Tag Archives: backstory

#NaNoWriMo2019 #WritingLog: #writing a #fairytale sort of #prologue, part 2

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Hi, friends! I’m continuing the fairytale backstory today. Of course I realized there was something I wanted to include in yesterday’s submission, soooo I’ll just manage it into this one. That’s the way of NaNoWriMo: always write moving forward. xxxxx

Today’s Writing Music: Philip Glass, Dracula

“Good morning,” said the Silver Man with a tip of his tall hat.

Such a strange creature! This man was not like Papa at all. His skin was darker, his voice smooth and fearless. He wore no wool sweater or flannel shirts as they, but a suit much like the fancy men in story books, right down to the shiny shoes. Beneath his long silvery coat was a lining that looked like white fur, but the hair was too long to be fur.

The girl and her brothers clasped hands. The little brother shivered. A crow called from atop the roof of their home, but the children didn’t answer him, either.

The Silver Man tucked his hands into his pockets and took another step away from the forest and closer to their front stoop. “I do hope I have the honor of addressing the children of Master Perdido.”

Black wings flew out of the forest–more crows for the roof just above the children’s heads. When the girl watched them perch, they seemed more like holes in the sky than birds.

It is just Mama and Papa and us, the older brother said, very loud and sure as he gripped his sister’s hand. Are you from beyond the forest?

“Indeed I am.” The Silver Man removed a small bottle from his coat pocket and took a drink. “I come from a land without snow such as this.” He picks up a handful, and tosses it in the air between him and the children.

The snow does not fall. Each flake remains clear and still and perfect before the children’s eyes, blinding them to the Silver Man and the forest behind him. Not even the crow swooping over the their heads as it circles the house can take their eyes away.

The Silver Man begins to speak.

“From beyond the forests and oceans and mountains…” A dot of still snow melts, revealing the Silver Man’s finger. The finger melts snow as it draws little lines, little circles, little arms and legs–

–three. Three little children.

“…I have crossed the world on magical waters to find you.”

A flurry of scratches in the snow surround the drawn children–the eternal forest that, to the girl’s amazement, is not eternal, for the Silver Man’s scratches end—the forest, it must end, too! He sketches lines for rivers, and, and squares for buildings, squashy circles for lakes and bumps for mountains. Snow melts into the ocean and there’s more, there is more to the world, such a world! The girl leans away from her brothers to see the Silver Man draw some buildings and trees, and…another line, circle, arms and legs. Himself, surely.

The world, it had never felt so near…and so achingly far away.

A dark shape melted into the snow map: The Silver Man waved his top hat through the snow, and the snow fell to the ground as normal, boring snow does. He brushed the last flakes from his hat, and replaced it upon his head. “My farm is kissed by the son every day, its air filled with the scents of sweet fruit and flowers. You can run free to play with other children all day, and the fairies will tuck you in to bed at night. That is,” his legs bent and suddenly he was eye to eye with them, “if you wish to go.”

The scent of oranges drifted from his shoulders. The children swooned, their imaginations filled with grass and no trees, with treats and no wool sweaters, with other children waving to them, calling their names, wanting them, them, to come and play–

–until a crow swooped again, knocking his hat off his head. There had to be a dozen crows now, circling the house and cawing, cawing, the noise too loud for dreams and maps and–

“Children!” Their mama stood in the open door, wild-eyed and shaking. “Inside!”

The children ran beneath Mam’s arms, the girl almost caught in the door as Mama swung it shut and brought down the beam to lock it in place. The children clung to the stairwell’s bannister, waiting.

Step.

Step.

Step.

The Silver Man approached the door.

Mama’s chest moved up, down, up down, fast like the bellows when she stokes the kitchen fire. “You can’t have them!” She yelled at the door. “I don’t know where it is! You can find your own demon seed!”

Black shapes whipped by the windows surrounding the door: crows, flying.

Step.

Step.

Step.

The Silver Man left the door.

Crows cried from the rooftop.

Mama’s breath kept heaving hard, so hard, harder than her children. Her skin shone with sweat, her dress sleeves sliced and bloody.

Who is he, Mama? asked the little brother.

All crowing stops.

Silence.

A cold wind tumbles down the stairs and over the children’s backs. The girl watches a snowflake land upon her older brother’s cheek…followed by a white feather.

The top stair creaks.

Only the girl dares peak over her shoulder to see the Silver Man standing there above them all, brushing snow off his top hat.

“You know I can’t.”

Word Count: 857. Total so far: 1420. Yay!

While I know 50k won’t happen, my goal is to write 500+ words every day through the month of November–enough to have a solid start on my next novella. So, I’ll see you tomorrow! xxxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

#NaNoWriMo2019 #WritingLog: #writing a #fairytale sort of #prologue, part 1

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Hi, friends! I wanted to give myself a little warm-up to the main story with a moment in the story’s history. Considering my recent enjoyment of Labyrinth of the Faun, I wanted to take an impromptu stab at the fairy tale structure. Enjoy!

Tonight’s Writing Music: Bruno Coulais, Coraline

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had two brothers: one elder, and one younger. They lived with their parents in a forest filled with wild things in a vast house built of secrets and fear. No window allowed a view into the house from the outside. The brick walls were so unpleasant no vine wanted to climb them. The house, named Crow’s Nest for reasons which will later be revealed to you, looked out upon the forest with its mirrors eyes as if it loathed its own surroundings, but had nowhere else to go.

It was the perfect place for to live if you were an explorer, which is just what the girl and her brothers deemed themselves to be.

Not that they could all explore at once. Being that rarest of sorts known as sensible children, they knew it best to take turns with each dangerous task involved with an explore. One was required to distract the parents, be it helping poorly with chores, hiding the day’s cooking rations, or—the riskiest option—asking incessant questions about the world beyond the trees.

Only the girl dared do this. Why must my hair be black? What are those things that fly above us without flapping? Angel talks too much, can we eat him? I want go riding into the forest like Papa does. What are those loud noises outside the trees? Where does Papa go when he rides on Sean? When can I read the big papers Papa brings home with the food?

Often the questions would drive the mother to tears in a hand towel, to screams with a spoon, or to both. The girl learned to run and hide in the Crow’s Nest, very well, and very fast.

After the Distractor came the Watcher. This child must study the witchy trees and starved fingers for any signs of the Devil’s eyes, for to be caught by the Devil’s servants is certain death. They do not appear often in the day, but the children have seen them from their bedroom window when the sun has not yet woken, and the world is violet and sparkling with frost: small and yellow as the marbles they kept in their playroom. But those eyes never turned away. Those eyes stared upon their house. Those eyes stalked the innocent, flying down to strike any helpless rabbit or mouse foolish enough to cross the bare yard. The children’s book called them “owls,” but to their parents, they were nothing but servants to the worst Evil.

And no child wanted to be caught by the worst Evil.

So the third wore a dark green blanket they fashioned into a cloak and carried a knife. This was the Insider, crawling among the trees to carve little arrows near the grass line. Every found hoof print of Sean’s marked another clue to the living labyrinth around them, another tree marked to help them uncover the mysteries of distant rumbles and high-flying creatures, of where food came from, and clothes, and books, and maybe, just maybe, other children.

Oh, to see other children! The girl and her brothers often talked late into the night of their dreams of new friends, what they might look like and the games they could play.

So when the Silver Man emerged from the forest one wintry morning, the children were very curious, indeed.

Word Count: 563. Woohoo!

While I know 50k won’t happen, my goal is to write 500+ words every day through the month of November–enough to have a solid start on my next novella. So, I’ll see you tomorrow! xxxxx

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Lessons Learned from Neil Gaiman: Some Questions Ought Not Be Answered.

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As a child, I spent most of my time with cozy mystery writers like Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Colin Dexter, Ellis Peters, and, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. By saturating myself with mysteries, I grew accustomed to quick character development, red herrings, plot twists, and, of course, explanations. A good mystery must show the whodunnit, howdunnit, and whydunnit. If the mystery isn’t solved, then the protagonist is clearly not worth his weight in pages.

It’s with this mindset, cemented over, oh, a couple of decades, that I entered the fantasy worlds of writers like Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman via film adaptations of their stories.

While both films take great liberties with the stories, I saw enough to get hooked on these writers for life.

Now I’ve got to admit something shameful: The first time I read Coraline–before motherhood and writing were serious endeavors–I was deeply disappointed. All these kudos on the back cover about how awesome the story is, it’s the new Alice in Wonderland, blah blah blah. Gaiman doesn’t EXPLAIN anything! What IS this button-woman? Why rats? Did no one else ever notice that giant door? Surely other people lived in the flat before that. Humbug, I say!

Five years later, I hope I can say that hearts change, and that what I felt about the book before: that was a humbug, as George C. Scott’s Ebenezer Scrooge put it.

Does this mean I discovered the answers to those questions? Nope.

It means I’m okay with there being questions unanswered.

Current culture revels in creating backstory questions the initial stories were not asking:

What made Michael Myers so evil? See the movie!

When did Anakin Skywalker turn to the Dark Side of the Force? Answers revealed!

How did Hannibal become Hannibal the Cannibal? Find out now!

Why do magic ladies go bad? Disney’s got the goods on The Wicked Witch of the West and Maleficent! 

Everything has to be explained. Everything has to be known.

Part of what makes fantasy fiction so enjoyable is its unknown, the extant of not-like-reality it contains. Neither the film nor book of Coraline explain what’s with the door between worlds, why there’s only one key, why sewing buttons into a child’s eyes keeps him/her in the other world, or even what the Other Mother is.

Because guess what–a kid don’t care. Coraline knows the Other Mother has her parents. She knows the Other Mother uses buttons to trap kids. She knows the Other Mother wants that key.

When I studied point of view, I realized just how vital that ignorance/acceptance trait is with a child character. While the writer knows how the world works, he can’t imbue that knowledge into the child. The child takes in the world as it enters her immediate perception, and she absorbs what impacts her personally. Coraline initially enjoys the Other Mother’s world very much, but when she’s asked to give up her eyes for buttons, she prefers her own home. Only then does the predatory nature of the Other Mother’s world become clear.

Mysteries thrive on what’s hidden: a character’s past, a buried piece of setting, and so on. But what’s hidden must also be exposed in order for a mystery to fulfill its promise to readers. Even mysteries for children will do this, as I’m currently learning from Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit for the gazillionth time, as it’s my kids’ favorite movie.

coraline

Coraline, however, is not a mystery as far as the genre’s concerned. It is a perilous adventure through a dark fantasy land, something which kids are not often exposed to. The world both excites and tests the protagonist, and because the protagonist is as young as the readers, the readers share in the experience.

As Reality often proves, there just simply isn’t an explanation for everything that occurs in our lives. We have to learn how to accept the unknown as it comes as well as how to overcome it. These require courage, strength, determination, and wit–all traits Coraline uses to survive the Other Mother’s world.

No explanation required.