Titles

Titles are an odd thing. Sometimes, I write a story or start a book, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot come up with anything that sounds a concievable title (at first, just for a file name when saving it).

Other times, however, the book is not born out of a though, but rather out of a Title. The most recent work I started on, Coke, Pepsi, and the Will of God (theology), came from the title, not the other way around.

I suppose that, in some ways, the Title is the critical piece of the puzzle that is your work, the most important single element (of course, this begs the question of what a 'single element' is, and that makes its way into Objects, and I could go for pages about that).

This blog has kind of moved off line without me realizing it. I started a file called simply 'fantasy' and have been putting notes into about fantasy (more to do with my capstone than anything).

It is amazing how fast stories flee from you. In the last post I mentioned a pair of characters who fascinated me. Now, however, I cannot remember anything about those characters, much less the story in which they were written.

I left myself just enough clues to find them, as I have written few short stories. I am curious to go and see if they still interest me like they once did, or if that interest was based more on the time than the people.

Long Time

So I finally am posting again. This time though, it is a bit of whining, really.

I have come across a situation that is quite aggravating, and the most annoying thing is that it isn't really bad. I wrote a short story, part of a fifty story cycle, and a pair of the characters really intrigue me. The problem? There is nothing in their lives (without a lot of fiddling) that would make for an interesting work (at least in the way of the epic style I am currently using). I may, however, try and turn them into a full story in November, though I am not sure they will hold themselves up.

In all reality, they are a love story. That is what is so interesting about them is they way they love each other.

One more funny thing. The second of the two characters (the girl) does not even appear in the Short. Go figure.

Three forms of Trilogy

The trilogy (or any group of stories) (specifaclly Sci-Fi and Fantasy) has three forms.
The first, and most popular, is that of a large tale told in three stories. The characters do not change a lot between the books but the plot is signicantly different, though an overlying plot will tie them all together. As stories the later ones can stand alone, though they gain much more from being read together. The first four books of Harry Potter are of this type.
The second most common type is that of the non-unified tale. These stories sometimes involve the same main characters but something has changed them as a person greatly. This also includes any set of tales located in the same world with different major characters, though they are usually in some way related. The Star Wars books are a good example of this kind.
The final type of collection is the single volume. These are essentiually a single story broken into multiple volumes (usually three). Unlike in the others, the sub-plots take less attention than does the major plot and there is little change in time between volumes. This is by far the most complicated version, because it requires the entire story to essentially be laid out by the publication of the first book. The Lord of the Rings is the best example of this type.

World Creation

I was watching some of the special features on X-2 today and got some inspiration on world creation. Even the most detailed world lacks some important things, mainly the stories not told at that time. Every world is full of stories and every character has many stories.

This connects to an earlier though I had about the end of a story. No one's story really ends until the character dies and all the stories of that character can not be told.

True depth comes into a world when characters have stories that outlast them and the current stories. Many comic books succeed in this area because they are serials and stories keep building on top of each other.

Half Right

This post isn't specificaly about writing but more about art in general.

I was on campus today making my way to a study group and trying to take pictures for photo class. I need at least a roll of shots for my final project on the theme of 'Time.' So I was wandering around saying 'time' to myself over and over again and I came across the flagpole with the flag at half-mast for the death of the Pope. The phrase that immediately popped into my mind was 'only so much time.' 84 years. More than most, but not much. So I took a picture of the pole, only without the explination above it doesn't fit my theme. This is one of the big issues in art, that of the creators mindset defining the art. No further comments your honor.

Oh, and I'm wondering if it is still possible to make a movie that is as big a phenomenon as Star Wars.

Invention Theory

I actually had a better title for this phenomenom but I have proceeded to forget it.
Invention theory, at its most basic, is the creation of far more than a single story can support. All authors do this to a degree, I think, but there are some who actually embrace it as part of their writing. When I sat down to write a short (now not so short) story involving five characters I could not just write the story of them at this moment, for it is not the only story they have to tell. Their lives are far more than the one year I show on paper, and in the end I write entire lives out for them.

This is a much larger issue in my fantasy and sci-fi. Not only must my characters have stories (which I have labled World Stories) but I must have nations and groups and languages, and all of those must have a history as well. And each piece of that history can break down into more history. It is not necessarily invented as needed, rather it comes as I think of it or figure out how it works. This is one of the reasons my actual writing does not get done at any rapid rate.