David L. Atkinson's Blog, page 123

Writing - Emotional hooks

When we write we are obviously trying to engage with the reader on all sorts of levels but if we can generate tears -one of the most powerful reactions to emotional situations - we are doing well. Cessation is the sixth novel that I've written and two people have admitted to tears already. In a perverse way it has given me great satisfaction to have elicited that response and got me to thinking about how others achieve such success.
Now it could be that as I'm growing older I'm becoming softer but it is not unusual for me to be moved to tears these days but here are some examples of when that has occurred.
Harry Potter



Emma Watson as Hermione Granger
I know this is partly down to acting and the director but the concept was putt there by the author J K Rowling and occurs in the first five minutes of the film. Hermione uses her wand to wipe the memories of herself from her parents minds. Perhaps those of us who are parents may well react more strongly than people who have that pleasure to come.
Notting Hill
Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant
This is what I'd describe as a 'bog standard' happy ending. The two of them declare their love across a room crowded with reporters and it is handled very well. Sometimes this type of ending relies on the watcher having invested some concentration on the story to produce a soggy reaction and I can be quite unmoved in most instances but this film does the trick.
Schindler's List
Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley
This ending is in some ways like the one above but is in fact a great example of empathy centred on a true story. Once again the skill of the film makers mustn't be ignored but the situation is significant. The book is based on truth and encourages the reader to put him/herself in the shoes of the prisoner's, the soldiers and Oskar Schindler. It wouldn't be true to say that Schindler was a good person throughout but his final actions grew out of greed and a strong sense of self-preservation and were significant.
The last story has similarities with Dicken's 'A Christmas Carol' where Scrooge turns from being a dour old miser and becomes the epitome of benevolence finally reconciling with his nephew and helping the Cratchits.It is hoped that by producing these examples it will help fellow writers keep emotion on the agenda when they write and show some situations in which it can be developed.
God Bless

Poetry Thursday 104 - Emotion and a new form

I was asked the question both last week then again yesterday about where poetry comes from. In a number of comments over the 100+ weeks that I've been concentrating on poetry I have probably addressed the question in a number of ways. For me it boils down to the expression of emotion and as such is available to everyone. It's true that there are a variety of ways of getting your feelings down on paper, different structures like haiku, sonnets, couplets and blank verse to name a few, but it is good to begin when you are feeling emotionally charged for whatever reason.

There are some offerings below that have been generated in the last few days. That's not to say in the second case that I am feeling unduly depressed or despondent but have reflected back to a time when I was being treated for clinical depression and have tried to produce a word painting of what it felt like at that time.
The haiku was written on the spur of the moment and was appropriate to the day.

[image error]All Fool’s Day
April Fool againCold day for gullible folkButt of others’ joke©David L Atkinson April 2014

Despond
The sheer sides of the troughslick, black with tears of despond and frustration.Hope - the chance of footholds by which to escape.Reality that they are as slick asthe walls when they appear.False hope makes them seem obviousbut user instructions lie providingfurther lubrication.There is a bright unreachable sky and the ground is normal and variedlike a grassy field, or sandy beach.BUT there is no escape.You live with the inevitability, exist inyour time and succeed, but they don’t know.©David L Atkinson April 2014
It may be the above grows even further in the future but there comes a time when you have to commit to paper.
However, poetry may also be fun and you can write funny haiku, limericks or villanelles. The latter is quite a complex, highly structured French form of poetry although it began as a less fixed form prior to its development at the beginning of the 17th century. It was derived from a poem by Jean Passerat written around 1606. Rather than try to describe the form the sample below follows the format closely.
The subject is based upon the current situation of Sunderland AFC's current plight.

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A Sunderland Villanelle
Sunderland is a wicked teamThe epitome of great playThey may yet fulfil the dream
Football is to me the schemeSkills and thrills brighten SaturdaySunderland is a wicked team
And if they may sour the creamIt was no fault of their displayThey may yet fulfil the dream
When Poyet instils self-esteemEnemies are simple to slaySunderland is a wicked team
As the pressure grows more extremeAnd time allowed quick to decayThey may yet fulfil the dream
Red and white warriors forward streamWords to football’s gods I praySunderland is a wicked teamThey may yet fulfil the dream.©David L Atkinson April 2014
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Marketing

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As a further effort in  getting my work out there I have signed up to the above site which claims 90 million readers.
http://www.scribd.com/dla1950

God Bless

Writing - April 1st and all that

April 1 is named FOOL'S DAY, after Steve April. He was born on 1st April 1579. He did 105 businesses in his lifetime. He lost all his father's assets, and so everyone started calling him father of the fools.
At 19, he married a 61-year-old woman who divorced him after a year because of his foolishness. He used to read all kinds of fake stories like you are doing now.
It's great idea fooling you ...Happy April Fool.!

Haiku
April Fool againCold day for gullible folkButt of others joke
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April 1st 1957 Panorama hoaxed the nation with a report about the annual spaghetti harvest.The report showed farmers apparently picking spaghetti from trees and laying the strands out to dry. BBC reporter Richard Dimbleby was in on the joke and his authority lent credence to the ruse.Michael Peacock, the editor who commissioned the film, recalls how his team came up with the idea and kept it secret before broadcasting to a credulous audience.Among those hoaxed included the then-BBC Director General, Sir Ian Jacob. The reaction to the film was huge. Newspapers were split over whether this was a great joke or a terrible hoax on the public.The power of words should never be underestimated!Playing tricks related to a particular date is not new in fact it has gone back to the 6th century in Iran (Persia). It doesn't always have to be date specific and the purpose of playing pranks can be to alleviate tensions or even boredom. As a teacher a number of colleagues and myself would diffuse potentially unpleasant situations by sending unruly children to a colleague friend for a 'long stand' or a 'glass hammer'!
And Finally
The GuardianApparently Darth Vader runs for president of the Ukrainian Internet Party.
[image error]"I alone can make an empire out of a republic, to restore former glory, to return lost territories and pride for this country"
God Bless

Tuesday Recipe - Penne Carbonara and Fusilli salad

A couple of offerings this week but once again on the Italian theme. I enjoy carbonara sauce and have had it with spaghetti but I found a recipe by James Martin using penne pasta.

This very simple looking dish is so easy and very tasty but has a spin off for breakfast. The recipe requires three egg yolks and as always there is a question about what you do with the left over whites. I made a breakfast omelette and added a little pancetta to bring the taste up a little. With the best will in the world, on their own, egg whites are pretty bland.
The full recipe is on the TAB
Fusilli salad
As the weather is warming up I was feeling the need for a salad and what better than Italian pasta salad. This is so easy. The only cooking is the pasta which needs cooking according to packet instructions if you are without a pasta maker. Then there is a blend of extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a little sugar to make a simple dressing. Finally, a sharp knife to cut up vine ripened cherry tomatoes, black olives, then crumbled feta cheese and toasted pine nuts. This is served with rocket and is very tasty. Don't forget the pine nuts, they are essential.
God Bless

Writing - Footprints

As you get older thoughts turn towards what we leave behind when we die. I'm not just referring to money but more the value our lives have had, in short we want to be remembered. But, irrespective of how hard we try, we still leave traces (footprints) as if we'd never bothered making an effort. Those signs are often small but nevertheless memorable. We shouldn't worry as our loved ones will pass on memories. 
My mother was conscripted during WWII to make parts for Lancaster bombers. My father was taken off the beaches at Dunkirk in the same conflict. Just two examples of what I'm talking about.Of course some footprints are more tangible like the skeleton of Richard of York beneath a car park in Leicester and the latest discovery beneath London.
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Skeletons unearthed in London Crossrail excavations are Black Death victims from the great pandemic of the 14th Century, forensic tests indicate.Their teeth contain DNA from the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis and their graves have been dated to 1348-50.Records say thousands of Londoners perished and their corpses were dumped in a mass grave outside the City, but its exact location was a mystery.Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

This discovery solves a 660-year-old mystery. It's a hugely important step forward”

Jay CarverLead archaeologist, CrossrailArchaeologists now believe it is under Charterhouse Square near the Barbican.Part of the dating process was down to some pottery found near the bodies from the same period. So everyday objects, someone's favourite bowl perhaps has led to the discovery of long lost bodies which will be re-buried with due respect.Then there is the very significant story of the music that is happening in Afghanistan including a 19 year old female rapper called Ramika. Under the Taliban music and self-expression was banned but now there is an active music course in Kabul. Ramika KhabiriIn Afghanistan, young rappers gathered in Kabul earlier this month to compete to create a rap anthem for April's presidential elections.
Ramika, a 19 year old female rapper from Kabul, was among the competitors, with a rap about the importance of participating in the elections.
The Taliban have threatened those who go to the polls, but many youngsters in Afghanistan say they are planning to defy such intimidation.
What are the Taliban afraid of? Humans leaving signs of individuality perhaps, a change of culture, or people's right for self-expression.

[image error]Flight MH370
The missing aircraft that has dominated the news for three weeks has still not left any footprints of its own. Some objects believed to be from the carcass of the aeroplane turned out to be nothing more than sea rubbish!
It seems that the human race is continually making footmarks and of differing significance. Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK sometimes termed Refreshment Sunday, and it is the second time I've watched the celebrations with feelings of detachment as my own Mam died eighteen months ago. To celebrate her passing I reprint the poem.

  One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.             Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.                  In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.                       Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,                           other times there were one set of footprints.                                  This bothered me because I noticed                                that during the low periods of my life,                             when I was suffering from                         anguish, sorrow or defeat,                     I could see only one set of footprints.          So I said to the Lord,      "You promised me Lord,         that if I followed you,             you would walk with me always.                   But I have noticed that during                          the most trying periods of my life                                 there have only been one                                       set of footprints in the sand.                                           Why, when I needed you most,                                          you have not been there for me?"                                 The Lord replied,                          "The times when you have                  seen only one set of footprints,          is when I carried you."God Bless

Writing - 10 things we didn't know last week

Some great stuff this week from battling sea lions to clever crows and on to Chinese smuggler's haircut in North Korea!
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1. Goats are surprisingly quick witted.
There also very good pets.
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2. Helsinki is the most expensive city in the world to order room service.

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3. Ukraine's navy is equipped with combat sea lions.

Or not!


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4. There have been three cricket matches played at the North Pole.

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5. When crows drop stones into water to make food more accessible, they display the reasoning skills of children aged 5 to 7 years old.

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6. Michael Gove is a fan of chap hop.

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7. Tuberculosis can be passed from cats to their owners.

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8. An aircraft's "black box" is actually two boxes.

They're also orange not black!
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9. Chimpanzees have bromances too.

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10. North Korea's "leader's haircut" - reportedly being rolled out to students across the country - is aesthetically similar to an earlier style known as the "Chinese smuggler haircut".

And the leader's haircut



Quite terrifying when you consider haircuts of leaders round the world. What would we look like if we  all looked like David Cameron, Barack Obama or Angela Merkel? The slightly worrying thing is if you Google world leaders a significant number look uncannily similar to Kim III.
God Bless

Writing - Deliberate misinterpretation and cultural differences

When we write we do so influenced by such subconscious factors as dialect and local cultural idioms. There is a question about how you handle these factors if you are writing for an international market. I often find myself brought up short when referring to different parts of a car and how much confusion it could cause across the pond. Such things as boot for trunk and bonnet for hood spring to mind but I have heard from a relative about something much more amusing. She did an exchange with a teacher from South Dakota who came to work in Yorkshire. The English girl went to the States and took up the corresponding teaching role in a Magnet school. She was confused and somewhat embarrassed when one of her charges made a mistake and couldn't correct it without an eraser which he didn't have. My relative asked the class if anyone had a 'rubber' he could borrow! What a furore!
There is a deal of fun to be had misinterpreting what people say in everyday life such as toasting pine nuts. Read on.
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I love toasted pine nuts but its a bit hard getting them out of the machine when they're ready.
Then of course there is the rubber band - have you ever heard one?

The curse of the writer is such that you can't go anywhere without hearing or seeing. That may seem obvious but all of the senses seem to be heightened towards possibilities and collect snippets of conversation, views and more. Not everything is useful but you can't unhear something. I was seated in a restaurant eating breakfast when I overheard a conversation between three people, two elderly, concerning the NHS in our area. Of no great interest in itself, three people lamenting the demise of our nearest facility and having to travel on a 2 or 4 bus journey to reach the other two hospitals. The one factor that was worrying was that one of the elderly people didn't know where a town no more than twenty miles away was situated. From her accent she was local, but it just goes to show how intensely parochial humans can be if they are secure in their place. If there is no need to visit a place or if you have never had business there, why would you need to know about it? How far does that type of boundary stretch?

In Vietnam



A very unromantic Brit attempted a large romantic gesture for his beautiful Vietnamese wife one day by purchasing a bunch of – what he thought – cheerful yellow flowers. Unbeknownst to the chap these flowers are used to honour the death of a close loved one and are regularly put on ancestral shrines. The wife ended up in tears; he ended up covered in petals and shame.

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Does society care? In the UK 7 000 000 people are not on the internet. The news over the last two days has been dominated by the report into the activities of the massive energy companies. We're constantly being exhorted to switch companies in search of a better deal and they always begin their advice by saying 'just go online'! A ninth of our population can't do that!! Hello!!! Am I the only one aware of that statistic?
The canker worm that is the internet, to some people, has weadled its way into the fabric of society and cut out a significant number of disinterested folk!



God Bless

Writing - The power of fiction

As a closet conspiracy theorist I enjoy reading stories that have been put to good use. Sometimes stories create a 'real' situation by accident rather like the panic caused by the radio broadcast of H G Wells story War of the Worlds. On the other hand there are stories created from real life situations to serve a specific purpose rather like the one below.

The Texas Roswell
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People in Dallas read in their newspaper on 19/04/1897 that"A Windmill Demolishes it" which was written by S E Haydon.Two days before at 06:00 an airship had fallen into the town of Aurora. "It had flown over the town square," Haydon explained, "and when it reached the north part of the town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went to pieces in a terrific explosion."However, the real surprise was in the wreckage. The dead pilot was badly burned, but it was clear "that he was not an inhabitant of this world". Indeed, "Mr T J Weems, the US signal service officer at this place, and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars".The truth was that at that time Aurora was in trouble in the late 1890s. Boll weevils had destroyed the town's cotton crop, while residents had been the victims of a huge fire and some had developed spotted fever. Above all plans for a rail link with Dallas had been shelved."The town was dying," one resident recalled years later. So Haydon decided to get them a little publicity!
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So what other tales have fooled the media over the years?
The Cottingley Fairies 1917[image error]The Cottingley Fairies are a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins living in Cottingley, near Bradford, England, depicting the pair interacting with fairies. When Mr. Wright, upon developing the plates, saw fairies in the pictures, he considered them fake. After the taking of the second picture, he banned Elsie from using the camera again. Her mother, Polly, however was convinced of their authenticity.In the summer of 1919, the matter became public and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes) wrote an article for a leading magazine claiming that they were authentic. However in the early 1980s the sisters who took the photographs admitted that the first four pictures were fakes.Speaking of the first photograph in particular, Frances has said: “I don’t see how people could believe they’re real fairies. I could see the backs of them and the hatpins when the photo was being taken.”Both of the girls claimed, right up to their deaths, that the fifth photo was, in fact, authentic------------------------------------------------There are in fact myriads of tales like Piltdown Man, The Fijian Mermaid and the Cardiff Giant (New York). The April Fool stories will be assaulting our senses in the next week or so but the common denominator in all of the above is the impressive level of creativity. I love words and writing but I also enjoy the reading and learning experience so if you have similar tastes the write, long short, poetry or prose, whichever you prefer. Backing that need to write was author Emma Donoghue.
[image error]Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue is a successful published author whose latest book Room has been nominated for dozens of awards and is to be made into a film. But it wasn't always so. She stated on TV this morning that some books will sell one or two copies and others thousands but if you are a writer you will go on producing works. The bottom line being that she'd written because she loved the exercise.
God Bless

Poetry Thursday 103 - Great Escape

The Great Escape
The prisoners needed a purpose for life, a reason to carry on the endless strife.Escape was the game that engendered hope a narrow, dark passage snakes as rope.

Three dark arteries constructed beneath the earth Tom, Dick and Harry had they come from birth.Endeavour without tools self-created torture but fierce determination to ensure a future.
A dark night with snow covered ground above seventy men crawl through a tunnel made from love.Trees in view the rope is too short!Months of hard work counts for nought.
But wait – the night is yet dark,there was a chance to escape their evil parkStalag Luft III no longer holds menWinter’s dark cloak now enfolds them.
The end was not too far awaysome unfortunates caught the very next day.Most of the number captured by a hated foeand executed in a foreign field by the Gestapo
Some re-incarcerated to serve more timeand perhaps escape further down the line.Their duty as officers and gentlemento cause the enemy maximum mayhem.
But for three the story ends differentlytheir travels were long but with difficultythey returned in time to fair Englandto fly once again as they had planned.
©David L Atkinson March 2014

Writing - accuracy or anally retentive?

I'm a bit of an old 'fart' in that I was brought up in a world where being accurate was an important part of expressing yourself. When I say 'expressing yourself' I am talking in speech as well as in writing. My concern is that standards become so slack that people will no longer understand what each other means when they speak or write! The examples below are there to illustrate the need for being accurate. When we write our stories the accuracy of what we produce is essential in successfully engaging readers. If we didn't bother then inaccuracies would detract from our work and readership would vote with their feet.
Monkey Planet
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I have just seen an advertisement for the new programme ‘Monkey Planet’.The trailer showed a mixture of different types of monkey and then an orang-utan which is an ape not a monkey.It concerns me that there is such a lack of depth of general knowledge in the modern world without adding even further confusion by blatantly misnaming  what is likely to be a popular TV programme.It may be during the broadcast the differences between monkeys and apes will be explained but by that time the damage has been done. As a previous educator and involved in music it is a fact that it is difficult to ‘unlearn’mistakes. Better not to make them in the first place!I would suggest the name ‘Primate Planet’ which, as well as being more accurate, adds punchy alliteration. 

General Knowledge
I recently watched a TV quiz programme in which a young woman was asked to name a country with the Pacific Ocean on its coastline. She said 'Egypt'!



This is not a one off occurrence! Geographical knowledge seems to in decline. Many contestants have demonstrated that they don't know the difference between a county and a country and even cities and countries. What is worse for me is the fact that they don't seem to feel that it is important but if you are unsure of your physical orientation in the world how do you understand the relationships between countries?
Its only a couple of examples of dumbing down but the concern is its tacit acceptance. Of course many of the problems that have been generated are due to changes in educational thinking. However, it is my feeling that as humans we inhabit this planet Earth and as such we should endeavour to understand the planet as best we can but what we seem to be doing more of is trying to understand ourselves. That is okay if we all are going to end up living in solitude in a single room never to exit. There could be a book in there somewhere,
it may be worth further exploration.
Running today on VG.

http://venturegalleries.com/serial/why-had-the-attack-on-him-been-so-different/
God Bless