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“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary.” ~Frederick Buechner
 “Of course the first
thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she was going to travel
through. ‘It’s something very like learning geography,’ thought Alice,…” Lewis
Carroll
According to The Oxford Universal Dictionary, the sense of
getting one’s bearings is a term that has been in use since 1635, with the
meaning “in relative positions of
surrounding object.” The need
to establish where we are in relationship to other objects is a key concept in
our everyday lives both in external geographic space and internal emotional
space.
When someone walks into an office for a job interview they
immediately want a sense of orientation physically and personally in order to
assess the situation and lean into their strengths. A hiker needs to be
prepared to protect themselves in unfamiliar outdoor terrain. How deep is the
water? What kind of bug is flying around?
Or how safe is it to run in this part of town? A few years
ago, prior to a convention she was about to attend, a friend came to visit me.
She was also in training for a marathon and needed to run at least four to six
miles for each training day. The day before she first ran I drove her along
some routes near my place so she wouldn’t get lost. After our visit I dropped
her off at her hotel, approximately fifteen miles away, and she showed the
concierge a map and asked him to point out a safe route now that she was in the
heart of downtown. He explained that all the streets were safe to run except
not before 8:00 am and not after 6:00 pm—basically she could run safely only
during business hours among crowds of people.
How to find our bearings will have a direct impact on the
main reason we need to become oriented.
As your characters arrive in a situation give them a moment to survey
the lay of the land and orient us along with them so we can feel their
curiosity or apprehension too.
Journal Prompt:
1. What
kind of survey orientation does your character prefer—to be as prepared as
possible, or taken by surprise, or somewhere in between?
2. How
does he cope with his least favorite method of landing somewhere new?
Share: What is the
first thing you want to do or to know when you travel anywhere new? Why?
Coinage--Economic Roots--Example
 Knowing the coinage and economic roots can move
your plot along in interesting ways. For example, in the movie The Count of Monte Cristo conflict is
tied into the system from the very beginning. Alongside the financial and
social system is a barter system that seeks to gain influence in various means.
Edmond Dantes is duped by Napoleon into passing
on a letter. The magistrate, Villefort, acknowledges Edmond’s innocence until
he discovers that the letter was meant for his father. Villefort then uses the
barter to put Dantes away for life in prison; both for his own political safety
and as a favor to Fernand Mondego, a childhood friend of Dantes, who despite
his own wealth and status is eaten up by jealousy for anything Dantes achieves.
Although the viewer does not see the full
results until the end of the movies, both men extend their pact and use the
barter in increasing ways to solidify their greed as they grasp for influence
and power. Fueled by his own revenge Dantes uses their very system to force
them into accountability. He squeezes them financially to ruin and public
display.
The moral compass and reasoning differs between
all three men, but all are able to use the coinage system of their era to
achieve their desired ends. And all are in conflict with each other adding
critical tension to reach the crisis and climax points.
Exercise:
Use
either this movie or another of your choice, plot out the turning moral turning
points/decisions for one of these characters that had a direct effect
financially or socially for them.
Share:
What is another well known novel or movie that you consider a good example of
weaving conflict through coinage roots?
 “All this time the
Guard was looking at her, first through a telescope, then through a microscope,
and then through an opera-glass.”
Lewis Carroll
Alice does not change being Alice despite the various ways
in which she is being observed, but the perception of her is altered by the
method by which the Guard chooses to see her.
Just as images and word pictures feed our imagination
through metaphors, so can a study of map-making enlarge and enrich our
connections with the places we inhabit. In his book, the Geographer’s Art,
Peter Haggett says that, “If the
historian uses mirrors to look back and the physicist uses mirrors to look
forward, then the geographer’s use of the mirror analogy lies in a different
dimension—that of space.” What exactly do we see in that space regionally and
historically? Are places mapped by linear distance as in a conventional map or
by spatial configuration?
Haggett gives an example from a vacation he once took at a
lakeside village nestled in the Austrian mountains. As he traveled back and
forth across the lake by boat he realized that the lakeside did not quite
measure up to the conventional map. Some routes he took were fast routes and
others slow. Which speed was taken would influence the map form or scale of the
lake. He put together four different sketches to try to determine how nine
locations reflected or related to the lake itself based on: distance, time of
journey, cost of journey and frequency of service. He concluded that each map
showed a “different aspect of the spatial
structure of this settlement.” His experiment on vacation opened up a whole new outlook on
how maps can measure location and identity of place.
Today we can click our computers for directions and are
given a choice to find a destination by conventional map, or street view or
aerial. Why do we choose which version we do? How does your character approach
space in his world? Why does it matter what she sees?
Journal Prompt:
1. Visit
a favorite place of your own where you like to sit and watch the view. Take a
pair of binoculars and a magnifying glass. Pick one focused spot and look at it
intently for a few minutes each time using first your own natural sight and
then each of these lenses.
2. Write
down the differences you see with each one.
Share: Did you see
something you’ve never noticed before? Can you adapt the experience for your
character?
Coinage—Economic
Roots
 Who controls the economy? Is there a hierarchy that
matches the political rule, or one that is counter to it? Does it run its
economy as a free trade society, a company store system, and/or a black-market?
Is it a system that has roots into your world’s
ancient culture and history, or has it been commandeered by outsiders that have
imposed their system? And does their system actually work better or worse—again
according to whose set of values.
The economy may not play an important role in
your world, but you’ll need to know the basics. It can provide several conflict
moments just in routine situations. Think of a time you planned to eat out and
then realized your forgot your wallet. What options did you have? What
emotional stress did you undergo?
Exercise:
1.
Outline a company store system that the
whole community has agreed upon as the best solution. Begin with a Robin Hood
type leader.
2.
What are the potential strengths? What
are the potential weaknesses?
3.
Now jump ahead a century or two and have
the system run as a way to enslave the community financially by greed driven
leader.
4.
Somewhere in an old ledger the community
finds the original documents and provisions. What does it give them courage to
do?
Share:
Do they return to the original moral compass, become the next tycoon, or change
the whole system?
“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?
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.
“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?
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.
“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?
|
“Of course the first
thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she was going to travel
through. ‘It’s something very like learning geography,’ thought Alice,…” Lewis
Carroll
