Vampires and whatnot...

Before Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight I was a huge fan of fantastical vampire stories, even to the point where I read most of Anne Rice’s work and eventually found Brian Lumley.  His Necroscope series has a number of focuses as the series moves forward, but amazingly ruthless vampires thousands of years old appear throughout.  That being said I believe I have a high standard for one of the more ruthless types of characters in the literary world.

In the recent years a slew of vampire based movies, TV shows and other mediums have saturated the market making vampires almost passé.  Having said this I was hesitant to check out a new TV series, SyFy’s Being Human.  This story focus’ around the lives of Josh and Aiden, a recently turned werewolf and a 300 year old vampire respectively, as well as the newly deceased resident of their apartment, Sally.  From this interesting premise, the show tries to look at what exactly does it take to try and have a normal life amidst the temptations, fear, and unknowing surrounding the characters.      

Being Human has a very basic premise but the great thing is that they do not sugarcoat everything with the drippy, long winded concepts of lust and sappy vampire drama made famous by so many others.  These characters play real people trying to deal with what they are, being a ‘vegetarian’ vampire by not eating live people and those repercussions, dealing with the transformation into the wolf that takes place every month, or trying to cope with your own tragic death. 

Being Human is a great show and another one of my total nerd indulgences.  It shows supernatural beings at their rawest, trying to cope with what they are, not lusting around trying to make a decision on whom they should marry or be with. The show is now winding down to the season 2 finale, so anyone who has some free time, I recommend taking some time to get hooked to this great show.  

Plotto

So it has been some time since I posted, and for my few followers I apologize.  Regardless it has been an intense few weeks and a number of stories and other writing based concepts that I have come across.  One such is William Wallace Cook’s story plotting tool Plotto.  I was initially really mad to get this book, reason being my girlfriend’s aunt ordered the book for me without letting me know, so my first time seeing it I was seething at Amazon.  After realizing who it was from and what it was I became curious.  Barbara, my girlfriend’s aunt, explained that she had heard about it on NPR and it sounded interesting so she ordered it for me. 

I was not sure what to make of the book since it contains phrases almost out of an algebra textbook to help come up with themes for stories, character development, as well as fractions of statements that can be mixed and matched together to come up with an (semi-)original three-act story structure. 

This book is way too interesting to describe in a blog post and I recommend any writer who is even occasionally looking for inspiration to pick up this book, or at least leaf through it at your local bookshop and see what it is all about.  It has been described as the book that every author denies using, but has a copy on their desk. 

The brief history of this book is that Cook while writing around the turn of the century was a pulp novelist, meaning that he would pump out sixty novels a year in some years, (yes that is correct sixty, 60 novels) and Cook came up with a much larger volume to keep track of the stories and plotlines he had used.  After a long career he wrote Plotto, a condensed version of his own reference and marketed it to writers. 

This is an excellent reference and I feel guilty that I have not yet had a chance to use it; it does come with exercises to learn how to use it while at the same time help you develop a storyline or theme to flesh out on your own.  But rest assured I have thumbed and learned how to use the book and its crazy algebra like structure and I must say it couldn’t be more interesting, definitely worth checking out.      

The End (for now) of A Song of Ice and Fire

Well after months and months of audiobooking I have finished George R.R. Martin’s series’ A Song of Fire and Ice, that is to say the five books that currently make up the series.  I must say as I have in a previous blog or two that I am amazed at the way Martin does storytelling on such an epic scale.  Though in the books there are perhaps 30-50 characters that actually have a chapter devoted to them (a majority have only one, perhaps two) but the major players keep shining through different parts of the story illuminating a small part of the deep world, that Martin allows us to see.  By having the rotating narrative switch from character to character, allowing first person glimpses into each of the characters, Martin takes the small idea of chapters, and blends it amazingly into the rest of the saga unfolding in the rest of the book, giving way to the grander story happening all around these characters.  Masterful in my opinion. 

I have been very pleased with the series and I anxiously await the sixth book in the series whenever it may come out, and I can only hope that Roy Dotrice (who read four of the five novels) comes back for the sixth novel, but at age 86, it remains to be seen if he will.  I personally will miss his voice accompanying me all over Boston,  voice acting every character in the series (he actually holds a Guinness World Record for voicing the 256 speaking characters in the book Game of Thrones: Book One of A Song of Fire and Ice).  As another side note he will be making an appearance on Season 2 of A Game of Thrones on HBO, as Halleyne, an alchemist in the capital city of King’s Landing.  But regardless, I will miss this series until the next installment and the companion to my reading, Roy Dotrice.

Anyone interested in an engrossing fantasy series that is engaging, deep and complex, pick up the first novel, and prepare to be amazed.      

Opposite sides of the coin lately.

Since I have hit a brief respite from my reading in my short novel class I own my nights again as far as reading is concerned.  One of the guilty nerd pleasures that I have is Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Mars’ Trilogy.  It’s a fictional story of the terraforming of Mars.  The three books represent the three major shifts in terraforming towards an earth like planet.  The books are Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars.  I have been reading this series off and on for about six months now.  It has been on my night stand for so long it’s nice to be able to pick up where I left off. 

This story is amazing.  It starts as the first person is setting their feet on the Martian surface.  It moves from there through the process of setting up a base, and center of operations and goes on from there. 

What is so engrossing in this story is how the reader gets a first-hand look of how the culture on Mars might evolve.  Again it starts as humans are just landing on Mars.  The First Hundred people from earth land on mars and begin operations.  It grows and grows and the mars planet takes on a whole other worldly feel as cultures, governments, ecologies, and relationships change throughout the process.  In the story the brilliant minds on mars and a many who follow on to mars synthesize a treatment, when if administered at correct intervals a person can live on indefinitely.  The whole story takes place over the course of 150 years or so, a large amount of the story focusing on the First hundred. 

So it has been nice to get back into the politics of mars and its government and see how it transforms.   Like I said a total nerd indulgence. 

The great thing about this story is how it encompasses so much and envisions the world so clearly.  Robinson’s ability to convey every aspect of science that goes into the terraforming of mars as well as the gravity of the culture is stunning.  

One of the other books I have been able to come back to is The Bible According to Mark Twain, it never ceases to amaze me the brilliance of Mark Twain in everything he does.  I am still in the beginning, looking over the different versions of the Diaries of Adam and Eve; starting with the very short beginning pieces to the much longer stories, much more in detail and more complex.  An excellent look at Twain’s process, which I find fascinating.

Fairy Tales and other Stories

So I believe it is fair to say that I am obsessed with the fairy tale television shows on right now.  As I said I have been watching the series Once Upon a Time, but I have also begun to watch the series Grimm.  I like how these two stories represent different sides of the same coin.  Once Upon A Time in itself is pretty tame, with maniacal twists coming at strategic points in the story to maximize effect.  What Grimm does is uses the frankly gruesome Grimm’s fairy tales as a base, and looks at them in the modern context. 

What I appreciate as someone who enjoys the idea of re envisioning stories to give it new meaning and life, I think the darker side of Grimm really hits on that.  with some of the stories reaching a truly demented scale, on example of this is the Series’ fourth episode where a goat like creature called  Ziegevolk or Bluebeards, has hypnotized women, as well as holding them captive and breeding with them.  Some very disturbing subject matter, and it seems that the episodes do not let up, a very chilling way to revision Grimm’s’ Fairy Tales. 

These stories make me realize the interesting things you can do with re thinking material.  As a side note, the BBC’s new series ‘Sherlock’ does a similarly excellent job re envisioning Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters and stories and applying them to modern day London. 

As for the novel St. Mawr by D.H. Lawrence it ended very well and it does represent an excellent piece of literature.  The way that Lawrence uses the character of a horse to truly examine the concept of passion, as well the state of gender in post-World War I England is enlightening to read.  This is just a great piece of literature and I enjoyed it immensely, the way he portrays passion is something I would like to emulate. 

I have also started he book The Yacubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany.  I am only about half the way through the book, and so far it appears to be a look at the lives of a number of different people who span different social and economic classes in early nineties Egypt.  I think so far it is very interesting and frank in its discussion of Egyptian culture.  I can see why it is an international bestseller, and why it has been translated into nine languages.  I have high hopes for how the story progresses and comes to a head. 

I hope to have more time and more pages done in the future, and actually write.  Until then.

“I think the story is my form.”
Joseph Epstein

So far into the semester

So in the last week I have been trying to read as much as I can for personal pleasure as I am for school assignments but unfortunately that has not been the case.  In the last week for my short novel class I had to read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.  The story in this book is broken up in a very post-modern way giving limited views on characters, and having those judgments and perceptions flipped on their head as more of the story is revealed along with other timelines.  I did enjoy this book and I enjoy how Toni Morrison uses a new historicism to explore the dynamics of race, sexuality, and perceptions but I feel that I have read and discussed her books into oblivion and cannot see myself reading any of her books for pleasure, only for assignments.  Oh well. 

Other than that there have a number of other stories that I have been engaging with, as usual I am chugging along through A Dance With Dragons, having read (listened to) ten chapters since my last blog.  I know I have said it a number of time but I am still amazed at the layers of storytelling that he is able to accomplish.   

A book that I have made it a little over halfway through has sort of clicked in my mind and I understand the author’s intentions is D.H. Lawrence’s St. Mawr.  This book has surprised in the fact that it is a book about a group of people who are obsessed with a horse.  The premise and the first half of the book are completely insane in that I can’t stop reading; I have been forced to stop every time.  I am excited to read the rest of it (shortly after I publish this blog) and see how Lawrence manages to keep the momentum of the book going while focused mostly around the horse and the people who are close to the horse.  It’s really an amazing read and I recommend everyone who reads this to pick up a copy. 

As for my own writing I have not been putting any pages down of my own personal writing in some time but I have been writing two chapters in my head for almost two weeks now, and I am anxious to get them on paper one of these days.

 

One of the television shows that I have come to enjoy and has been “Grimm.”  That show along with “Once upon a Time” has been on my radar more as of late.  I think the retelling of modern fairy tales, is a good way to reexamine our roots, and perhaps come up with something new and different.   These stories have somewhat made me rethink more common storylines and rework them into something new and see what I come up with.

 

I wish that I have written more of my own personal work so as to comment on it, but my school schedule is forcing me to make sacrifices.  I hope by my next blog post I will have written some very serious pages.  Until next time. 

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
Orson Welles
 

Setting it all up

 This being my first actual post, besides the introduction to the blog, I think I should go over some of the things that I have been doing as for my own writing and segway into what stories I have been engaging with over the various forms of media available. 

As for writing this week I must say I am a little behind in terms of pages and words, since school and my normal work schedule have somewhat encroached on my personal time to write just that, personally.  With school starting as well a number of the books that I am reading are from the curriculum of one of my classes, ‘Short Novel’ where we are reading a novel a week.  

The main story I am developing at the moment, or at least the one that has the largest amount of my attention right now, is a novel.  It is Sci-Fi/fantasy based and incorporates a large amount of steampunk elements into it.  I have been developing characters and settings for some time.  The only major problem that I am having is stepping through the doorway from Act One into Act Two.  I know this is a remedial form of story writing but the three act story has and does work, plus I like having a general outline to work with and eventually not use and go from there. 

A number of the comics I am working on are in a sort of a standstill at the moment.  I have a number of ideas that I am making notes on, but I have not put words to paper in all of the cases.  I hope to begin doing more with them as time goes by, god willing, this blog will help me to get a move on all of them and eventually have a number of comics and perhaps two to three more comics in the series that I’m writing. 

As for stories this past week and weekend I have read and watched a number of them.  For my short novel class mentioned earlier, this past week I read Justin Torres’ We the Animals.  This book was pretty good in my opinion. The one aspect of it that I really walked away from it was the ferocity of youth.  The story revolves around a boy and his two brothers.  The boy who is also the narrator has a number of issues but the one thing that really stuck with me throughout the book was the ferocity of his brothers and himself, and the gripping way that Torres tells the story makes me think of a number of the confrontations of my brother and I had growing up. 

One of the other books that I am reading and have been reading for a while now is George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons.  After the television show came out I was hooked and have been listening to the audiobooks for the entire series.  It is narrated by Roy Dotrice, who is a superb voice actor, and really brings the story alive.  I listen to the book every time I will be commuting (which is every day) and get a number of chapters in each time I listen. With Martin’s style of storytelling, with a revolving door of third person limited point of view, moving from one character to the next in every chapter is a great way to tell a story and Martin does it extremely well.  I am emulating this story style with my novel , and hope to have some good pages from this style. 

One of the other stories that I have become hooked on in the past week and I feel a little embarrassed bringing it up online is the television show Once Upon a Time.  I will not explain the synopsis of the show (but I will attach a link to the Wikipedia page if you do want to check it out, here it is) The one major part of the story is its dual storytelling method.  By showing what is going on, as well as flashing back to show major elements of the characters backstory, can be a bit clunky for my taste but overall the effect is great, as one storyline progresses, a second past storyline emerges in the episode as well.  If this is making no sense, I apologize, but this back and forth method of storytelling seems like it wouldn’t work but in this sense it does.  It makes me wonder what sort of story I could use this kind of storytelling for and come up with something a little more fresh than a story based on fairy tales (which it then filets to its own purposes)

I plan to take some of these overall ideas and work them into a concept sometime soon.  That is all that is on my mind at the moment, though there is a lot more that I am reading but I will save that for the next installment. 

“I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else.”

-Kurt Cobain
              

Starting it off.

 

I think with this blog what I will do is take all of the different stories that I see throughout my day and the stories that I interact with day to day and follow that onto how different parts of those stories influence my own work. 

 

I am a bit of a scatter brain when it comes to working on one thing at a time.  I tend to have ideas, make a whole bunch of notes and come back to them later and add on to them and flesh them out into stories. 

 

I watch a number of television shows and movies, as well as read comics, books, and magazines, and I am pretty religious on checking the news.  I enjoy seeing the stories that are prominent in the time that I am living and morph those into something new and interesting.  That is what I hope to chronicle throughout the blog, what drives me and my creativity.

   
 

I see stories in everything around me, in the people I meet and for those I don't, and I try  use those ideas and almost graph them onto what I create, because I believe that in story telling the beauty of every story is in the minutia of actions, people and nuances.  By documenting and therefore forcing myself to document what I am doing and what I am accomplishing will help me to get further on my way in writing.