Red

Ever noticed how the color red is used in telling stories?  Schindler's list was a black and white movie with one exception, the red coat of the little Jewish girl.  It depicted the fate of that young life and brought audience to tears.

But red is used for other strong emotions.  From sultry and sexy, like ladies in red dress in so many movies, to anger and rage, to warning and danger.  Red makes the audience pay attention.  It highlights something particular and special.

Just remembering one of the classic uses of red is in a comedy bullfight.  The red cape is said to anger a bull.  Of course when Bugs Bunny entered the ring it meant war with the bull.  The red cape hid things like a shotgun and an anvil, all to the determent of the bull. Perhaps it should have been called "Bull caper by Bunny".

There is a certain amount of people that need to know what color things are.  Color sets moods and emotion.  Just imagine a sharp looking crooner in a black tuxedo and next to him is his date in a slender white backless dress and white fluffy fur around her shoulders.  Now compare that to a young guy wearing blue cutoff jeans and a tan.  His date is a curvy brunette in a red tight bikini.  Notice the glamor in the first example and the casual and sexy in the second?  Color makes a difference, and red is easily understood by most everybody.
 Red shirt makes one look spiffy, red roses to please the lady, blush red after blundering over words, and a red hand imprint on the face after insulting the object of desire (not to mention a red broken heart).

Changing face of writing

I'm did a short lesson to my ABE students on communicating.  And it dawned on me how writing is changing.

Ebooks in the last few years has become a bigger market.  You may say you never knew ebooks existed before until Amazon came out with the Kindle.  But I've known about ebooks for many years.  Before the Kindle, the main device to read ebooks on was the Palm Pilot, and it used the file format of .pdb .

Newspapers are finding harder and harder to keep up with their expenses.  As a result some are forced to go down the online only option.  Here in St Louis, one resurrected as an online only newspaper, The St Louis Globe Democrat.

Publishing has also changed.  No longer do you have the only option of going to a publisher and pony up money to print your work.  You can self publish online.  You can get your own ISBN numbers, do the copyright registration online and sell your work as an ebook.  Who will sell these?  You can self sell on Scribd.com, but also BarnesandNoble.com and Borders.com have programs where you can submit your work.

Creative writing is changing.  The biggest change is that you can publish your creative work online via blogger, Scribd.com or maybe even facebook or some social network.  Its wonderful to have readers read your stuff you made from the heart.  These sites often have stats of reads.  And getting these stats gives you encouragement to continue.

Those are the options available today.  Who knows what will happen in the future?  Perhaps a mind meld to the frontal lobes via some contraption strapped to our heads.

Compose

Compose, I love that word.  It has a specific meaning but I like to always think of it in terms of a symphony.  The various instruments to make distinct sounds.  Sounds that conjure up a story.

Peter Tchaikovsky made many sounds bow to his whims. He told stories via the orchestra.  Peter and the Wolf was one of the more apparent.  He assigned an instrument and a musical theme for each character.  This way you could easily visualize what was going on.  You could hear the characters.

In much the same way, John Williams composed a piece for an up and coming film maker.  His piece was key to take an off the wall story in a very foreign world(s) and make the story relate-able to the viewers.  At the time the symphony and the orchestra industry wasn't in much demand with the younger generations.  This crazy Sci-Fi story gave the orchestra an opportunity to show a new generation what it had been doing of  centuries, move hearts.  That film was released in 1977 and was the first world wide block buster ever.  Those who worked on it said that the music pulled everything together and made what could have been a B movie to laugh at to a story to take seriously and cherish.  That movie was the original Star Wars.  And after 33 years, that franchise is still making money.

But what does this have to do with writing?  Everything, in my humble opinion.  Music brings out the emotion in characters.  But the characters have to have the emotion in them to begin with.  Creating characters and situations that evoke emotion is what creative writers do.  Can you hear your characters?  Can you feel your characters?

But composing is more than just emotion, its a conglomeration of emotions and situation that work together to create an adventure and a great ride for the reader.  Much like essays or Aesop's fables, there should be a single thought driving the story.  A big picture, if you will.  I think that what makes a story satisfying.

So compose, bring out the emotions and make them work together like wheels and cogs in a clock.

Democracy Is Freedom of Speech - Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi speaks after years of arrest.

How do we value our voice?  Do we get on our housetops and yell at the top of our lung hoping to be heard?  Do we shove our opinions down the throats of those who think differently?

After about seven years of house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi is released.  She does not put on camouflage and arm herself with weapons of war.  All she has is her ideas of democracy and a voice, a gentle voice.  A voice that makes a countries military tremble in their combat boots.  That gentle voice has the attention of the World and of its leaders.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a warrior.  There is no doubt in my mind.  But her warfare is in the realm of communication.  She has suffered loss, as any warrior does.  Her husband has died halfway around the world from her.  Yet she chose to keep up the fight.

It is said that the pen is mightier than the sword.  Effective communication can and does move people.  How do you value your voice?

Write.

Write your ideas, your thoughts, your poetry, your novel, your short story, your essay, your persuassion, your passion, your dreams.

Write.  Dammit, write.

Genre selecting

I love comedy, drama, and some romance.  While I really enjoyed some comedians books (like Dave Berry, Bill Cosby et al.) they are more exaggerated non-fiction than fiction.   Not something I would like to write or have the talent to.  But mixing up comedy, drama and romance seems good for a story.  Keep the reader entertained. Another piece of literature I like are story of morals as in like Aesop's Fables.  Driving home a point or an idea is very attractive.

Two genres in particular are attractive to me, science-fiction and murder-mystery.  I guess because the ideas of exploration and investigation are almost synonymous, and curiosity is a great hook.

Of course great stories of Star Trek, Space 1999, Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica (old and new), Star Gate, Star Wars are great influences.  They provide a range of story telling styles form the old single plots to the modern multi-plot stories.

Needless to say my favorite genre is actually sci-fi.  So that's what I'm currently writing in.  But mixing up stuff seems like fun too.

What writting does.....

To concrete thought on paper (even virtual paper) is to release the thought that has captivated us.

Emotions are powerful.  Language of emotions is the very essence of life.  When language is used to describe the language of emotions, then emotions are transferred across space and time.  Its astounding how you can know a writer just by his/her writings.  His/Her soul is spread out across pages in ink.  As long as the work exists their souls keeps on. 

I see this to be true time and time again.  Thomas Kelly was the lead in the Apollo Lunar Lander project.  Kelly was quoted in HBO's From the Earth to the Moon to say that he thought that the craft had a soul.  It was the combined souls of every designer and engineer that worked on it.  Thus it is with every work we do.

That's somewhat of a sobering thought.  Imagine that this society has passed and some future archeologists are excavating the area where your works are, or what you have worked on.  What impression would you give to those explorers across time?

Plots

Plots are fun.  You have a white hat hero and a maiden in distress that's been captured by the black hated villain.  So the basic idea of a plot goes.  Will the hero be strong enough?  Will the maiden be freed?  Will the villain be captured?  And where to put the monologue of the villain?  Perhaps when the hero is trapped and needs time to get out.  Yes a good spot for a soliloquy.  Charming, isn't it?

Plots and subplots fill the books of today.  And why a subplot?  Well of course is so the reader doesn't get too bored with the main plot.  Flower it up a little.  Have a fling, a romance, a fight, or a spite.  Comedy is useful.  Little jokes and such.  Stargate SG-1 and Castle were good with comedy.  Main characters playing with each other and such.

I learned a lot from Stargate SG-1 about story telling.  It was quite different than any series of Star Trek.  They had a multitude of plots.  And a seed from past episodes could flourish into a main plot a couple of episodes ahead.

But plots answer the question where are you taking me?  And I find that a well defined plot comes about with some back story telling.  Stuff that will not make it in a book but serves to give credibility to the plot.  Sometimes I have to do multiple back stories so I can understand where and how the characters and players are coming from and coming into.

For example I have this character I had to come up with, he's not a main character but just a henchman.  Yet I had to define his character.  I used a hot dog in the story to define him.  How he uses the hot dog is how he is.  There was another character by the name of Flass in Batman Begins.  He was defined by his scene with a falafel kiosk.

Lots of plots keep brains from flops. :-)