Hey everyone. Thanks for this opportunity to share. This is a long one...
At the moment I'm working a short story set in my WIP Children of Shadows universe, a speculative world, starting with a post-apocalyptic England after an invasion of alien shadow spirits that take over the children, but building towards a world where an ancient light power can bring back animals, ancestors and deities from prehistoric rock art. I'm serialising the first novella I wrote in this universe here on Substack: https://harveyhamer.substack.com/s/children-of-shadows
Some of the writing in the early chapters comes from my first version of the story at age ten! When I was eighteen I worked that story into the novella I'm sharing, and at 21 now am still exploring that universe after completing two novels and working on the third will have short story interludes.
Which sort of brings me to answering the second question. The short story I'm working on at the moment is many-layered with history and mythology, and probably my own experiences and world-view that work their way in there. The whole cave art part of the universe came from visiting prehistoric sites in France when I was nine years old, and I revisited last year while working on the first novel and making notes for the brewing idea of the second. This third one is much more global, so for this interlude section I'm tracing a magical alien crystal from prehistoric Britain, to Roman Britain, then traded all the way to India where its energy will be what brings ancient rock art of an ancient army, of hunter gatherers to elephant riders and Hindu gods, to life. So I'm layering the universalities of mythologies, human commonalities in art and faith. There's been ideas that arise in the process, like a comparison of colonialism, the Roman Empire in Britain to the British Empire in India. I've been talking about the story in my weekly roundup posts as I visit the sites in Britain that I'm currently writing about, and discovering.
And now to your places question, which I've sort of answered. I've been so enjoying finding the most intricate details down to the exact couple of years I want to set the Roman Britain part of my story, to the prehistoric henges and enclosures beneath Oxford where the crystal lands, finding the right one for Neolithic and then the later beaker Bronze Age population. There's also the sort of spiritual mind place where the protagonist of the story is being shown the vision of the crystal journey, in a sea of 'cosmic fluid' shown to him by the cave art Shiva. (I don't know when I'll be sharing this story; I'm pursuing traditional publishing for these novels, though have self-published 22 books in the past.)
In relation to spaces as well, contacting the volunteers at a Roman villa has led to me receiving so many pdfs of old historical records, of the mosaics that have since been stolen, of the colour of plaster found in each room, so I've really been able to bring that place to life in the detail that I love. Then I'm using artwork done for guides and museums of places like Roman St. Albans or Richborough. And you mentioned pastiche in the audio... one of my next short stories will be, or at least I'm aiming for, a full pastiche of art, ideas, from song lyrics to writers' quotes, to theories of existence and the levels of consciousness, all human thought and imagery coalescing into one sort of vision.
Phew, that's a long comment, but I guess I wanted to share, Thanks for reading.
22 books?! Wow, congrats! Yes, the publishing world is a strange one to navigate, and sometimes even if trad publishing is available, I think self publishing can be the way to go. It depends on so much! Good luck with that.
You bring up so many interesting layers! I can see it will be interesting to have you on this journey :) Look forward to your thoughts along the way!
St Alban is such a beautiful place. Interesting ideas about the way you are brining together art / museums/ history/etc in fiction. England is undergoing a lot of transition at the moment. It's an interesting time to be writing about it and reinventing it yourself. Thanks so much for sharing your work with us!
Oct 26, 2023·edited Oct 26, 2023Liked by Dr. Kathleen Waller
OK here we go!
1. I've been working on a piece based on the story of my biological family told to me by a person I connected with on 23andme. Apparently, my father was one of six kids of a single mother living in a car in Reno in the 1950s. At some point, the kids were all taken away and dispersed to the four winds, some to California, some to Texas. I've been trying to imagine how that happened, who my grandmother was, what it was like for her and her children, why they were there and what it was like.
2. I suppose the layering comes from the bare historical kernel, my own suppositions about what homelessness in the 1950s would have been like, and some background characters I've imagined: a junkyard owner who lets them live in his yard in exchange for the mother's "companionship" - a hobo from the Appalachians living in the same junkyard, etc. Some details from this crazy book I read a long time ago called "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer about the different waves of immigrants from England to the Americas.
3. The place of course: Reno (land of divorce!) and the streets of the same. Also what's it like living in a car with six other people? The place-feel is strong in the construction of this story.
Wow, Troy, this is an incredible project. So personal and yet so imaginative at the same time. I can see why you'd want to explore the gaps of information alongside what you've learned and try to piece this puzzle together. Reno - yeah, that is ripe for story - and then maybe it feels like such a real place and then parts of it are just like elsewhere? I really don't know. I have a friend from Vegas and everyone's always like "but how can you be from Vegas??" and he says it's just another place. I don't know if I'm making sense :)
Good luck with this wonderful endeavor. It takes a lot of empathy and imagination to to consider what it was like for your father's mother. I look forward to reading this if you decide to share it - or maybe we have already seen pieces of it on your Stack? I came to your writing via a shared post and now I've gone back to look at your About. Hello, fellow American emigrant in Europe.
Oct 26, 2023·edited Oct 27, 2023Liked by Dr. Kathleen Waller
Hello, fellow emigrant! "Six Kids in a Car" is just a short story at the moment, unfinished, will share. I'm working on a bigger project, to be announced very soon, a serial novella.
Great post. This really made me think about the crime fiction and I currently working on and how to change/manoeuvre the settings to aid the pace and plot. Thank you.
I already have three crime novellas out but the fourth is set in different museums and it was these places and spaces I was thinking about and your post brought some clarity to how I should go about them 😁
What project of fiction are you working on or want to start? How is it a fiction (and not)?
I'm a filmmaker and working on several projects. Two are active so I'll limit myself to them. One is a anthology of short films of which I'm midway in production of the second of six. Another is a feature length gaspunk fantasy about a puppeteer and his apprentice which I hope to leverage the experience of producing the anthology to help build the experience necessary to make, while I work on the script for now. In the interim I make experimental shorts and write on Indulging a Second Look https://polarisdib.substack.com/ .
I mostly conceive and work in fiction, I generally have a hard time driving myself with documentary (I can work on other people's documentaries, but mostly don't make my own) or other nonfiction works. This is because a lot of nonfiction film involves sitting and capturing a lot of various content and seeing the story that comes out of it, whereas I come up with stories I want to render out. I more often want to compose a shot than find a good composition, is what I mean.
In what ways do you already layer your art? Which elements are conscious choices and which simply emerge in the creative process, unbidden?
Layering can actually refer technically to a nonlinear editing timeline and how images are composited together for visual effects, so that's one easy answer. And I personally am obsessed with texture, color, and embedded compositions (frames within frames etc) so that's another. I do a lot of glitch art and processing / generative art which involves layering multiple outputs together to make a cohesive whole.
But from a storytelling perspective, to me the biggest importance is not just having your a plot / b plot character arcs or whatever but also making sure you have an emotional, intellectual, AND visceral arc. An ideal movie is one that takes your body, mind, and emotions all through their own ups and downs.
To what extent are places and spaces features in your work? How might considering these elements in different ways enhance fiction?
Space is hugely important in film, and I really started feeling like film could do what I wanted to do with it when I saw Antonioni's movies in high school and college: his open vistas and architectural shots. I actually made this short about how I'd spend a lot of my childhood looking at the light bouncing off corners of my bedroom and wonder how it was possible to describe the space between me and the corner:
I also love experimental cinema and trippy thrillers / horror / drug films for getting into mindspaces and creating experiential entertainment. You can 'look out' or 'go in' and that's one of the most fun aspects.
hi DB, thanks for sharing such interesting insight into your work! I love to watch and study film, but I've yet to work on one except editing parts of a script for a Japanese film this summer (that was fun! and no, I don't speak Japanese). So, it sounds like aesthetics as well as editing devices are in some way telling your story in the way they create the emotion, etc, -- is that right? It's interesting also the way you bring it back to a study of light in real life. Thanks for sharing. Look forward to learning more about your work.
"it sounds like aesthetics as well as editing devices are in some way telling your story in the way they create the emotion, etc, -- is that right?"
Right. There's the dialog and characterization and plot points -- writing. There's the mise-en-scene -- directing, plus its supervision over other storyteller-collaborators such as the cinematography, production design, and performers. There's the editing and sound design -- post-production. Each tell the story in different ways.
I kept thinking about 'layers' after leaving my last comment and it would be an interesting experimental film concept to see 'how few layers' you could make a complete film or idea from. One of the most minimal styles of experimental film is literally just cutting back and forth between clear film leader and black film leader, creating various patterns of flashing. Even that means the intervals of flashing are some sort of layer.
That’s a lovely idea. It would really allow you to play with some cool aesthetics and concepts. You could perhaps do part of a film with one layer focus, then switch? As if from a different perspective?
Somewhat related, I loved this (faux) one shot film about hairdressers and a murder mystery I saw on MUBI recently. I think it was called Hair?
1. I have a few pieces of very short fiction centered around interior rooms, and then creating the background story of the inhabitants of that space. It's purely fictional as both the images of the people and the spaces do not exist - I create them using artificial intelligence.
2. It's layered in that I want the reader to appreciate several different aspects of the piece: - the visual interior design of the space - the wordsmithing - the content of the inhabitants' story - the showcasing of a diverse representation of families & people. These are largely conscious choices.
3. Places and spaces are the the MAIN story for me, actually - even more important than the story really. I enjoy writing a lot, but my focus is the interiors. So the story is a carrier to showcase the interiors in a more contextual way.
Wow what an amazing way of creating fiction! Your substack work has always intrigued me. I like how you move into fiction at times on there as well (like the one you post). AI brings in a whole new element for this creation!
Thank you, Kate! I haven't done a fiction piece in a while just because they take a bit more time than the colour pieces and I'm focused on getting my interior design studies complete. But I look forward to returning to them and your Substack is great motivation to do that! :-)
Hey, this is cool! Thanks for the opportunity to share. I'm writing Bottled Embers. It's a sci-fantasy story about a family who take in a lost little girl, and how they make space for her in their lives.
Here's a link to the homepage, in case you want to take a look. 🧡
These are great questions and it's great to read these responses already here.
There are two main fiction stories on the go for me: the fantasy novella of Brae's meteorite and the more sprawling SciFi tale of Precipice.
Emotion, feelings and relationships are possibly the most important conscious layers that I think about, but the places are an equally important layer, too.
Precipice is itself a layered city upon a city, so I suppose for me these concepts are all interweaved. On the fantasy story, aspects of the mystical come in (more so soon, with where the chapters are at), whereas the SciFi is more grounded in a future reality (even though it isn't our world), with an emphasis on climate brought into it.
So many great things going on here. Agree that the more purely human elements - emotions, relationships - are great ways to focus. A couple of impressive projects. I really enjoy seeing where you head with these each week. Thanks Nathan!
The idea is to bring people back to the time of Jesus to experience what it would have been like. It's a sort of historical fiction where each episode will be a character who tells their story and how they were eventually healed by Jesus. I never thought of the layering that goes into these, but clearly the location is important, but also my experience of spirituality is layered in as well. Thank you for drawing out this point to help me embrace these concepts!
Thanks so much for sharing your work, Bryan! Sounds really interesting. Agree there is a ton of layering going on there even without knowing about your personally spirituality that you mention. I guess also with at least one if not more religious texts? I’ll have a look ☺️
Hey everyone. Thanks for this opportunity to share. This is a long one...
At the moment I'm working a short story set in my WIP Children of Shadows universe, a speculative world, starting with a post-apocalyptic England after an invasion of alien shadow spirits that take over the children, but building towards a world where an ancient light power can bring back animals, ancestors and deities from prehistoric rock art. I'm serialising the first novella I wrote in this universe here on Substack: https://harveyhamer.substack.com/s/children-of-shadows
Some of the writing in the early chapters comes from my first version of the story at age ten! When I was eighteen I worked that story into the novella I'm sharing, and at 21 now am still exploring that universe after completing two novels and working on the third will have short story interludes.
Which sort of brings me to answering the second question. The short story I'm working on at the moment is many-layered with history and mythology, and probably my own experiences and world-view that work their way in there. The whole cave art part of the universe came from visiting prehistoric sites in France when I was nine years old, and I revisited last year while working on the first novel and making notes for the brewing idea of the second. This third one is much more global, so for this interlude section I'm tracing a magical alien crystal from prehistoric Britain, to Roman Britain, then traded all the way to India where its energy will be what brings ancient rock art of an ancient army, of hunter gatherers to elephant riders and Hindu gods, to life. So I'm layering the universalities of mythologies, human commonalities in art and faith. There's been ideas that arise in the process, like a comparison of colonialism, the Roman Empire in Britain to the British Empire in India. I've been talking about the story in my weekly roundup posts as I visit the sites in Britain that I'm currently writing about, and discovering.
Here's a link to those too: https://harveyhamer.substack.com/s/weekly-roundup
And now to your places question, which I've sort of answered. I've been so enjoying finding the most intricate details down to the exact couple of years I want to set the Roman Britain part of my story, to the prehistoric henges and enclosures beneath Oxford where the crystal lands, finding the right one for Neolithic and then the later beaker Bronze Age population. There's also the sort of spiritual mind place where the protagonist of the story is being shown the vision of the crystal journey, in a sea of 'cosmic fluid' shown to him by the cave art Shiva. (I don't know when I'll be sharing this story; I'm pursuing traditional publishing for these novels, though have self-published 22 books in the past.)
In relation to spaces as well, contacting the volunteers at a Roman villa has led to me receiving so many pdfs of old historical records, of the mosaics that have since been stolen, of the colour of plaster found in each room, so I've really been able to bring that place to life in the detail that I love. Then I'm using artwork done for guides and museums of places like Roman St. Albans or Richborough. And you mentioned pastiche in the audio... one of my next short stories will be, or at least I'm aiming for, a full pastiche of art, ideas, from song lyrics to writers' quotes, to theories of existence and the levels of consciousness, all human thought and imagery coalescing into one sort of vision.
Phew, that's a long comment, but I guess I wanted to share, Thanks for reading.
22 books?! Wow, congrats! Yes, the publishing world is a strange one to navigate, and sometimes even if trad publishing is available, I think self publishing can be the way to go. It depends on so much! Good luck with that.
You bring up so many interesting layers! I can see it will be interesting to have you on this journey :) Look forward to your thoughts along the way!
St Alban is such a beautiful place. Interesting ideas about the way you are brining together art / museums/ history/etc in fiction. England is undergoing a lot of transition at the moment. It's an interesting time to be writing about it and reinventing it yourself. Thanks so much for sharing your work with us!
Thank you for the kind words and well wishes!
OK here we go!
1. I've been working on a piece based on the story of my biological family told to me by a person I connected with on 23andme. Apparently, my father was one of six kids of a single mother living in a car in Reno in the 1950s. At some point, the kids were all taken away and dispersed to the four winds, some to California, some to Texas. I've been trying to imagine how that happened, who my grandmother was, what it was like for her and her children, why they were there and what it was like.
2. I suppose the layering comes from the bare historical kernel, my own suppositions about what homelessness in the 1950s would have been like, and some background characters I've imagined: a junkyard owner who lets them live in his yard in exchange for the mother's "companionship" - a hobo from the Appalachians living in the same junkyard, etc. Some details from this crazy book I read a long time ago called "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer about the different waves of immigrants from England to the Americas.
3. The place of course: Reno (land of divorce!) and the streets of the same. Also what's it like living in a car with six other people? The place-feel is strong in the construction of this story.
Wow, Troy, this is an incredible project. So personal and yet so imaginative at the same time. I can see why you'd want to explore the gaps of information alongside what you've learned and try to piece this puzzle together. Reno - yeah, that is ripe for story - and then maybe it feels like such a real place and then parts of it are just like elsewhere? I really don't know. I have a friend from Vegas and everyone's always like "but how can you be from Vegas??" and he says it's just another place. I don't know if I'm making sense :)
Good luck with this wonderful endeavor. It takes a lot of empathy and imagination to to consider what it was like for your father's mother. I look forward to reading this if you decide to share it - or maybe we have already seen pieces of it on your Stack? I came to your writing via a shared post and now I've gone back to look at your About. Hello, fellow American emigrant in Europe.
Hello, fellow emigrant! "Six Kids in a Car" is just a short story at the moment, unfinished, will share. I'm working on a bigger project, to be announced very soon, a serial novella.
Great post. This really made me think about the crime fiction and I currently working on and how to change/manoeuvre the settings to aid the pace and plot. Thank you.
Awesome, Jon. From cartoons to crime! Will you divulge the setting of your project?
I already have three crime novellas out but the fourth is set in different museums and it was these places and spaces I was thinking about and your post brought some clarity to how I should go about them 😁
Sounds great. A museum is ripe with knowledge...hiding spaces...very cool.
What project of fiction are you working on or want to start? How is it a fiction (and not)?
I'm a filmmaker and working on several projects. Two are active so I'll limit myself to them. One is a anthology of short films of which I'm midway in production of the second of six. Another is a feature length gaspunk fantasy about a puppeteer and his apprentice which I hope to leverage the experience of producing the anthology to help build the experience necessary to make, while I work on the script for now. In the interim I make experimental shorts and write on Indulging a Second Look https://polarisdib.substack.com/ .
I mostly conceive and work in fiction, I generally have a hard time driving myself with documentary (I can work on other people's documentaries, but mostly don't make my own) or other nonfiction works. This is because a lot of nonfiction film involves sitting and capturing a lot of various content and seeing the story that comes out of it, whereas I come up with stories I want to render out. I more often want to compose a shot than find a good composition, is what I mean.
In what ways do you already layer your art? Which elements are conscious choices and which simply emerge in the creative process, unbidden?
Layering can actually refer technically to a nonlinear editing timeline and how images are composited together for visual effects, so that's one easy answer. And I personally am obsessed with texture, color, and embedded compositions (frames within frames etc) so that's another. I do a lot of glitch art and processing / generative art which involves layering multiple outputs together to make a cohesive whole.
But from a storytelling perspective, to me the biggest importance is not just having your a plot / b plot character arcs or whatever but also making sure you have an emotional, intellectual, AND visceral arc. An ideal movie is one that takes your body, mind, and emotions all through their own ups and downs.
To what extent are places and spaces features in your work? How might considering these elements in different ways enhance fiction?
Space is hugely important in film, and I really started feeling like film could do what I wanted to do with it when I saw Antonioni's movies in high school and college: his open vistas and architectural shots. I actually made this short about how I'd spend a lot of my childhood looking at the light bouncing off corners of my bedroom and wonder how it was possible to describe the space between me and the corner:
https://polarisdib.substack.com/p/symposium-2-nostalgia
I also love experimental cinema and trippy thrillers / horror / drug films for getting into mindspaces and creating experiential entertainment. You can 'look out' or 'go in' and that's one of the most fun aspects.
hi DB, thanks for sharing such interesting insight into your work! I love to watch and study film, but I've yet to work on one except editing parts of a script for a Japanese film this summer (that was fun! and no, I don't speak Japanese). So, it sounds like aesthetics as well as editing devices are in some way telling your story in the way they create the emotion, etc, -- is that right? It's interesting also the way you bring it back to a study of light in real life. Thanks for sharing. Look forward to learning more about your work.
"it sounds like aesthetics as well as editing devices are in some way telling your story in the way they create the emotion, etc, -- is that right?"
Right. There's the dialog and characterization and plot points -- writing. There's the mise-en-scene -- directing, plus its supervision over other storyteller-collaborators such as the cinematography, production design, and performers. There's the editing and sound design -- post-production. Each tell the story in different ways.
I kept thinking about 'layers' after leaving my last comment and it would be an interesting experimental film concept to see 'how few layers' you could make a complete film or idea from. One of the most minimal styles of experimental film is literally just cutting back and forth between clear film leader and black film leader, creating various patterns of flashing. Even that means the intervals of flashing are some sort of layer.
That’s a lovely idea. It would really allow you to play with some cool aesthetics and concepts. You could perhaps do part of a film with one layer focus, then switch? As if from a different perspective?
Somewhat related, I loved this (faux) one shot film about hairdressers and a murder mystery I saw on MUBI recently. I think it was called Hair?
Can’t edit on phone -- Medusa Deluxe! 2022.
Hmm, I love these questions, Kate!
1. I have a few pieces of very short fiction centered around interior rooms, and then creating the background story of the inhabitants of that space. It's purely fictional as both the images of the people and the spaces do not exist - I create them using artificial intelligence.
2. It's layered in that I want the reader to appreciate several different aspects of the piece: - the visual interior design of the space - the wordsmithing - the content of the inhabitants' story - the showcasing of a diverse representation of families & people. These are largely conscious choices.
3. Places and spaces are the the MAIN story for me, actually - even more important than the story really. I enjoy writing a lot, but my focus is the interiors. So the story is a carrier to showcase the interiors in a more contextual way.
An example of one such fictional story centered around interiors: https://practicallyfabulous.substack.com/p/017-a-refuge-of-love-in-london
Wow what an amazing way of creating fiction! Your substack work has always intrigued me. I like how you move into fiction at times on there as well (like the one you post). AI brings in a whole new element for this creation!
Thank you, Kate! I haven't done a fiction piece in a while just because they take a bit more time than the colour pieces and I'm focused on getting my interior design studies complete. But I look forward to returning to them and your Substack is great motivation to do that! :-)
Can't wait to see it!
Hey, this is cool! Thanks for the opportunity to share. I'm writing Bottled Embers. It's a sci-fantasy story about a family who take in a lost little girl, and how they make space for her in their lives.
Here's a link to the homepage, in case you want to take a look. 🧡
https://jennyhoman01.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=25941x
Sounds fascinating, Jenny. Thanks for sharing your work with us! I'll check it out. I know there are some other sci-fi writers here as well.
Thanks so much! I will be looking through the comments too, fishing for my next off season reading. I'm sure this will be a goldmine!
🤩
I’ve started a substack of intelligent, inquisitive and playful writing that’ll stop you in your tracks.
“My love poems were merely whispered in unpeopled places alighting upon the breeze and sailing away unheard. No one cared to listen. No one cared.”
https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-crow
Sounds like a fun mix! Thanks for sharing a link to your work and joining us here, Jonathan!
These are great questions and it's great to read these responses already here.
There are two main fiction stories on the go for me: the fantasy novella of Brae's meteorite and the more sprawling SciFi tale of Precipice.
Emotion, feelings and relationships are possibly the most important conscious layers that I think about, but the places are an equally important layer, too.
Precipice is itself a layered city upon a city, so I suppose for me these concepts are all interweaved. On the fantasy story, aspects of the mystical come in (more so soon, with where the chapters are at), whereas the SciFi is more grounded in a future reality (even though it isn't our world), with an emphasis on climate brought into it.
These sound fun. I love the idea about the layered city, it adds such built in history to the idea.
Thanks Bryan, it's been a fun process so far!
So many great things going on here. Agree that the more purely human elements - emotions, relationships - are great ways to focus. A couple of impressive projects. I really enjoy seeing where you head with these each week. Thanks Nathan!
I write a flash fiction substack and just started a "Healer" series. Here's the first: https://bryangullette.substack.com/p/darkness.
The idea is to bring people back to the time of Jesus to experience what it would have been like. It's a sort of historical fiction where each episode will be a character who tells their story and how they were eventually healed by Jesus. I never thought of the layering that goes into these, but clearly the location is important, but also my experience of spirituality is layered in as well. Thank you for drawing out this point to help me embrace these concepts!
Thanks so much for sharing your work, Bryan! Sounds really interesting. Agree there is a ton of layering going on there even without knowing about your personally spirituality that you mention. I guess also with at least one if not more religious texts? I’ll have a look ☺️