A Story is a Promise Blog

Evoking a Story’s Characters and Landscape One aspect of a well told story is to evoke an environment; what it feels like to be in it. Paul Hollis’ novel, Loose Ends , from his Hollow Man series, offers some wonderful examples in its first chapter. A note in passing, even the title, Loose Ends , conveys something about the story and plot. Both a character and a situation can be at loose ends. Opening line... “Life goes on,” he said, “even when you don’t want it to.” This conveys something about the main character’s state as the story begins. Continuing... ‘The words hung in the air, heavy with resignation, as if he uttered them not for comfort but to confirm some unwavering truth. Outside, he knew the world would press forward with its usual indifference; down in the street bus brakes screeched, car horns blared, and pedestrians and pedestrians weaved through crowds of living ghosts as the world moved on with us or without us.’ Note how ...

Notes on the Movie Obsession I recently viewed the film Obsession and found it thoughtful and intelligent in the vein of Good Dog, Broken Bird, and, going back, Companion. These films all have strong, visual stories and thoughtful storytelling and ideas. They are about something. In Obsession, an emotionally stunted young man treated by psych meds turns out to be practicing how to tell a young woman he works with that he has feelings for her. Later, she even invites him to tell her how he feels, but he can’t. In a curio shop, he finds the One Wish Willow and asks that his friend be in love with him. His wish is granted. The first few days are glorious, but then she creates a shrine with the body of his recently dead cat that passed from an overdose of his spilled psych meds. The film slowly develops what it’s like for the young man to be with someone who is obsessed with him. Until the ending, when he understands he can only escape ...

Storytelling, the Unconscious, and the Subconscious Minds The unconscious is where we store memories. To help compact this storage of a huge volume of memories, feelings are shorn from each memory. Scientists have discovered that when people retrieve memories, they can be guided to attach different feelings to them than those that were originally experienced. The unconscious is also where fixed ideas about who we are and what we think about our place and role in the world are embedded. Think of ideas buried there broadcasting a message, like a radio transmitter. 24/7. You might think of yourself worthy, but buried in your unconscious could be the message that you are not. Or any powerful message that drives your conscious feelings and awareness. The conscious mind is, in most people, consumed by measuring and weighing things. Our relationships, our standing compared to others, how we judge and measure ourselves compare...

Forestalling the Conceptual Mind in Storytelling. by Bill Johnson The power of a story is in the intensity of its scenes. Each scene should be a complete experience unto itself, something readers can immerse themselves into. In a powerful scene, readers can surrender themselves to the story. They can let the situation take care of them. But this requires not a dry description of events, but an unexpected revelation of feelings and illuminations of ideas and understanding. To write an intense scene, write it as an evocation of what an environment feels like to character, what a character feels in reaction to events. To do this, feel your way into a story, into a scene, into a moment in a scene. Many writers enter a scene from their head, a conceptualizing of details, what's going to happen next. It's a map of a journey, an outline, if you will, but not the journey itself. For many, once they start down this path of understandin...

Capsule Movie Review - Broken Bird The set up for this film is a young girl is traumatized when her family's car goes off a mountain road and she spends days alone with the bodies. Later in life, she becomes a mortuary assistant to recreate the family she lost. This is horror like Hitchcock's Psycho, or a story by Poe. It's a true descent into madness. The film making is striking and beautiful, the main actress a marvel, and I appreciated seeing it on a large screen. I suspect the film will find a wider and appreciative audience when it's available on streaming. It might even be considered a cult classic some day. The film is a singular vision, but not for everyone. I offer capsule movie reviews on my website at https://www.storyispromise.com/quikcuts.html . The reviews are meant to offer a glimpse into the mechanics of a film and what it did to satisfy - or not - an audience.

Essays on the Craft of Dramatic Writing! Website Rebuilt I've rebuilt my writing website, Essays on the Craft of Dramatic Writing! | A Story is a Promise with the help of Chatgpt, at https://www.storyispromise.com . It was a long process that started with some simple fixes and became more complex and detailed. I really needed the help to navigate the Google Search Console , to interpret messages and to figure out problems, like a word processing program that used curved apostrophes that didn't work with the Console. My original site went up in 1995 when people thought you were talking about spiders when you mentioned the web. Those were the salad days of my site, reaching a hundred visitors a day. Ah, youth. My latest post of the website is Storytelling and the Superconscious Mind It has been a pleasure and a priviledge to work with so many talented writers over the years. Blessings on your journies. Bill Johnson ...

Buddha in the Garden, by Upaskia Yoly Buddha in the Garden is a charming and delightful book about how someone seeking to live by the tenets of the Buddha can manage a garden. The author moved from creating an organic garden in the lush Willamette Valley, with abundant rainfall and fertile earth, to a place in Arizona where limited rainfall and scarcity of nutrients made a garden a target for insects and animals. To protect a garden in such an arid climate, how is the concept of no killing resolved? Or can it be? By looking at each pest and guest with a calm mind, the author developed a deeper appreciation of how to avoid just being reactive. Right View leads her to Right Action. To replace a ‘Fix it Now!’ mentality with a calm ‘how does this action reflect the wheel of life?’ guides her to a deeper understanding that the order of life and death also leads to renewal and rebirth. Her individual chapters on d...