LOG 4.11 The Juice is Not the Muse

Having spent almost three weeks working on the monologue and dialogue, I emailed said monologue to an old friend of mine for feedback, which he gave and which was very useful. As a result, i realised that the Parallels Sequence, while interesting, may not be necessary - perhaps best to follow through with the protagonist. And so it goes that several days of work go back in the draw, to ferment for a later date. And by days I mean long days and sleepless nights, sweat, blood, perhaps the occasional psychic tear. By days I mean, like, 30-40 hours of work.

200 satisfactory words of monologue, 11 pages of Action - cause and consequence - later, i picked up the strongest part of the work and began this morning to write the FRAMES in proper. I did this from notes that I made over the last two days. This note-taking bears explanation; I have been using a new technique.

1. Dissecting the monologue: The language used is that of a hunter, but what is the world of the hunter made of? What are the words made of? I went through all the key words with a thesaurus and made lists and correspondences, with the development of a Military terminology and a Culinary imagery, with implications that the character is "rough-cut", "keeping on foot", related to "sappers and miners", that he is a stepping stone and a ripening scaffold. Equipt and Forecast also made it into the equation.

Headline: Military Culinary Miners Ripen Scaffold. [sic] (this has nothing to do with anything).

2. Making Images from Words:

This phrase:

Attuned to rhythms run

Through splintered rumours,

Footsteps echo

In idle gesture and disembodied words.

...does not in itself conjure an image, at least not to my mind. It describes a process, but gives no visuals. Thus, I have to come up with an image that would echo these words, giving them a sensory anchor (using five of the senses) lest they become jibberjabber signifying nothing.

Rhythms = Car lights as if in fast forward, a blurred image of a crowd moving towards an underground station

Run = a running man highlighted in contrast to the blurred crowd

Splintered Rumors = TV screens instead of shop windows, littered with slogans

Idle Gesture = Crowd reactions to the running man

Disembodied Words = Perhaps a repetition of "splintered rumours"

3. Making Images from Vision:

This is where the "meat" came from. Rather than follow the words on the page, letting them paint a picture, i used my head, my inner vision. I wanted a clear picture of this place inside me where the action is taking place, and so I used meditation again. I didn't rush it - it took me over half an hour just to get the first frame of 5, which has only the caption "I know no peace". Why did it take so long?

Because I'm building a city, a whole city, a whole world. It's not just "one frame" or "one line" it's LIFE. Life has detail.

I have been called imaginative, astute, observant, creative, artistic, with an eye for detail and a flair for nuance. This is - with no disrespect to either myself or those who have provided me with these perceptions - rubbish.

My imagination is a spasm, a knee jerk, a premature ejaculation. It needs training, and not just on an academic, technical level, not just on a level where a skill with words builds up - i need a skill with vision. With seeing. And I don't just mean observing the details around me, I mean observing the details within me. My inner landscapes. I need my ideas to be more than a phantom that haunts me, taunts me and propels me upon the page - I need to hold the vision, to hold the image.

If anyone was to ask me now what the difference between having a skill with words and having a skill with vision is I wouldn't be able to tell them, but I do in truth suspect my vision to be independent from words. A precursor to words. Maybe it's not enough to let the words flow and build an image - vision is primary. Vision came first, and I am letting the vision find the words.

This brings me on to the current creative paradigm that appears to be dominant in academic teaching - that there is a formula to everything, that writing is a craft and that the "muse" is a "myth designed to mystify art". Jeez, I don't know where to start with this one. My suspicion is that people with this view have fallen out with their muses, and that this opinion is tantamount to "ya know, I never really loved her, I just thought I did".

I beg to differ!

Log 4.9 A Complex Dream, A Simple Character. Fuse.

Three things of interest have happened today. The first is that I've been distracted - it's been a while since I was distracted by anything. I've had quite a run - a good month of solid focus.

The second was using the exercise of speaking my writing, giving voice to my characters. I did this with the superhero's monologue which opens the story, trying to get a feel for whether it was natural. Quickly I established what belonged to the character and what belonged to me-as-author. Some of what I'd written was information rather than expression of a character, and I cut it out with some success.

While contemplating doing this exercise I realised that I was too distracted to focus on it wholeheartedly. I was also afraid of speaking the character because I felt that it would just sound trite, so I tried to get into character first. Before being able to get into my character I realised I had to get out of myself. This was a significant learning, and it is the reason that meditation is becoming a part of my writing practice more than it is a part of my health of wellbeing practice (which, truth be told, I don't really have).

This bought about the third interesting part of today. I realised I need to organise my space better. I have been writing, reading, reflecting, meditating, researching, plotting, mapping, planning, breathing, eating, sleeping, and getting into character all in one space - a space that takes up about a third of my room. I need to set aside different spaces for different parts of the work, and also make sure that I can keep life and work separate. I decided upon an experiment to this end - blacking out a portion of my room using fabric, black so that there are no associations, no imagery, no colours, in order to both meditate and explore characters, scenes, phrases. The difficulty is that I don't have the space to have an area for "IN" and an area for "OUT" so I will have to devise some sort of boundary marking techniques. It has reminded me that I should definitely get around to building that spaceship.

What I've realised is that if I don't embody the character and really get to know it on a personal level, it remains trite, just words and thoughts.

I'm also having difficulty with my five other characters. I managed to run the script parallel which is interesting as a dream sequence, but the story is weak. As an example, the Scientist is being interviewed by a television company and speaking about the N.U.I., thus delivering strictly factual information. There is no nuance of character, and she is nothing more than a plot device.

Perhaps I should start in medias res, and then have her converse with another character but in the same manner that she talks to the interviewers, as if her being in the world is defined by delivering factual information. Better yet, forget the interview altogether, and have two characters discussing the machine who have an different agenda from the protagonist/supe - media moguls, for example, who see the potential of using the machine as an entertainment device.

In conclusion; the superhero is going well, not yet fully formed but going in a good direction. After writing this I will return to paper and pen and dissect his monologue, paying attention to his language.

There are two important defining elements to his character: a) that he is of dream, and b) that he is primal. Thus there is a need to create very, very simple and emotive language. The use of the word "riddle" and the word "labyrinth" concern me a little. They are dream words, true, but they are not simple. Here is the conundrum: creating a character "of dream", which is complex, who is simple - single minded, primal. That is something I will enjoy, I think.

For now, with regard to the course itself, it is enough to focus on this character with this approach. If i can fit in just one or two other characters but the end of the month, that will be even better, but not if it is at the expense of the superhero whose form is rich and becoming richer.

Log 4.8 So far, so far

I've done what I set out to do at the beginning of the month. I've turned an idea into a script - i havn't yet written out the whole thing as a script, but I have the dialogue, the scenes, the story. Were I to write it out as the script I will submit, only about a quarter of what I've written would fit the word count, and I've only written half the "issue".

It begins with a superhero, who is the dream self divorced from the protagonist, a primal force whose only motivation is 'The Hunt', the thing that joins the dots and chases, hunts ---

The waking self.

While I'm still only just dipping my toes into the writing game with any sense of integrity and purpose, I am still trying to avoid cliche. I do not wish to construct a post-modern superhero in the Alan Moore sense, one who is motivated by personal agenda's and various neuroses. What motivates [The Shadow] is the hunt. I have this idea that characters like Batman are who they are because they are in touch with their animal selves - obvious when I think about it. [The Shadow] is what he is because he's in touch with Dream itself - and in this work dreams are not fluffly wuffy safe places to be. They have big teeth.

The story is essentially about uniting the dreamer with the dream, via an explosion of spurious ideas that turn the world upside down and inside out. It's in no way as simple as 'you have this world over here, and it's real. You have that world over there and it's everything else'. The dream self is as real as the waking self, and this is about what is created when the two are united, fusing those two worlds to create something new.

In it there is a sort of conspiracy by the media to own dreams, to seperate them from the audience so that the audience becomes dependent upon the media to feel alive, whole and like they have an imagination. It begins with a revision of previous methods in the light of the death of what is known as "The American Dream". This death is the reason for Open Auditions and Reality TV; the public are becoming rowdier the more they see that celebrity, fame and wealth are unattainable for the majority. This group of conspirators has the responsibility for maintaing a unified global paradigm, and is now considering providing not only entertainment, but an experience.

They are not the "bad guys", because if they were things would be as they seem, and I'm aiming to move beyond things being what they seem in the story. They are providing a service, in a way, although 'The Old Order' has become decayed as it's members succumb to the pleasures of their own successes.

There is a new technology, which I have fiendishly called The Natural User Interface, which has been designed to hunt down terrorists. They whole thing is set against the back drop of the war on terror, with the two main elements of this war being

a) The enemy is no longer defined by uniform or territory

b) The soldiers/heroes don't know who their superiors are.

Thus the scene is rife for paranoia, the waking selfs cousin to dream, the consequence of two much stimulation, too much information, not enough trust and a dawning realisation by the characters that truth and belief are fictions.

Effectively the machine synchronises the Soldier/Superhero/Hunter character with the Enemy/Villain/Hunted character. The obvious consequence of this would be that one would not know who is good and who is bad, the Superhero would take on villainous characteristics, the Villain would take on heroic characteristics. No! This will not happen, because the machine is not in touch with the Enemy in any way. The Enemy is a construct created by the programming in the machine, L.I.S.T. (living information systems technology) and thus is also a fiction. The justification for this by the "Gov" and the Inventors is that while the programming creates a construct, the Soldiers do actually find enemies.

The protagonist I have yet to work on. Given the genre, and the readership and my own inclinations, it seems obvious that the protagonist will be a 20-30 something "ordinary guy". The S/S/H, Scientist, Media contingent are much more developed than the protagonist, since he only comes into this "issue" half way through and I havn't had a chance at all to work on him yet. So far he has had an experience of his partner becoming divine during sex, which then initiates a psychic breakdown that ties in with the S/S/H synchronistic hunt in a round about way - both events are essentially the same thing in different worlds.

All of this is why I have given the piece the working title of "PSYCHONAUT".

I hope that having these different characters will mean that I have sharpened up my voice and POV skills, and have given myself the challenge of having my characters echo each other through different paradigms.

Writing all this it's clear to see who and what my influences have been. I don't, however, feel like I am copying anyone or rehashing old ideas since the "issue" is largely based on my own experience. Primarily, even. There are themes here that have been in my heart and in my head for pretty much decades. Dream is the most obvious one.

Man, if anyone has sat through a class room of people telling you "You have no idea of the real world" while they spout tired and trite but acceptable cliche's and moralisms, you'll know what I mean.

Personal Reflection: Wow. How alone am I. All dressed up with nowhere to go.

Log:2.5-4.2

One more exercise to go, and a week before the deadline. This should give me enough time to polish and prune the piece i knew I'd submit when I wrote it - the Dunn St. bit. Still ill, have resorted to reading fiction in bed.

Reading 'The Vanishing'. What stood out was that a great deal of information was given in the very first paragraph - introduction to the scene (first of several references to space and space-travel), to the two characters, to their psychology, how this trip they were on was different from others, the time of day, the time of year, their destination etc etc, all in about 50 words. It felt like you knew the characters immediately.

I turned this lens onto my piece about Dunn St. and it appears that what I've written could be more about the street than the first person I meet in it.

What I have to work on now is sharpening up the mystery of the diary - which I've decided fits in well, and am also planning on making Justin dyslexic - and adding another 100 words with portents of the future; where he's going and why. Its a 'mundane' passage, in that nothing blows up and no one dies, but its got some good tension, especially in the "imbroglio" of the street and the "pastiche" of the buildings. My concern is that I've over described things.