Don gave me a
lot to think about this week! And yes! the answers to last week's riddles were punctuation and autumn! Nice work!
Okay, my guesses for Don’s riddles from Wednesday: laughter and emotion
On to the meat of the blog: On behalf of
the voters subjected to endless hours of rallies, media reviews of the rallies,
debates, reviews of the debates, bad taste commercials and survey calls, I
think we could all have used the help of Glamdring. I imagine that on more than
one occasion political pundits would have gone blind from the blue glow in the
crowd. Of course, we can also relate dragons to politicians – riddling talk
that makes us waste time trying to understand what they said.
As an editor and a writer, wordplay is fundamental. It is that process of how to get the
point across clearly that often stumps writers. However, one of my students
found just the right words in his fairy tale rewrite of Humpty Dumpty: Humpty
found out about the infidelity of his wife, Mrs. Dumpty. Humpty felt like “his
heart had been poached and his brains scrambled.” WOW!
The ultimate
human wish – to right a wrong and survive! For me, I think that is the draw for
an adventuring swashbuckling story. That
and the ending, the return to life as it was – the Hero’s journey. On the
Wormhole Electric website we put together a definition of pulp that I think most accurately
defines a reader’s experience for me:
“… good pulp is the hero winning
the day, walking through the smoke and dust of the situation and coming out a
bit older, a bit wiser, ready and willing to do it all again another day; it is
the hero peering through the dissipating haze feeling satisfied… As a reader, pulp is something that explodes
in your face, dominates your thoughts as you pull with the hero through the
villainy, the deceit, the rawness, the heart break; and like the hero, at the
end of the story you want more. For a moment that glint in the hero’s eye is
yours, his nod of definitiveness is your nod.”
So here is another riddle:
A nightly bandit
Washing to feel with hands
A single mother with a brood in tow
A sumo wrestler in fur
Have a great week!
Carolyn
PS
You have an answer to the riddle? Comment! You don't have to leave it up to Don and I!
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