Clay Head

Mike GristFeatured Story, Stories, Surreal, Writing

by Michael John Grist

There’s a giant head in my living room. It’s made of grey clay and it sings through the night.

It sings songs about America. Sometimes boogie-woogie or the Big Bopper. It sings Buddy Holly. It sings about the plane that crashed and sometimes the song about the crash. It sings about whiskey and rye.

I don’t know why the head sings. I don’t know why the head is in my room, or why I let it stay.

The head doesn’t wake me up when it sings. It sings so low and so slow and so deep that I don’t hear. I hear it in my dreams as I watch the Big Bopper come down in flames. I feel its vibrations, a slow sub-woof all through the night.

It’s a big head, and it blocks the TV, but I can’t do anything about that.

Image by Karina Ishkhanova

I record the big head singing. I record it with a long-playing digital recorder. I have 8 hours of audio before the battery dies. Each night the battery dies a little sooner. I should buy new batteries.

The head sings, and I replay the songs at high speed. It has the voice of a young girl. It sings high and sweet.

I wonder how such a big head can have such a high sweet voice, so slow.

“How is your voice so high and slow?” I ask the big clay head. It sits and stares. Its eyes are two big red buckets. I bought the buckets at a hardware store at the mall.

I know it can hear me. It may be replying, but its answer will be too slow and low and deep for me to hear.

I set the tape that night, and leave it to record. I go to sleep. I dream of crashing planes and purple mountainsides strewn with wreckage.

*

The giant head is sitting in my living-room. I find its eyes pointing upwards to the ceiling when I sit down at the coffee table to eat my cereal. It is looking up. I play back the recording on fast speed.

The giant head answers my question. It says- “I have a high and slow heart.”

I remember the question I asked.

I go to work.

The head sings in my absence.

I feel like there are desert winds moving through the house when the head sings. There is nothing lonelier than a giant head.

When I get back from work I find myself in tears at the door. I am staring at the giant head. It is staring at the wall.

“You can’t walk,” I say to the head. I try to speak slowly. “You can’t move around. You can’t meet other people, or other heads. You’re trapped here.”

I sat and watched it while it slowly slowly answered me. I set the recorder and waited. I’d never waited before. I’d never tried to talk to the head before.

After 30 minutes I cut the recorder and played it back fast.

“That’s true,” said the head.

I threw the recorder on the red sofa. I moved over to the giant grotesque head and touched its cold clammy skin. I felt nothing through it. I felt nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

That night the head sang Irish songs. Sad Irish drinking songs.

*

I brought a friend from work home the next day. Her name was Geena.

“Hello Geena,” I said as I picked her up in my SUV. It’s an old SUV.

“Hey Bob,” she said. “You’re late.”

“The traffic was atrocious,” I say.

Already it’s over.

I brought her back to my place. When she saw the giant clay head she freaked out.

“What the hell is that?” she asked. She stood in the doorway looking at it.

“It’s my art,” I said. “It’s a giant clay head. It sings through the night.”

“It looks freakish.”

“It’s just clay,” I said, taking her arm, giving her a gentle tug. “It won’t bite.”

“Why would you make a giant clay head in the middle of your room?”

“Why does anyone do anything?”

I let go of her arm. She let it fall back down by her side.

Her bag was red and covered in cheap looking red sequins. Like she’d sewn them on herself. They said- MARGE.

Her name was Geena. I knew. Maybe she thought of herself as a Marge. She was a work friend. She didn’t want to come in for dinner.

“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I knew this was a bad idea,” she said. She looked me in the eye. “You’re weird, I knew it.”

She turned and left.

Her left leg seemed a little longer than her right.

I walked over to the big clay head and sat down in its mouth. I could feel it trembling beneath me.

We were both alone.

I dreamt of empty vistas. Like the new Coen brothers movie. Wide open spaces with nothing but occasional death interrupting.

*

The next day there were tear trails down the clay head’s cheeks. But not only tear trails.

Geena’s bag was hanging out of it’s lips.

I watched Geena’s MARGE bag for a time.

Geena had left.

“Geena left, didn’t she?” I asked the giant head.

I looked around the room.

Her cheap nylon mini-skirt was on the floor. So were here high heels, and stockings. Her blouse.

Where was Geena?

I looked at the giant clay head. I knelt over its mouth and pried open its jaws.

Inside its mouth was Geena. She was shivering, her naked skin was goose-bumped. She was white and pale. Her eyes didn’t see me, they flickered fast and sharp at random angles round the room.

“Geena?” I said. She didn’t even seem to notice me.

I ran to the bedroom and pulled the blankets off the bed, lifted her out of the giant mouth, and set her down on the red sofa. I ran to the bathroom and ran a bath. I made it hot, and I added sweet-smelling salts.

I put Marge into the bath. I left a towel, and her clothes on the inside.

Then I went to talk to the giant.

He was looking at the sofa where I’d lain Marge. I was looking at him.

“You can’t do that,” I said to him.

He looked at me. His eyes were looking at the me of the past hour. So I stayed still. And I started slow-talking. I slow-talked like I’ve never done before. I made the words last as long as I could.

“You can’t do that,” I said.

“I know,” said the giant head.

I made myself think slow. I turned off my breathing, or at least forgot about it. I turned off the light and the sound of traffic outside. I turned off the thump of my heart, and I talked to the head.

“You can’t eat people.”

“I was so cold.”

Tears slow-trickled down the head’s cheeks.

“I thought she’d keep me warm.”

“You nearly killed her. How did you even get her back here?”

“I sang her back.”

“Why did you need her? Am I not good enough for you?”

The head shook its head with its eyes. It had no neck to shake its head with.

“No,” said the head. “You come and go. You work. I’m always here. I’m always alone. I can’t move. I can’t see the outdoors.”

“I’ll leave the door open,” I said. “You can see the street.”

“No. Everything is too fast. Everything is wrong for me. I almost killed her.”

“That’s right!”

“I put her in my mouth because I thought it might be warm. But nothing is warm. Everything is cold.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

The tears trickled slow and clay-like down the head’s face. At the carpet they furrowed and bubbled and spread grey clay flat across the floor.

“No,” said the head. “We won’t.”

I was snapped out of the slow-talk trance by a blow round the head. Geena was standing in towels. She had hit me with her bag.

She stepped over me and hit me again.

“Just what kind of psycho are you?” she yelled.

She hit me a few more times. Then she got dressed as I lay on the floor recovering, and then she ran away.

I waited for the police to come. They didn’t come.

I watched the tear pools of the giant head spreading over the floor.

*

That night I dreamt of empty oceans. I was floating in the cold sea. I looked down, but the oceans were empty. I looked up to the sky, but there were no stars.

I was alone. There was nothing.

I woke up chilled to my core.

The door to the apartment was open. My TV and stereo system had been stolen. I forgot to close the door, I guess.

The giant head had cried itself an inch thick across the floor. The clay was washing in slow waves towards my bedroom and towards the kitchen and out towards the door.

His face was sallow and run down, like molten wax. I could see the edges around his loosening bucket eyes.

I played back his songs of the night before.

There were no songs. Only humming. Long slow humming, deep like the tectonic plates grinding under our feet.

*

When I came back from work, the tears were all gone, and he had returned to normal.

“That’s better,” I said.

His roar began shortly after that. It began soft but soon trembled up to an almighty blast that filled the whole house with deep shaking sound. A mirror fell from the bathroom wall and smashed in the sink.

I ran over to him. I put my hands on him, his cold grey skin. I sat down before him, I looked into his bucket eyes.

“Kill me!” he boomed in his slow deep voice.

I hit him with a shovel and went out into the yard.

“Kill me!” he roared out the door. I was digging a hole in the yard. I don’t know why. I found there were tears in my eyes now. I don’t know why.

“I don’t want to live like this!” he cried.

I ran back in and hit him with the shovel to shut him up. I hit him long and hard, until all his features had been knocked askew, his bucket-eyes knocked out of his face. I hit him until he stopped screaming and the sound coming from him became nothing more than a low buzz.

Then I started to take him apart.

I dug out chunks of clay with the shovel. I threw them out into the garden. They flew and lay, grey on the green, sweating in the warm night air.

I cut and diced his whole head. I spread all the little pieces around the garden until there was nothing left in the living room at all.

Though there was something left.

There was the shape of my daughter cut into the clay. I had cut her into it. Lying as she had lain when we lost her.

I watched her.

“Don’t cry, daddy,” she said. Her button eyes stared up at me. I knelt beside her, touched her cheek. Her cheek was cold, cold clay.

“It’s OK,” she said.

I knelt and gulped and fell into paroxysms of shaking and sobbing and hugging her cold clay body close.

*

I came to some time in the night.

The lump of clay I’d thought was my daughter was now no more than a lump of clay.

I stood up. I thought about drinking whiskey. I walked to the open back door to look over the clay spread around the yard.

The clay was moving. Every hunk of clay was stretching up like a plant blooming in the moonlight. They grew up into a tall and tangled forest, and through that forest walked a man, the man with the giant face. He smiled at me. He was whistling the Big Bopper. He came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“It’ll be alright,” he said. He spoke at a normal speed. More tears gushed from my eyes. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

I fell against him in a hug. He hugged me back. His arms were warm. I remembered his smell, the smell of my own father as I’d hug him close. I remembered the times I’d hurt myself and run to him.

After a time he pushed me away, held me at arms length.

“You’ll be fine,” he said.

Then he turned and walked back into the undulating forest of clay branches. Fish swam in the canopies and octopi squidded and darted around.

I found myself laughing as I watched them move.

*

I woke the next day on the sofa. There was clay everywhere. I hadn’t dreamt of anything.

I moved to the lumpen chunk of clay in the center of the room. I opened it up, and dug from out of the middle a small cache of jewelry. A wedding ring. My daughter’s first necklace. Sundries.

I placed them in my pocket.

Then I walked to the yard, took up the shovel, and began to heap up the clay.

I was ready.

*

Later that evening, with all the clay packed, I listened to the final songs of the giant head. He was singing “Danny boy.”

“Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling me. From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.”

He was singing in my daughter’s voice.

It drew the last few tears out of me. I wiped them away. And then I moved on.

END

Read more of MJG’s SF & Fantasy short stories.

Learn about his epic fantasy novel project DAWN RISING.

See Story Art.

Read about the craft of writing.

SunLovePrice Haikyo

Mike GristEntertainment, Haikyo, Tokyo-to

At the time of the Great Tohoku Earthquake in March I was teaching at a composer’s office 10 minutes west of Shinjuku. During the quake and aftermath it was a bit crazy, but soon things calmed down and it was time to go home. All the trains were stopped so I started walking, and on the journey ran across this little haikyo- the Sun Love Price pachinko/restaurant combo.

I dipped in, but with just my iphone camera in the dark interior I could only get blurry photos. A few weeks later I returned to shoot it properly.

I think it was pachinko or some kind of game hut because of all the gaming coins inside.

On the way to my lessons out West I take the Seibu Shinjuku line, and for years now have been amused by this ‘HAIKYO’ building:

Official HAIKYO building.

I’d resolved to go out and shoot it many times, but could never be bothered to go just to shoot a word. This time it was on the way, so worth it.

Why HAIKYO? I think it’s nothing to do with this hobby- the building is occupied by a travel agency.

HAIKYO!

Then onto SunLovePrice. My students in the area told me it was burned down about 5 years ago, and nobody bothered with it since. Was it vandal kids, or just an accident? They didn’t know. I assume nobody died, or I’m sure they would have known about that. I guess the fire service got there pretty quickly, since it’s far from completely burned down.

SunLovePrice ext.

Its neighbor, what I assume was a restaurant- though I couldn’t get access to the ground floor to confirm.

Second floor window with photos of past company presidents hanging loosely from their frames. Remember this shot for a mirror image coming later.

The block of two, both trashed.

Vin. Ater. Tuleen 2010. Hmm…

The ground floor was totally stopped up, but the stairs up the side were wide open, with only a feeble warning rope to step over. Inside, as always, it was quiet, cool, and quite separate from the street outside. On earthquake day I felt weird to be there at all- like it was disrespectful to be ogling ruins on a day when fresh ruin was coming to Japan. Of course at that time I had no idea of the casualties the earthquake and tsunami would incur.

Partially molten umbrella, next to a skeletal umbrella.

The squat toilet is rinsed with black ash. Or I suppose it could just be a really dirty toilet.

These char-marks look like sand in a sun-baked ocean bed.

Blackened plug.

Toilet wash bowl. Did the fire smash it, or vandals coming after?

Last toilet shot, I promise.

From the second floor (first floor to Brits) I could see down to the ground floor, but it was just a tip, not something interesting to see in a photo. There was no interior staircase, so no way down. One narrow corridor, with two rooms shooting off it, one to SunLovePrice and one above the restaurant. Apartments, I guess.

Box of cassette tapes.

The floor is gone, a lone dresser stands in the shadowy corner.

Dresser and vines.

Mangled light shade. For some reason I really like this shot. Maybe for the mild background blur. and black on black.

Charred paper screens.

A polaroid dude studies. The manager?

A more interesting floor shot- boards battered through.

Final mirror matching shot- wilted company presidents upside down and looking out at the street.

I wrote about my earthquake experience in a few blogs for my hometown paper- the Bolton Evening News:

1- Day One pt. 1

2- Day One pt. 2

3- Nuclear Threat

See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

[album id=4 template=compact]

You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

Gellick in the Hax

Mike GristDawn Rising, Featured Story, Jabbler's Mons, Story Art, Writing

Gellick is the rock at the heart of DAWN RISING, my epic fantasy novel. He is the lightest, most fun character, the one least touched by all the chaos outside in the city- though there is plenty of darkness lurking within his stone chest. He is a Balast, a race that calcify with time, losing all fluctility until they are just motionless blocks of stone, unable to think, speak, or move.

It’s a terrible fate, one that comes young and never lets up, that all Balasts seek to stave off through the Hax- an endless recounting of their life stories in sand, constantly reinforcing all their memories to keep them from fading.

Here Gellick writes his life in the lime-dust of the Hax district.

This is the third artwork I’ve commissioned from the world of DAWN RISING. You can see paintings of the main character Dawn here and of Mare the half-head thief here. Again I commissioned with Bryan Fowler.

As before, we started with a number of study images to get a flavor of how Gellick should look. First was the bulky, hulking nature of Gellick- something similar to these rock-monsters from a table-top RPG game:

Like this but not the same.

Next came the texture of his skin, and his eyes. All Balasts begin life with beautiful jewelly bodies, which slowly corrode and calcify over time. Gellick is only 12, like the others in the story, but his skin is already blackening, though his eyes are still a bright emerald green. I sent this image of volcanic rock with slight shimmering patches to get an idea of his skin tone.

Another reference we drew on for his physicality was the rockbiter from Never Ending Story. I have always loved the story, and the loss felt by the Rockbiter as he realizes his body is failing him. No doubt it went some way to inspire Gellick and the Balasts.

Last is the environment Gellick should be standing in; the Hax. It is an industrial area clouded with the white dust of pounded lime and grindstone, rising out of the Rockshares where Balasts work at mining and rock-smithing. Everything is coated in a constant blanket of white limey rock dust. To that end I drew on a haikyo- the White Stone Mine, which dealt hugely with limestone, and led to every bit of the factory being rimed with it white.

White Stone Mine.

Also since everything is built by these huge blocky Balasts, feeble and precise constructions of wood are out of the question. Instead all structures are stone, in simple Stonehenge like columns and lintels.

Bryan took all that stuff and came up with the image below, which I’m really pleased with. I love Gellick’s eyes, his weird jaw, his glittery skin, and the way he’s kneeling to draw with three-fingered hands in the dust- perhaps taking advantage of a momentary lull in his work pounding rock.

DAWN RISING progress report-

I’ve not been doing any active work on Dawn, though it’s constantly in the back of my mind. Fresh perspectives were provided by the book on Story Engineering I read recently, bringing me to a better understanding of why the story wasn’t as strong as it could be. Perhaps my weakness is movements of the third act. Third Act (when I use it this way, of 4 Acts total) is all about the hero knowing what he needs to do to win, and pursuing it like a Warrior.

In many of my past short stories, and novels, I bypass this stage entirely. By the time the hero knows what he must do, the power to do it is already in his hands- and he must simply make the choice.

That however is not standard story structure. People want to read the battle as the stakes rise between good and bad. In life, succeeding is not simply a question of knowing what you want. You must FIGHT for it.

Fighting requires a bad guy that is present and pushing hard on the hero. DAWN RISING has bad guys, many really, but they weren’t pushing hard. They were in the distance somewhere, applying gentle pressure. Now I know I need to bring them in harder, make them cut to the quick and really TRY to win. Only then will Dawn’s actions have the value they need to have for readers to care.

In the meantime, next up for art rendering is the spoiled little rich girl- Feyon.

See more of Bryan’s work on his website here.

See more art from DAWN RISING here.

See all my published short stories in the bibliography.

Volcano Museum 5. Documentary

Mike GristFeatured Story, Gunma, Haikyo, Haikyo in the Media, Museums

Well over a year ago now a Belgian film-maker called Jeroen Van der Stock got in touch with me about making a haikyo / ruins documentary in Japan. He had the concept but seemingly no solid structure at that time, so we met up for coffee to discuss ideas. I went along because it seemed a kick- I’ve had other meetings about haikyo books and TV shows that fell through quickly- so I didn’t have high expectations.

A year and a half later, Jeroen has pulled the first stage of his haikyo documentary vision together. He got funding from a film body in Belgium, a film company to produce it (Savage Film, who also produced his first documentary about Chinese day-laborers), a crew to come over to Japan, rescheduling around the 3/11 earthquake, and 3 or 4 haikyoists to take part- including me.

His funding is enough to make an extended trailer for the movie. He’ll take that back to Belgium and leverage it for full funding- come back for more extensive shoots, and in a year or so’s time, his full haikyo documentary will be ready to roll.

Exciting.

And I’m pretty much all done already. My shoot was last weekend, at the Asama Volcano Museum; my fourth trip back.

The documentary crew, L to R- soundman Andrei, director Jeroen, assistant Ken, and DP Aman.

I’ve never been in a documentary before- the closest I’ve come is SY following me around the Queen Chateau with my camera rolling. My dad was in a documentary on witchcraft once, because he was kind of a bigwig in the uk in that arena for a while, and he told me about how scripted and to some extent fake shooting a documentary felt.

So I understood that. It makes sense- cameras want to get footage that looks natural, but to achieve that, there’s already tons of artifice involved; ignoring the crew, the cameras, doing things you normally wouldn’t because the cameras can’t capture it well a normal way. With that in mind, I headed out.

I met Jeroen and crew in Ikebukuro on a rainy Saturday morning, all of us stuffed into a 5-seat sedan with their gear filling up any extra space. Originally we had been scheduled to shoot the week after the 3/11 earthquake, but due to uncertainty over gas availability Jeroen postponed the shoot by a few weeks.

I crammed into the sedan, and off we went, 3 hour drive up to Gunma. Along the way Jeroen went over what kinds of shots he wanted to get, where we would film, which of my photos he’d hope to use in the finished film. I won’t go into much detail because that would spoil the movie. Plus of course I have no idea what will make it into the film.

Currently Jeroen and crew are still shooting, with a few Japanese haikyoists around Tokyo area. After that they’ll go cut the film in Belgium, and hopefully get funding to complete production.

Andrei looking disgruntled.

The first day the weather was crappy. Cold, rainy, and grey. A lot of what we did that day involved me walking around on the obvservation deck taking photos (as I normally would in a haikyo- so catching me in my natural habitat, I guess) while the crew shot me from various angles. Doubtless it was more miserable for them than for me, as I could duck inside while they were still out tinkering with setting.

Aman sets the camera.

The guys were great to work with- very friendly, interested enough in haikyo to make me not feel like a chump to be talking about it all the time (and I talked about it a LOT in talking head-style interviews), and also totally respectful of the place and its vibe.

On that first day after shooting outside we did some shots around the eruption diorama, featuring an old stuffed owl we found in one of the storage closets.

Up the eruption- black cotton wool

Owl in the diorama.

By the end of the first day I had a better idea of what being on a film set feels like. Basically- there’s a lot of standing around. The guys assured me that usually there’d be buffets laid on, comfortable rest areas, but of course we had none of that. So while they did their setup stuff, I wandered the museum.

This being the fourth visit for me, I now it very well. The areas that were dark I could walk in the dark because I knew what lay beyond. I re-discovered the old office I hadn’t seen since my first trip there. I found a few new vantage points to see the museum’s UFO dome from. Mostly though, I hung around- occasionally stopping to study Japanese on my iphone.

That night we stayed for free (sponsorship deal) at a gorgeous family-owned dog hotel right at the base of Asama mountain. They had a brand new stone bath onsen and laid on breakfast and dinner. I took a bath, then went to bed.

The next day was all-change- really bright, sunny, though still damn cold. We headed up into the volcanic rocks of Oni Oshi Dashi (see history post for more details) to shoot me approaching the museum from various angles, with various ‘friends’ along for the ride.

Director Jeroen with the museum stuffed deer. No animals were harmed in this production (and all animals returned to their original homes).

It’s a funny thing, walking. Breathing, too. When there’s no camera on you, and no mic at your chest, you don’t really think about it. But when the camera is watching and the mic is on, you become pretty conscious of those things. Many times I found myself thinking- Am I walking normally now? Am I breathing normally? Am I looking around in a normal way, or a fake way?

Any time I was walking towards the camera I couldn’t help but think of the beginning of Bobby Jindal’s Republican response speech- it’s hard to walk towards something and seem normal.

Anyway, those were little things. I walked a bunch, and they took their shots.

Dolly wheelchair.

Jeroen had also brought along a makeshift dolly, a wheelchair, to get smooth tracking shots of me walking. Aman had to perch on a couple of metal shelving units borrowed from the museum, settled across the armrests. It can’t have been comfortable, but we walked that path a few times adjusting my pace to his.

The rest of that day we did talking-head stuff. I thought at the beginning that doing that would be some of my favorite parts- look direct to camera and talk about my haikyo passion. After a while though I came to dread it- pulling answers out that were different each time started to feel kind of exhausting, especially since many of the questions were very similar. This is surely another issue of documentaries- you harvest a LOT of material, perhaps chunks of it overlapping, and probably only use the best few percent of it all. When we wrapped the last interview session I was pretty relieved.

Shots taken while (again) wandering the observation deck for footage.

Ken solved the mystery of the orange-lined room, by tying it to the generator on the ground floor with KDDI labels. KDDI is a mobile phone/telecoms company, so perhaps that whole orange room is a giant aerial for signals. Ken’s phone was KDDI, and he had a 5-bar signal. I’m on Softbank, and barely had one bar, so that probably bears his theory out.

Broken glass and bits in the restaurant deck.

Loudspeaker, still endlessly playing rousing classical music.

The third and final day we started at 5am, and got snow. A snow storm, at one point. We were all freezing, walking around in the whirling snow, covered in it. It was the first time I got excited to do much photography myself- as I’d basically taken every shot of the museum already on the past three trips. But never in a snow storm, so I ran out while they were setting up and grabbed what shots I could.

Full frontal- I love how the lines of weeds make frosty jigsaws of the black tarmac.

Barbed wire fence (easily moved aside) with snow.

The snow was really coming down at this point.

The path up obscured by freshly snowed branches.

Jeroen waves down and says- come on in!

This one included because it compares well to the second image in this post- here it is again:

I guess I was in the exact same spot.

The crew struggle to keep the lens clear of snow while they shoot.

Indoors, with the wind-ravaged snow. A good spot for some talking head interviews? I guess so. We’ll see if they make it into the movie.

A lonesome shot. Required, really.

At the last, we didn’t think to take a photo of me with the crew in front of the museum, as we were worried about some parking lot guy who warned us we had to be out by 5pm. But down in the parking lot things were pretty calm, so we assembled in front of the mountain for this group shot- me in the middle:

The white cloud atop the volcano is coming from within- it is a live volcano after all. Occasionally we caught the whiff of sulphur on the wind.

See other posts on the Volcano Museum here-

1. First road trip

2. History

3. Return in HDR

4. Wedding shoot

5. Documentary shoot

See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

[album id=4 template=compact]

You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

Why Sucker Punch sucked

Mike GristBook / Movie Reviews

There are 2 main reasons why Sucker Punch sucked. These reasons have got nothing to do with all the half-naked girls, the cartoon violence, or the complexity of 3 nested worlds. No. Director Zach Snyder would be glad to have any of those problems. He’d love it if they were all we could fault the movie on, especially after the success of movies like Moulin Rouge, 300, and Inception.

Nope, the problems are much deeper than that. They’re in the bones of the story, the structure.

Sucker Punch is the story of Baby Doll, who within the first 3 minute prologue/music video watches her mother die, and her step-father kill her sister. Because she fails to kill him when she has the chance (gun in her hand) he puts her (rightly, I guess, who wouldn’t have killed him?) in a mental asylum, where she will be lobotomized in 5 days.

Soon after arriving the asylum shifts into a Burlesque brothel. Ok. The guy who was the corrupt warder becomes the mafia don, forcing the girls to dance for his ‘clients’. Exactly what that means in the real world is unclear- but there’s probably a good chance he’s pimping out the girls to his buddies, for money.

Baby Doll enters a third fantasy world of utter fantasy whenever she dances. Her dancing is ultra-sexy and leaves everyone in tears. Why does she have this special skill? No reason. She takes advantage of her dancign to hatch and execute a escape plan, with video-game like precision- gathering 4 items from a checklist in a boringly linear fashion, while battling through hordes of game-drones to get there.

So why does it suck?

SPOILERS

Why the structure sucked- one

The first point is simple and obvious to everyone who saw the movie. The middle was too long.

OK, let’s get more technical- the third quarter, or second half of the second act, was too long.

This is basically an insurmountable problem. While we were watching it we got bored. Every time Baby Doll steps up to dance, we know we’re going into another empty, meaningless battle sequence, within which no major milestones will be hit upon, no major bad guys will be faced, and no major good guys will be deposed. It is a wasteland of interest. Hot girls and fancy CG are no longer enough to hold our attention. We are bored.

The only answer to this problem is to cut about half of the fantasy scenes out. They could be replaced with a few much faster scenes in the asylum world or brothel world. They could even all be combined into one long montage of occasions the girls fought, got various items, and escaped alive.

We cannot really put too much influence of the real bad guys in the middle, either, in the hopes of spicing things up. Putting bad guys into the middle would initiate the turn into the fourth quarter too soon. So our only option is to cut.

OK, we cut. The movie is now an hour long. We need to add some stuff in.

The obvious place to put it is in the first two quarters.

QUARTER 1 – We should spend 10-15 minutes in the home of the step-father, see Baby Doll’s miserable life more, learn what losing her sister really meant. Instead Zach gave us a gripping 3 minute music video prologue of the ORDINARY WORLD. Ok, fine, but by doing that he added 12 minutes onto his third quarter. Oops.

QUARTER 2- We should spend 20 minutes or so in the asylum just figuring things out, before any fight and step up to the plate to the quest. Baby Doll needs to learn the boundaries of the new world better. Instead we get it all in a 5-10 minute montage. Another 10 minutes not used, added onto the third quarter. Oops again.

All this added up to a very fast-paced start, but with nowhere in terms of story milestones left to go until the end. We have almost an hour of nothing much happening to get through before the end. And that was boring, repetitive, un-alleviated by dragons, steampunk zombies, or flashy robots.

If Snyder had fleshed out his first two parts, we would also have come to care more for Baby Doll and her fellow inmates. What happened to them next would matter more.

Why the structure sucked- two

The ending was silly.

Yes?

What Baby Doll achieves by self-sacrifice is too Deus ex Machina to have any real resonance. She willingly goes under the lobotomist’s hammer, and in that last moment her knowing look makes Dan Draper doubt himself, which sets in motion the arrest of the asylum jerk who ran the brothel.

OK, saved from outside.

The other aspect of her self-sacrifice, to save Sweet Pea, was utterly meh, because Sweet Pea was about the dullest character in the story, AND the only one who didn’t want to even escape anyway. So, stupid.

But not only that. All that is not even the main problem. The main problem is that the ENDING DID NOT RESOLVE THE QUESTION THE BEGINNING PROMISED US.

The beginning hooked us with her evil step-father. We hated him most, and got into the movie for revenge.

But there was no revenge. Baby Doll never escaped. The Step-father got off scott-free. Utterly unsatisfying.

So, fail.

Every other issue in incidental to these two issues of story structure. With a solid story underneath him (I guess not written by him, as this was) Zach Snyder’s crazy directorial style and sure grasp of CG would work wonders. I really liked both 300 and Watchmen, for those reasons. Here, it just ran away with him.

And finally- Sucker Punch? What the hell does that even mean, with regard to this movie?

Japanese title Angel Wars is just as silly, but at least vaguely appropriate. Was there even one Sucker Punch in the whole movie? Perhaps when she kicks the guard in the balls at the end?

Full story structure dissected below:

SUCKER PUNCH

IDEA Fantasy battles, insane asylums, and hot girls in a brothel
CONCEPT What if a hot girl in an insane asylum/brothel enters a fantasy world through dancing.
PREMISE What if a hot girl in an insane asylum/brothel enters a fantasy world through dancing and uses that skill to attempt an escape.
MILIEU Insane asylum / brothel / fantasy world.
HERO EXTERNAL Silent, somewhat gutsy, baby doll girl
HERO BACKSTORY Her sister died because she couldn’t save her, at her step-father’s hands
HERO ARC / TURN She decides to sacrifice herself to save some random girl- after failing to save her own sister, and that girl’s sister too
SPECIAL SKILL / ITEM Dances real sexy- into fantasy battles
INNER DEMON Death of sister, feels responsible
OUTER VILLAIN Step-father, asylum warder, lobotomist
THEME Lot of voiceovers dictating the theme-

Everyone has an angel

Got to step up and fight with the weapons you’ve got

In fact, theme is- willing self-sacrifice leads to vanquishment of foes
1- SETUP / ORPHAN Baby Doll loses mother and sister, fails to kill step-father, put into asylum
1a- HOOK Cool music video, root for her, dramatic camera work
1b- THREAT Powerful, step-father kills sister, mother, hints of abuse
1c- HERO’S WORLD UPENDED Thrown into asylum., will be lobotomized.
2- RESPONSE / WANDERER Doesn’t know what to do, asylum morphs into brothel, gets by until she is forced to dance, and meets mentor in a dream world, who tells her how she can fight back. She kills samurai and starts on her quest.
2a- THREAT Samurai, threat of lobotomy in 5 days, asylum warder
2b- ACTIONS Swabs the decks, mopes about, fights.
2c- MENTOR Old dude- angel, full of fortune cookie wisdom.
2d- HERO’S 1st REVELATION Decides to fight back with her sexiness.
3- ATTACK / WARRIOR Go on several quests to get various necessary escape items. No push-back until the end, and three of the girls die, the lobotomist is there.
3a- THREAT Asylum warder, lobotomist
3b- ACTIONS Lots of killing meaningless drones.
3c- LULL Three girls die, he gets up in her face.
3d- HERO’S 2nd REVELATION Pulls out the knife she somehow stole from the cook and stabs him in the neck- kicks off escape.
4- RESOLUTION / MARTYR Frees one girl remaining, they escape, baby doll must sacrifice herself so she can escape.
4a- HERO’S FINISHING MOVE Sacrifices herself, so willingly that the lobotomist thinks its weird, and sets in motion events that see the asylum warder arrested.
4b- RESOLUTION One girl escapes to return home, baby doll becomes duller than ever

story craft #15 Acts of Invention

Mike GristStory Craft

26.

That’s how many acts of invention a story needs.

We can look at any story, any story that is a story, at least, and reel them off. Without fail, they’ll be there. They are all discreet. They all require a new idea, or the development of an old idea into a new idea. They are the ingredients in the cake, mixed and baked according to recipe, flavored with the writer’s voice, that build a living breathing story out of a bunch of bits and stuff.

26.

Why is this interesting? Why should we sit up and take notice?

Well, for me it has opened my eyes. I used to write single shot ideas. Basically- there was one idea. Maybe two or three, since I was aware of the need for a hook, for a character, for a big smash-bang ending. But the other bits, the whole middle, the bad guy, the struggle, the lull- I fell down on it. Chances are you do too.

Read Stephen King’s On Writing and he won’t tell you about the 26 discreet Acts of Invention (read Acts of God if you like) you’ll have to come up with in order to have a functioning story. Read almost any book on writing and they won’t. Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey comes close. Robert McKee’s STORY pretty much nails it for screenplays.

But comes close? Pretty much nails it?

Frankenstein is built but he doesn’t live. Perhaps he’s missing a heart. Wait, or a liver. Did we get all 26?

Enough prevarication.

I recently read the book STORY ENGINEERING: mastering the six core competencies of successful writing, and it kind of blew my mind. In an incredibly methodical way author Larry Brooks goes about nailing all the fallacies that writing is somehow mystical, magical, a wishy-washy adventure that is birthed from some untouchable, unknowable place in the writer’s mind.

Essentially- codswallop.

We can blueprint story, we can structure it, we can cut it open and tug on its dead tendons, watch its fingers jerk like a puppet. It is wholly knowable, and explainable.

26 is a combination of everything I gleaned from STORY ENGINEERING, coupled with my own experience. Already I’m feeling the difference, seeing weak spots in my writing that I just didn’t know were there before. Though the book is commercially available, I feel weird to even mention these 26 points here- like they are Masonic secrets, and anybody armed with them will know exactly what to write and how to write it.

But 26 is no magic number.

26 is the number I counted from my outline sheet. Maybe more or less is fine- there’s redundancies. But the number speaks to the issue. A story is not one long act of invention. It is many, many ideas, strung together with the joins concealed, just as a painter will combine and smooth his reference images into one whole composite image.

Here they are. They will be indigestible at first. But every story has them, all. If not more. To make them more palatable, I’ve set them alongside the stages from the new Jack Black movie Gulliver’s Travels.

Spoilers.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS 26 ACTS OF INVENTION

IDEA Gulliver and tiny people
CONCEPT What if Gulliver gets whooshed into world of tiny people
PREMISE What if Gulliver gets whooshed into world of tiny people and must face up to the tiny person he thinks he is himself, becoming at last the giant he appears.
MILIEU Tiny people with medieval culture vs. modern rock giant
HERO EXTERNAL Short, fat, noisy loser
HERO BACKSTORY Jack worked for 10 years in the lowly mail room, with a hidden 5-year crush on a girl way above his station
INNER DEMON Low self-concept
OUTER VILLAIN Charmless ambitious General of Lilliput, and the rival nation of Bluefish
HERO ARC / TURN Jack thinks he has changed in Lilliput because now he is the big guy, but when the big robot comes along and beats him up, he runs. Must learn to face down other big guy to truly be big himself.
THEME Outward change is not enough, gotta change inside to make a difference.

Everybody can be a giant, just need to believe in yourself
1- SETUP / ORPHAN Gulliver is loser, lies his way into travel assignent to impress the girl he likes (Darcy) that whooshes him to Lilliput.
1a- HOOK Jack Black’s charisma, opening shots of NY through toy-looking lens
1b- THREAT Tall dude steals his job in one day, tells him he will never amount to anything
1c- HERO’S WORLD UPENDED Literally upended in a reverse whirlpool
2- RESPONSE / WANDERER Lands in Lilliput, spends a while goofing about, building stuff, proves his worth by peeing on fire.
2a- THREAT Darcy (the girl he has a crush on) leaves message, uncovers his lie. General is getting pissed and wants to get rid of him.
2b- ACTIONS Goofs off.
2c- HERO’S 1st REVELATION Decides to stay.
3- ATTACK / WARRIOR Becomes general and has the Lilliputians build him Times Square and other cool stuff. Fully accepts the role and steps into it. Saves Lilliput from attack by the Bluefish navy. His buddy seems lucky in love. At the end though the General comes for him in a giant robot suit and beats him up, so he flees to giant world.
3a- THREAT General steps up, humiliates him, makes him the tiny loser again.
3b- ACTIONS He fights general, gets wedgie, runs away, is banished to giant land, where Jack is tiny.
3c- LULL Dressed as a little girl doll in a little girl’s playhouse in giant land, thinks he has found the role best for him, gives up.
3d- HERO’S 2nd REVELATION His buddy comes for him, tells him to snap out of it, get his stuff together. He agrees.
4- RESOLUTION / MARTYR He comes back to fight. With his buddy’s help faces the robot on even terms. Beats it. Gets the girl. Becomes a successful writer in the real world. Other dudes still in the mail room.
4a- HERO’S FINISHING MOVE Atomic wedgies the robot.
4b- RESOLUTION Has the girl, becomes writer of Gulliver’s travels.

Third quarter problems

In the book Larry Brooks doesn’t describe this exact structure, but something pretty similar. I’ve already used it to plot two stories, and revise several others. My largest failing is in the ATTACK / WARRIOR stage. Too often I have the hero hit his 1st REVELATION, then immediately jump to the big ending. I tend to skip the whole ATTACK  / WARRIOR quarter of story where the hero fights to earn the ending she will get.

Well, now that’s obvious to me. I have to add it in, or it’s hardly a story. It’s just an easy recounting of how a dude figured out he was wrong and fixed it, no bother. Without the third quarter ATTACK, what meaning can the final RESOLUTION have?

Blueprints

Other things, like defeating the INNER DEMON by the end and arcing the main character, adding the LULL before the 2nd REVELATION, thinking about THEME objectively as a combination of the INNER DEMON arc and RESOLUTION, have all been brought to the fore in my mind now. I try to plan them all before I start writing the story.

I don’t want to expend hours putting words together only to find out I’m building a tower that can have no possible conclusion without severe re-working at the foundations. I want my blueprints, my story architecture, prepped before I go.

Read his book for more details. It’s good.

STORY ENGINEERING: mastering the six core competencies of successful writing

Read more posts On Writing here.

Read more about my writing here.

Mare in Indura

Mike GristDawn Rising, Featured Story, Jabbler's Mons, Story Art

Mare is the most powerful voice of resilience and independence in DAWN RISING, my epic fantasy novel. She is by far the toughest character, who has been through the worst childhood imaginable- her parents were beaten to death in the street by drug-money collectors and she was sold into body-slavery, where mogrifers cut out the left side of her brain and threw her back into the slums of Indura expecting her to die.

But she didn’t die. She pulled herself together and taught herself to survive in the filth and rot of the world. As a result she relies on nobody, trusts nobody, and manipulates every situation to her best advantage.

Here Mare shows her assets in the plague-ridden slums of Indura:

This is the third artwork I’ve commissioned from the world of DAWN RISING. You can see the first two of the main character Dawn here and here. Again I commissioned with Bryan Fowler, who produced the image of Dawn I was so totally happy with last time.

We started with a number of study images- aspects I hoped he could incorporate into the finished painting, ideas that evolved as we went back and forth on various drafts. First was the backdrop- Indura is a disgusting urban swamp filled with warped trees bent into structures.? I sent this image of a swamp:

Next were some thoughts on Mare. Her defining feature is the concave depression in her head, where Shoalmite mogrifers took out the left side of her brain for their experimentation. I sent this image to get an idea of how that would look. It’s a bit unpleasant though.

From those basic images, and with a bit more background, Bryan knocked up this pencil sketch:

I liked it a whole lot, though one problem was that it felt quite provincial, lots of nature, not as dark and smoggy as I wanted. Also I wasn’t too sure about the girl’s face, I had in mind more of a yomamba style girl, like a black magic gypsy queen, and tried to express that to Bryan. The next sketch tried to go more down that route, with a more urban setting:

I realized on seeing this that I’d steered Bryan in the wrong direction, and that his original vision was really much better and more original. Her holding her skirts out works, standing in a twisty nature environment is better than the regular lines of this medieval city street. So with hat in hand I asked Bryan to back-track, which he was actually happy to do- win all round.

I sent an image from the new Pirates movie to give an idea of the look I had in mind:

He fleshed out the original sketch with that in mind, giving Mare rasta-ish braids and a big ragged skirt. He also changed the village homes for twisty tree-huts:

I loved it, but the rocks at left made me feel it was still too provincial. It could be a lovely forest glen. So I suggested swapping in a cart of dead pigs.

Now that’s more like it! I was ready to go to color with this image, but Bryan saw an opportunity to take it one step further. He wanted to paint the work in oils, on canvas. I could only say ‘YEAH’ because I knew he’d be putting even more time in, making the image as good as it could be.

Alright, so, here was the first sketch:

Yes, it looks great. I like her more swarthy face now. She seems more bad-ass, which Mare should be.

Mare on the easel, as slowly her background comes to life.

Full detail. I loved it. Kept badgering Bryan to paint it because I could barely wait to see it done. Next came a first wash of oils.

Excellent, like the sickly color. Not a fan of the green leaves though- too healthy-looking.They got mostly culled for the next, and final version.Wait for it.

At first I was a little torn. I had no doubts that it was an amazing piece of work, and I was really pleased that Bryan had put so much time and care into it. Mare looked just right, the twisty tree-huts were there, but I felt uneasy about how bright and cheery it seemed. Though her head is deformed and the pigs are dead by her side, and her pants are rags, the colors are quite bright and happy.

I sent Bryan an email asking if he would be bothered by me changing the colors, darkening it up a bit. He relieved all my concerns and said sure, no problem. So I cracked it open in photoshop and darkened it up.

All that said, the image as is has really grown on me. I love it, and am proud of the small role I had in concocting it. Thank you Bryan!

Here’s the darker version:

Because of the number of changes to be made, and the switch to oil paintings, the work took a few months longer than expected. In that time I worked feverishly on my rewrite of the first book in the series- DAWN RISING. Then I churned out a few short stories, sent them off to fiction magazines, and am now back onto the novel. When will it be done? Hopefully, soon. And what changes am I making, that require this much backwards and forwardsing?

– I had comments from readers that the book as it was didn’t have an ending. That’s a problem, one I caused myself when I cut the first book into thirds, each of which was to be a stand-alone book. Obviously they didn’t stand alone though, so now I’m working on re-integrating them, or at least the first two parts, into a book with a kick-ass ending.

– To make that ending feel more electric, I’ve gone back to the beginning and changed what was a fairly genteel introduction into something that crackles with pace and energy. It means cutting, rewriting, and suturing together old bits and new bits. Some character motivations have changed, so I have to go through and make everything fall into line.

– I’m still a little torn about what end point to choose for the book- one ends at 130,000 words, a good but normal-ish book length, the other at 190,000, which is about as long as The Fellowship of the Ring. The shorter one would presumably have a better chance of selling, but the longer one kicks a lot more butt. Well, I’ll figure it out soon enough.

Bryan will be rendering more of the characters from DAWN RISING over the coming weeks and months- next up is GELLICK, the Balast Rockman. I’m looking forward to it.

See more of Bryan’s work on his website here.

See more art from DAWN RISING here.

See all my published short stories in the bibliography.

Axiom Interview

Mike GristInterviews / Reviews

I recently did an interview with Axiom magazine about my haikyo photography and fiction writing. Axiom is a print and web magazine focused on Japanese entertainment, gaming, and culture, run by Adam Miller and Jimi Okelana.

I chatted with Jimi for about 10 minutes- probably the first time I’ve done an interview over the phone. I’ve done interviews a couple of times before, but only by email. By phone is fun, though challenging to express what you want to say concisely without just going on and on. I think I did go on and on, but Jimi managed to pluck out some bits, and you can them in the article here:

Axiom MJG Interview.

Their intro to me is very flattering, which is of course appreciated- thank you Axiom!

The article should also be in the print version, so I’ll probably post that when I get a copy.

The Boltonian

Mike GristInterviews / Reviews

About a year ago my old school in Bolton got in touch with me about writing something for the alumni school newsletter. I think they had seen the review of this site in the Guardian newspaper, and figured something on haikyo would be pretty interesting. I put something together along with a few photographs, fired it off along with my address for the chap to send a copy of the newsletter, but then unfortunately never heard back from him. I assumed he hadn’t run my piece, and forgot about it.

A few days ago I was in touch with an old Bolton School chum, and he let me know that he’d read my piece in the magazine and enjoyed it. Eh? I said. Ok, they ran it, but never sent me a copy. 🙁 So I got in touch with the chap at my school again. It seems our emails got muddled, and now they’ve no print copies left. He sent me a pdf though, which was much appreciated.

If you’re interested in how my old school helped steer me towards haikyo, read on:


They asked me if I’d like to come back and speak to the current crop of students some time about my hobby. I said I’d be happy to, and perhaps I will some time.

See more of my haikyo here-

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And more on my fiction here, and here.

You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

One-armed Ultraman

Mike GristEntertainment, Haikyo, Statues / Monuments, Tokyo-to

Ultraman is a Japanese icon, guardian of Tokyo against all kinds of horrible invaders since 1966. His branding can be found everywhere, from plastic bento lunchboxes to bikes, cell-phone straps, and kids’ ride.

My buddy Scott was out walking the streets near his home in northern Tokyo and stumbled across this one-armed Ultraman. It doesn’t really qualify as a haikyo since it seems that it may still function, despite the missing arm and rust-coated surface. 10-yen will give your kids a ride into battle with whatever crazy alien-suited baddie the Man had to face.

Scott very kindly took these photos for use on this site. I converted them all to B&W.

Bold guardian to us all (for 10yen).

What mysteries await inside Ultraman? Probably the ossified corpse of his driver- Hayata, of the Science Patrol.

Stop! Who goes there?

You probably hadn’t realized from the above photos what a silly pose he was in. Of course, he’s flying. It does look odd though. Superman never flew like this.

With the other members of the Science Patrol.

The Science Patrol wait, as ever, for the right moment to serve…

It must be a simple ride. I guess from the pump we can see here that it just goes up and down a bit.

And that’s it. Read more about Ultraman on Wikipedia.

See more Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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You can also see a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.