The week before, I’d been playing with the concept of a story behind a story, as a way to strengthen a draft or unfold an existing story. Here, I was trying to apply that to illustration.
I adapted the activity by instead asking: If I remove the [primary/obvious] purpose, what remains?
Of course, I discovered I’d simply reinvented “breaking an image down into its component shapes”.
But doing that does create a basis for building something back up into new shapes and possibilities, and revealing alternative, less-obvious purposes.
A more directly creative (as in, I made things out of it) activity was: Drawing the people glimpsed from the corner of your eye. But the mental exercise of this approach felt like a (mild) workout, and it was an intriguing way to hold an object in mind and at arm’s length, and look beyond the obvious.
Writing/illustration activity:
Choose an object in your line of sight.
Identify its main/obvious purpose.
Now ignore that purpose. What remains? A collection of shapes? Secondary or tertiary uses?
What could you build up with those residual aspects? What type of story might it have come out of (fictional or real)? Could you create something with those shapes and textures, or redesign the object to better fit a less-obvious use?
Do a quick sketch (written or drawn).
Bonus round: Repeat a few times. Then notice what was easy or hard, what tactics you defaulted to, what objects or features regularly charmed you.
paint-water jug and candy (dice) jar
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These observation journal pages feature a simple activity: make a small thing, then make notes about making the thing.
The thing I made was a silhouette with imitation gold foil on it — a function of Inktober and Mother Thorn and other silhouette projects and interests at the time.
A few days later, I played with the same ideas again, this time with a gold leafing pen (Krylon).
This time, I was more focussed on a particular question (18k gold leafing pen vs imitation gold leaf) — how they handled and what effects they suggested. (See also: loving the tools.)
Observations (true for me):
Making something, however tiny, is immediately good — it’s forward motion.
A first attempt, even (perhaps especially) if it doesn’t work quite as imagined, unlocks new ideas.
Some practicalities can only be practically considered.
Getting words on screen or ink on paper is so much more powerful than thinking. Or perhaps: it is a much more powerful way of thinking.
These epiphanies are small and frequent. But it’s less important to know them intellectually than to learn them viscerally, and remind myself through my hands.
parcels
Writing/Illustration/Creating Activity (if you keep an observation journal, activities like these are a good way to find some personal fascinations and questions to pursue — they’re also a nice way to just calm down and make things)
Make something small. Write a 50 word story or description of something you can see or draw a tiny portrait or try out a new pen or cover the page with fingerprints and draw legs on them or embroider a flower. (Bonus: if you’re stuck, try a separate exercise and make a list of at least 20 tiny things you could make. Be silly. Note where your thinking shifts gears. See if there are any patterns you could use to invent more activities, e.g. approaches you obviously like or are clearly avoiding.)
Stick it to the page (or if that isn’t feasible, note what it was you did).
Consider the thing you made, and how, and why, and what it was like to make and what you ended up with. You’ll have your own interests, but some places you could start are:
why this
senses (touch, smell, how the light affects it — these can be important for achieving an effect or working comfortably, but also for pursuing things you like)
ways you could use or develop it into something further or new
ideas it gave you
what you liked or resisted
is it (or could it be) connected to anything you’re currently interested in
is it pleasing (why)
is it X enough for you [dreamy, horrific, utilitarian, etc] and how could you make it more so
Make a couple extra notes on how the activity as a whole worked for you, or what it revealed about how you work.
Think of a specific creative question you’ve been wanting to answer (or one of the ideas from the step above).
Jot down a few subquestions — whether a technique will work at all or suit a particular purpose, how it would compare to a different approach, whether it will create an effect you saw someone else achieve, or be more fun, or change your speed, or any number of specific questions.
Make a tiny test-patch experiment, as small as you possibly can make to answer the question (a blurb for an experimental trilogy format; two colours blended; pickling one slice of an unusual vegetable).
Paste it in or make a note of what you did.
Around it, again, make observations. This time, answer some of those subquestions. But also look at the list of questions for the previous activity, including ideas to try next…
Power pylon with one toe just over the line of the park fence
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As part of this year’s short story reading project, I’ve been noticing the strong structural and structuring pull rite or rituals exert on stories.
Structurally (and that’s how I’m talking about them in this post), rituals can be a way to first summon a story and peel apart a world, and then at the end to stitch through many layers, to mend and make new. And of course ritual brings with it layers of language, formulation, knowledge, history, time, family, the numinous brushing the physical, a way of altering the world or being acknowledged and changed by it, and (rendered bureaucratic) all the ways that can be made soulless.
This post is lengthy… (among other things, after the initial draft I injured myself in a way that made editing very difficult).
I’m planning a post on how rites and rituals show up in short stories, and wanted to refer back to this observation journal page. So I’m posting it earlier than it would otherwise have appeared! (Edit: the post on rituals and short story structure is now up.)
I was thinking about the way rites and rituals — as human an urge as covering surfaces with patterns — can shape a story or be the base for building a world.
I wanted to play with these ideas and effects without using the most obvious existing rituals, or ones I didn’t fully understand. So I made a little ritual-generator out of two (non-comprehensive!) lists: purpose and subject. You can expand the lists with your own interests and knowledge.
Purpose of rite/ritual/invocation/ceremony/sacrament/etc
evoke
encircle
hide
confer
sever
transform
invoke
farewell
recognise
transfer
separate
renew
summon
welcome
acknowledge
steady
remove
improve
avert
remember
identify
support
transition
reform
banish
remind
pledge
seek
prevent
return
shame
mark
sacrifice
request
bar
reset
remove
own
gift
petition
acknowledge
bless
honour
possess
invest
accompany
protect
heal
secure
join
partake
harmonise
ease
speed
protect
disguise
approach
beautify
liminal
ease
Subject
life
crops
journey
freedom
future
holy
death
plants
partnership
seasons
past
unholy
ages
vehicles
marriage
days
present
phenomena
roles
houses
relationships
tides
meteorology
legend
human
tools
adoption
times
disaster
deities
animal
utensils
disowning
celebrations
hopes
health
bird
endeavour
roles
events
aspirations
processes
fish
jobs
teaching
memorials
departed
industrial
weather
calling
ruling
history
children
war
land
commission
serving
government
elders
domestic
business
contract
vow
promise
physical
abstract
The writing/illustration exercise
Take one or two items at random from each list and combine them (e.g. gift/legend or renew/own/animal).
Then expand them into a rite or ritual, getting more specific (e.g. a generational ritual to pass ownership of a community’s founding legend or an annual rite to renew ownership/stewardship of draught-animals). (Note: Keep an eye on where these brush against or trample on rites and rituals actually in use, and on places you might want to push against expectations, use discretion, avoid stereotypes or come down hard on (or redeem) a ceremony you’ve suffered through.)
If you know the world in which this story will happen, you can draw details and aesthetics for the ritual from it — weaving it into the substance of the world. Or you can start with the ritual and add details and aesthetics from things you like or notice around you (art deco/modernist!), and discover more about the place and people that way.
Then, if you’re using this to build a world or story, ask what could go wrong (or more right than was anticipated!), and follow the implications. (Control, enforceability, cost and benefit are some other interesting if cynical questions to ask — or consider e.g. the evolution and varied iterations of the ritual, and what it means to different people.)
Make a quick sketch (written or drawn) of a scene.
Bonus round: Note where the story or world started to grow, or where it didn’t. Repeat the process, and see if there’s a pattern, or if there are questions that helped grow it. Is there a echo among the ideas that resonate for you? Are there more entries you’d add to the lists?
More to come when I post about rituals and story structure. (Edit: it is now up)
On this observation journal page, I was playing with more ways to look at a story (written or drawn) with fresh eyes.
It was a process I wanted to use on my own sketches and drafts, but as usual, I tried it out on a fairy tale first.
I used “Little Red Riding Hood”, because I’d just spent a couple pages on it in another context (The Story Behind the Story).
First, I kept the characters in their established roles (Little Red Riding Hood playing herself, the Mother playing the Mother, the Wolf… well, you know). For each, I listed their obvious/easy/common traits. This is easy and fun — leaning into stereotypes and cliches in order to use their strength against them is usually a good time (see e.g. The Caudwell Manoeuvre).
Then I mixed them up.
Character
Usual personality
LRR
innocent and plucky
Mother
solicitous but hands-off
Wolf
wily & ferocious
Grandmother
frail & vulnerable
Woodcutter
taciturn & pragmatic
Washerwomen
cheerful and in solidarity
(I like the version with the helpful laundry ladies at the river)
I then moved each characteristic up by one. Now it’s a story about a cool and capable Little Red Riding Hood, sent by her ferocious mother to visit her taciturn, pragmatic grandmother. On the way, she meets a frail, vulnerable wolf…
Next, I pushed things further by keeping the story the same, but having the characters play each others’ roles. Now it’s a tale of a washerwomen sent into the forest by a wolf to visit a child, and on the way they meet a treacherous woodcutter…
You could use either approach to shake up a story for retelling. But I’ve found it useful as a thought exercise when working on projects — drawn or written! I mightn’t ultimately make these changes, but playing through these exercises can highlight where I’ve made easy instead of interesting choices with a character, or identify where my original choice was correct but needs to be done with more deliberateness or flamboyance. And it’s an interesting way to break open someone else’s story in order to analyse it, or to have fun with it.
Writing/illustration exercise
Choose a story (written or visual). It can be someone else’s or your own.
List the characters. Next to each, briefly describe their obvious/default personality. Keep this simple. If it seems stereotypical, that’s fine.
Now, swap the characteristics around. Either randomly, or by shifting them all along one space.
Do a quick sketch (drawn or a paragraph) of what the story might now look like. (And make a note of any new ideas it gives you.)
Make a table with a list of roles (key characters) from the story. In the next column, put the same characters, but shuffled.
Pretend each character now has to play the new role to which you’ve assigned them.
Do a quick sketch (drawn or a paragraph) of what the story might now look like. (And make a note of any new ideas it gives you.)
Bonus, for each: Make a note of what worked, and what you liked, and see if you can identify why. Identify where the changes broke the story, or how robust the original idea was.
Bird and man watching plastic leaves get caught in a cafe fan
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Here’s a recurring observation journal page, with one of my favourite activities: mixing up descriptions. This forces a closer look at ordinary things, from slightly unexpected perspectives. Sometimes it creates miniature poems, at others it builds an image that pulls away into a story. Almost always, it’s an engrossing little mental exercise.
On this page, I chose four things from the day, and paired them: picnic bench and youth, chooks and gold leaf (it was Inktober — see below for a related illustration). For each word, I then made a list of descriptions using words and metaphors I associated with the other word in that pair.
Picnic bench
youthful
springing
slatted with spring light
sifting flowers
curled/curved like a fern frond
ribbed like a fern
slim-legged/nimble-limbed
unsteady as a lamb
stubborn
I noted a “push to metaphor”. Now, I notice an organic vivacity and lightness.
Youth
four-square on the earth
curved and up-springing
youth on which all else rests
youth on which age depends
barred with strength and air
the promise of birds
knee-deep in greenery
The note says “sentiment”. But there’s a solidity, here, that the idea of the bench brought to the prettier language I was using before.
Chooks
square and bright as gold leaf
metal-tipped
ruffled like soft foil
scattering/scattered in light
in a cloud of glittering dust/insects
“Tricky but ennobling”. I really like these ones — it was more of a reach than the reverse (below), but I think that paid off.
Gold leaf (imitation)
fine-feathering
soft and enveloping as [illegible]
brooding on size
nested in corners of container
flocked
“Personifying”. I’m struck by how textural these are (very particular to the textures of metal leaf in use), and also that the staticness (brooding and nesting and enveloping) implies some readiness to movement.
For Inktober 2020 prompt “Radio” plus “The cowardly hero deceived the hen.” (This was VERY TINY and also a birthday card for my father and something of a riff on His Master’s Voice.)
On these pages of the observation journal, I unpacked some feedback I kept giving students on their stories: to look at the story behind the story.
On the first page, I tried it out on a couple of projects I’d been working on — a short story that has never quite got off the ground, and a very old draft that’s since become a place for testing ideas (see The Usefulness of Template Stories).
The idea is, you mentally remove the plot, and see what’s left behind — the world and the currents and relationships that support the story (or fail to). What would we know about the world, and who would the characters be if the plot weren’t happening?
The exercise stirs up sediment, creates currents, pans gold dust — or, to shift metaphors, it creates sudden changes of lenses and focus.
The process certainly paid off indirectly: I can trace several elements and epiphanies about my current manuscript to some notes on this page — and observations on the facing page.
The following week, I tried the exercise again, this time on “Little Red Riding Hood”. I listed major characters/presences, and pulled back to ask what would be there if the story weren’t happening — the sorts of people who live in the woods, the natures of these wolves, how the grandmother came to live where she lives, etc.
If I pulled on these strands, I ended up with a soberer story than usual, and a sequel to previous stories — a brother and sister grown old and still living in the forest, a witch they destroyed who has returned as a wolf and is trying to become human again…
The process forced logic and loops and links, as well as pulling in other recent thoughts and preoccupations. It turns out to be a useful way to expand a fairy-tale plot.
Writing/illustration exercise
Choose a story — a fairy tale, or a story you like, or one you’re working on or with (see Template Stories).
Make a list of at least five key characters, elements, locations, or motifs that exist in the story.
Mentally, remove the main plot. What information or questions are you left with about those key characters/elements? What do we know about them, in the absence of Plot happening? Who would they be, if not caught up in the story?
How might you fill in those details? Can you link those questions and answers to suggest the fabric of the world behind the story? Or even to find some larger stories behind it?
Sketch out (words or pictures) a key scene from the original story, adding that new information in as names, textures, interactions, details…
Alex and Obi
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I began this flippantly, although I was curious to see what else the activity might work on, and how ideas pinched from a setting could be reworked into art or writing or life.
The answer was: very well. I had to moderate a strong inclination to turn everything into a metaphor. But very interesting things happened when these points of inspiration were applied to or ran up against other patterns and fascinations I’d been noticing recently.
Here are the five:
Shrine to the mundane / honouring the ordinary (old furniture, paintings of little things)
as an image, as a concept, as a reminder when writing, as a way to arrange my bookcases
Trellises (being used in the cafe to display art)
as a practical solution, as a metaphor for showing the underpinnings of a world etc, the use of lattices to connect worlds (Deep Secret, etc)
Cheerful / cosy bunker
a reminder (since my house isn’t arranged for looking out of easily) that it can be done by having lots to look at inside and many small spaces, as a story setting/mood/aesthetic, in art as a cavern drawn with no reference to externalities (an inversion of the little groves)
A particularly vivid blue/green in some paintings — in the background, in pupilless eyes etc
a reminder of some people I’ve known with vivid/striking/unsettling eyes, a pattern of outlining things with other things and/or outlining an absence (with a Midsomer Murders connection, of course)
Fake leaves everywhere — kitschy but oddly cheerful
a reminder to put more foliage more deliberately into images, and to consider plants as part of various aesthetics
Writing/illustration exercise:
Think of a space you’ve recently been in (the less obviously inspiring is sometimes better) or look are the place where you are right now.
Find five things about that space that you would like to steal — textures, colours, shapes, approaches to interior design, noise, atmosphere, etc.
For each, list at least three different ways you could incorporate it into an illustration or story. Try pushing past just representing an object/using the setting (but do that, too!). Could you approach it as a metaphor? How would you insert it into an existing idea?
Choose a few of those ideas and do a quick treatment/sketch (written or drawn).
Bonus: Do you notice any habits/patterns in what you chose, or how you adapted them? Make a note — you could try leaning harder into those tendencies, or flipping them. Did some of the ideas spark more than others? What did they have in common, and can you actively pursue that when coming up with ideas in the future?
This page of the observation journal is a reflection (nefarious) on a visit to QAGOMA (the Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art).
The Five Things To Steal exercise is a useful way to quickly make notes on and tease inspiration from specific books, movies, etc. But I’ve also found it a lovely way to approach a broader experience — in this case, an art gallery.
It’s a good way to capture a substantial (but not overwhelming) handful of impressions, and speculate on what to do with them.
The sense of being parachuted into someone else’s visual memory: a sense of slowly descending into a landscape belonging to a particular artistic vocabulary.
This was in relation to a Mavis Ngallametta exhibition — I’d seen the paintings in small reproductions, but that was nothing like the experience of simultaneously looking up at and floating down into their enormousness. And simultaneously being reshaped to fit into them.
It’s also something that I’ve been thinking about again more recently — it seems like it should relate very much to map illustration, but I love it as an example of lowering readers into a world.
The scrolling effect of the repetition of a long cabinet full of ceramic forms like water plants and coral and fungi.
This is for the reminder to use repetition, but also the appeal of long decorative bands.
(Like the notes on the camp dogs, below, this fascination continues to get into the calendar patterns.)
The mundane writ large, gaining weight and honour and importance.
This is about the value of the everyday, yes, but also of the contribution detail and texture and focus have to making something feel mythic.
Sunken garden, mirror pool, bronze figures, water dragons — a particular enchanted aesthetic.
(This is a description of the gallery cafe.)
I’ve noted it as a potential aesthetic for a large project I’m just now editing. It managed to completely flow off the back of that story, but I’m hoping it will pool in the next project.
The Aurukun camp dog sculptures, for a large number of repetitions that are entirely individual and have very distinct personalities. (And I mean, look at them.)
I enjoy looking back at these five-things-to-steal posts, finding my way back into an experience of something, turning over fascinations to see how they’ve grown or what’s grown under them.
I also like this little list of things seen on the same day (from the left-hand observation page — that structure is based on a Lynda Barry exercise, see more on this page: observation journal).
I like the specificity of it, the way that makes the everyday remarkable, the way the list of disparate things forms into an impression of a day, the weight of wistfulness of the absence of jacaranda flowers under the painting where they are sometimes scattered.
Illustration/writing exercise:
Go to an exhibition or art gallery (in person or virtual). Roam around it idly.
Then think of five things you would like to pinch from it.
Then ask yourself why — what about that artwork or approach to curation or unexpected lighting appealed to you?
Then make your heist plan: how would you steal each of those effects for your own art/writing?
Do a little written or drawn sketch of a way you might incorporate that aspect.
terrible lizard sketch, water dragons do not look very like this
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On this pair of observation journal pages, I was still thinking through the three-moods approach to short fiction. That’s described in more detail here: Story shapes — three-mood stories, and has spun off into its own series of very large short-story reading posts and quite a few short stories (mostly rolled into some larger projects, such as Patreon stories and sub-stories in a current manuscript).
These pages helped me by:
clarifying the usefulness of a three-mood structure in:
coming up with a story-shape
coming up with and developing ideas
reminding me of the usefulness of having a clear final note towards which to aim (see also e.g. picture to story idea)
confirming the power of adjectives (somewhat flippant but I do like them)
There is (as usual) an exercise at the end of this post, if you want to try it out yourself.
On earlier pages, I’d been breaking down existing stories into broad moods/vibes. See e.g. story structures and story patterns.
Here, I started trying to build up a story shape in the other direction. First I made a list of emotions. Then I picked three at random and looked at what sort of story that progression would suggest.
Here’s the initial list of moods (non-exhaustive):
surprise
instigation
seething
horror
momentum
aggression
suspicion
doubt
antagonism
anticipation
fear
active
dread
terror
revulsion
delight
bewilderment
repentance
desire
knowledge
emotive
greed
naïveté
melodramatic
affection
placidity
supportive
incorrigible
irrepressible
bereft
jaunty
After picking three at random, I looked for the sort of story which that progression of moods might suggest. For example:
greed — doubt — aggression –> acquisitiveness and wanting leads to falsity and the fear of potential failure which then leads to destruction (of self? of the object of desires? indiscriminate?) in that pursuit
naïveté — desire — placidity –> ignorance/innocence being swept up in honest pursuit of its desire, and then achieving its happily ever after having successfully learned no lesson. (I’d already written an earlier draft of “Merry in Time“at this point, but it was a structure I wanted to lean into on those edits. Arguably lessons ARE learnt in that story, but not — I hope — the obvious ones for that shape of story.)
These clearly suggested story-shapes. I also liked the way that, taken together, the moods definitely implied an end state — a final note towards which to aim.
Parts of this one (although not quite identifiable) have 100% got into parts of a subsequent large project (yet to be announced). The idea also contains concerns taken up in”Not To Be Taken” (in Bitter Distillations).
On the next page, I tried combining two moods (at random) for added nuance.
For example:
suspicious bewilderment –> seething greed –> surprised revulsion be careful what you wish for / dreams of avarice
affectionate instigation –> knowledgeable horror –> doubtful anticipation succeeding too well
melodramatic delight –> greedy fear –> antagonistically supportive lives(?) for the drama
I also tried rearranging positions of the moods to see what would happen.
The main additional lesson from this page was the power of adjectives, and how much they modulate the expression of a mood.
Minimalist cubby down by the creek — this has also appeared in another project
Writing/illustration exercise:
Make a list of Big Moods (emotions/vibes/driving concerns). Try for at least 10, although 20 is usually more profitable. Think of moods you like from stories, emotions you’ve felt recently, etc. Or use the list earlier in this post.
Pick three at random.
Imagine they form the beginning, middle and end of a story. Make some notes as to what sort of story they suggest.
For example, if I chose “delight –> bewilderment –> repentance”, that might suggest an “all that glitters is not gold” story.
Think of a possible situation and character for that story — if nothing comes quickly to mind, pick a character and setting from a fairy tale or other template story, or just someone/thing you’ve seen today.
E.g. if I used the stick cubby picture above with “delight –> bewilderment –> repentance”, that could become a story about someone finding a cubby in the trees, and being charmed by it, and getting inside it, and then… well, all is not as it seems (and you’re in season 1 of Stranger Things).
Sketch out (in words or pictures) a tiny scene or moment for that possible story, capturing part of that vibe. If you’re having trouble choosing, consider what the final scene might be.
E.g. a kid scrambling delightedly into an ominous hiding place — or scrabbling desperately to get out.
Bonus: Repeat this a few times. Notice anything that particularly works for you — or doesn’t. Are there story-shapes or ideas that particularly spark? Moods that resonate for you, or which you have to struggle to like or capture? Story types or genres you tend towards? Make a note — that’s all useful information for things to try (or evade) in future.
sleeping beagle
Support and/or follow
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Kathleen Jennings 