The title does not refer to an actual Dante’s Inferno musical. Sorry if you find that disappointing. It will make sense if you read this blog entry.
I am approaching writing this novel with a background primarily in live theater and a lot of training as an actor. I tend to think visually. I also have been writing most of my adult life. I am finding it interesting the many ways that my theatrical background has proven helpful in writing fiction.
I am working on a chapter that has no action, but is used to reveal more about the characters. As my wife pointed out, this is where the characters get to sing their “I want” song. That is an analogy to musical theater where typically the first or second song in the first act has the main character sing about what they want. Think Belle’s first song in Beauty and the Beast, Over the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz, Lion Tamer from The Magic Show or Impossible Dream from Man of La Mancha. They help establish a character’s dreams, goals, or desires without needing to bring in Basil Exposition.
I don’t have my characters sing, and I needed to accomplish this with not just one but with five central characters. It also happens later in the book, as the first two acts focus on the group assembling and then their first mission. My characters do not know each other yet, which negatively impacts their unit cohesion. No, I do not do the old hackneyed bit if creating conflict by having the main characters dislike or fight with each other until they finally come together at a dramatic moment to save the day. They just don’t know much about each other yet or in what areas they can most count on the others to be helpful. They also do not yet understand how they fit in.
I wanted to mirror that difficulty for them in the first mission with the reader not yet understanding their goals or motivations. I want to reveal them in this chapter both to the reader and to each other, and at that point they are much better able to pull together as a team. The trick is to do that without making it non-stop talking or just plain exposition.
Their first mission turned into quite a cluster, and none of them are feeling particularly great about it. I think Wall has the most challenging issues at this point, so I have him approach Grace to talk it out. Her solution will also help advance the story later on. My plan is to write the scene with Wall and Grace, and then have Grace briefly discuss that and the other concerns from the other team members with Brian, who has already been established as an important sounding board for her. The story is very character driven, so it is important to get this right and keep it from being too wordy or boring. I think it will be more challenging to write than the action sequences, which are much easier to make interesting and exciting.
What’s Up With Us
My wife and I went to the Magic Castle (a world famous and amazing club for magicians in Hollywood) to celebrate our anniversary. Regular readers of this blog know that my wife is a working magician and back in the day both of us did that full time. We also worked in the theater and in television.
Since we have been happily married a ridiculously long time, I tend to avoid telling younger people just how long. For this one, I tell people we have been married the same number of years as Jack Benny was when he died. Most people of a certain age will get it, and typically it makes no sense at all to others. Now you know, maybe.
The Castle decorates for Halloween every year. This year they returned to a theme that they tried unsuccessfully before- Dante’s Inferno. They have all of the circles of hell, and every area is dramatically transformed, which is a lot of work considering that there is a lot of space to decorate. They have a great crew of member volunteers and they did a fantastic job.
The reason it failed when they tried it in 2011 was because, with irony lost on no one, that was the Halloween when the Castle caught on fire. For the first time ever, they had to close for Halloween and for awhile after to repair some rather extensive damage.
They had some outstanding performers booked for this week. Belle and I were hanging in the library and we realized we had to dash to make the Palace show. As we were going out the members only door, the librarian, Joe, mentioned that Chip Romeros was the emcee. He is the premier collector of the memorabilia of magician Doug Henning, including owning a great many of his illusions. I made it a point to meet him after the show, and shared with him my tale of literally sneaking backstage (or back-studio in this case) to see the very first Doug Henning magic special, which was aired live. I describe this in my book The Greatest Adventure (available on Amazon.) I had some memorabilia from that show that he was interested in, so he came by the house on Monday.
What I had were signed cards from the various close-up performers that entertained the Mobil executives who, with their families, made up much of the audience. Mobil was the sponsor of the special. Chip did not know about this aspect of the show, the show before the show, so this documentary material signed by the performers was another piece of the puzzle for him. It was cool for me to have, but I believed it really needed to join his collection, which includes items like the ticket for the evening signed by the cast of the show that belonged to Doug’s mom.
My experience at 15 will now become part of this archive on Doug Henning, so in a small way, I get to join the history of Doug Henning. As Chip enthusiastically explains and I fully concur, Henning’s first magic special changed the way people thought about magic and launched a resurgence in its popularity with the public. I believe that Henning had as big an impact on the popular imagination in the second half of the twentieth century as Houdini had on first half of the twentieth century.
This is not the first time some of the items we saved over the years have wound up in a museum. Some of our photographs from our time working in a sideshow went to the Sideshow Museum in Missouri. I checked and thankfully they managed to survive covid.
While Chip was here I got to see some of the items from his collection, including Henning’s diary from the 1970s. He wrote down a lot, even what he had for lunch as he struggled in his early years. Chip had the notebooks where Henning sketched out his ideas for the first special. I am so thrilled that Chip is preserving and archiving this material. It is an invaluable and important part of the history of magic. I am also a bit thrilled to be a part of it.
If you wondered why I included the not especially great song Lion Tamer from Henning’s The Magic Show in the list of I Want songs, now you know.