Climactic Moment/The Payoff


I used to play in garage bands back when I was in high school. There was this guy, a kid who seemed to know everyone in the local scene, and he taught me a valuable lesson about art that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

You need a climax, a moment of extreme payoff, a part of the art that rises above all the rest and makes the whole progression through it slam into one pivotal revelation. 

a Game of Thrones sigil I drew when I was bored one day
I had been writing songs, then. I was the singer in all the bands I’ve been in, and that position usually also made me the songwriter. My friend, Julius, had just taken me into one of his bands. I was adding a slower song to it. Something mellow and unlike anything I had written before.

Julius told me that he liked the song, but that it needed a climactic moment. That, being that the entire song was mellow, the verses and choruses didn’t seem to be building to anything. My tune was good, my guitar riffs were sound, but I wasn’t providing that key moment that would make the listener’s climb to the end of the song worthwhile.

I envisioned the song. I cut the drums and bass out of the beginning. I started it with just my voice and guitar. Harmonizing came on the second verse. Bass came in on the second chorus. A vamp, a musical interlude with different styling, fit in next. Finally, the lead chorus came again, only I added hard-hitting drums and made the instruments fly. Instead of mellow singing, then, I had loud, passionate singing.

It made a decent song into a great song.

I’ve been editing my novel lately, also thinking about other books I’ve read. Payoff is such an integral need in a longer work. When a person reads 300+ pages, they are going to go through sections that are work as well as play. The end must have a climax. It must have payoff. It must have that pivotal revelation.

During this edit, I’ve been thinking about how all the best books have their plots and subplots all unravel into one great climax. The payoff hits and hits and hits, right at the end. I’ve been working on that, and the build up. It’s a challenge to do it right, in a way that weaves all the smaller aspects of the story into a meaningful web. If you look at works like Cloud Atlas (the movie, never read the book) or A Storm of Swords, you peer into the lives of many different characters with different desires, goals, and situations, but they weave together. When the payoff comes at the end, you see that. You understand.

I just want to be that kind of artist. I want my books to have payoff. Just my thoughts today. Hope you’re having a good one!

Follow me @Oxyborb and check out my website at http://www.harrisonaye.com Thanks for reading!

Can't Buy Happiness

So, I bought a Playstation 4.
Unboxed it. Set it up.
Played on the menus for about 5 minutes.
Then it died.


No joke. It crapped out on me and became unusable. When I push the power, a blue light flickers and it beeps once, then it dies. I called Sony, and ran their tests. They tried to boot to safe-mode, but it wouldn’t go past the first beep. The only solution was to send me a box coffin to ship it back to them with. They’re going to fix it for free and all, but it still sucks.

I’ve been really, really missing Seattle lately. 

I had been doing so well—making herds of friends and all while I was out there, but then I had to leave it all and return to the cornfield that is Southern Illinois. Most of the old friends I had here moved elsewhere, and I suppose I will move away again someday, but…

My Playstation 4 was supposed to take me back.
I bought a game called Infamous: Second Son, which is set in Seattle. You can explore the city freely—it’s an open world without the linear restrictions of normal games. But, my PS4 died 5 minutes after the unboxing. Figures.

On the car ride over to the video game store, I even said, “I’m just trying to buy myself happiness.”
I guess I’ve been super lonely recently. In some ways, I guess that’s by design. I’ve been really reclusive lately. I’ve felt like doing things but I’m so annoyed about how there’s nothing to do without driving a million miles away that I’m frustrated. I went to the STL Zoo recently, attempting to go out and do something by myself for myself. A self-date, I guess. I wanted to see if I could have fun alone, so I went to the STL Fair and then walked to the Zoo. It was boring. I bought myself a root beer float and sat alone eating it. It sucked. At least I know that I hate being alone, now.

The other reason I’ve been a recluse is because of my writing. I really, really want to be a writer, and I know that I have to work at it full-time, even though I already have a full-time job, if I even have a hope of ever being published. I’ve been working extremely hard at it, and writing is a lonesome activity. All of people you hang out with while writing are characters that you’ve made up in your head. Those characters are all bits and pieces of you. So, writers really are a weird sort of introvert. Self-examining, social creating, but only with fictitious copies of the self. Err.

Well, that’s my life recently. Also, more weird dreams.

I posted the other day, but I had another last night. Here it is:

I was in a giant observatory, and I walked through a painting. On the other side, the painting had become solid and so I could no longer go back. I was on the top floor of a tower, inside a room that looked like Dumbledore’s office. A tall pale man in a pinstripe suit was there, and he spoke to me about how to become immortal. Suddenly, the floor collapsed and I fell into a room surrounded by spider webs. Spiders trickled out from all the walls and gripped me. I wasn’t afraid, though. Suddenly, my dream cut to a giant open field of hilly grass and flowers. Tall women, with thin purple legs were striding over the hills singing. I was walking under them but they kept going. I woke up and Enya was playing on my computer—I guess that’s where the singing came from.



Follow me @Oxyborb and check out my website at http://www.harrisonaye.com Thanks for reading!

Best Of Miiverse....

Miiverse is Nintendo's Twitter. You can draw pictures about your favorite games and upload them so everyone can see. Sometimes your pictures will even appear in other peoples' games. It's a really awesome idea, and I love contributing to Miiverse. Recently, Nintendo added a feature that allows people to post Miiverse posts to their blogs. So, this is that. My person, BEST OF MIIVERSE! The best of my drawings on Nintendo's social network. Enjoy!
I love MarioKart, so I post there often. This one is about the track Grumble Volcano.
I have a weird artistic obsession with Waluigi, apparently... I feel like he's some sort of rejected Dr. Seuss character or something
This one is from when I started my Wii Fit training. I joined a gym and posted the ideal body I wanted to have... OK, so it's a little ironic to have a video game company helping me to lose weight.
Editing the "Stamps" they allow you to use is fun
Ice Climbers are another reoccurring theme in my Miiverse.
Uhhh.... What if there was Wapeach and WaDaisy and WaYoshi...
kek
Me wishing that Geno was in Smash Bros....
WAAAA. Wario and Waluigi are just so gross, it's funny.
More wishing for the return of the Ice Climbers
This is interpretable. Waluigi is a strange man.
BEG BEG BEG. I really cannot wait to see them.
Playing through Nintendoland... Monita was so annoying...



Best of Miiverse Part 2

Charting Your Novel's Stars, a world-building activity

My book, The Unraveler, tells a story from a world that I've been building for many years. I like to go beyond the words on the page and explore the lore and history that surrounds my stories. As such, I know things that might not ever make it into the prose of my novels, such as all of the year's holidays, who the top 10 musicians are, and who runs the local businesses.

One exploration I've been working on recently is constellations. My novel is set on normal Earth, but in a society that no longer remembers what we today might think of as constellations. They see their own. For example, instead of the Big Dipper, they see Mobion's Horn.

If my mind was wiped of all the old constellations, what would I see painted in the stars? What would the people within my book see?

These questions I wondered, so I went outside and looked. What I saw was mostly blackness, though. I live in a populated area, and the night sky is too polluted with light to see many stars.

So, instead I Googled star charts, and I found this one. It was created by Mads Holgersen, who runs this awesome website: www.annalsofarda.dk. I got his permission to show an edited version of his star map on my blog. In this new version, I deleted all of his old constellations and made a blank chart, then filled it in with my own:

The Unraveler's Star Chart

















It's not completed, by any means, but it shows what I'm getting at. Since ancient times, people have looked to the stars and wondered what shapes they make. They looked for signs, for prophesies. In a way, the culture of society shapes the way people form constellations. Every society could see something different, depending on what is relevant to them. It was a fun writing exercise, anyway. It made me think about what my book's culture would deem important enough to find in the stars.

What do you see?





btw, this is my 50th post! Woot-woot!