--- In [email protected], Bhairitu <noozguru@...> wrote: > > I'm waiting for Turq's daily rant written using the 15 > beats. Or maybe we ought to have a posting contest for > posts using the 15 beats. I was looking through those > and imagining posts written that way. :-D
Warped minds think alike. :-) I actually was toying with both of these ideas earlier, but followed up on neither. I *did* like the article, and recognize the (gulp!) truth of and the effectiveness of the formula. And I am the first to admit that a film or TV episode can be brilliant and wonderful even if it slavishly follows this formula. But in real life the only formula I have ever written to was haiku -- the number of syllables, and all. I've never even felt constrained, when attempting poetry, to stick to the formulas of rhyme and meter often associated with that art. If asked to pin down my approach to anything creative I write, I would have to describe it as "bardish." That is, I wind up approaching the writing the way a traveling bard of old might have approached coming upon an open fire in the wilderness late at night, being invited to join the party huddled around it, and then -- having been recognized, possibly by the harp you are carrying, as a bard -- being invited to pay for your spot around the fire by telling a story. For the fellow travelers around the fire, the story that emerges as the result of such a request is a one- time event, here and Now. They will draw whatever magic they can from the tale told during the next hour in which it is being told, or they will miss the magic forever. There are no "do overs" when it comes to bardic tales, and the appreciation thereof. You either get it as it is being told, or you do not. For the bard, however, the request inspires another kind of koan. The crowd has asked for a tale, and you have many. Which is the appropriate one to tell tonight? How will you manage to tell it in such a way as to cause everyone in the audience to believe that it is the first and only time you have ever told this tale? Because -- from the bard's side -- that is the magic of telling stories. Every one is new. Even if you have told it a thousand times before.
