Trickster Fiction Manifesto

TRANSFORMATION FICTION

 There is a lot of "transformation fiction" out there on the web, and by fiction I mainly mean captioned images, however there are text versions as well, heck, Amazon even has a sort of category for it.   The themes vary, with people changing gender, race, age, weight, species and what have you.

Some are presented in the form of science fiction, some as fantasy, some frankly as nothing more than porno, some as "magic reality" in that remarkable things happen, but it stays, more or less in the realm of what could possibly happen, and some.... well in some stuff just happens.

However, just as presentations as diverse as Eastwood's Unforgiven, Disney's the Apple Dumpling Gang, & TV's Lone Ranger, are still all recognized as Westerns I think this sort of fiction is close enough to a genre to at least call it that, and if you’re willing to go that far with me go just a little further and let me indulge myself by calling it Transformation Fiction.    

`Transformation Fiction: Fiction in which the main or one of the main themes is one or more of the characters physically changing to a fantastic degree, and their and others action to that change.'

Well there you have it, TF in a nutshell, period, end of paragraph, thanks for showing up and drive home safely.
 
And yet......

TRICKSTER FICTION

I would like to put forth my thoughts on how to do T.F. better, using a style for doing it that I call Trickster Fiction.

In the folklore, mythology, and even pop culture, you'll find a character type with a thousand & one names who yet share certain traits; the mythologists call these characters Tricksters.

They range from Hermes, to Loki, to the Native American Old Man Coyote, to Bugs Bunny, who, as different as they all are, have certain things in common.

They are subversive, boundary crossers, rule breakers, and  shape shifters, who regard mundane societies' fixed ideas about genders, race, class, caste, and how life should be lived, with at best humor, and more often contempt.  Another common thing about Trickster stories is that they often have a touch of the surreal about them.   So when I do my stories & captioned images I like think of them as Trickster Fiction.

Well bully for me..... So what?

I'm hoping that it's different enough that my writing about what I think it is might inspire some to create Transformation Fiction where they otherwise might not, whatever you choose to call it, and whatever form it takes.

 TEXT TRICKSTER FICTION

Text Stories  
First of all I would say that Trickster Fiction is best done quickly much like Flash Fiction or Prose Poetry, however I would also say that perhaps Flash Fiction with its (more or less) limit of 1000 words is too restrictive, the best length for this being between 800 and 2300 words, quick, but still enough room for some color and character development.  Epics are all well and good, but Trickster seems to be an impatient critter and the twist at the end is more shocking if you don't have to wait to long for it.

Speaking of the twist some things that Trickster Fiction needs are: 

A. At least one bold arresting image, something that paints a picture for the mind's eye

B. Surprise, an "I didn't see that coming" twist.  

C. Transform someone.  

D. Humor, even if it's a grim horror story Trickster still seems to need a bit of the funny, even if it's just a low key piece of dark humor.

E. Lyrical prose, try for a prose poetry feel that does more than just tell you what's happening.

Forget Hemingway with Trickster Fiction; think more along the lines of Raymond Chandler.  

F. Metaphor & simile are your friends, however

G. Stay away from clichés!  Or use clichés, but screw with them as a way of pulling the rug out from under the readers’ mental feet.  

H. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!
 
I. Shun restrictions, cross borders, if "They" say you can't do it that way DO IT! However....  

J. Have a beginning, middle & end, however far off the beaten path you may get, it's still a story, breaking rules is one thing, cheating is something else altogether.

 

PICTURE & TEXT FILES

Most people refer to pictures with a bit of writing under or beside them as captioned images, and that's what they are for the most part, and I'll get a little crud here and say that most of the examples you will find, save for a few here and there, are unimaginative crap.

I would say of most of the ones you will find, 9 out of 10, no make that 24 out of 25, amount to nothing more  than a cheesecake shot with written under it the equivalent of  "Timmy use to like girls with big titties, now Timmy has big titties!"

Oh please... A pox on these captioned images!

I say it's a real story forget about it.

In his controversial book, The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, Leonard Shlain speculates that when writing was introduced millennia ago it resulted in a change in the way the brains of those who understood the concept of letters forming words worked beyond just the obvious effect of being able preserve thoughts, It changed what society itself was.

Further, he speculates that the coming of the internet, with its intimate bonding of text and image is, in as yet unknown ways right this very minute, creating what will amount to a new way of thinking, the next profound change in society at large.

Like I said, controversial, for one thing he’s a surgeon, not an expert in linguistics, and his book has been known to piss such experts off to no end, and Loki knows experts are never wrong, just ask them.

Still....

Why miss out on the opportunity, even if the idea is only partially on the button?

MAKING PICTURE / STORIES

And even if it's `the bunk' a little more effort.... or in some cases, any effort at all in the first place, couldn't but help!

So how does one go from Captioned Image to Picture / Story?
My suggestions would be:

1. Forget the cheesecake *, and toss the porn right out the window, look for pictures that suggest a scene from a story, so that once the story is applied it will make it seem that the picture was staged and taken for the story, not the story being inspired in part by the picture.

*unless of course you have a really good idea that goes with it!

2. That being said let the picture carry a good deal of the weight of the narrative. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a good innovative picture can turn a 3 or 5 hundred bit of flash fiction into a 13 or 15 hundred word short, short story.

3. If you can find two or more pictures even better, heck there you are with another thousand words! Half the fun can be seeing how well you can get two disparate images to go together with your words.

4. A sentence or two just won't do, go for at least 150 words, 800 seems to be the best length in my experience. Okay... the file ends up being larger, and it takes some practice getting them all in and around the images, but what you gonna' do?

5. Play with the way pictures & text go together, it doesn't have to be a straight picture above, words below kind of thing. Make an ad from a magazine, a comic strip, a review from a film with images and other such permutations.

6. Refer to the suggestions for text Trickster Fiction above.

There you have it, that's what I call Trickster Fiction, am I just trying to make something out of not much at all by giving it a name?

`Shrugs' not what I think.

Opinions no doubt will vary, but I like it, and hey, whatever the case, I just hope it inspires a few more folks to try their hand at it.