Category Archives: Writing

Manipulations

23 Saturday Mar 2013

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Manipulations

1.
In a couple of weeks, I’m heading off to the Santa Cruz mountains to participate in a weekend yoga and writing retreat. In fact, I’m leading a session on photography as meditation, which means what I ought to be doing right now is brushing the dust off my camera and planning what I’m going to say to these folks for an hour as I lead them on a gentle hike through nature. My photography rambles have been few and far between these past two years, so I figure I need to rediscover how the process works for me before I try and teach it share it with anyone else.*

Well, I did try. I got my camera out and snapped some photos around the house – the just starting to bloom poppies in the front flower bed, and the miniature violet shown here. Pretty thing, isn’t it? My mother complained that the shot was too close, that it didn’t capture the true diminutive beauty of the flowers, because there’s nothing to scale them against.

Personally, I’m a fan of small things made big. The flowers are beautiful in their own right, not just because of their size. I especially like these small flowers when they are exploded to full screen size – there’s something transformative about it. Of course, at its heart, every photograph is transformative.

It’s a kind of magic.

Manipulations I

2.
Because I shoot digitally, there is nothing that comes out of my camera that isn’t digitally manipulated at least a little bit. Standard post-processing is akin to the developing process of traditional photography – there are a lot of choices you can make along the way when you’re developing film that affect the final product (things like how long you leave the negative in the solution and what sort of paper you print on***) that don’t count as “manipulation” per se, but do affect the final product. For me, standard post-processing steps include: cropping, sharpening, and adjustments to white balance, exposure, curves and contrast. These small adjustments only refine the picture – they don’t fundamentally change it.

I don’t like to stop there, though.

Manipulations II

I suppose it’s related to my penchant for writing fantasy, the fact that a good, crisp photo that beautifully captures an object or landscape just isn’t enough for me. Reality just isn’t enough.

I like to change things. Tweak them this way and that. Ask that most important creative question: What if…?

Manipulations III

It’s not so much a question of making the flowers look like something they aren’t. Or making them look magical or otherworldly. It’s just a matter of making it look… different.And understanding how those differences change your experience of the photo, and the object that was photographed.

Because even small changes in tone and texture, in focus and composition – they can transform the way we feel about a photo when we see it.

So I keep trying different manipulations, looking for the feeling I want a photo to convey when I share it.

Manipulations IV

3.
Writing is the same way.

Whether you think there are two stories, or four, or 36 or an infinite number of stories to be told, we have a metaphorical Photoshop full of tools with which to manipulate what happens to them as we put them down on paper.****

Texture and tone and focus and composition are all things that a writer uses  to try and control the experience the reader will have when they encounter any given story. We don’t adjust levels – but we control pacing. We elide instead of cropping. We texture and tone not with color adjustments and layers, but with word choice.

Manipulations V

Right now, I’m struggling with the same thing in both my writing and my photography. I know how to use the tools of manipulation – but I don’t know the experience I’m trying convey. I keep pushing buttons, trying this filter and that, undoing and redoing, again and again and again.

But what I produce feels … not quite right. More often then not I hit QUIT without bothering to save.

I’m reaching for something, I know that.

I’m hoping I’ll discover exactly what at the retreat.

Manipulations VI

* I am conflicted about the use of this Internet-born convention where you show crossed-out text right next to the “revised” version. I’ve seen it used for great comic effect, of course, but beyond that I wonder what we are trying to reveal. What does it mean that I show you my first thought alongside my edited version? If the first version wasn’t good enough, why I am I showing it to you anyway?**

** Of course, now that I’ve waxed on about it, I just want to delete the edited text and the first footnote. Except that I’ve realized that it’s actually pertinent to the topic at hand.

*** I’m guessing, really. I have no experience with film developing.

**** Or orally or visually, but let’s stick with writing here.

Place and Character

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Photography, Writing Lessons

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Scout

Completely unrelated to this pic, there is a new City of Bridges post available: read The Color of Light. I am still feeling my way into this world, these characters. Trying to find a balance between an engaging narrative style and the sort of poetic descriptive voice that catches my breath as a writer. A balance between character and place, too.

Actually, when I think think about my writing in those terms, this photo isn’t really unrelated at all, is it? It was the tree that caught my eye, the way the light illuminated the leaves amongst the shadows of the grove. It is the tree that is in the camera’s focus. But it is my daughter there, in the background, that makes the picture interesting. Blurred and indistinct as she may be, she adds motion and life to what would otherwise be a static image. Pretty, maybe. But not really interesting.

I shall have to think about that as I venture into the next installment of City of Bridges. There must be a way to highlight the fascinating, colorful place that my city is, without losing sight of the people who make it move.

Blog in the Family

17 Saturday Dec 2011

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Do you know I’ve got three sisters who blog? It’s true! Well, two sisters and one sister-in-law, which is close enough for horseshoes.

Keeping up with the Joneses. Natasha, my baby sister (who has five babies of her own), blogs about her parenting joys and challenges and about how her faith helps her through. Personally, I don’t know how she finds time to write, let alone write so well.

Excellent Mistakes! My oldest sister, Stephanie, shares some thoughts about education, from her long experience as a teacher and school administrator in the private school arena. She’s only posted a few times, so go encourage her to write more!

…In Transition. And finally there’s Maureen, Stephanie’s wife, who has recently completed seminary studies and is awaiting ordination in the UCC. She’s really one of the most eloquent writers out there, and it’s always a treat to read her posts about her journey.

My sister Melissa also kept a blog for a short while…until she discovered Facebook! Ah, the allure of the status update, death to all coherent thought. I’m sure my blog suffers from this too!

And while I’m on the subject, my daughter Anna has a blog of her own, where she hopes to share her writing efforts. (She has not, as yet, completed any posts.) Is 10 years old too young for a blog? Well, I’ve put my foot down about Facebook: not until she’s 16! Of course, by that time something new will have come around, and Facebook will have become the new MySpace. I just hope they still have Castleville…

5 Things I Thought About in the Car on the Way Home from my Writers’ Group Meeting Tonight

03 Thursday Nov 2011

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  1. I need gas soon. There should be enough to get to and from work tomorrow, though.
  2. I hope I don’t have to walk the dogs when I get home. If do, I hope it’s not too cold.
  3. Coyotes in the opening scene of my long-languishing novel. Figured out how they could be used to both add tension to that scene, plus iron out some difficulties in the early section of the book.
  4. Why does Sandy have to get her tramp on in order to win Danny in the end? What’s wrong with nice girls?
  5. Crap. I still have to write today’s blog post.

Investment, and Fantasy’s Secret Ingredient

02 Wednesday Nov 2011

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I’ve watched the first couple episodes of the new ABC show Once Upon a Time, enough to offer an articulate opinion of, “Eh.”

All right, I can be a little more articulate than that. The show actually has some potential, if only because it has the vast resevoir of fairy tale and myth from which to draw the essence of story stuff. If they can get past a couple stumbling blocks, it might actually turn into some enjoyable family fare.

The first thing it has to do is shed the notion that they’re doing anything new by playing with fairy tale tropes. Granted, I’m probably more well-versed in contemporary fairy-tale literature* than the average TV viewer (especially kids, and it is rated PG), so it’s going to take more than a twisting a few tales together in order to impress me.

But so far, it looks as if the writers are letting the “novelty” of playing with fairy tales in the real world take the place of compelling writing. “Look what we did,” they say, sniggering behind their hands, “we made Jiminy Cricket a psychiatrist! And his umbrella is his good luck charm! Aren’t we clever?” Only, they’re not so clever, because Dr. Jiminy doesn’t have any good dialog, just a bunch of stereotypical shrink-like platitudes with a dash of cricketish wisdom tossed in.

It’s worse with the more prominent characters (particularly the Evil Queen/mayor of Storybrook). The characters are flat, the conflict overly simple (Snow White good, Queen bad), and the structure of each episode (which includes LOST-like flashbacks) and the story on the whole just seems to be ambling around without any greater purpose. It’s just kind of…there. Not bad enough to make me turn it off, but not enough to have me eagerly turning in each week.**

The other problem is larger (and encapsulates the uninspired writing to some degree). Everything is so plastic. Visually, you can see a lot of money was spent designing sets and costumes***, but it comes off looking like a ride at Disneyland — intricate, yes, but so obviously fake. I suppose this might have been a deliberate design choice, but it just ends up looking like every other fairy tale movie that’s ever been made. Even the Evil Queen looks like a replica of Susan Sarandon from Enchanted. After the lush, imagined realities of shows like The Tudors and Game of Thrones, I’d like to see a fairy tale world as carefully created.

And then there’s the acting. The real world stuff is fine, I suppose…but once they flashback to the magical kingdom, everyone slips into that faux high speech, “I am in a fantasy so I must speak grandly” patter and cadence of language that plagues so much fantasy on tv and film. Combined with weak dialog, it can only spell doom.

But here’s a secret: bad dialog can totally be saved by a good performance (and good direction). If you doubt me, just take a look at some of the dialog from the Lord of the Rings movies. Those actors have to spout off some of the cheesiest, corniest lines in the history of movie-dom, but you never notice because the actors are fully invested in the reality of their characters, and in the truth of what their characters are saying (in the way their character speaks). The importance of the words is intrinsic in the delivery, not because the actor decides he or she needs to say it With Importance, but because the character knows it’s important.

This sense of investment is the crucial thing missing from Once Upon a Time, and from so much fantasy produced for the screen, and really even many fantasy books and stories. It’s as if the label “fantasy” magically lowers the expectations of all involved, so that they fail to strive for the same depth and sense of reality that they would expect from non-fantasy productions and literature. Maybe it’s the ol’ “fantasy is kids’ stuff” prejudice rearing its head — kids don’t need depth, after all.

But reality is the secret ingredient of the best fantasy. If we can’t believe the characters are real, we won’t care about them. If the settings feel fake, and the situations contrived, we’ll dismiss the story as inconsequential. If you want me to love your story, your movie, your show, if you want me to come back to it again and again, then you need to prove to me that you love it too, and you’re not just putting on a show for the kids, or playing with tropes because you think it’s clever.

Because, really, it’s not.

For fun, share you’re favorite cheesy Lord of the Rings movie quote in the comments!

* Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt, Jane Yolen, Tanith Lee, Robin McKinley, the graphic novel series Fables, etc. etc. etc. But really, people have been remixing old stories into new ones since…well, the beginning of stories, I bet.

** I recorded it, and watched (while folding laundry) when there was nothing else on to watch.

*** In the flashbacks to the fairy tale kingdom. Modern Storybrook is just…modern.