Compose Through Metaphor

“I never make work that is careless.” Tezuka Osamu

Cont’d Part Three

Animator Tezuka Osamu’s images, themes and stories that he worked with came from the heart. It showed through his choice of topics and the manner in which he developed his films. Some techniques he had to let go of because he couldn’t find enough people skilled in the process, but he kept as close to the passion of creating film by hand because “I really wanted to keep the preciousness of the hand animation in the work,” he said. At the time his industry was undergoing a metamorphosis of its own and Osamu felt that the original work of Japanese animation was becoming imitative instead of original.

The story was fueled by the techniques and the techniques enriched his storytelling. For example in his short film, The Legend of the Forest with Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony Op.36, he divided the story into four parts. And then each movement he animated in a different style beginning with a basic form and adding more details and complications with each transition. So alongside the legend he also visually showed a development of animation without speaking about it at all. He embedded the metaphors naturally.

“Perhaps the animation can be supported by the passion of the creators.”

It’s that passion that creates timelessness as well as creativeness. Viewers today may find some of the imagery he uses odd or old-fashioned; especially since now computer graphics have emerged in leaps and bounds since his day. Which he also recognized as a growing field of development. Yet we still can identify and relate to his metaphoric images because he has grounded them in familiar circumstances.

Often we ourselves don’t recognize the metaphors in our work during the early drafts but by nurturing the quality and technical craft of our novels we will begin to recognize them. Then our use of image and metaphor, allusion, theme, symbols, echoes will all have the naturalness of originality instead of imitation too.

Journal Prompt:

1.     Make a list of the words you’d like readers to say about your novels?

2.     Write down the themes you’d like your readers to identify with in your novels.

Share: Which one would make your heart sing?

Build a Story World

Elidor Cont’d

So the children arrive at the street, now demolished. Only an old church remains. In this odd place a fiddler appears in the distance playing strange music. A plastic football snaps lead in the church window. One by one the children disappear until only Roland is left in the empty church where the fiddler finds him. Roland runs out the door back towards the street. “But he never reached the sidewalk for the cobbles were moving under him. He turned. The outline of the church rippled in the air, and vanished. He was standing among boulders on a seashore, and the music died into the crash of breakers, and the long fall of the surf.

With each major transition in the story the disbelief, the impossible, is emphasized.  They find the treasures in the Mound, when danger forces them back into their own time with the treasures: the jeweled sword, golden stone, and pearled cauldron, which all change. 

“In his hand Roland held a length of iron railing; Nicholas a keystone from the church. David had two splintered laths nailed together for a sword; and Helen an old, cracked cup, with a beaded pattern molded on the rim.”

The tone of dealing with the impossible heightens the action as well as the mystery.  When the electric appliances start operating on their own, even the unplugged ones, they consider telling their parents; but even they don’t believe the treasures are causing it. Over and over the children try to ignore, forget, disbelieve the strange circumstances surrounding them, but with each impossible occurrence they are forced back into their relationship with Elidor.

They finally accept that their reality and Elidor’s world have intermingled, even in its impossibility, and now begin to seek a solution that mingles the two. “But if the Treasures are in Elidor, we’ll be left in peace.” They go back to the demolished church dragging the treasures. They figure out the clue and at the end, “The children were alone with the broken window of a slum.”

They started in the broken demolished street and they ended in the demolished street. Everything about the magic stayed contained within the limits of their comprehension and ability to process and act. And yet the possibility of failure also faced each decision.

So regardless of the age of your characters the magic must remain true to itself in all its characteristics. It too must cost. Take time to plan out the repercussions.

“Drifter's gold is for me to spend --

For I am a vagabond.”

Don Blanding (A Vagabond’s House)

Exercise:

1.    Write your own version of these two lines.

2.    What does it cost the drifter lose or gain in your version?

Share: your two lines. 

Compose Through Metaphor

“I never make work that is careless.” Tezuka Osamu

Cont’d Part Two

Last week we looked at how one word in a title, or as a character summary, can be strengthened into a metaphor for a broader understanding. But before you can even do that it’s important to know what are your themes and your goals for your story. For example, one of Osamu’s goals for his work was to include a touch of humor or irony, especially when dealing with difficult topics. He felt that especially when he tried to show culture out of control or present the idea that technology had the potential to become unstoppable he would lean into irony.

In the Tales of a Street Corner all the characters were developed with humor and pathos as war came to their corner crashing into their lives. And showed those who remained self-centered and those who grew into selfless actions, like the naughty little mouse who tried to save the bear.

Another key word image for Osamu in creativity was joy and fun. “The fun of experimental animation is the different perspectives people saw.” He appreciated the unique insights his audience had and in turn their comments often sparked new ideas for him to pursue. He worked diligently to create quality work, but did not expect everyone to see only his vision. Once his work released it went free. That is the gift of metaphor in any work.

 In his short film Mermaid he explored potentially closed thinking through “the story of a boy from faraway lands that likes fantasies.” The boy saw a mermaid. Everyone else only saw a fish and went to great lengths to blast his idea of out him. He too eventually saw the fish, but with Osamu’s tilt of angle the last line went, “But the boy did not forget the mermaid.”

Like a firecracker a familiar image might start off in plain wrapping paper and then explode into showers of light.

Journal Prompt:

1.     Read through a picture book the next time you’re at the library or a bookstore but don’t read the words. Look only at the visual background first. Then go back and read the story. How do they complement each other? Does each page have a one-word tag? Funny, scary, curious?

2.     Now do a reverse action. Take one of your chapter scenes and mark it off as if it were a picture book. Can you identify a main image on each ‘page’?

Share: Did you find an image that surprised you? Can you develop it further as a thread without it being forced?

Build a Story World

Cost of Magic

All use of magic costs.

Whether you use man-made or magic-made, the actions and choices need to be believable, and they must follow the rules you set up for them. No last minute, “oh look what else this can do too.” Decide early on what are the levels of safety and what are the levels of danger. How many times can a person cross dimensions before needing a re-boot, or cannot go back at all?

Begin simply and then build on it as needed so as not to have it become so complicated that you lose yourself and your reader in the technical aspects. Is it a ticking clock like Cinderella’s midnight, or a magic potion that requires a fallen star?

For example, in his MG story Elidor, Alan Gardner uses disbelief to first bridge the children’s entrance into the land of Elidor and, then later, Elidor’s entrance into their world. The characters repeatedly insist these things can’t be happening, that there must be an explanation, like a dream. Roland alone continues to insist on examining the odd occurrences in their landscape, and trying to find a solution.

 David says,“And he’s been reading books. He says it could all have been what he calls ‘mass hallucination,’ perhaps something to do with shock after the church nearly fell on us. He says it does happen.”

“And I suppose the mud we scraped off was a mass hallucination,” said Roland.

The atmosphere is set even before the strange events begin to occur.  The four children are trying to keep busy so they won’t get bossed around at home packing for their move the next day.  The youngest, Roland, finds a postal map, turns a dial and they decide to find the street.  When the streets become more and more deserted and Roland voices concern, he is reminded that he’s always imagining things.

Exercise: Set up a situation where a main character experiences evidence of magic for the first time and explains it away using concrete logical thinking.

Share: What happens when she realizes that what is happening cannot be explained away.

Compose Through Metaphor

“I never make work that is careless.” Tezuka Osamu

While discussing experimental animation during an interview he gave during the 1960’s, Tezuka Osama explained that he desired to introduce the good parts of Japanese animation to the world. He wanted it to be understood internationally or globally. “I would like to convey big messages to the world,” he said. So he began to make pieces for an international audience so that others would understand and care.

To convey his messages of animation and life, culture, humor and irony he worked with familiar images drawn from universal theme and experience. He built upon common ground to engage his viewers, and then angled the image or the expectation of the story in a way that it became a fresh insight and a means of communication. He thoroughly enjoyed the different perspectives that people saw after viewing his style of experimentation.

Next week we’ll look at some of the techniques Osamu used but for now here’s a glimpse into one of his pieces.

The titles he chose also provided an introduction to his images and concepts: Jump, A Memory, Mermaid, and Legend of the Forest, showing a wide range of topics and idea grist. Often we forget that our titles are as valuable as the metaphor images themselves. Titles, characters, music and images all intertwined as metaphor in his animation.

Here is Osamu’s list of characters (images) for his short film, Tales of a Street Corner.

According to the caption these are the people who live at this corner. Note their variety.

            : a friendly girl and a teddy bear

            : a naughty mouse

            : a plant with seeds

            :an old street light

            : a street Punk “Moth”

            : a woman on a poster

            : a young violinist on a poster

Journal Prompt:

1.     Choose two of these characters and make up a sketch of them even if you are a stick figure artist.  (Like me)

2.     Then from your interpretation choose a word image or metaphor as their main personality characteristic.

Share:  Whom did you choose? Why? What is your word metaphor for them?

Build a Story World

Coinage Introduction Cont’d

There is a story in the New Testament, where a widow gave only two pennies and Jesus told those around him that she had given the greatest offering because she had given all she possessed, while the others only gave of their surplus. For what reason in your world would someone give up everything they had, regardless of the consequences?

The world’s setting as backbone comes down to value. What costs mind, body and soul?

“It may be that place can focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its gaze to point. Focus then means awareness, discernment, order, clarity, insight—they are like the attributes of love. … Indeed, as soon as the least of us stands still, that is the moment something extraordinary is seen to be going on in the world.” Eudora Welty

A few weeks back you chose an art form close to your protagonist’s heart and looked at ways it could be shared across cultures. Within our own earth’s history lineage we have read or experienced evidence of a regime that sought to destroy all previous evidence of art whether burning books, smashing century old sculptures, banning music or shredding paintings. Look at ways your people’s heart heritage must be driven underground in order to survive. How does that affect the cost of keeping the art from becoming extinct? Or the cost to the regime to contain to banish it?

Exercise: Do one version under the serious circumstances above and one version as a lighthearted comedy of errors.

   Take the art activity from the previous exercise and make a list of all the steps involved from creative draft to public sales. Or choose a new one that is part of your character’s gifts and talents.

   Next make a list of all the materials needed. If this were a barter culture set a ‘value’ to each item, both for buying or selling.

For example, are paintbrushes easily accessible and cheap because children gather material the landscape and make them? Or is it almost impossible to find quality material for the brush portion and therefore make them so exorbitant an artist must keep them under lock and key?

Are gourmet cooks willing to literally ‘kill’ for a specific type of pan?

Share: Which ingredient in your story was the most difficult to find? Why?

Compose Through Metaphor

“Every image in a poem is a portrait of a state of a soul.”  Jane Hirshfield

                     Photo by Bevin Hunter 

And likewise every image has the potential to represent a theme or a metaphor.

Journal Prompt:

    1. What first catches your attention? Your feelings?

    2. Make a list of possible other emotions.

    3. What ‘voice’ fits this image?

    4. Choose one and turn it into a word metaphor.

Share: What metaphor did you choose?