Recently, on a whim, I decided to set Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market to music. I had a lot of fun doing that, as I expected. What I didn’t expect was that the experience would teach me something about writing fiction. But remember, art is holistic.
The reason I decided to share my experience of adapting Goblin Market to music is that it makes for an excellent teaching opportunity. In other words, I want to share with you what I learned from this, because I believe it can be very efficient for anyone interested in writing fiction.
At the end of this post, I’ll also share a link to the album, which you can stream or download for free.
Cover of the Goblin Market music album. The Focus Protocol is a lo-fi music vehicle for some of my artistic ideas(more…)
Literature in the audiovisual era. Can it survive, and how? I’m bouncing ideas off Igor da Silva Livramento, friend and fellow writer, academic, and creative-writing advisor. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. You can find him on LinkedIn, and also take a look at his blog and his page on Bandcamp.
Chris: The idea behind this post began as a series of what-if thoughts and musings. We were talking about a generational disconnect in terms of readers’ ability to fill in the gaps.
Igor: Younger-generation writers grew up with (anglophone) young-adult fantasy and science fiction. Literally everything is spoon-fed to them, all details, all plot points, everything. I don’t like that. I wholeheartedly believe in strategic holes and unexplainables.
Igor: Suggesting is much more powerful than showing, because the imagination is boundless, thus filling the vacuum with something truly intense. This is the tactic I’ve found for my literature to survive in a predominantly audiovisual era.
How can literature survive in the audiovisual era, where vision & sound give the illusion of everything?(more…)
Today’s post on the concept of rhythm in prose is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English.
So you’ve heard of rhythm. It exists most explicitly in music, especially music with drums and beats and looping patterns. It also exists in poetry, with its rhyming and metrical patterns.
