A Night of Storytelling

I went to see Mawson's Mettle, a reading by storyteller Lawrence Howard, performed as part of Portland's Fertile Ground festival. It was a wonderful event. This was the first time in many, many years I listened to an oral storyteller as opposed to attending plays. Listening to Lawrence tell Mawson's story (Mawson was an explorer of the Antarctic) held my attention for over two hours.

Lawrence belongs to a group called Portland Story Theater.

Spirit of Storytelling

I taught a Spirit of Storytelling workshop as a benefit for Elizabeth Lyon. I discovered something that's helped me a great deal with my new play that has lacked a quality of depth. During the workshop I asked the people attending to meditate and visualize someone who represented the audience for their story. Then, to have that person speak about why a particular story spoke to them.

A bit more to it than that, but it really opened my eyes to a deeper layer to the play. I realized when I meditate on a story (deep meditation for me takes 2-3 hours to get to a place of quiet mind), that I was calling on my own understanding, and not seeking that understanding from a story character or an audience to my story.

Still pondering it all.

Happy to reach another level of understanding.

Bill

Two Ideas

Someone asked me in an intro to screenwriting class what I would teach in an advanced class. After thinking it over, given a free choice, I'd spend eight hours teaching people how to write a good sentence. Most bad writing is an accumulation of bad or weak sentences. Which is why it's so hard to fix a flawed novel. Fixing structural problems doesn't get to the underlying, word to word problems.

On a theatrical front, I'm on the third version of a full length play. I wasn't happy with the new variations on the characters, so I've decided to write ten minute plays with 2-3 characters in each. A way to get to some deeper truths about characters, and to give scenes more dramatic definition and fulfillment.

The Spirit of Storytelling

I went to a meditation tonight and asked for help. I realized that to teach the difference between personal storytelling versus telling a story to an audience, I need to get to what I call the spirit of storytelling. This would be a place where a writer creates characters without judging them or shaping them to meet the needs of the author (or making all the characters all an extension of the author's voice).

I realized during the meditation I'll only get to some understanding of this through the world of spirit, at least my getting there. Two years ago I was listening to a monk speak and I had a deep realization about the spirit of storytelling, something that would have been an organizing principle like a story is a promise. But I didn't have a pen and I lost the understanding once I came down from the high mood I was in listening to the monk.

Anyway, I'm teaching a characterization workshop this weekend in Medford/Ashland an during the meditation I had an idea for the first exercise I could ask people to do for the spirit of storytelling.

When I teach and people ask me questions, the answers come to me. If I don't teach and don't hear the questions, I don't know the answers.

Bill

Is It Smart To Make Yourself The Main Character in Your Fiction Novel?

When you are beginning to write your fiction novel, character development is key. As many authors know, lines often become blurry, and main characters can easily resemble yourself. However, how far should you take it, and is it effective to have yourself as the main character in your fiction novel?

This many times can stem from unresolved issues that you would like to express within your fictional story. This can be a good and a bad thing. If you have had a very emotional experience in your life, then you can use yourself as your fictional main character to give an outside point of view to specific events that have occurred. Many people would call a story about character based on themselves a memoir, but what if you wanted to put that main character within fictional events that weren't true to your life? That is the beauty of being a writer because you have the opportunity to blur truth with reality, and you can use yourself as your main character within the story that you are creating.

Many people may feel that it is more effective to make themselves the main character in their fiction novel because it gives them a better voice and tone to their writing. Again, since it is a fiction novel, many of the events will be fabricated within the storyline, but you will still be using yourself as the main character to tell the story. This can often give you the opportunity to express something in your life that you did not get the chance to express before. Now you are in control, and you can write your story however you would like with yourself as the main character.

This does have a good and a bad side because many people may do this with suppressed motives of anger or sadness regarding true events that have happened to them. They may want to write themselves as the main character to be able to rewrite the past and work through some of their issues.

Regardless, your choice in using yourself as the main character is up to you if you are still staying true to the theme of your novel. For some people, this may be an interesting avenue to provide first-hand insight of events that will make the story one-of-a-kind.

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Chuggin McCoffee is a coffee fanatic that has spent the entirety of his career cultivating and studying all of the best uses and brewing styles for optimal coffee and espresso flavor. His specialty site for all coffee needs, supplies, and Automatic Drip Coffee Makers can be found at The Coffee Bump.com.

Hats for Sale, by Nancy Hill

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Hats for Sale is a video written and created by Nancy Hill, a photographer and writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. The video can be viewed at http://storyispromise.blip.tv/

Nancy is the photographer and writer of the The Dolltender, also available for viewing on Blip.tv.

To view more of Nancy's work, visit http://www.nancyhillphotography.com/default4.asp

Hats for Sale is a retelling of Slobodkina's Caps for Sale.

Me and Fixing Things

Had a run of ill-luck fixing things. Tried to change my 90 year old father's battery, and didn't know it had a security system that wouldn't let the car start when I put in a new battery. Replaced terminals, checked fuses, fussed with battery chargers, was going to start replacing relays and jumping the starter, when I got the word to take it to a shop and they found the problem.

Next up figuring out a cable problem to an upstairs tv that the adult kids taking care of my father use when staying over. Just stopped working. So I'm fussing and running around, getting another tv, hooking up a dvd player/tuner, no luck. Turned out the cable tv people hadn't really hooked it up to cable tv, it was still working off an antenna.

During all this I had two older computers in the office of Willamette Writers die in one week. Stressful.

When I was young I came across several people from Egypt who had old cars with bad brakes. I would go to a u-pull it yard with a $25, all you could carry deal. I'd take off the drums and shoes of an old car and install it all for $50. Got people on the road again.

Gizmos are more complicated now. Can't do the quick and cheap cleaning a battery, replacing an alternator or a coil wire, getting someone back on the road.