Welcome to Rock City, a fictional mid-western whose soul is founded in the lyrics of rock music. You’ve been eavesdropping on its citizens for years; singing along with their stories without even knowing it. Join our “Tales from Rock City” short story anthology series as we heed the call to arms of our most passionate, travel along on an epic journey, share stories of love, and relive the glory days of our shared reckless youth.
My favorite part of writing is when I see or hear something and I get a new idea. This moment has several names depending on your beliefs, nearly all fall into two conceptual buckets of either an idea that didn’t exist being created OR an idea that did exist but being found. I fall into the latter camp, that ideas exist and that as creators we find them, catalog them, assemble them, attach meaning to them, translate them into different forms. This belief leads me train and exercise my skills in observation and allowing my brain to chase thoughts and ideas. Whenever I receive inspiration I try to chase it as far as I can.
Yep. I made a coloring book. I was inspired by a creative assignment to make an affirmation sign for my workspace which lead to a few weeks of graphics work, learning about self publishing, and waiting for things in the mail. I am now the proud creator of “Colorful Affirmations” a coloring book (series) of quote inspired affirmations. You can learn all about it here.
Rock City Bus Depot
Wednesday July 19, 1933
10:42 PM
“Don’t leave yet!” Mary shouts as she runs down the street toward the red neon glow of the bus station. She wobbles from the white laundry bag in her left hand weighing her down, holding her back. The bus spouts a dark cloud that rises into the moonlight as it pulls away. Mary’s face drops into disappointment, her legs give up running and resign themselves to a slow walk. Arriving at the porter, she asks “Was that the #7 to Detroit?” “Yep.” he replies. “Drat.” as she walks to the ticket booth, attended by a young woman her age.
While bingeing the latest series in my “slow burn, visually stunning, foreign crime drama” obsession “Trapped” on Amazon Prime I noticed something interesting, an 8 year old girl that plays with Lego and dinosaurs. There are multiple scenes that highlight her favorite toys: correcting her sister on the correct pronunciation of Tyrannosaurus Rex, the toy dinosaur on the dash of her father’s car, bullying a younger boy “Don’t you know how to play with blocks?”, and the scene from the picture below where she is playing with dinosaurs and Lego and her mother joins her. A girl that plays with blocks and dinosaurs, she must be a tomboy right? Nope, just a regular girl. Her parents must try to discourage her and give her “gender appropriate” toys right? Nope, they support her choices. Notice that last example, the mother joins her on the living room floor and participates in her play – a bonding moment between an absent mother and her daughter.
Individually these small moments are easy to miss. Each one is from a different episode, they usually short and part of other scenes, only one is a scene by itself, only one drives the narrative of the story. But collectively they paint a well rounded, non-stereotypical 8 year old girl. Small moments matter. These moments could have been easily replaced with her playing with dolls and bullying the boy from any number of other reasons. They weren’t and now we have a character that can grow up to be an architect or a scientist or anything else she wants to be.
When writing we often focus on large, project defining ways to break stereotypes and build diverse characters. Don’t forget that small moments matter. It is just as important and impactful to build strong supporting and background characters as it is to have barrier breaking main characters.
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Writing for The Rookery Radio Hour I’ve gotten to create some out there, stuff. One of my favorites was the sidekick character, Feliciano, in my preteen demo, reality / educational, old time radio show “Tex Cardinal: Protector of the Wild West.” Imagine it’s 1930 something, you turn on the radio after school and listen to our titular hero help people in situations unique to the west and learn a life lesson in the process.
I had fun writing Feliciano due to the extreme dialogue motif used. Feliciano only spoke in questions. They were often leading questions, but questions all the same. I was asked several times if he ALWAYS had to talk in questions. I answered yes, every sentence in every line of dialogue must be in the form of a question. Just like Jeopardy. If the pattern had been inconsistent the effect wouldn’t have been the same. It would have been annoying and lots of opportunities for the character would have been lost.
Several other speech patterns were used when writing this which helped sell the framing story of the radio show for kids, and to set the location of the characters.
Enjoy, and until next post – happy trails…
I stumbled across the poster (below) I designed (hacked together from existing artwork) for the “Night of the Werewolves” show I did with The Rookery Radio Hour. This show was special to me for several reasons:
I hope you enjoy listening as much as I did writing it. And remember, NONCANONICAL.
Night of the Werewolves Podcast
Simon Keirn 