Thanks to Mary for passing this on from Facebook. This is a 1997 Apple commercial, narrated by Steve Jobs. It never was shown. The version that went public had Richard Dreyfus doing the voice-overs. Here it is with Steve’s voice. Happy Sunday!
“I have no interest in retail; I have no interest in opening a bookstore,” said Ann Patchett, whose Parnassus bookstore opened Wednesday in Nashville. “I also have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore,” she continued.
Author Ann Patchett welcomes customers to Parnassus Books
Nashville, once called “the Athens of the South,” lost it’s last independent bookstore and its Borders, in what one local writer called, “a civic tragedy.” Cultural leaders held meetings in the public library, and hatched such ideas as a co-op bookstore, with individual investments of $1000 to startup. Nothing came of those suggestions. Then Patchett, the best selling author of Bel Canto and Truth and Beauty, began to think of opening a store.
In April, she met with Karen Hayes, who had worked with a large book wholesaler and as a sales rep for Random House. The two became partners and co-owners. Patchett, whose most recent book, State of Wonder, reached number 3 on the New York Times bestseller list, put up an initial investment of $300,00. When she went on a 15 city book tour last summer, she was bursting with questions for the owners of all the stores she visited: How many square feet? How many employees? What makes this store work?
“Put the children’s section in the back of the store,” (so if they bolt, they can be stopped before they hit the street). “If you hang signs from the ceiling, people will buy what’s advertised on them.” “Make your store comforting and inclusive, smart but not snobby.” These were bits of advice she gained from others in the trenches. Like other independent bookstores, Parnassus will use Google to offer ebooks to customers. (“Novelist Fights the Tide by Opening a Bookstore,” by Julie Bosman, The New York Times, Nov. 16, 2011, p. A1).
Stocking the children's section
In an NPR interview, Ann Patchett said she felt nervous, “like the first day of school,” but added, “I actually think this is going to go really, really well.” http://www.npr.org/2011/11/16/142413792/ann-patchett-opens-parnassus-books-in-nashville
Patchett says Parnassus is her “gift to the city.” Compared to the bookstores Nashville lost, Ms Patchett’s store, at 2500′, is tiny, but she says, “This is the way bookstores used to be. This is the bookstore of my childhood, and I feel fantastic being back here.”
I think maybe all of us can remember the magic of childhood bookstores and wish Ann Patchett, Karen Hayes, and the city of Nashville great success with their latest enterprise.
I just received this announcement for the 81st annual Writer’s Digest writing competition, seeking entries in ten categories:
As one would expect, there are nice prizes and nominal entry fees, with the top ten winners in each category to be named in the November, 2012 issue of Writer’s Digest. Here is a link to the announcement page, where you can find links to the rules and regulations, as well a place to sign up for notification of the many contests WD holds every year, especially for short fiction and poetry.
http://www.writersdigest.com/competitions/writers-digest-annual-competition
If you’re interested in the Children’s/YA section, you will notice that although the category is listed on the main page, details such as word count are missing from the rules and the FAQs. There is a “Contact us” link that gives phone number and email for questions like this.
Good luck to everyone. I know several people who have been listed in the “top ten,” and it’s quite an honor, since the Writer’s Digest competitions always draw a large number of entries.
Bella Lugosi's Dracula
When I was 15, my family lived in Europe. My room, at the far end of the house, opened onto a patio through French doors that you could unlatch with a butter knife. I decided it would be fun to read Dracula late at night, after everyone else had gone to bed. Dumb – really dumb! I know I’m not the only one to seek the thrill of a scary movie or book and get a whole lot more than they bargained for. Let’s just say that for weeks after that, I took a clove of garlic to rub the French door frame every night before bed.
When I first went to college, we had a saying: “Wherever two or more are gathered, they will start a film society.” Friday nights on campus, I watched, Nosferatu, 1922, which made Bela Lugosi’s count seem tame.
Count Orlock in Nosferatu
Then there was Carl Dryer’s 1932, Vampyr, a movie whose plot I have never been able to decipher, but whose haunting imagery gives a truly creepy feeling of being in a coffin and seeing the face of the vampire who killed you peering through the glass in the lid.
The young protagonist of Vampyr. Is he really dead or only dreaming?
Once upon a time, vampires were not sensitive hunks and hunkettes. Team Orlock? I don’t think so! And trust me, you don’t want a date with Dracula’s brides:
Dracula's better halves? Don't you believe it!
But alas, we are so besotted with undead who love poetry and walks on the beach that not even the current owners of Bran castle in Romania, the one that inspired Bram Stoker, are immune to draw of vampire fandom.
Sign on the way to Bran Castle, Romania
It turns out that the castle that overlooks the town of Bran is not even scary, although the real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, is supposed to have passed through the valley in the 15th century. And NPR correspondent, Meghan Sullivan, says it’s a little disconcerting to see t-shirts on some of the pilgrims proclaiming that, “All Romanians are Vampires.” http://www.npr.org/2011/11/13/142256325/in-transylvania-sometimes-a-bat-is-just-a-bat
Castle Bran, which inspired Bram Stoker
I guess it will just have to fall to the next generation to restore a fictional world where, to paraphrase Garrison Keeler, “All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, all the children are above average, and vampires are nobody’s sweetheart!”
At 11:00am, on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the insanity of the First World War came to an end. Though the United States holiday was renamed to Veterans Day after World War II, it is still known as Armistice Day in France and Belgium. It is known as the Day of Peace in Flanders Field, where many of the dead from the western front are buried and one of the most famous poems of this war or any war was written.
Poppies near the Connaught British cemetery on the western front
Poppies are an annual, summer-blooming wildflower whose seeds are carried on the wind. They can lie dormant for a long time but will bloom if the earth is disturbed – as it was, of course, during the years of trench warfare. In many parts of the line, in the summers of 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918, the little poppies shone as the only symbol of life amid the devastation of no-mans land.
In May, 1915, Major John McCrae, a Canadian military doctor and artillery commander, noticed the poppies growing in the disturbed ground between the graves that surrounded his artillery position near Ypres. When the chaplain was called away, McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service for a friend. We think he began his famous poem that evening.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
***
***
Even more than McCrae’s poem, Armistice Day / Veterans’ Day brings to mind a song by the Scottish musician, Andy Stewart. His song, “Young Jimmy in Flanders,” commemorates his uncle James who served as a piper during the war, and miraculously survived. More than any other picture or poem or story, this ballad evokes for me the terrible sadness and anger at this conflict where boys playing bagpipes led troops against machine guns and poison gas:
He played his pipes to battle,
and the laddies died like cattle,
and the brandy was drunk in Whitehall,
a million miles away.
This song is recorded on Stewart’s fine album, “Fire in the Glen,” 1991.
Think the new world of publishing is complicated these days? Here’s another option in the mix: Espresso. That is the name of the new book printing device just purchased by the Sacramento Library. Espresso is a $150,000 machine that works from digital files and can print and bind a softcover book, up to 800 pages in length, in about five minutes. Only a few of the machines exist in California, and this is the only new model west of the Mississippi. It comes to us through a grant from the California Library Association.
Printing costs are TBD. Setup costs for original books are likely to run to $100, while ordering one of millions of books in available databases – titles no longer in print, or not to be found in bookstores or library shelves, are likely to be around $9. Here are a few more things the downtown library plans to do with Espresso:
In connection with the original books, the library has started what it is calling the I Street Community Writing and Publishing Center. The library will start holding writing classes in branches to try to replace the recently ended UC Davis Extension Creative Writing program. “It’s really about working that connection between reading and writing and community,” said [Library Director] Rivkah Sass. There are also discussions of using the machine to support 916 INK, a new program that includes publishing student authors as a key part of literacy education. http://www.sacbee.com/2011/10/21/v-print/3992292/sacramento-library-will-unveil.html
I’ve never researched costs, procedures, and shipping options for print-on-demand, so I don’t know if this will be competitive for writers looking to self-publish quantities of books, but one exciting use comes to mind: family memoirs, histories, and diaries. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have the recorded thoughts of the ancestors who lived a few generations back?
In the first days of personal computers – of TRS-80’s, Commodore64’s, and Apple-IIe’s, there was a distinct, “Power to the People” ethic among the early adapters of gear that had once belonged only to corporate elites. “Be careful what you wish for,” comes to mind when I confront my own elitist ideas on writing. Everyone who has ever downloaded a really terrible, $0.99 ebook knows what I mean, and I did that a lot when I first got my Kindle.
Yet when I read of the library’s plans to offer and guide this advance in the democratization of publishing, I am filled with a lot of hope. This Pandora’s Box is now fully open; there’s no going back, and up to us to apply creativity to the new tools.
I think it’s analogous to blogging. There are hundreds of thousands out there, but given limited time, you have to be choosy. Thanks for choosing The First Gates today!
Red Riding Hood, by Gustave Dore
In my last post, I said I was going to review some folktales to see if any conventions of the “three act structure,” used in contemporary fiction and cinema, apply. Lest I be accused of hubris, I did not say I was going to be systematic about this. My qualifications are simply a lifetime of love for this stuff. Here are a few random observations.
The first thing I noticed – and I should have expected this – was the apples and oranges nature of my comparison between long fiction and short, between modern novels and screenplays and the kinds of tales you find in Grimm and other folklore collections.
Some longer epics do mesh with the three act structure. In Homer’s Iliad, plot point #1 is Paris taking Helen to Troy, and plot point #2 is the Trojans wheeling the horse into the city – this is how the 2004 movie, Troy, is structured too. It seems the three act structure only really fits longer fiction. This leads to the question of whether the concepts apply to short fiction at all and to folktales in particular.
Every one of the folktales I reviewed has what Syd Fields called, an “inciting incident,” an event or situation that sets the action in motion. The king is sick, the princess is missing, a dragon is loose on the land. Often this is right where the tale begins, without any other preamble.
In terms of the major plot points, most of the folktales I looked at only have one. Some have two and a few do not have any. Are there any plot points, in the sense of a major crossroad, in the tale of Red Riding Hood? Not really. The unfortunate girl obeys her mother – “Take this basket to grandmother” – and events roll on to their unfortunate conclusion.
Cinderella has a single plot point. The fairy godmother asks, “Do you want to go to the ball?” When Cinderella says yes, her happy fate unrolls like destiny.
Cinderella by Edmund Dulac
Another common folktale set up has just one decision point: three brothers or three sisters set off on quest. Each of them meets an “insignificant” or repellant creature as they set out. The older siblings are arrogant and come to an unfortunate end. The younger sibling behaves with respect, and the creature’s advice and boons are key to fulfilling the quest and often finding love and riches as well.
A Grimm’s fairytale, “The Water of Life,” is a good example. The king is sick and only the water of life will heal him. Two brothers set out, but disparage an “ugly little dwarf” who offers advice. They wind up stuck – literally – in a mountain pass. The youngest brother, who is open to help, receives it in abundance, both for the immediate quest and in overcoming the treachery of his brothers later on. Although the action is rather complex, the only real decision the brothers face is whether or not to befriend the little man at the side of the road. That choice determines their fate.
Beauty and the Beast by Warwick Goble
Some stories with two plot points echo the three act structure. An example is, “The Pedlar of Swaffham,” which I discussed here a year ago: http://wp.me/pYql4-85. A poor pedlar in the English village of Swaffham dreams he will find gold if he travels to London Bridge. Unlike most people who do not act on their dreams, he decides to go (plot point #1). He spends three days waiting fruitlessly. His decision to stick it out, to believe in his dream, is the second key plot point and is rewarded when a shopkeeper asks what he’s doing. When the pedlar tells him, the shopkeeper says dreams are a lot of foolishness: “Why just last night I dreamed of a bag of gold under the peddlar’s oak in the village of Swaffham, wherever that is, but you don’t see me running all over the countryside, do you?”
A story like this seems so modern in it’s emphasis on trusting oneself and following dreams, it may be surprising to know that Rumi recorded the first version 900 years ago. In other variations, the poor man travels to Baghdad, Jerusalem, or Krakow. Still, in conforming (sort of) to the three act structure, “The Pedlar of Swaffham” is the exception and not the rule.
***
Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. How long the sections are and how we move between them is the province of structure. If you’ve ever heard a good storyteller, you’ve seen them adjust the pacing to match the mood of the audience. You’ve seen gesture, expression, and silence used to enhance the tale in ways a written transcription can never capture.
It’s easier to gain an intuitive sense of how to tell a story aloud than to write one, and easier to structure a short story than a novel or screenplay. Some people may gain a sense of how to structure a novel by reading them, but for the rest of us, constructions like the three act structure form a useful skeleton to build a story. It isn’t the secret of what makes a novel or movie compelling, but I find it a useful bridge to that destination.
In a similar way, structure alone does not explain the magic in my favorite folktales. For that I will have to slow down and consider each one more closely. And there is a topic for more than one future post!
Puss In Boots by Gustave Dore
I found a great post on story and movie structure on one of the blogs I follow, Albert Berg’s Unsanity Files. http://unsanityfiles.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/building-on-the-bones-or-why-structure-doesnt-have-to-be-boring/
Despite Mr. Berg’s caution that discussions of structure has been known to cause some Californian’s heads to explode, I suffered no ill effects (well, maybe a facial tic or two, but I’m still perfectly normal…honest!).
Actually, I credit a Californian, Syd Field, a hugely influential teacher of screenwriting, with formalizing the three act structure as we know it in movies and novels. You hear Field’s book, Screenplay, recommended at writer’s workshops and conferences. It is one of the best references I know on plot and structure. For anyone interested in writing, the “Three Act Structure” is required learning. Even to rebel against it, you need to know what it is. Here is a simple diagram:
This, of course, is a variation on Aristotle’s observation that every story has a beginning, middle, and end. In modern usage, it has become more formal than that. The length of the acts in movies and in books is not arbitrary: it’s 25%, 50%, 25% by default. These numbers are sometimes even spelled out in screenplay contracts, and they are quoted in numerous other books on writing.
In a similar way, the plot points are not just ordinary troubles: they are sometimes called, “doorways of no return.” Examples of Plot Point 1, the first doorway, are when Luke leaves with Obiwan, when Frodo agrees to carry the ring, and when Louise pulls the trigger. After a character steps through the first doorway, plot point #1, their old lives are gone, no longer an option. Plot point two is when the last battle is joined. When Frodo and Sam gaze down into Mordor, they still have an option to cut and run. That choice disappears once they continue. Once they reach the valley, their only options are victory or death.
If you know the running time and have a watch, you can spot these plot points occurring right on time in recent movies. One thing I like to do, because I love old films, is try to see when and if they occur in the classics on TCM. I watched for this recently as I viewed Lost Horizon, and sure enough, this structure was there. I’ve come to the realization before, that Syd Field was not creating something new, as much as clarifying and codifying something successful screenwriters had already been using because because it works.
Which finally brings me around to the point of this post:
I was paging through some Google search results on “three act structure” and saw one author claim it was “fundamental to storytelling.” As someone who spent 20 years in the Sacramento Storyteller’s Guild, I thought, “Wait a minute. If you want to get ‘fundamental’ you aren’t going to do it with written fiction. Fundamental storytelling means our worldwide oral tradition.
You find it in collections of folklore, the older the better: in epics and fireside tales and sacred stories from all cultures: in recordings of storytellers from library archives or recent storytelling festivals.
It also means stories we can hear at this years Tellabration, a day of storytelling that will happen around the world this year on November, 19. http://www.tellabration.org/
What I am going to do is informally browse and listen to some of my favorite folktales to see what relationship they may or may not have to the three act structure as it has evolved in our literary and cinematic arenas.
We know that every story has a beginning, middle, and end – if it doesn’t, it may be a vignette or a character portrait, but it is not a story. We also know that the progression of folklore and myth tends to be “simple” rather than “complex.” In other words, you aren’t going to find a lot of twists and reversals.
What else? That is what I am going to explore for next time.
The First Gates 