Today’s Special

Ok, let’s think for a moment, about the world in which we live. Now, “what if?” Yeah, the question that has fueled fiction writers for thousands of years. Take something ordinary, and push it beyond the flights of ordinary imagination. Or even not so far, just tell a story. Every single person has a story.

I recently read a blog, and the guys has some good ideas, I’ll probably be linking to him often, in the future; In which, he and a friend were posed the question: Should a writer develop a story based on entertainment value, or “the moral of the tale” perspective, and the person who rang his bell said also: don’t cop out and say that a story needs a little of both.

Well, I won’t quote his blog without being able to link to it, so I’ll offer up my own opinion.

I think, that while I’d love to cop out, my personal belief is that one should entertain and capture the reader slash audience. Which, and I believe the mentioned blogger said this as well, is why I love Dean Koontz so well. The characters dramatically or not, draw you into the story. Even the recurring little girl with the deformed arm.

If you can pull the reader in with the story and entertainment value, you can then cop out and add the foray of the moral in as an underlying, possibly hidden agenda of the story.

My love of the anime and manga serie, Gunslinger Girl by Yu Adia, is possibly the closest and dear to my own heart, because of the underlying achievement that if you run deep enough into the story you start to understand that even though the majority of these girls (Angelica as the exception I think, though the second gene ration’s Petrushka maybe as well, but I’m not that far in the Manga yet, and I haven’t even seen Petra in any of the Anime at all) have had the “conditioning” or basically, brainwashing and reprogramming, to erase their memories, they still have a problem with being machines (or cyborgs, or “the dolls of section two”) and the job of killing to protect their fratello handler. Or to act in symphony to the counter-terrorist job that they have been saved from the hospital beds to do.

Gunslinger is a favorite because it underlies something that I have hoped to achieve in my stories about the same subject. Children aren’t meant to kill and when they do, it does irreversible damage. Damage that has lead some of my characters to suicide, to drugs, to perversions. And well, honestly, most of my characters are an extension of my self image. Not that I have ever killed anyone. In fact, more the opposite.

When I was young, I didn’t hang out with my own age group until I was well into puberty, and honestly by then it was too late. Yeah, I had school friends, but never got to hang out. I heard all of the stories about Eunice almost drowning Anthony at the pool, or you should have seen the swim suit Andrea had on. Yeah I missed all of that. Outings, BBQs, birthday parties.

No, my friends were more, mentors.

Usually in advanced age, usually in advanced illness, and only lasted months or years of my acquainted with them. I never attended their funerals, and began to think of it as almost disturbing their rest if I did. In that point in my life, death took on a new meaning. I paid more attention to the horror of dying, than the finality of death. To me death was and is just mere sleep.

My mentors died of valley fever, cancer and any other assortment of other illnesses. One after the other. In a consist ant basis.

So I began to be friendly but shallow. So I never became much of a friend to anyone in my own age group, especially now. I still don’t.

I’m not completely introverted, but yes, I would be better suited to being a hermit in a desert cave in Arizona. So I focused on creating my friends.

A little more intricate than merely having imaginary friends and talking to myself. No I wrote stories about them. In depth, like I was able to call and confirm what was truly said. And became for a while unable to separate the truth of the situation.

Some where along the way, it developed into a fruitful and multiplied storylines that I just couldn’t throw away, when certain events caused me to wish to forget about those “fake” memories, and really remember the real ones.

Amazing how the human mind works though. Some memories, even the fake one’s, just can’t be forgotten. Which brings me to a discussion of the real versus the fake and what I should throw out.

And I have gone well into the second chapter with story boarding.

 

Well, I’m about to fall over in this chair, so I guess I should go to bed! Gnite all.