Poems to Epic Stories

I still think in short thematic prose, the sort of thing you sometimes see in spoken word poetry. So often these little pieces just grow and grow.

Most of us are born poets, artists. We start to develop singular fascinations as part of learning. Words interest us with rhythm, then we hear the appeal of rhymes. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, those letterful words for simple concepts. We start to realize that we can replicate what we see or add to the noise, interpret and create anew. It's not insanity that makes us reach for what isn't there-- it's hope, imagination, interest. Artists are some of the most practical and grounded people I know once they really start to find themselves. They look critically at the world, but not necessarily to pass judgement, since most creatives are harshest on themselves. 

Poetry is still in me but it's become more abstract over time. In fact, it's often a very poetic idea that becomes a short story and the short stories become novels then series. It's actually really common to hear novelists claim they never meant the idea to grow so big. Some even start with a non-fiction head in research or are just playing with a simple idea before it grows like wildfire.

Until I read The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz, I didn't think anyone wrote like that but me. Chains of short stories, seemingly unrelated, that come together. Mood heavy romps rife with symbolism. Hell, I might have actually happened on it many times before, but for some reason, this book was the one that made me believe my stories could be told. I wouldn't say that I was waiting for permission but when you tend to stand out even when you don't want to, sometimes you wonder if you will stand out for the right reasons.

Of course, Koontz writes real-world based fiction so that was about where the similarities ended but, ya know... Many of my favorite books and authors inspired me in very pinprick ways. A dash of Nix, a splash of Rice, throw in some Douglass. I was never out to emulate, but I found some affirmation in  all the right ways.

Anyways, poetry was where I was supposed to be going. I have a poem for you. A lot of my early poetry was heavy-handed, trying way too hard to lead, using a lot of forced imagery and over saturated words. This is more where I am now, on the rare occasion I throw one down.

Where I Lay

I'm not going to lay here

Not on this old mattress where the springs sag just right

Not on this new mattress made of space age foam

Not on the porch swing with weather proof cushions

Not on the carpets of flowers baking sweet in the sun

Not in the dark with his breath like stale beer

Not where those familiar hands can disappear

Not where mom said she'd be but never showed up

Not where my needs were for another family

Another family

Another family

But where was mine?

I'm not going to lay here

Where my hands are not idle

My mind is not quiet

My heart is not still

Yet my words must be silent

I'm going to lay there

Where there might be a lake

Or another mistake

But on the river is a bed

And in my mind there is a story

From my hands there will be magic

Behind my eyelids, more than dreams

I'm going to lay here

Until the whole world sees

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I'm less concerned about rhyming and rhythm. Poetry is often just chains of thought. Chains of thought sometimes find patterns and break them, find rhyme then find alliteration. I've always liked the freedom of 'prose' where poetic structure is broken in favor of the message.

As I've said, poems can inspire stories. I believe Stephen King's inspiration for the Dark Tower series came from a poem. I remember I used to daydream about the adventures of Annabelle Lee. Poems always held the potential to become the bite-sized portals of epic stories.

Need another writing exercise? There you go! How would you take a favorite poem and turn it into a story. Flash fiction, short story, novella, novel, series, however far it takes you! Try to go into it without expectations and you may be surprised where it goes.

The Truth about Heroes: A Short Story that Grew Up

I didn't love every Final Fantasy game ever made blindly. My preorder history shows a rather embarrassing trail of chances given before the burns created hesitation. However, Final Fantasy XII, though vilified in the fandom, was a romantic playground for my budding imagination. It took the recurring theme of airships to a new level, adding dimension to the bad guys of the sky, making sky pirates three-dimensional-- beyond just the beautiful graphic Square always pioneered. Many of the characters felt... kind of flat though, aside from the charismatic Balthier but there was a short cutscene involving the Princess Ashelia that hit the nerve.

If you haven't played the game, the scene shows her political marriage to the dashing prince Rasler but while the marriage was still in its infancy, a war breaks out and he is killed. Ashelia's lackluster reaction might have made it forgettable but something stuck (and not for lack of great story-building. I'll link you so you can read the full story HERE). I saw Ashelia become Rienna and envisioned a smiliarly strong young woman who struggled to find her place, not a princess but the daughter of the Commander of the King's Army and her disjointed relationship with the young man her father favored to follow his footsteps someday. I lowered the expectations of entire kingdoms on their shoulders; my retelling didn't feel like one of power and prestige but the raw emotion of young people reaching for happiness. I was a young one myself, romanticizing a troubled love with doomed aspects to lament its interruption.  I rolled it out in a montage, flashes of past and present and the big day becoming a dark stain on far more lives than her own.

It wasn't a chapter when I wrote it, but a one off bit of prose that repainted the scene. I threw it on a CD and labeled it Blazing Paths.

When I came back to it months later, I read it again. This time I looked at the space after and felt an ache and centered the text in the blank space.

Chapter 2

It's not over.

Rienna had fled on the guard Captain's horse, revenge mobilizing her in the numbness of unsorted chaos. She saw his face, the man responsible, and questions flew rapid fire and lava hot in her mind. She knew him. She remembered the heated words exchanged before he left. There wasn't a single excuse he could give her that would spare him from her wrath once she found him.

Two more characters make their way in. She's not thrilled about having company along for her schemes. She needed a tracker to find where the attackers went but that bargain unwillingly gained the loyalty of her tracker's best friend.

In the beginning, I thought this story might be hers, but plans changed. The world grew. There were more people in it, more pieces to the story.

Ashe returned, not as a princess but as a miscreant who sneaks into a circus tent. He watches the performers, drawn to a young man who fights in the same rare style he uses, only he has no memory of why he knows it. Like Rienna, he thinks it is a day for closure until the shit hits the fan and another city is torn down.

Somewhere along the way, it started to become The Truth about Heroes. I got into the heads and lives of people who are not just heroes leveling up in orderly fashion but often pawns struggling for a sense of free will. There are absent gods, people without souls, tribes with dual magical affinities and the shaky pacts of elementals who promise power at a steep price.

It's not about romance or war or magic. It's about the large and small scale effects, pieces that struggle to reform and fit in the shifts of time. The world moves from the grueling concerns of one person's aspirations to the grand 'fate of the world' and often the unbalanced hands that claim to know what's best.

It's philosophy without the definite bias. It's psychology that doesn't play nicely with the DSM-V (or rather shows why brain sciences have a pseudo side). It's character development behind the scenes and laid bare, flaws and all. Above all, it's fantasy-- magic, mythical creatures, new rules and discovery. Oh, the struggle to blurb this one because it's not just a neatly packaged entourage, a party of fast friends with clear roles. It's a series about adaptation and growth. It doesn't tell you how to feel and the characters are only kind of sure about what is true even when they spout it as fact.

Up to that pivotal point, I was about poems and short stories. I was about comics in blue-lined spiral notebooks. I was always about stories but until that point, when chapters became books and books became series, I didn't know I'd be a serial novelist. I didn't know I'd have that kind of discipline and desire to grow a world from a few choice scenes. I didn't know I'd renew my love of drawing through writing. To start envisioning comics again.

Maybe it's not quite as laser focused as it could be. I know that between the three-- comics, writing and illustrating--there's going to come a point where I'll have to choose. I follow the muse but I follow the opportunities. I've seen so many people sink themselves into vast voids of marketing and networking to try to get their babies noticed, but I feel the freedom of ninja production. The flitting between all the plans I once only dreamed of. 

I feel the pulsing edges of finished things. I say finished, but in truth, those edges whisper the possibility of more. I still see the flashes of the War of Black Violets and the ogre uprising. I still see the past antics of my unnamed mercenary in the series I have yet to finish. I see them in comic, movie and video game form. I see a possible future where people open up to my ideas and my voice, but right now?

I see the forest for the trees. I build small fires on still cool nights and write lip-biting tales.

There's the romantic again. Because I'm also growling at computer screens in epic battles of editing and formatting. Every epic brain is tied to a frustratingly finite body that succumbs to eye strain, wrist cramps, neck and back slumps and the need to eat, sleep and human.

However, I once battled a borog on the way to picking up my nephews from school. Storytelling is everywhere!

It's okay if you didn't know you wanted to be a writer since you could hold a pencil. It's okay if you don't find your muse until you're 50. You don't have to have big plans to end up with big stories. Just that little torch that keeps burning with the promise of more.