Shouts From Down Under

The Boomerang Book Bonanza; will bending plot be crEDITABLE?

How many Bendy Buses would you like to buy? For Sale. Only one easy payment of around £12,950.00 Buy-it-now

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mercedes-Citaro-G-Articulated-Bendy-Bus-49-seats-and-1...

How bendy, how creepy would it be if..?

Could a story be written that had a plot and characters hooked up like strings; not puppet strings but guitar strings, and we bent the whole work, like pressing a tremolo lever that tightens or loosens each binding thread?

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What if the characters names and the plot situation gradually bent, changed, distorted to something completely different; perhaps just a little different, and then as the book worked through its final chapters, those changes faded, receded, until everything - the characters and plot - were back like as in the beginning?

Can we bend the whole thing into a strange tension, and do it with enough subtlety that unless the reader is very alert, they miss the changes? Could an author deliberately do everything in the book that is against established, advised, rules of narrative?

Could we write a story with a plot so that it's not what's written, but what is NOT WRITTEN that is the story? Like a photo negative? Like driving forward using the rear vision mirror for guidance.

I was sent this link from Son L, with the suggestion - "wanna read something that will do shivers?"
Maybe its just tonight's mood, but he wasn't exaggerating.

http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/337lqx/there_is_something_very_strange_...

Another link (1) sent from Daughter A.
http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=30&weekday=tue

Link (2)
http://openawesome.com/junji-ito-horror-manga/enigmaofamigarafault/25.html

Sometimes we debate about this here, about what makes a story or movie the most effective, deeply scary, creepy, but most important, realistic?

Why do we feel real fear at some nonsensical incidents etc?

What optimises fear and creepiness, but what takes away that feeling? What ruins the effect in one second?

With any movie, we all agree here (sons and daughter) that many times, movie directors and script writers, don't realise that most music wrecks the scary factor.

No music or very little.
Documentary approach was very real.
Acting would have been complicated; on one hand they were being professional journalists doing their thing, yet their efforts underground have a strong flavour of amateurishness that amplifies, authenticates the realness. This "ultra-casual" approach, which as an Australian myself, I feel was a tad overdone, (are we really that ocker-ish and do we truly sound so rough, so without class?) does make you feel that they have nothing to gain by convincing us, an audience that didn't get to see any documentary, only this movie.

I feel this movie is worth watching right through, for the simple strategy ideas. When I first watched this I thought it really was a documentary, and even boring at first. When they show news broadcasts and a film crew chasing a politician for some media frenzied quotes or volatile comment, you quickly zone out and think, oh man, why am I watching this?



There were a few moments in this movie that I cringed. Not from fear, but from a small bit of dialogue, hopelessly passionless acting, or script that was stupid - stuff no one would believe, not even in a cheap movie.

Well, I don't know what sort of budget they had here. This may have been done on an absolute shoestring. Perhaps in that light this movie excels.

I think as writers it will profit us immensely if we think outside the norm, outside the rules, outside traditional opinion, and outside pomp city.

And yet thinking outside the rules may just mean writing a book that seems ordinary, containing old worn out plots, ideas and culture that are far outdated, and even an unlikely strategy of excluding basic things as swearing or adult themes.

Example: JK Rowling.

Yes, I was disappointed that Harry grew up and became the terrible teen etc.
But I suppose what else could happen?

Still, doesn't it all come down to what we want to experience when we read a book?

Escapism.

Who wants to read a book containing all the so called "free and open" ideas and apparently acceptable standards of the world we live in today?

I certainly don't. I want to read a book (not always) that has an innocence of days gone by, even if that was far from the case. I want to read a book where magic happens, where good overcomes bad, where evil people can change, where fake people are found out just who they really are, where nasty enemies really ARE nasty enemies.

In this world today, there are way more than 50 shades of grey, and I have an old fashioned view. Well, that's ok. I'll stick with that view. We live in an era that seems to be on a slope towards a cliff of chaos.

The last thing people want, I think, are stories all the time about how bad people are, how many serial killers are hiding in suburbia, and all the rest of the sad lonely populace of unforgiving, unmerciful, greedy, selfish, shoulder shrugging, cold hearted salary slaves.

Well, enough of my finger pointing - at unpalatable plots, filthy fiction, depressing discourse and discouraging dialogue.

How did we get to here from the bent, distorted story idea? Perhaps blog entries are like that. I often save notes of different things seen through the week and after pasting them into the notepad (here), I then fiddle around, trying to keep focussed for long enough to get cohesion. What happens though, is that I'm trying to be loose enough to let ideas and underpinning material pull me where it will, yet mine it for the gold, silver, iron ore, whatever mineral, of meaning.

That's what you read this for, don't you? You are looking for meaning to things.

Sometimes my moods go from one extreme to another. Much like the bendy-bus story plot idea. If I don't know who I really am, what hope has anyone else?

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Sparky