This is a Twitter story that caught my eye this week. Click on the heading if you want to visit the author’s Twitter Site. Or the post timestamp to go direct to the story.
Each comma was a slash with a blade. The gaps between each word, final gasps. Brackets, clasped to the throat and crushing. A death sentence.
Basically most traditional stories as published are neither good literature or good oral tales ready for the telling - you write them very differently. Nor are they related back to the actual society that produced them so they often lack nuances that would enrich them. So I rewrite from one version and then check this against other known versions to build up the most dramatic three act version.
This is then checked against umpteen books about the Celts to see if this affects the story. For example Celts had a very layered society so the amount of the blood-fine paid (if you killed a man you paid a fine to the family to avoid a blood-feud) depended on honour-status. Also the decisions of this process laid more with professional lawsayers then the chiefs who could not make law. If you know The Sons of Tuirenn these are very relevant to how the story could be told.
Then on the way home, an idea poked in, which that I could re-imagine a whole range of Celtic stories but in two versions- one as drama-literature and the other as a retelling version. So at a stroke I would enrage the traditionalists, the nationalists and the odd wandering Bard. Must be a winner!
