ramblingsfromwithin

[ramblingsfromwithin]

#2 - Finding the Story from the Ideas

I have a confession: I can’t wash the dishes without having audio of some kind (whether random songs, an album, podcasts, etc.) playing in the background.

I am more likely to do a chore, like load the dishwasher, if I have some kind of audio playing in the background. This does not necessarily carry over to writing.

I may listen to an album or playlist with strong subjects and themes if I am writing dialogue, but, usually, I prefer to write in silence. Recently, though, I have begun listening to instrumental music as I write and I have found it to be refreshing and stimulating.

As I was hyping myself up to load the dishwasher recently, I did a search for James Baldwin in the Podcast app and I randomly played a podcast episode titled “Episode 294: The Negro in American Culture”, a mere fragment of a much longer group discussion featuring James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, Emile Capouya, and Alfred Kazin. 

I encourage you to listen to either when you have a moment.

In the previous post, I touched on how I’ve used my writing as a way to better understand myself and the world around me. As I loaded the dishwasher and listened to the discussion in the podcast version, I began to ‘find the words’ to use to pitch a story that I have been working on for almost a year now. I’ll refer to this story by the abbreviations of its working title, TAHOP.

TAHOP began with a simple challenge for myself: I wanted to showcase a world that was like our own, a fantastical world but also one full of limitations.

As I began to try to better visualize the world, three characters immediately came to mind; two of these characters are completely new creations of mine (a “hero” and a “villain”) while the third is a version of a character I’ve held onto since middle school. 

With an understanding of the world and three characters a part of it, I began writing down ideas. Some of these ideas shared space in composition books with other, unrelated ideas while other ideas I had frantically written down on scraps of paper during moments of inspiration while at work.

I took all of these notes and compiled them into a single document that was almost 40 pages. That’s 40 pages of character ideas, dialogue, rough scene ideas, and dozens upon dozens of subjects and themes that I felt could serve the story. Yeah, sis, I know. I overdid it.

The idea phase of writing is always so much fun, but I came to a point where I realized that I couldn’t just continue to pump out idea after idea without working towards the story itself. So, over the last three or so months, I’ve begun organizing and sifting through those notes to find the story, something that I didn’t believe I had despite having a handful of solid ideas for scenes. 

Faced with 40 pages of notes, I came up with six titles for chapters and began sorting my ideas. There were some ideas I had come up with that I found very easy to part ways with while others felt valuable, despite not fitting TAHOP, and worth putting aside for other, unrelated stories.

During this time, I found myself filling in missing plot pieces, molding certain characters, and rearranging many of the scenes to better serve the story.

Now, within the last month, I’ve condensed my ideas down to four chapters and begun the actual writing of the story. Four chapters, or parts, feels more achievable than the six that I had briefly considered. 

All in all, I feel like I’ve left my comfort zone with TAHOP. Moving on from the idea stage has made me less guarded and less secretive about the project which will be important once I begin seeking out a publisher and/or an artist.

I plan on discussing it more openly here and sharing more of the strategies I’m using to get this story finished and polished.

[ramblingsfromwithin]

#1 - The Value of Reflection

Over the last two months, I’ve been pushing myself to take my writing more seriously. I’ve finished more stories in the last two months than I have since I took a creative writing course in high school.

At the beginning of each week during the class, there would be a brief lesson followed by a related prompt and, for the remainder of that week, we were free to write to our heart’s content. We would then read our finished stories aloud to the rest of the class. 

While recently gravitating towards podcasts involving creative discussions like Lean Into Art, Comics Are Great!, and Comics Manifest, I began to realize how much that class molded me into a better writer without me even realizing it, primarily through constant creation and constant reflection.

The best thing you can do as a creative is to create, regardless of the finished product so long as it is in a finished state that you can reflect on. You’ll soon realize that these reflections will stick with you and come to mind as you continue to create more things.

While I never enjoyed journaling assignments during school, I’ve found enjoyment in ‘creative’ journaling as early as the fifth grade when I fell in love with composition books. I would doodle random shape blobs throughout them, often forming them into something that could be compared to abstract stained glass art.

I also would write down any story ideas I had as well as any ‘storyless’ characters and dialogue that popped into my mind. Mainly because I thought one day I might run out of ideas and wish I had recorded all of them. Ha!

In fifth grade, I wrote and illustrated a comic about a superhero named Gold Star. It was inspired by The Incredibles but also by my vague understanding of Marvel and DC stories via animation, film, and Wikipedia/Wikias.

His name stemmed from a mortgage company in my hometown that had caught my eye one day. Gold Star seemed to me to be a fitting name for a superhero.

I don’t remember much about him specifically. He was a part of a team similar to the Fantastic Four, but he was more Booster Gold influenced. I’d be willing to bet that the “The Greatest Story Never Told" episode of Justice League Unlimited likely was the source of my brief interest in Booster Gold.

The Gold Star comic, my first real creation, was gone almost as quickly as I made it. I had molded two of the villains in the comic after two male classmates who had teased me for being feminine. They somehow got a hold of it, read it, and ripped it up.

I can’t recall how I felt after this happened, but the creative fire inside me didn’t waver.

In middle school, I read the Twilight series in an attempt to understand why it had exploded into popularity with not just my classmates but my mom and her friends as well.

The books were satisfying and I understood why so many people, mainly young girls and women, found so much joy in the gloomy world of Twilight. 

In fact, my friend Brittany began to write her own Twilight-inspired series. The story was handwritten on loose-leaf paper yet it felt as real as any book I had ever read.

It was so inspiring seeing someone my age create something of her own so I decided I would work on my own novel.

I considered how Stephenie Meyer and Brittany used vampires and werewolves in their stories and I decided that I, instead, wanted to write a novel about a boy with bright pink fairy wings that he couldn’t hide.

I did some research online about fairies, naming him Puck as a reference to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I read certain passages of Twilight again that had left a positive impression on me.

I even talked with Brittany about her writing process and bounced ideas off of her.

I don’t remember much of what I wrote and, even though I have quite a bit of writing from that time period, I’m not sure where it disappeared. I’m certain of why I gave up on the project though:

One, writing a novel was more challenging than I had originally thought. 

Two, the ‘slice of life’ teenage story was also challenging to me as I was someone who was just becoming a teenager himself. 

Three, I didn’t have a story.

Looking back, I realize I hadn’t experienced enough up until middle school to truly utilize Puck in the best way possible. I had enough experience to form him as a character but not enough to understand what his role could be in a story.

Even with no real story, though, Puck has continued to live with me in the back of my mind. I have inserted the essence of him into a lot of my fantasy-leaning writing.

He’s now found his way into a world that I created as a form of therapy. I have faith that he and the stories of that world will one day see the light... but it won’t be in the form of a novel like I originally had wanted.

So, prior to my creative writing class, I had created before. I had created things that I was, and still am, proud of, but that creative writing class was the defining moment for me.

It was such a valuable experience for me as a budding creative, showing me the importance of setting and reaching obtainable goals for the sake of creating something tangible.

Sometimes, it means ‘puking’ ideas for a story onto a page and discovering the characters and stories hidden within the ideas.

Sometimes, it means writing the ending before the beginning.

And, sometimes, it means putting a project on hold while I work on other things and continue to read, listen to, and experience the world around me. 

This blog will serve me where my memory cannot. As my craft continues to grow and change, this blog will act as a reminder of where I once was and where I’d like to be headed in the future as well as listing and thinking critically about my own projects as well as my inspirations and my aspirations.