Tag: rich

SPREY Log #029 – Notes on Worldbuilding #002

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Styxcolor

I’ve talked to a different storyteller since my last note. I have realized, I couldn’t trick or convince myself of what isn’t there in SPREY. Wasn’t I talking about a romance with hidden fleshy bits under the coat? I should take that thought serious and cut some fat, a lot of fat, from SPREY.

Let’s think in a new and bold direction, right after Literature Note #005 has smacked my brain moments ago Instead of trying to be a city, instead of trying to be a theme, instead of trying to be a whole cast I should go and be Rich and Willard. Why don’t I let their relationship dictate SPREY? Instead of looking into various things superficially, let’s make this one thing right and find some good words for it.

What’s the conflict here? Rich and Willard are madly in love with each other and it’s a bad idea, even without any cannibal horror rockers or other external threats around. Rich is a convicted cybercriminal and Willard is an ambitious and idealistic cop, who doesn’t know this detail about his partner yet. It also doesn’t help that Rich has a lot of past trauma bottled up he never dealt with and is so scared of being hurt that he keeps making decisions that hurt him more.

Now what is the worst thing that could happen to them?

Imagine one day they’re making out in a back alley during Willard’s break. A new wanted poster comes in and it’s Rich. Now Rich has a lot of explaining to do, Willard’s world collapses faster than he can say, do or feel anything, but they have zero time to discuss it out. Willard has to make a decision really quickly…and decides to help Rich escape the city.

But then… and this then could be anything, it wouldn’t necessarily require the slashers even.

Stepping away from this text for a bit I realized that Willard can only be convinced to do anything that goes against his ideals if someone literally holds a gun to Rich’s head. And then whatever happens doesn’t come from Willard. At least at first. I have a lot of new food for thought. You can be sure, I will soon be back and try to solve this riddle again.

SPREY Log #15 – Exploring the Ending

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Styxcolor

I spent yesterday’s session working on the end of SPREY. The climax is pretty solidified at this point, so I was looking at what happens afterwards. The end determines what else the build up up to it might need. I wrote some villain biographies, motives and relationships down, so that I have a clearer picture who will do what in the final fight. I was focussing on the Executioner until now, because he is…well…easy to look through. He is named after activities he likes to do. The Speaker on the other hand has a telling name as well, but his words have more intention than just making noise. Ryu got some new attention as well, although I’m doubtful he survives until the last duel. And then there’s the old king of the slashers who loomed ominous over the early drafts. I cut him out of the story entirely for a while, but now that I’m reworking SPREY and dealing with a core of civilizations theme, he seems to fit in pretty well again. Let’s not start with Motofiend whom you don’t know yet.

Also a huge shoutout to my friend Vergil who patiently listened to several drafts of my final fight scene and gave me a new perspective on the slasher genre and the deeper seated symbolism. The killer doesn’t come from nothing. He has been either wronged personally in the past or is more, is a manifestation of a whole group of victims now turned into a raging beast past any eye for an eye retribution as they received no justice, turning against the innocent and blindly creating more injustice now. The virgin breaks the cycle of violence. Some cultures sacrifice her, let her symbolically innocent blood be the last spilled, maybe even hinting at political marriages. And some cultures apparently let her defeat the monster instead, laying it at rest again. SPREY does beautifully fit and not fit in this at the same time. My virgin ends the violence by becoming the slasher king and ordering the tribe to dissolve (probably). One small parasitic civilization collapses while also uncovering the rottenness, yet the strengths of the host it tries to nest itself inside. A lot of people fall over their own ego. But my slashers do try to sacrifice one of their worst enemies to avenge their dead and improve their morale again.

Another bit of confusion waned when I found an old fragment I had written. SPREY contains excessive flashbacks. While I love all that is happening I was doubtful whether I shouldn’t just trim that out and be more action oriented in the present. Then I read this little loving conversation between Rich and Willard and was like, no, moments like these probably give my comic soul. I will not spoil it for now, but imagine something like a couple of words lovers whispering into each other’s ears gives me confidence for the whole project…then there must be something to it. I’ll work on making this comic happen, like every day!

See you next blogpost!

SPREY Log #14 – Back to Action

Posted on August 22, 2021 by Styxcolor

I have understood the next truth of what I’m doing today. Writing a story, creating anything really, is an organic process. Organic means I will have branches and some of them will wildly sprout or die off and it is just a natural process. What I can do is cultivate what I want out of it. My approach to theme seems to be a pretty natural one. Most people will not think about abstract questions and answers first, but about interesting bits of plot and characters. No one starts out as a good gardener of stories, so patience is needed on the road to get there and a lot of mistakes are to be made. Maybe I was starting to stress too much about the theme. What I need to do now is to jump right back into the SPREY script and watch out that I don’t document more of the journey than actually travelling it and doing the legwork for it. But me having those self-doubts is probably the best indicator I’m not procrastinating on that. Keeping vigilant.

After a couple of days where I was too scared and dumbfounded with new things to draw more than just doodles, I have started to work through “If it’s purple, someone’s gonna die” by Patti Bellantoni to challenge me on the color side of things. Gurney’s book on color somehow never worked for me, but this one does. And it does wonders so far. You can see my first thumbnails influenced by this book as picture for the blog. I love them. This is also a Willard slasher look reveal of sorts, as this is where the design is so far. Changes are possible. Of course, color theory for art works for everyone like a natural law and has to be learned, but Bellantoni reached me emotionally, reached my emotions, which Gurney absolutely didn’t in the past. And I didn’t know it was that. That and a lack of confidence on my side. Whatever you start, you cannot succeed if you aren’t confident enough to go all the way in and go that way until the end. Gurney’s book was never the problem. I’m left to wonder now whether I can train myself to be confident directly. What seemed to work so far was to decide if I was a hero’s journey character myself the last thing I would want to do would be to be outgoing and confident. So I’m doing that every day now, probably for the rest of my life. Bleak.

Now excuse me, I need to get some writing on the new SPREY script out.

See you next blog post!

SPREY Log #13 – Genre Research

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Styxcolor

Exciting news, I finished reading Brian McDonald’s “Invisible Ink” and started reading the next book already. I will put “Invisible Ink” away for a couple of weeks and then read it again, just to make sure I haven’t missed the point. Then, I was very lucky as my kindle recommended K.M. Weiland’s “Writing your story’s theme” to me. Perfect, I told myself, reading another voice dealing with exactly what plagues me at the moment could be the best call now. And I found a treasure indeed.

First of all, according to Weiland what I have gone through and discovered througout my own past blog entries and writing sessions is true. Theme is indeed ethereal and you can actually craft a story without ever consciously dealing with any of it. You then just aren’t guaranteed a coherent theme will manifest through your instincts alone.

Weiland offers a more open view on theme than McDonald declaring theme a personal practise of each writer. She does for example not exclude single word themes or a preaching approach where you offer an answer to humanity’s biggest problems yourself from being acceptable themes. What I learn from this is that I can treat it like the discussion which art style is the best…none of them. I just have to find out where I fall on the spectrum of approaches and make the best of it. This of course in turn changes my search for SPREY’s theme. I don’t have to find that one statement that clutches the story climax and in turn is reflected through everything else in the story, although it would be good for structure’s sake.

Yesterday I figured out that current SPREY is a wild mix of themes. Weiland says if you can’t figure your theme out and are worried about the consistency of your story, you can always fall back on genre. At least that’s what I understood. It is probably not the most elegant way to do things, but if you at least do your genre right, you aren’t lost completely. After all, it wouldn’t be a genre if it’s archetypes and must have scenes weren’t tested. I took that to heart and put in an extra reading session yesterday, diving into the romance genre and slasher movies. I was surprised by what even a superficial look at both unveiled.

Genres are powerful tools indeed. A romance can be more than primarily dealing with a love relationship in your story. Actually, a classical romance can even work without a love interest. If you are interested in that genre and it’s history at all, look it up, you will not be disappointed. Looking into slashers was also pretty revealing. I have truly seen my share of them and never actually thought about the ritualistic nature and symbols in most of them. A virgin woman is protecting herself from a sometimes supernatural danger that has been killing her whole peer group. That’s like tossing an ancient Greek princess into a labyrinth to please that minotaur monster inside. Truly, some things never change. This time around the princess, rarely a prince, saves herself though. Here I’m baffled how I ever assumed SPREY had anything to do with the essence of slashers. I guess I just copied some of the aesthetics. On the other hand, they’re putting Rich on an altar to cut his heart out in the end. But he never was in a peer group that was killed off and left him alone to be tested. Also if anyone is a typical final girl it’s Willard, because he’s the only virgin I know of in the story. But Willard is also the one who returns to kill the monster. Decisions decisions. But at least I’m having a lot of new ideas to play with in my writing. I have no idea where this is going but I must write and test. I also hope I’m not being dishonest with myself here though. I don’t think the final girl protects “just” her virginity. This must go deeper.

See you next blogpost!

SPREY Log #12 – Hunting for a theme

Posted on August 20, 2021 by Styxcolor

Okay, before we dive back into dry writing craft, I have realized something.

I’m feeling young again. I’m feeling a specific feeling of youth I’m surprised I still remember. Many years ago I was an actual literature nerd, actually interested in reading, literature history and the technical and practical aspects of the craft of writing. Then I got a taste of literature how it was taught at the university I studied at. Not saying all universities are bad. That one probably was. It made me lose all passion and interest in pursuing writing and reading at all within a year. If that was “real” literature I didn’t want to do anything with it. Now I feel this is gone again, finally, after many years and I’m back to where I was.

And just to be clear, I’m not blaming the university, after all no one held a gun to my head and told me I may never read a book again. Everything that happened, I did to myself, in my head. I just needed the wisdom of many years to come to realize it and undo it. I would even go so far to say I dumbed myself down from then on, further manipulating my further endeavors for the worse. How could or should I ever succeed with any writing if deep inside I didn’t want to do anything to do with it?

I consider myself very lucky that I got behind it after all. Now I can deal with everything I must deal with in peace and without self-manipulation. Writing and literature should have always been a part of me, to whatever extent. I think this will improve my art, not distract from it. And just as a general reminder, me and you do not need anyone’s approval to pursue literature and writing and learning about it. The knowledge is out there, not discriminating, it’s there for everyone. And it wants you to learn about it and use it in your own writing as you see fit. And as anyone can publish books today, truly no one can hold you back but you. Apparently you have to be confident but humble. Confident, so that you don’t give up when you don’t get anyone’s approval first, and we’re talking years possibly, but always humble so that you don’t stop listening and working on your craft.

And now back to writing SPREY.

After last blogpost I made myself a list of bullet points what I have to establish in order for the story climax to work. And fascinatingly, I got a complete looking list of what belongs in the first and second act. This is spectacular to me, as writing had been an incredibly difficult cascade of guesswork for me before. The distance to bridge between first and third act seemed to be impossible. Never did it occur to me that not all story parts are equal, independent from each other, just boxes to tick to hit the “right” act structure. Pretty much everything before the climax is dictated by the climax. There is no guesswork. And now I see how this structure is the bones that hold the flesh of the story together. I was just sculpting the flesh before. Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a scene where Rich is about to get sacrificed but then is saved by Willard? Isn’t that villain monologue lovely? I can still have ideas like that and see whether I can work with them, but they can never substitute the underlying structure.

But how can it be that I have SPREY current state now with it’s working structure without knowing my theme yet? Shouldn’t the theme sit one level above the climax and govern it? I’m starting to have a suspicion that I was just assuming a new structural model for my works again without fully understanding it yet. But through research I found a new clue. Theme is not message! A theme is asking and describing a difficult to answer problem or question about the human experience, a message is offering an answer to it. By design, the message can only be flawed, as the most interesting problems about being human absolutely have no easy answers and no matter how educated you are, your own perspective will never be a hundred percent and always right. Also, people tend to not like being preached to. Luckily for me, it doesn’t seem to be the job of a writer to solve existential problems and the human nature once and for all. It is my job to unveil that a problem exists and what makes it so hard to solve it in the first place. And that is what theme does. Which questions do I ask and look at about being human through my characters and what’s happening to them? I can absolutely have a clear theme, but it is not me saying something is so and so, it is rather me asking things like “If love always wins, what is about the villain who is also loved and loves? Is his love not good enough?” That is actually hard to answer and I would have to look at multiple cases or facettes of a case within my story. If my climax is the story core and tangible backbone, my theme is the soul. In a way it is ethereal. And yes, you can absolutely ignore it and create something down to earth without dealing with any of this. But I guess the best stories, those that stay in your memory, do ask those difficult questions.

With SPREY my struggle to find one red line might also stem from just throwing a lot of things together that sounded entertaining and interesting by themselves. But this also results in a mashup of themes, leaving us with no clear winner or direction on that front. Let’s take a look at what we got:

1 Love as a terrifying force

If you think about SPREY from an inverse perspective, a whole biker gang gets killed because they didn’t account for selfless sacrifices made out of love. Willard and Rich each get into mortal danger to protect each other, another character dies for people who aren’t even present. That is terrifying from an outside view. Love, that is regarded as a “soft” power actually lures people into death overriding their instinct for self preservation? Love gets people killed who stand in the way of lovers? Well, unfortunately the slashers are pretty bad people themselves, so in this specific case it will be hard to feel sorry for them.

2 The individual versus the group

Maybe I should rather go for the individual vs group angle. A human is a creature that must exist both as an individual and as a member of a group or groups to be happy, but in actuality humans are never happy. We get extreme cases like Rich who is a struggling lone wolf or on the other end of the spectrum the slashers who literally operate like a hive. And then there’s Willard who finds his own balance as someone who wants to be part of a group, any group, but just doesn’t seem to fit.

3 Are humans trying to domesticate themselves into a functioning civilization since the beginning of time

The slashers themselves as a concept ask a very difficult question. We think bounding together to a tribal group was what helped people drive civilization forward. But here a group has formed that actively undoes civilization, rejects rules anyone outside of them made and uses group synergy to harm and kill people. And they build nothing up of their own, they just destroy. Are they a mirror of us when we can’t get over our selfish desires to build a society that works, a failed civilization? This is a tough one.

4 Man vs (human) nature

And what about good and evil and how being amongst some of the most evil people imaginable teaches Willard to be a better balanced human being? As I said, theme is ethereal, doesn’t give easy answers. Ha, wait, maybe this is a good one – the slashers are everything we do not want to have in our modern, civil, urbanized society. They are a form of nature’s revenge. But it is not the environment that comes for us, it is the parts of the human nature that we don’t want to acknowledge or deal with, our own potential for evil. It comes back to haunt us, no matter what we do to shut it out. And Willard is us, he is very cultivated and civilized, first in utter disbelief about facing actual and unapologetic evil, then part of it, then out of it. Rich isn’t that severely affected because he grew up amongst evil already, there is nothing to be disillusioned about.

I will think about that.
See you next blogpost!