Tag Archives: poetry

Rush for Insight

My favourite sketch on the recent series of SNL UK was the British Pork Sketch. I thought it was funny and absurd as I watched it, but what lifted it to genius level was the final reveal when everything suddenly made sense…

I love this sort of writing.

You can hear it in the song The Day Before You Came by ABBA.

It was all the way through the first series of Mad Men.

Robert McKee calls it the rush for insight. It comes at the turning point of a story, when new information is revealed and suddenly the audience is hurled back through all that has gone before and everything suddenly makes sense, or even better, a new kind of sense.

Robert McKee often quotes the moment in The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader reveals he is Luke’s father. At the point the audience looks back through two films and three years, and odd events that happened in Luke’s past suddenly make sense. We realise why Yoda wanted to train him, why Ben Kenobi didn’t like to mention his father, why he kept having those lucky escapes from the Empire.

Now, before you read on, there are spoilers in the next section. I didn’t put this warning earlier as I can’t believe anyone reading this blog hasn’t seen The Empire Strikes Back. If you haven’t, it’s time to reconsider your life choices.

Listen to the Day Before You Came. This is one of my favourite songs, and, unusually, not for the music. Listen as the singer recounts a series of routine events that take on sudden poignancy when you realise how her life is about to change. That insight comes in the last line of each section: it’s also the title of the song.

I’m watching Mad Men for the umpteenth time with my daughter. Mad Men is a masterclass in writing, not least for the way it deals only in the edges of ideas. But the first series is also masterclass in turning points and rushes for insight.

In the first episode Don Draper’s behaviour is cast into harsh relief when he goes home to a family we weren’t previously aware existed. As the first series unfolds more revelations about his and other characters send the audience constantly rushing back through the previous episodes to look at events with new understanding. Watching the show a second time, you pick up on clues and subtleties you were previously unaware of. Rushes for insight make something worth looking at again.

This is a favourite technique in SF. I use it a lot in my Fair Exchange series of short stories. The crew of the Eva Rye make a trade using Fair Exchange software, but it appears as if they have been cheated. The fun comes at the turning point when everything turns out to have been fair all along.

But here’s a little secret. There are big twists still to come in the series. I’ve just been bringing it to a close this week and I can’t help but smile at what’s to come… You’ll get the first hint of these twists in the next story.

More on that in a later post.

The Arctic-Alpine Pea Mussel

I heard the Arctic-Alpine pea mussel mentioned on Radio 4 earlier this week when they were discussing the three thousand species in Wales that now exist in five places or fewer. I don’t want to diminish the struggles of the pea mussel but I couldn’t help but think it might not be so endangered if it weren’t quite so picky about its choice of ecosystem.

Or maybe not. Thinking about it, I suppose there are lots of cold streams in high up places. The name tells you something about the creature.

Rather like the glutinous snail, which I heard mentioned on the same program. At first, I thought I’d misheard this one so I looked it up. It wasn’t mentioned in the accompanying article, but after a little more googling I found an article about the snail here.

Reading about creatures like these doesn’t make me wonder why writers bother to invent aliens and fantasy creatures. There are very good reasons for this which I’ve talked about elsewhere, and I’m sure I’ll talk about in the future.

But it does make me wonder yet again why writers make up names.

If a group of glutinous snails have just slithered down the ramp of their flying saucer and demanded to be taken to our leader, why would they confidently announce that they were the K’Kzzlia?

They’re snails. They don’t have tongues and teeth. They wouldn’t have the ability to make K and Z sounds. They do, however, have the ability to build a machine that can translate their language into English (assuming they’ve landed in an English speaking country). So why doesn’t that machine just introduce them as the Glutinous Snail People of Betelgeuse 5?

I hate made up names. They’re overused by beginner writers to lend an air of exoticism to their world building. They end up just confusing people. Worse, they muffle the drama.

I quickly become bored reading stories where Oolma rides a Vlurp through the gates of Mlzra in search of the stolen Glevar of the Throom. Wouldn’t it be far more exciting to say that Emma rides a horse through the gates of the dungeon in search of the stolen daughter of the King? Call your smeerp a rabbit and have done with it.

The thing about most exotic names is that they aren’t actually very exotic. I thought that Suidobashi in Tokyo sounded enchantingly strange when I stayed there. It turns out that Suidobashi just means aqueduct bridge.

And as every expectant parent poring over lists of baby names knows, everyday names can have some rather exotic meanings.

For example, Tony means “priceless one” or “highly praiseworthy”.

That seems about right to me.