Wednesday 9 June 2010

Showcase Wednesday #6

This is a Twitter story that caught my eye this week. Click on the heading if you want to visit the author’s Twitter Site. Or the post timestamp to go direct to the story.

Each comma was a slash with a blade. The gaps between each word, final gasps. Brackets, clasped to the throat and crushing. A death sentence.

12:50 PM Jun 8th via web


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Celtic Dreams

Celtic StoriesI was at a strange work meeting yesterday     (training to do work that the new Government is to abolish!) and we did a ice-breaker. One part of which was to say something unusual about yourself. So I mentioned that I write daily nano (140 characters)and micro (50 words) stories and poems. This impressed them (and me) I then explained I was currently reimagining a traditional Celtic story (The Sons of Tuirenn) with the aim of adapting it for a radio play they were even more impressed and I was surprised that they were impressed because I knew the slow hard work of small steps this involved.

Basically most traditional stories as published are neither good literature or good oral tales ready for the telling - you write them very differently. Nor are they related back to the actual society that produced them so they often lack nuances that would enrich them. So I rewrite from one version and then check this against other known versions to build up the most dramatic three act version.

This is then checked against umpteen books about the Celts to see if this affects the story. For example Celts had a very layered society so the amount of the blood-fine paid (if you killed a man you paid a fine to the family to avoid a blood-feud) depended on honour-status. Also the decisions of this process laid more with professional lawsayers then the chiefs who could not make law. If you know The Sons of Tuirenn these are very relevant to how the story could be told.

Then on the way home, an idea poked in, which that I could re-imagine a whole range of Celtic stories but in two versions- one as drama-literature and the other as a retelling version. So at a stroke I would enrage the traditionalists, the nationalists and the odd wandering Bard. Must be a winner!