The usefulness of template stories

In a lot of the writing exercises and art exercises on here, I recommend trying techniques out on someone else’s existing story, rather than only on your own ideas and works in progress. (Note, those writing and art links go to almost exactly the same posts, because most exercises work for both).

This is for a few reasons. For example:

• Using an existing story saves time. I don’t have to construct a new one before I can try the exercise, and I know that this story already works as a story.
• It lets me play in a style I know I enjoy (or, occasionally, one I detest).
• Using someone else’s story can be freeing. If I use an idea I’m working on or wedded to, sometimes I’m worried about breaking the idea, or else the idea is so strong it doesn’t let me go wild with the exercise.
• Transforming a classic story is a good way to create retellings, and new ideas in conversation with existing stories.
• It makes use of the things I already know, that otherwise are just rattling around in the back of my brain.
• If I need to come up with a new idea in a hurry, reskinning the basic structure of a story I know well is a shortcut (the whole three-moods project is related to this).
• Changing something in an existing story makes it very clear what the ripple effects of that change are. It can reveal all sorts of things about structure and style and choices, whether about that story (if you’re interested in analysing it) or about narratives generally.
• Consciously using a template story can sometimes reveal and shake up my default stories — habits I have and structures I lean on.

Here are some of the types of template stories I like to use (and it is nice to use a variety for variation and for different purposes):

• Fairy tales. This is partly because I personally like working with them, and partly because of the mythic weight (see below). But a lot of fairy tales exist in versions that have been heavily condensed and pared back and boiled down to parts that can be used as archetypes or armatures for all sorts of purposes — shifted in time, dressed up in different costumes, etc, etc. Or you can pinch their ornaments and textures and put them onto something else. I like having a few in rotation; you’ve probably noticed I use Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood pretty heavily, at least in examples.
• Stories with mythic weight. When I get people to choose these template/reference stories in workshops, this is what I tell people to look for. By “mythic” I mean personally mythic — stories that loom large in your life, that you know well, that you recommend to others, that you refer back to. It could be Jurassic Park or a historical event or a memorable sports story. The only real rule is that it has to be a story, not a theme. You can’t say “death” but you can say “Hades & Persephone”.
• Classics. Either stories culturally well-known, or ones I personally know well. (If you’re doing an exercise to share in public, e.g. as an example or in a workshop, the former is useful.) I’ve read Pride & Prejudice a lot, usually out loud to my dad, and it’s also pretty well known, so it shows up a lot, along with Jane Eyre.
• Works with cultural resonance. Some of these are classics, others are familiar in certain circles — even the idea of a movie I’ve seen too many previews for but have no wish to watch can be the base of an exercise.
• Stories I actively want to mess with. Sometimes it’s less about the exercise than the template story — maybe I want to see how I could fix something that irritated me, or work out what made me like it so much by changing elements until I identify the key components. (For a lot of people, these are also source urges for fan fiction and fan art.)
• “Testing ground” stories. I do have a couple stories of my own I use as test cases. They are old manuscripts based on ideas that never quite worked, from long ago, and have been so handled and worn out and outgrown that I don’t mind doing terrible things to the base material.
• Images. Illustrators can use all the stories above exactly as for writing. But sometimes there’ll be a single image or classic illustration that you can use in the same way as a template story.

I’ve posted a lot of writing and art exercises on here. (Note: exercises are usually at the end of the relevant posts — follow either the writing exercise or art exercise link, as almost all exercises work for both.) But it’s also worth trying other exercises you encounter out on a template story. Or try making your own exercises.

Here are some uses for a template story, as a starting point:

• Playing around:
  • Doing scales
  • Aesthetic tests
  • Fanfiction
  • Messing around and having fun.
  • Test driving concepts
  • Distraction and procrastination
  • Play-writing
• Working though:
  • Examples and demonstrations of concepts (e.g. for workshops)
  • Watching what happens to a story when you make a dramatic shift
  • Feeling for the levers and gears of a story
  • Tweaking visuals
  • Understanding what an existing story is doing, and how (in order to better understand that story, or the technique)
  • Learning to read as a writer/look at stories as an illustrator
• Mythic palette:
  • Borrowing powerful narrative structures and approaches
  • Leaning on metaphor
  • Guiding choices in an unrelated story/image (e.g., using the characters in a fairytale to suggest the character and placement of chimneys on a skyline, or using words from Rapunzel to describe vines)
  • Lifting aesthetics and imagery
  • Ransacking for material/inspirations
  • Retelling
  • Using to strengthen or provide a point of comparison to another story

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• I have a mailing list for occasional major updates.

Brisbane Writers Festival 2021

The Brisbane Writers Festival is back — and done for the year (it’s staying in May, now, and next year is the 60th anniversary). It was lovely to see people again, and sketch in the cafe, and listen to talks on history and life, poetry and family.

Of course, sketching in the SLQ cafe mostly means sketching ibises

I (with Flyaway, although I got in a tangential reference to Travelogues!) was on the “Magic and Myth” panel with Krissy Kneen (The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen) + Tabitha Bird (The Emporium of the Imagination) + Melissa Ashley (The Bee and the Orange Tree).

The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen; Flyaway; The Emporium of the Imagination; The Bee and the Orange Tree

Krissy ran a great discussion on three very different books (a novel of murder trials and fairy tale salons in 1699 Paris; a tale of a magical store that arrives by night in a Queensland town and heals sorrow; an Australian Gothic story of secrets and things in the trees; and Krissy’s memoir of searching through Australia, Slovenia, and Egypt for the true history of her grandmother). But there were many common elements too — secrets and generations, loss and what we cling to instead, and stories told and believed in different ways.

I usually have difficulty remembering what happened on a panel, but many people said lovely things about it afterwards, and there were some excellent questions.

I do remember one question on how you judge the parameters of magic/myth when writing it into a ‘real-world’ story. We all had different answers, of course — the fairytales in Melissa’s novel were specifically contained and retold within a historical, non-fantastic setting; Tabitha followed a theme and let the elements grow; I talked about (a) developing an ear for certain types of stories, so you can hear when you strike a false note, and (b) letting the magical elements sit in the setting/story until they start to change each other — and following the consequences.

There was another question, too, on the purpose/use of myth and fairytale. Melissa was specifically dealing with the way fairytales were used to communicate and argue around the restrictions of a society and royal censorship. Tabitha was using them as a way to allow the processing of grief and loss, and the preservation of what is mourned. I spoke about their usefulness as a template, because I find it more organic to use a fairy tale as a structural key than to think about acts and arcs — that’s a matter of familiarity and ease. But I also got onto another favourite topic, about how there are points in time where people sort of agree on how certain stories are to be told (you see it when artists agree what the basic cat should look like, which makes medieval cat drawings look implausible, until you meet cats who look just like them). I find that having a sheaf of alternative templates (fairy tales, for me) lets me shake those ideas loose, and look at them in a different light. So, for example, people are starting to tell post-lockdown stories, and those are starting to converge. But you could pick any number of fairy tales and retell the story through that: “Rapunzel” is an obvious one, but “Little Red Riding Hood” would work just as well (the year that was eaten by a wolf), or even Cinderella — I had just broken new shoes in at the start of 2020, and now I’m having all sorts of problems wearing them again.

I did make it to a few other panels! A few standouts were the First and Last Word bookends, Ellen van Neerven‘s talks, “The World’s Biggest Survival Story” (Melissa Lucashenko, Bruce Pascoe, Lisa Fuller and Thomas Mayor). And then of course so many wonderful conversations in the green room and the cafe, at signing tables and over drinks.

A particularly memorable panel I went to was “Out of the Wreckage”, in which Kelly Higgins-Devine interviewed Margaret Cook’s A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods and Jamie Simmonds’ Rising from the Flood: Moving the Town of Grantham. I still have very vivid memories of the 2011 floods (as well as being cut off, I’d started at the Department of Transport and Main Roads just days before they happened, and since something like 95% of the state’s transport networks were affected by that year’s rains, it was a crash course in the department’s responsibilities!), and was tangentially involved with some of the Grantham relocation. It was a vivid and compelling discussion (and surprisingly entertaining), so I am looking forward to reading these two.

November calendar: house plants

Note: This calendar is supported by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art: patreon.com/tanaudel, and also by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: paypal.me/tanaudel. 
Further note: Travelogues: vignettes from trains in motion is out now to buy from Brain Jar Press and most of the usual online places, and is also just the right size to post to people who like words and trains and travel. And Flyaway, my Australian Gothic debut, is also out now for purchase (Tor.com and Picador).

I — possibly alone in my generation — have not acquired any house plants this year. But people won’t stop talking about them, and they started creeping into my thoughts.

There are a few tangential allusions in here, as well as some plants I just wanted to draw.

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions. If you like them and/or like supporting the arts, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or through the tip jar at paypal.me/tanaudel.

Storied Imaginarium — fairy tale salon

The Storied Imaginarium is launching its new fairy tale salon series this month. On Friday (September 25 in the U.S. & Canada)/Saturday (September 26 in Australia), Edit: Friday October 9 in the US and Saturday October 10 in Australia I’ll be joining salon facilitators Carina Bissett and Nike Sulway for their first online fairy tale salon!

The salon includes a reading from Flyaway, an interview, a Q&A session, and a writing game. The salon is strictly limited to 20 guests, and is $US30.00 ($US25.00 for members of The Storied Imaginarium). You can sign up on their site today!

The Beauty and Horror of Fairy Tales

Olivia Brown of the University of Queensland’s School of Communication & Arts interviewed me about my writing (including but not limited to Flyaway), illustration, and research, and wrote this lovely long article (with lots of pictures):

The Beauty and Horror of Fairy Tales

July Calendar: Sew a fine seam

Note: This calendar is supported by patrons, who get it a little bit early, along with other sneak-peeks and behind-the-scenes art: patreon.com/tanaudel, and also by those very kind people who throw a few dollars towards it via the tip jar: paypal.me/tanaudel. 

For July, here are threads and bobbins and awls and wax, and the daily tools so often adjacent to fairy tales: bodkins for poisoned lacings, winders to hold the thread for clues, needles and pins to choose your path by…

There are no scissors, because I wanted this to tie in to the scissors calendar from November last year. I kept the colour scheme, but added pink (for the clover flowers and other details). And I’ve had a few requests for a repeating pattern for the scissors, so I’ll try to do both at once. I’ll let you know when they’re up. In the meantime, both this design and Scissors are up on Redbubble as prints, masks, cushions, etc.

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions. If you like them and like supporting the arts, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early) at patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at US$1/month!) or through the tip jar at paypal.me/tanaudel.

More legs than strictly necessary

“I had a little pony,
His coat was dapple grey…”

To make nursery rhymes creepy, usually only a slight wilful misinterpretation is necessary.

An additional leg here or there.

The slight twist that makes the familiar uncanny.

“… I lent him to a lady
To ride a mile away.“

March Calendar: Giants

The March calendar (supported by patrons, who get it early, and you can too) is gargantuan.

They are perhaps a little more trollish than gianty, but they’re my giants.

I think my favourite is the mountain giant just waking up. But I also like the one that just found a dragon.

(If you’re a fan of giants, sea-serpents, or remarkably strong and beautiful ladies, here’s an Irish fairy tale in a series Katherine Langrish is sharing on her site, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: “Simon and Margaret”).

I was playing around with textures digitally in this one — some spare ink washes from when I did the City of Bones 10th anniversary edition illustrations. It’s a little more directional than I’d like but it was, by then, about 1 in the morning. Here is what the colours look like, without lines.

And here (for personal use) are the printable versions. If you like them and like supporting the arts, you can contribute to the calendar (and get it and other behind-the-scenes things early at) patreon.com/tanaudel (starts at $1/month!) or through the tip jar at paypal.me/tanaudel.

February Foxes

Welcome to February, and a busy crew of librarian foxes, foxes in libraries, and general bookishness!

This calendar is brought to you, as usual, with the support of patrons on patreon.com/tanaudel, and if you’d care to see art and calendars early through that and help them happen, please feel very free to check out patreon or toss a few coins in the jar through paypal.me/tanaudel.

I’m hoping these sketches will turn into a bigger project, and I’ll put a repeating pattern up on Redbubble and Spoonflower as soon as I can (I’ve been out of action for a few weeks and am now scrambling to deal wth deadlines). I have put it up on Redbubble as a print: Library Foxes, but there’s a bit of tinkering involved to make it repeat pleasantly.

In the meantime, below for your personal February-planning purposes, are the printable pre-coloured and colour-sheet versions of the calendar. (And of course, a tip through patreon or paypal.me never goes astray).

Be Bold prints

The original of the Be Bold, Be Bold paper-cut design has sold, but the white-on-black print is available on Redbubble, as an art print or other things (e.g. a hardback notebook which I think looks rather striking).

The other, more fox-centric, “Be Bold” (originally a calendar page) is also available as a print, etc, too.