I have abilities beyond my knowledge...

Well fellow bloggers and blog readers, another semester has started for me so this spring 2013 I am taking my second fiction workshop in addition to my Literature of the South course. That will be two more down and three to go before I graduate in the fall of this year. Phew, it’s about time. So I am attempting to remember that I do still have a blog site (which isn’t very difficult as I am attempting to invest time into this) so I will continue to keep up my weekly postings. I am debating what kind of punishment I will suffer should I slack off of my duties. My video blog has already suffered neglect and this month’s video, as well as last month’s I believe, have yet to be posted. Next month will mark a year and I will have to decide if I am continuing that path or not. I may pause for now and wait until class is complete and focus more on my prose writing. Enough about that then, we now move on to our topic for this week.
 

So I have recently completed my reading of Stephen Kings On Writing for my fiction workshop class. This is not, unfortunately for you thrill seekers, another novel but a memoir that Stephen has written to up and coming writers. In a sense it is him sharing knowledge, things he has learned and still learning. One concept he discusses with his readers is the idea that “all the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree” (King 95). No groaning, that is in fact MLA format you see but you’ll be okay.

 I thought this over as I was reading. What if in a way we are telepaths. Myths and legends are usually stories that have been amplified by the human imagination anyway so why not. By definition telepathy is the “the communication between people of thoughts, feelings, desires, etc involving mechanisms that cannot be understood in terms of known scientific laws” as stated by the free dictionary (I figure the definition for telepathy will pretty much be the same anywhere else). Now before you think my reflection preposterous consider this. A writer who knows their job and does it well is able to create an entirely different world for the reader. The result will be that your sense are taken on a exploration of things they may never have experienced before but now they are perceiving these things as if they are happening right before them.

 

 The thoughts that writers see are translated well, for example, in movies we watch everyday. When a telepath (writer) provides images that allows us to create the visual replication of it we have executed our purpose. People can imagine the coldness of the night as the rebel group hid from opposing forces. Or maybe the reader gets a hint of the putrid smell of the surroundings the protagonist finds themselves in. Whatever the case may be the writer triggers something that allows you to actually “see” the story through your senses. King did an exercise in his book and I would like to try and do the same here. So here it goes:

 You see in front of you a dark hallway. The only light that enters is from a window at the far end. The light that seeps in is gloomy causing a gray cast across the hallway floor. It doesn’t reach the high corners of the hall and so leave them hidden in dark shadows. On either side are doors each labeled with a set of numbers followed by a letter. The door closest to you on the left has the number 18 and the letter A engraved in a bronze plate. Your arm brushes the door and you feel the chill of the coldness creep up your arm.

 

 You saw the hallway didn’t you, did you feel the cold on your arm. Telepathic abilities may very well exist. Hmm…what an interesting thought.

  

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of The Craft. New York: Pocket Books, 2000. 95. Print. "Telepathy." The Free Dictionary. Farflex. Web. 27 Jan 2013.  

        <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/telepathy>.

Experiments in Openings

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha *manic laugh* I am awful at this blogging twice a week. So until I have trained myself to look at this computer on a regular basis and not flip between this, homework, TV and other such unavoidable distractions for myself I will be doing this now only once a week (I'm sorry people, I tried).

 

I will now move onto this week’s topic of conversation: introductions.

 

Introducing a reader to a story is like fishing with the right bait, you want to get them hooked. At least that is how I like to go about things. There are different options for doing this certainly: with a funny situation, with a dramatic scene, in the middle of the story so that the reader has to figure out how the protagonist got to that point, and so on. I have attempted all of these and I always like to try and be captivating within the first page and keep it that way. Of course it is a task to try and not let the reading become monotonous after the exciting intro that would just plain suck.

 

When I do my own writing personally I find once I have a rhythm it usually works. However, I have only written short stories so this doesn’t apply overall yet. How can I keep my first book from becoming to dry or unappealing to the reader. Truth is I don’t know yet. I am reading books currently and attempting to pay attention to see what catches my attention and what doesn’t. As I have learned from reading The Satanic Verses by Salaman Rushdie big words don’t do it for me. I have a vocabulary but Rushdie had an entire dictionary. This may be reading I’d appreciate later down the road when I can look up every other word but it did not make me want to finish the book. I can’t even remember at this time what the introduction was really like, that’s bad.

At this point I have started off stories in the rain, with conversation, during sex, basically just a little of everything. I’m sure there is some formula I could find and keep repeating it but I don’t want to. For now I enjoy the flexibility of my writing and I may start one way but who knows what will come next, I certainly don’t’. For the time being I am going to just make a note to one day go down the current best sellers list for fiction and pay attention to how they all start. This seems like a good start to discovering new ways to introduce my books or short stories.

 

What follows now is the introduction to a story that struck me during a moment I was…indisposed. I decided to write it down because hey, no idea is a bad idea (until you put it into action and everything goes to hell, then it’s a bad idea). Anyway, I figure it is a pretty captivating intro because I feel it makes you ask, so what happens next? I don’t know yet how to develop the idea to this so I really don’t have any explanation for where the story is going. It was actually a piece written in reflection of a pretty dark moment for me and remembrance of someone I knew who worked a similar job. He unfortunately didn’t overcome his demons but maybe I can write this piece as a salute to him and others who were in situations parallel to his. Either way this is not for anyone who has dealt with suicide so I don’t suggest reading further if you have a weak disposition when it comes to this topic. Currently it is titled A Day in the Life, subject to change but for now I like it.

 

It’s the thought of being stuck; dealing with the same people day in and out that puts this gun to his mouth. It’s the idea that of having one more screeching customer in his ear that has him reflecting on his choices. He ponders momentarily on the bullets in the gun as his thumb pulls back on the hammer. Will it hurt, was this the cowards way out? His finger rests on the trigger of the Smith and Wesson now, careful he doesn’t pull it too soon. Life is supposed to be warm, people aren’t’ cold blooded like this gun. That doesn’t change the fact that it is because of people he finds himself locked up in the bathroom of his home sitting on the toilet preparing to end it all…

 

 

This is a work in progress. It may never go anywhere but I had fun writing it and felt it was really intense. Is this something to captivate your imagination? Does anyone have a favorite opening they’d like to share. I would love to know so that maybe I can take a closer look at how that writer does it. Back to my school work for now, new semester started. For those reading, thanks.