A few years back, I began a word document titled "Subconscious Theater" specifically for this purpose. It's the place all of my characters go when I'm not writing about them. It's a place where they can interact with each other - across genres and plot lines - and tell me things about them I might not find out otherwise. I add bits and pieces to this document all the time, but most especially when I have writer's block. It doesn't seem to matter how much I can't write in the midst of a novel or short story, I can always get someone to say something to me in the theater.
Anyway, last night, best writing friend was telling me about this man named Henry Darger who worked for years and years as a janitor - and was all the while writing and illustrating a fairly epic fantasy novel (15,145-page, single-spaced manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion). This excited best writing friend into something he's calling superbooks.
This made me insanely excited because it sounds like a better organized version of my Subconscious Theater, or the soap opera project I've been trying to put together. So I suggested: oh, hey, blog format. And he agreed.
It's a writing exercise in which hundreds of characters are treated in four to five page installments in an interconnected world but without necessarily interacting. The purpose is to develop characters, concepts and scenes for later use in conventional writing.
So, here we go. Two superbooks for you to lose yourselves in. Two very different superbooks, I might add.
Best writing friend's can be found here: Godhead of the Immortal Moth-King. He is a fantastic writer (the Terror member of TTT) so I can attest that his blog will definitely be awesome.
Mine will be the polar opposite of his in many ways. A somewhat trashy, but hopefully immersive and possibly surprising, soap opera style story. It can be found here: Stormwatch
No comments:
Post a Comment