In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, life moves pretty fast.
As the weeks slip by, I’ve become less motivated to write this weekly blog and more excited about posting all the fiction I’ve come up with. I have not revisited any of the stories I’ve written, saving that for when my Bradbury year is completed. While I am very curious to reread words that I haven’t seen in many months, I am preparing myself for the reality that all of them will need serious work before they are even pretty good. Let alone great.
I may be facing a year of turd polishing.
This week, I wrote a very weird story inspired by the fact that the area behind one’s ear seems to be associated with mystery. We’re often reminded to wash back there. Magicians extract coins from the spot. I came up with a character who goes looking for what’s behind his lobe and finds more than he expected. It allowed me to play with the stretching of space and time, to imagine what could be done when physics goes out the window.
What exactly I learned about writing, I’m not sure I could say.
Early on, I seemed to have a lot of thoughts on craft that I had stored up over decades, and for a while it poured out, filling the digital pages of these little essays. Now I think that I will have to move from the first draft stage into the rewriting zone to feel like I’m really gleaning further lessons.
There is, however, one topic that has been on my mind for a while and has not yet made it to this series.
The callback.
I don’t often see this overtly discussed, but it can be a powerful strategy—one I’ve seen many times and employed somewhat liberally myself. It’s a strong spice that can be over used. Made cheap. Cliched even. But when you have only a few hundred words or a few pages to tell a story, sometimes you have to pull out all the stops.
In case you are not sure what I mean, it’s the other end of the literary string, brought back at the conclusion to tie the whole thing up into a nice bow. A word or phrase or idea, usually mentioned within the first paragraph or two, often related to the theme of the tale, that then gets repeated at the end, even if in a slightly different form. The reader is suddenly brought back to the start.
“Ah,” she thinks. “It all comes full circle. Very ingenious.”
Or at least that’s what we hope for.
Like I said, subtlety is key. Knock them over the head with it at your peril.
Perhaps it goes back to the hero’s journey. Humans find deep satisfaction in the circular nature of a character who, standing in for each of us, leaves the familiar but stifling trappings of home, crosses the threshold into the unknown, is challenged to their very limits, inherits hard-won knowledge, uses it to seek out and vanquish the dragon-symbol of our shadow selves, and then returns to the motherland, armed with wisdom and no longer a naive and vulnerable stranger to themselves.
We like our loops. Our narrative bows.
To come back home.
I spotted a few such subtle but impactful callbacks in the finale of Severance, season 2. The show has been a prime example of my favorite kind of story-telling, and I don’t seem to be alone.
I like a big idea that allows the story to play with human emotions in terrestrial settings but with a new twist. I like a sense of mystery, of being intentionally confused, but also promised that the answers will come if I hang in there. I like being surprised in a way that doesn’t strain credulity. Right up there with the best shows ever made, Severance delivers on all of these.
Thank God season 3 got the green light.
I had a similar positive experience with Silo. I’ve not read the books, but the first two seasons hit all the right notes. And that show is getting a third and forth season.
I haven’t spoken much about books lately, mostly because I haven’t been doing much reading. Between writing a story a week and painting for my April show, there hasn’t been enough gas in the tank. At least I miss reading and still crave it.
I certainly have plenty of books in my TBR stack. There seems to be more urgency every day to use my time wisely. We were just yesterday bringing our daughter home from the hospital so we could figure out how to be parents, and tomorrow we’re taking her for a tour of the college she’ll be attending in the fall.
Life.
If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
fan of Hofstadter?