Tag Archives: Art

Thought of the Week: The Right and Wrong of Revising Your Writing

First of all, I had considered titling this The Wright and Wrong of Wrevising Your Writing, but it seemed a little too kitsch. What do you think?

Secondly, I have no intention of defining right and wrong. I’m not that daft.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) is one of my favorite composers. His four symphonies are of course the best known of his works, the first in particular, opening with its dramatic C minor chords and booming timpani, inspiring pathos and doom in all their forms. However, far more than these massive works I prefer his chamber music, and in particular his works for piano and strings. In his life, Brahms wrote three piano trios, three piano quartets, and one piano quintet. That we know of.

His first piano trio, in B, is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard, and is a constant player for me. The opening theme is serene and grand, and simply leads onward from there. The scherzo is tense and jittery, with the third movement being the sound of utter beauty. The finale, with its ambiguous tonality, draws on the agitation of the scherzo but adds in a extra melodic element to it.

Here’s the thing: it isn’t what he originally wrote. The piano trio was written and published in 1954, when Brahms was twenty-one. The piano trio we hear and listen to today was written and published in 1891, when he was fifty-eight, and it is almost completely different. In fact, it’s unique that we even know of the two versions, because Brahms spent his entire life revising and rewriting his works, never satisfied with the results. The tragedy of this was that, upon completion of his revision, Brahms would burn the original manuscript, leaving us with no trace of the process of his genius.

This is a shame, for having heard both versions, I actually find myself preferring the simpler innocence of twenty-one-year-old Brahms to his more mature and darker fifty-eight-year old self. I am given to wonder what the first editions of his other works might have been like. Sometimes there is a charm and quality in the passion of the first draft – Black Sabbath’s debut album, recorded on an eight track for £500, is a masterpiece.

My son makes up stories. Mostly in his head at the moment, but he enjoys it. Recently he started inventing back stories for the bounty hunters in Star Wars, which I thought was pretty cool, and not something I had given much thought to. When we discussed it, we realized that a particular detail of his invention couldn’t possibly have happened, because Boba Fett ended up alone on Jabba’s skiff over the Pit of Sarlaac, and so couldn’t have been involved in a smuggler’s ring previously. At first he disagreed with me, and I let him have his way. But a few hours later, he came to me and asked, “Dad…is it okay if I change the history I made up about the Star Wars bounty hunters?”

I thought this was incredibly insightful; having only just invented this history hours before, there was already a danger to him of changing that history – as though it would be telling a lie. If we decided to change our minds and say that it was actually Buzz Aldrin that first walked on the moon, there would be an outcry. “Lynch them!” people would cry. And they would be right.

But then what of fictional history? The natural answer would be, of course you can change it – it was made up in the first place! But look at what happened when George Lucas changed the history of Star Wars, with his revisions of Episodes IV, V and VI, and the release of Episodes I, II and III. Some of the scenery in the original movies was entirely changed. Whole scenes were added, which again changed the meaning of some of the story. Han Solo fired first! In the later films, we learn details that very nearly contradict the original movies entirely, and people have had to greatly stretch the meaning of some of the character’s dialogue in order for it to all fit. And look at what poor George got for his efforts.

So where does that leave us? As a fiction writer, you’ll often find yourself modifying some of your back story so that it makes more sense in the context of the main plot. Heaven knows, half of what I created in the Appendices of The Redemption of Erâth has already been flatly contradicted by the story I’m now writing. And I can’t imagine anyone would question me for that.

So when does it stop being okay to change your story’s history, or even the story itself? I’m sure J.K. Rowling wasn’t 100% happy with every word she wrote; even I can see some passages that leave something to be desired. But would we let her rewrite the book? Is it merely when the book becomes published that we lose the right to change it? Isn’t still in its essential nature our work? Why shouldn’t we be able to change it as we see fit?

I don’t have an answer to this; Brahms got away with it, and George Lucas didn’t. Peter Jackson felt the need to turn the ten hours running time of The Lord of the Rings trilogy into fifteen hours, and most people are okay with that (though not, perhaps, with watching it all). It seems funny how the public become so possessive of another person’s work – as though we owe it to them to stand by the work we created. Is this fair?

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Satis

Tales of Despair: The Road and the Unhappy Ending

There are so many creations in the realm of literature and art that draw inspiration from despair that they have, in some areas, grown a cult of their own. Entire genres are dedicated to these themes, and as far back as Shakespeare people have been fascinated by fate and the tragic ending. Macbeth is a perfect example of a tale which is very much doomed from the start – from the very beginning, we know there is no hope left for this man, and we follow him powerlessly to his doom.

In most areas of art, the artist is mostly, if not entirely, in control of their work. This allows a great freedom to take the story where it leads, regardless of the end. As a storyteller, it is with great relish – though also with great pain – that we can put our characters through a hell they sometimes don’t survive. Tolkien allowed Frodo to be scarred, physically and mentally, for the rest of his life. Orwell provided no escape for Winston Smith, and in the end he was powerless to stop himself from being reintegrated into the society he so hated. Stephen King is a master of the ability to push the darkness of a tale past the point of no return, whether it is Louis Creed graphically losing his son early in Pet Semetary and eventually driving him to insanity, or Paul Sheldon losing his entire leg to Annie’s madness in Misery. These are things that can’t be recovered from; for these characters, there will be no happy ending.

Yet there is one artistic medium in which it is much more difficult to avoid the inevitable ending upturn, and that is film. Particularly in the large-budget Hollywood industry, revenue is all-important in recouping the cost of developing the film, and the story ultimately falls to the demands of the crowd. In the end, most people just don’t go to the movies to feel bad.

What ends happening is that, with the exception of those few movies that are actually based upon novels (see the Stephen King examples above), it is almost impossible to find a movie that is willing to commit to the permanent destruction of their characters, and refuse to relent even at the very last moment. As scary as horror movies are, someone always survives. As moving as dramas are, someone always wins an insurmountable struggle.

Occasionally, you will come across a movie that goes halfway, and doesn’t quite provide quite the satisfying ending you might expect. Donnie Darko does this well – certainly not a happy ending, but one that somehow resonates nonetheless with a just fate. There are bittersweet endings, such as in Toy Story 3, with a conclusion we know is coming from the very beginning, yet somehow don’t want to face.

But there are very few movies that have the guts to go the full distance. In the end, there are few that can claim this credit as a stand-alone film (American Beauty springs to mind as an exception), but even in novel adaptations, the temptation to veer from the story can be overwhelming.

The Road, however, is not one of these. It is in every possible way as bleak and terrible as the novel it was based on, and doesn’t stray from its course even at the final stage. In a way, the shattered world in which our characters live give us little reason for hope form the outset, but a vast canon of apocalypse tales (thank you, John Wyndham) has taught us that at least some sort of redemption awaits at the end. At first, we want to believe that salvation may, in fact, lie at the coast, despite there being no evidence other than the father’s words. When the father becomes ill, we expect this as the twist, the seat-edger. What happens from there, however, is the push too far that casts the whole story into despair. There is no redemption, and even as we watch the boy watch over his father’s body, there is still some tiny hope that maybe we’re wrong, and that he’ll come back.

This ending has earned The Road the dubious accolade of being my favorite movie I would never want to see again. I fell in love with it visually from the very first scene, and the impeccably executed plot was riveting. But as a father, the ending cut a little too close to home, and I watched the credits roll through a pretty thick veil of tears. I want to watch this again…but perhaps not any time soon.

In the end, of course, we are allowed at least a brief reprise from despair in the form of the family that take the boy in. Yet they are a poor substitute, and the genuine love and caring the boy has lost in his father is irreplaceable. Ultimately, the closing message seems to suggest that kindness itself is irrelevant; in a world such as this, there is truthfully survival – or death.

Tales of Despair: My Dying Bride and the Destroyer of Hope

Weeping with you. Arms around them
Flowing with you. Without your men
Keeping with you. Feeling their shiver
Drowning with you. Deep in this river

Tired and lonely. Sitting and staring
Weak and filthy. No longer caring
Wasting to nothing. The rubble of you
Hoping for something. Poison where love grew

People. Feel her mind
She is broken
People. Fill your eyes
Her body is broken

Leave me be, with my memories
I can still see all the lovers of me
I still know those feelings

You’re still mine, my lover
I watch over you
Goodbye my lover
No sorrow. Please, no tears

Holy and fallen. Watch yourself die
Fade and wither. Long lost the fight
Tremble to sleep. Her man long gone
Years, and still weeps. Never forgotten

My Hope, the Destroyer

© 2001 My Dying Bride

It would be impossible for me to write of despair without at least mentioning the beautiful and doom-laden music of British band My Dying Bride. From a musical point of view, there is little else in all the canon of recorded music that is so inspiring of – and inspired by – despair and misery. Over the past twenty years, My Dying Bride have filled the world with misery, in a series of beautifully recorded and artfully written albums and songs. The mastery of these albums is, as much as the musical style itself (slow, morose, often heavy, with achingly tragic vocals), the imagery dredged up by their dark and evocative lyrics. Though they rarely tell a story (The Light at the end of the World is a wonderful exception), the visions painted by these terrible words have endured in my mind for years, and it is these I would share with you.

“My Hope, the Destroyer” is a part of their 2001 album The Dreadful Hours, and is the culmination of an hour-long soundscape of doom. Metaphor and reality blend interchangeably, and from the opening strings, a scene of such utter bleakness is painted that it blackens the very world around you:

There is a man, eyes red and swollen with many tears, arms out to a soul that is not there. In a room, dimly lit, he feels himself drawn ever deeper into a corner of blackness, and the world above fades into utter nothingness. So has he been for days, and now he has not the strength to crawl of the unlit void into which he has been carried away. Voices pass around and over him, and they are distant, unheard and meaningless. Their sound is cold, and bring no comfort.

As this man is ever drawn down a stream of unconscious and black, twisted claws of despair rise from the deep, and he comes to pieces, and is undone. In this dying, he sees his woman, in white on a ground of black stone, stained in red, and the bleak faces of people and demons gather and stare. He is there, again, and in his arms she is lifeless. In the rain, the gray and the red above, the twisted faces of the past stare down, and mock him.

He is carried away on the sea of ink, and there is a stone, upon it a word, and below it a death. The tree above is leafless, and the raven does not move. Water drips on the stone, and it is not rain.

And in the fading twilight of his life, his every thought has ever been bent upon this moment, and turning back on a life of many years, all hope failed that one night, and tears have filled all the nights since.

Such are the scenes in my mind, every time I hear this song, and I am given to wonder – what tragedies inspired music of such despair?