The Venice Carnival

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It is winter in Venice – La Serenissima. The jostling crowds have gone, the canals have lost most of their pungency and the pigeons have reclaimed St Mark’s Square. A calm has descended on this most enigmatic of cities.

Yet, for a week every February, the calm is shattered. For this is the week of the Venice Carnival, when the chilly quiet is banished. An old tradition revived in the 1970s, the Carnival is an excuse to dress up in all manner of finery, and party. Extravagantly robed and masked figures – some jovial, some slightly sinister, all mysterious – glide down alleyways and across squares, elevating the passeggiata (that very Mediterranean stroll, where the main aim is not to see, but to be seen) to an art form.

It is believed the original Carnival was a much bigger and rowdier affair, complete with bear baiting and puppet shows, bull fights and secret assignations in gondolas. According to one Francis Misson who visited Venice in 1688,

Vice and virtue were never so well counterfeited. There is everywhere a general motion and confusion, as if the world were turn’d fools in an instant.

In its heyday, the Venice Carnival lasted from Christmas until Shrove Tuesday (about eight weeks). Events officially began when a government official gave permission for people of all ranks to wear masks. For what was a highly stratified and rigid society, it was an unusually egalitarian holiday, as masks were worn by everyone: noblemen and beggars, courtesans and priests, and no one – in theory anyway – was any the wiser.

As for the costumes, the more flamboyant they were, the better. The crowds in St Mark’s Square routinely comprised Cossacks and Barbary pirates, Chinese mandarins and characters from the commedia dell’arte.

The celebrations traditionally came to a close in the presence of the Doge, the ruler of Venice. Amid fireworks and cheering, an acrobat slid down a rope from the top of the Campanile (bell-tower) and presented a posy to the Doge, and the fun was over for another year. As the last firework hissed into the Grand Canal, the crowd walked home, no doubt exhausted by all the frivolity.

The Venice Carnival Resurrected

By the mid-19th century, interest in the Carnival declined. Venice was then under Austrian rule, and Venetians were reluctant to rejoice while the city was in the grip of a foreign power. Venice’s days as ‘Mistress of the Seas’ were over and, before long, the Carnival was consigned to history.

But history is never completely dead in Venice. After a series of mini-Carnivals, the municipal authorities took control and the festivities have since gone from strength to strength, even if they haven’t quite reached the excesses of bygone years. Today, the city’s population almost doubles during the Carnival and the authorities have been known to close the causeway when the city becomes too crowded.

If you fancy experiencing it for yourself, check out the Carnival of Venice website. I might see you there!

 

How to create a character – motivation

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how to create a characterHere’s your chance to channel your inner three-year old, and ask, continually and incessantly, why?

While it is true that actions can tell us a lot about a person, or a character, we mustn’t stop there. We have to ask: Why? Why does your character act the way he does? The answers can sometimes surprise us, and tell us a lot about the person.

Following on from my examples in my last post, Actions speak louder than words, the man cutting hair is a hairdresser, but why? Is he a maestro with the scissors, following his passion and creating a gorgeous hairstyle for the catwalk at London Fashion Week? Or was he forced to go into the family business because there are no other jobs around, and his dream is really to play football for Manchester United?

And the woman stealing something – she’s a thief, but why? Is she stealing a valuable artwork for the thrill or the money? Or is she a spy, stealing the enemy’s plans for a new stealth fighter, and to her it’s just another job?

Depending on the answer to your “Why?”, your story could go in any manner of directions.
I think this is my favourite bit of character-building, as I love stories about ambiguous people, about people who aren’t cut and dried. There’s a fascination involved with finding out why the apparently good guy does something bad – was he faced with no other choice, or has he been waiting all this time for revenge? Or why the bad guy does the right thing, and hopes like hell no one finds out about it.

In real life we rarely get to know what truly motivates people to do what they do. I sometimes get the feeling that many of us aren’t sure ourselves. Fiction gives us the opportunity to delve as deeply as we could wish into this question, and even get some answers.

A Question of Character – free PDF

Asking questions is key to character creation. If you want a head start, sign up to my newsletter and get the free PDF A Question of Character, containing 89 questions to ask your characters. If you come up with more questions, as you surely will, do let me know in the comments!

How to create a character: – actions speak louder than words

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how to create a characterAfter a hiatus that was rather longer than planned, I am getting back into writing my book with unusual enthusiasm (I have to make the most of this mood while it lasts), and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the writing process along the way.

I’m hoping this will keep me accountable, and I’ll actually get the thing finished, but that’s a whole other blog post.

I’ll start with characters. Characters are, it seems to me, at the heart of story-telling.

How to create a character is a huge topic, and it can seem overwhelming. You need characters readers love, loathe, sympathise with and root for; in short,  you need the reader to care what happens to the people in your story. They don’t necessarily have to like your characters, but they do have to want to know what happens to them next. Well-rounded, three-dimensional characters will carry your plot and draw readers in by the scruff of the neck, but creating them is no easy task. There’s a lot of work involved in creating characters your readers will remember.

As with any big, daunting task, break the creation of characters down into smaller, manageable tasks. Start with the more straightforward elements, such as showing your character doing something.

Take the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark – Indiana Jones doesn’t say much, but he does a helluva lot. He’s trekking through the jungle, negotiating all manner of traps; he’s forging ahead while  his companions take fright and flee; he looks highly pleased when he finds the treasure; he runs like hell from a giant boulder intent on squashing him; he escapes from irate natives, and he has something of a freak-out at the snake in his friend’s plane.

Phew.

In addition to telling us all we need to know about the genre of the story, the sequence tells us a lot about Indy. He’s an adventurer, a treasure-seeker; he’s resourceful and smart; he has a sense of humour; he’s determined to survive. And he really doesn’t like snakes. Not only do we have a good idea of who he is, we’ve also been given plot points which will pay off later in the story.

“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?”

Showing your character in action – a classic instance of the Show, Don’t Tell maxim – is probably the most straightforward element of building your character, aside from detailing the more obvious physical characteristics (which is an approach that can so easily go wrong, but I’ll get into that at another time). If your character is cutting hair, he’s likely a hairdresser; if she is shown stealing something, she’s probably a thief. Show your protagonist in action, and you’ve made a great start in building that character.

But remember it’s only the start. Actions may speak louder than words, but they can also deceive, which leads us to the topic of motive, the subject of my next post.

Run Lola Run, a movie review

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Run Lola Run (Amazon)

Run Lola Run was an exhilarating blast of fresh air from German cinema when it was released in 1999. A simple story told with wit and imagination, it literally leaves you breathless.

Petty crook Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) is in trouble. A moment’s inattention sees him leave a bag full of money on the metro, and in twenty minutes his unforgiving boss is not going to be very pleased. Manni calls his girlfriend Lola (Franka Potente) from a call box in a last desperate call for help, although he doesn’t really believe she will be able to do anything, not in twenty minutes.

Lola thinks differently. She runs across town in a desperate effort to be with Manni. Together they will think of something.

Run Lola Run is refreshingly original. Lola will do what needs to be done, no matter how often she has to run across the city, folding back time until she gets the outcome she wants. The power of love is an impressive thing. Lola, as played by the flame-haired and athletic Franka Potente, is the rock-solid, yet very speedy and occasionally ear-splitting, core of the film.

We see the story play out in three different ways, a fast-paced thriller tinged with quantum theory. As the film progresses we also see brief snatches of the future of the people she runs past (including the tramp who took Manni’s bag of money on the metro), people whose futures are subtly different each time. These are just some of the many entertaining details which made Run Lola Run such a success.

The film sets up a breathless pace as we follow Lola across town. It’s a roller-coaster ride, its fundamental appeal the exhilaration of sheer speed. Directed by Tom Tykwer, Run Lola Run is a film where everything works – performance, music, direction and editing. As a writer, I found it particularly interesting how with each retelling of the story, small differences lead to major outcomes. I must see if I can apply that to my own work in progress!