Not that you really need another distraction to writing your novel or finishing that chapbook or putting together that poetry manuscript (or spamming innocents, or whatever it is my most loyal blog readers do).
But I stumbled on a game. A literary game. Actually, game is kind of overselling it—it’s more of a writing exercise. An experiment of sorts.
One of the unspoken lessons I’ve learned from (actually) studying creative writing is that while writing exercises can feel tedious and forced, they are trying to emulate the natural state of Play. Play has all kinds of advantages for learning, socializing, and generally expanding boundaries. In my opinion, it’s not really lost in adulthood, it’s more institutionalized. Exercises, games, experiments—the things writer have (theoretically) universally done in so many different ways in addition to their published material—are the temporary transgressions from the comfort of our institutions.
My early approaches to writing were play: sitting down with pen & paper, trying to do what other people had done, the stuff that had so moved me—which involved messing around, trying different devices & schemes & styles, consciously/forcibly/erratically/brutally bending those words until they came out looking like moderately acceptable poems, stories, etc.
And so I still like to fuck around. The exercise is based on this: when I’m writing, I can’t play music; and when I’m playing music, I can’t be writing. (Not considering ‘song writing’ and other poetic license with ‘music’ and ‘writing’).
Essentially, this doesn’t engage music at the lyrical level, but at the musical level. There are melodies that capture us when we hear them—and there are “voices” that capture us as we read them. That cadence is differently applied, but I have started to wonder if the aesthetic may stem from the same place.
So I wanted to “play” narrative modes like a guitar. Assign the modes to notes, and let an existing composition form the sheets I was playing from.
While I didn’t take advantage of it in the example I’ve included below, I could see how you could take a meta approach to this exercise: a love story to a love song? a revenge story to a revenge song? a weeping at the small town bar story to a weeping at the small town bar song? There are many variations, and in abler hands, I’m sure a decent story could come out of it.
More achingly: I want to know if there are hidden melodies in my favourite novels. But honestly, I don’t have time for that right now.
As much as I like what I can learn from experimenting with something weird or overly structured, I tend to favour the organic. All the same, if it gets writing done, it has to have some merit.
I tried Googling this literary game/exercise/experiment, and I have no idea if I was doing it properly but I didn’t find anything. I feel like I can’t be the only person who has thought of this. Please let me know if they exist out there, and if they have any other ideas.
Also, I want to know: Is the exercise contrived? Does it matter if the structure is intentional or organic if the “melody” as a whole is appealing? Or is the only way to get an appealing melody to let it happen organically? Or who cares, just tell the story damnit?
Alright, enough ambling.
The Exercise
- Choose a song.
- Derive/find tablature for the song.
- Assign one of the five narrative modes (Dialogue, Description, Action, Thoughts, Exposition) to five musical notes used in the song (its easiest to simplify to the root notes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G). If your song uses more than the five notes, assign modes arbitrarily, or as wildcards.
For the Symphonic Twist: Assign other literary devices to each note/mode’s major or minor usage (e.g. major = long sentence; minor = short sentence; or denote a certain diction, tone, etc).
- Proceed to write your story (or poem), structuring each line on the song’s tablature.
Can choose to structure it in different set ways. Examples: build sections/paragraphs based on verses & choruses, break it up to suit the story first (“hiding” the notational structure), or include one paragraph for each note (as it more-or-less turned out in my example, below).
The Experiment
[I only chose to do a short segment of a song, because I was spending too much time searching for the perfect short song to exemplar…and I was at J and had enough of looking. In the event there are MFA or other qualified eyes on this, I may not be perfectly employing each narrative mode but hopefully I’m consistent in my mistaken approach.]
SONG: White Rabbit by The Jefferson Airplane
F# G
One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small
F# G
and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all
A C D A
go ask Alice when she’s ten feet tall
F# G
And if you go chasing rabbits and you know you’re going to fall
F# G
Tell’em a hooka-smoking caterpillar has given you the call
A C D A
Call Alice when she was just small
A = Dialogue
C = Description
D = Action
E = Thoughts
F = Exposition
G = Dialogue
The Result
“MASTERMIND”
K had never been good at this kind of thing, and he had been trying to explain it for twenty years.
“Don’t you think you should stop playing around? They’re just games, for fucksakes,” T said.
Since his little brother had returned from university, anything he said to K had either been about how their parents needed more smart appliances, or direct insults to remind K how his vintage board-game store was an insult to his family tree.
“Who the hell ever comes in here, anyway?” T continued, fuelled now that he was finally standing in the store. “This looks like the setting to a shitty Halloween special.”
“We had a Ouija tournament three years ago,” K broke his silence.
It would be impossible to explain the Ouija tournament to T, besides that it involved tallow candles, rock salt, and urns on a shelf that served as the tally board. K didn’t have to explain—T had turned to a shelved wall, beelining for a stack of thin, rectangular boxes.
“Do you remember how many summers we wasted playing Mastermind?”
K did remember—the summers were short but intensely hot, and rather than sweat with the other kids on the street outside, K harnessed a powerful passion for games that had sustained his sanity throughout his adult life, even if it never supported him financially.
“Mom hated that you holed up in the basement,” T said. “She forced me to keep you company. Do you know how much Vitamin D you deprived me of? For these fucking plastic pegs.”
But those pegs now looked oddly familiar, like artist renditions of the machine code T had burned into his brain at school.
“Want to play?” K asked.
Playing the loveable jester had been K’s only reliable method to evade his family when they closed in on him like this.
“K, I have to be straight up about why I’m here. Mom’s tired of funding you.”
“She’s not funding me.”
But what T considered funding was in Maslow’s terms: food, shelter, love, esteem—and it baffled T that his older brother would never admit that what he muscled as his strength was his most obvious weakness. T nodded his head this time, picking out the most intact Mastermind box and handing it to K.
“One game. But if I win, you shut this place down.”
[ END ]
Jack Caseros 
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