters. But the writers and producers didn’t bring it home. They didn’t fulfill the promises made by all the plot threads and secrets, and therefore they “lost” my trust as storytellers.

And then there were the last scenes, where they presented a mishmash of religious symbols — for intance, that ridiculous stained-glass window that someone, I’m sure, will applaud as being ecumenical. That amalgam of religions was weak, even offensive. The creative team should have stuck with a more science-related ending.

Until the final season, the story seemed pointed toward the genre of “hard science fiction” with a leavening addition of a little fantasy, but the final season tipped completely over into fantasy. Remember how a clanking chain sound or growling would signal the imminent arrival of the black smoke? There was a definite machine-like sound. Then a couple of characters confronted the smoke, and it reacted with a seeming intelligence of its own. Were we misled from the beginning, or was the smoke’s “intelligence” an accident of storytelling that was later used in the mythology presented in the final season?

Whatever the answer, I can’t help but think that the creative team should have steered clear of the soft, faux spirituality, and done the difficult work of writing an ending that was hard science fiction and truer to most of the extant material. By closing the story as they did, they essentially negated all the story that came before.

They made all the audience’s investment in the story pointless. In essence, they didn’t keep their promise(s). They didn’t play fair.

It’s probably needless to say, but I will not be adding “Lost” to my ever-growing DVD library.

——————————-

The whole post could be summed up in this bit of simple writing advice: Endings Matter.

So do promises. If you write the promise, deliver on it.

I wish the “Lost” team had remembered that.

(Now, I gotta take my own advice, and go rewrite a short story.)

 

Brain. Needs. Food.

DF & AS (c2013, KB)

This week, I navigated the mean streets of a new city to meet friends for lunch. By “mean”, I’m saying they’re potholed and narrow and crowded with businesses so close together sometimes that the sign of one establishment appears to be advertising its neighbor.

Which is how I missed the restaurant.

And why I saw more of the city than I intended.

Not a bad thing, but there was rain, traffic, too many lanes, hard-to-read numbers, no place to turn around and get back into the flow of traffic, that sorta stuff. Still, not a bad thing. But it meant time with old friends was too short.

I’m jonesing for writerly conversation.

Aaaauuuugggghhhh. (zombie walk)

Brain. Needs. Food. Must. Find. Writers.

 

Wine and Dreams

April is here, spring is — well — raining, and it’s time once more for National Poetry Month.

I’ve shared this poem before, a year or two ago during April, but it was written a few years before that. It still describes me: reaching out, almost grasping, chasing elusive words and dreams.

via Wikipedia

Wine

What I want
I cannot have,
and most days I understand.
Today I tried
to take it–
or something almost like it–
but found myself
more empty
than before, and hungrier.

No substitute–
small, pale, cold–
ever embodies a dream
robust with life,
sweet and strong,
ruddy and just out of reach,
ready to fall
to waiting
hands working with patient care.

From my fingers,
fisted tight,
bleed clear juices of crushed dreams
harvested
too young to satisfy hope.

c. 2006, KB

As a friend wrote in e-mail today, “I remember writing this bit in a whirl of passion and excitement. It fell right out of my fingertips onto the screen. Where’d /that/ guy go? Why doesn’t writing come that easily to me anymore?”

I’m there. Everything I write lately is a struggle. It’s dull. It begins, and then I run out of words, and it remains unfinished.

Still, I get up, I turn on the computer or open a spiral notebook, and I write. One day, all those words, fermented together in the vast barrels of computer bytes and copious handwritten pages, will make a fine wine well worth imbibing.

 

What’s In a Name?

I’m horrible with names. I can shake someone’s hand and introduce myself, listen to them introduce themselves, and then, thirty seconds later, I can’t tell you who they are.

“The short guy over there, the one with the mustache. Yeah. What’s his name again?”

There are all sorts of mnemonic techniques to help recall names, but I’m the guy that needs repetition.

So you can imagine how tough it is for me to come up with titles for my stories. I hate cliches, and yet those are the lines that come most easily to mind, as anyone who read the original incarnation of Thieves’ Honor might be able to tell.  There were titles like “Endgame” and “Trial by Fire” and such. Cool enough, but overused.

What I ended up with was plain and not a little boring, although true to the episode content. I’m still considering a title change.

Shakespeare is an excellent source for place names and characters. I like to switch ‘em up, use the name of a city for a character, turn a character name into a city. (Then again, I like using last names for first names, and so on.) If you’re familiar with Shakespeare and Tolkien, you’ll find winks and nods to their work throughout Thieves’ Honor. And if history is also one of your geeky indulgences, well, there’s a reference here or there to Rome or the American West.

And speaking of names, one of the first pieces of mail I received after moving here was a warrant. You might imagine my surprise — and distress — at receiving it. I thought, Surely I haven’t violated any traffic laws to the extent that the cops are after me.

(Is it sad that I can’t think of anything worse than a traffic violation to — ahem — warrant a warrant?)

Then I noticed the first line of the address: “Mary ______”, in care of my name and address.

Ah. That explained it.

She was married to my father for a short time several years ago, and was of less than an honest disposition. An addict, she stole from him, her kids, anyone naive enough to let her near anything valuable, in order to feed her habit. She ran off with another man — the father of one or more of her children, I think — and that’s the last I knew of her, until she tried stealing my mother’s identity. They briefly shared the same last name; I guess that made it easier for her criminal activities.

KB, c2011

So, to quote the Bard, what’s in a name?

Everything.

It’s identity, meaning, story.

I’m more than my name, but much of what people know of me begins there: “Keanan Brand? The writer? Yeah, heard of of him. Can’t seem to settle down. Easily distracted. Lame sense of humor. Watches way too much foreign television.”

Sure, I could be called anything. The content of my character (to borrow from another great man) would remain the same. I could be Brian, James, Parker, Trey — and my personality, dreams, goals, intelligence, humor, and everything that makes me me, would be unchanged.

So, then, following that line of logic, why does a story title matter so much? After all, the story doesn’t change just because it has a snazzy name.

Yes, and no.

A title imparts something extra. It helps tell the story, providing theme, foreshadowing events, adding literary cadence.

In a fantasy series still trying to find a publisher, I used a non-rhyming poetic structure to title the parts:
Book 1
Part 1 — The Heir of Uartha
Part 2 — Blacksmith, Laundress, Healer, Priest
Part 3 — The Lady of Skarda
Part 4 — Captain, Farmer, Orphan, Spy
Book 2
Part 5 — Outlaws, Murderers, and Thieves
Part 6 — The Blood of Dragons
Part 7 — Keeper, Soldier, Dragon, King
Part 8 — The Sword of Ages

In truth, it’s more functional and straight-forward than poetic. I admire those writers who conjure the perfect, eloquent title. One of these days, I’ll get it right.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him. -Mel Brooks

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth. -William Butler Yeats

If you take different mythologies from different cultures, the names may change and the story lines may vary but there is always something in common. -Maynard James Keenan

George Orwell’s contention was that it is a sure sign of trouble when things can no longer be called by their right names and described in plain, forthright speech. -Christopher Lasch

I grew up hearing words like snakeroot, sassafras, mullein – things that had wondrous, mysterious sounds in their names. -Jan Karon

Titles are not only important, they are essential for me. I cannot write without a title.
-Guillermo Cabrera Infante

I always have trouble with titles for my books. I usually have no title until the editor has to present the book and calls me frantically, ‘Judy, we need a title.’ -Judy Blume

Next, in importance to books are their titles. -Frank Crane

 

Impatient

KB, 2012

Bridges, paths, even fence rows, make my feet itch. They ask to be traveled, and my feet yearn to follow.

Yet here I stay, trapped inside a room, telling stories that happen out there: out in the wild, out in space, out beyond the known.

Spring isn’t quite here yet, but I sleep with the window open just a crack, cover up with a  leaf-patterned comforter, and imagine the bare limbs outside the window are covered in green. There’s a creek below my window, and the sun sets beyond, warm light reflecting in the water.

Time to take the camera on a field trip, and store up new sights, new stories.

KB 2011

I close the windows and trap the sound outside,
wishing Spring wore running shoes
and lingered
for a marathon rather than the mad dash it usually makes,
infecting winter-weary souls
with a fever cured only by its cause–
sun addicts chasing their supplier.

c. 2005, KB