Fas Spring XI.5 - Bromance

What a session! I said bromance and you said aye. Great response: thank you.

Attendees: FB, CW, AS, JW, JH, AP (all old guard - huzzah!)

Read: Bromance I & II (CW poems); A Pathetic Apathetic excerpt (JW novel); Untitled (AP short story / pitch for short); Looking For Bromance (AS comic scene)

Colin likes a challenge; so he arrived with two poems, which, he claimed, were unrelated, on the theme of philadelphia between two men. As ever, he was swift to denigrate his work, but both displayed a comfortable manipulation of language, as well as the seeds of some greater ideas. In I, he had set himself a structural rule that he had to end each stanza on a different pronoun - it was effective both for providing an internal sense to the piece, as well as drawing in the listener. (So too was the fact that each stanza began with some kind of exhortation or spoken word). Bromance II, shorter, sweeter, and over in mere moments, was a snapshot of words spoken between brethren to escape womankind. It’s the kind of thought that works particularly well in poesy. 

Another excerpt from John - this one from later in his novel where our hero has been kicked out of his home and spends his first night on the streets, meeting a homeless man, Bob, who is surprisingly kind, if a little creepy at times. It’s a great section for character development of both John’s protagonist, who thinks one thing and often does another, to humorous consequence, and Bob, who will come to play a prominent role in the narrative, we were told. As so often, we chewed over how much description was enough, and how, in fact, it was possible to get those key descriptions working without overloading a reader, nor with leaving them feeling short-changed on detail. As ever, thoughts in comments would be appreciated. 

Alli claimed to have written her piece on her phone (no harm in that - I do the same when needs must), but it was clear she had given her concept some thought. A brief scene she intended to convert for the screen was excellently executed: four boys in a pub, all after the same girl, with hilarious / disastrous consequences. As with the other things I’ve seen of Alli’s, she has an eye for telling dialogue as well as capturing something of youthful relationships swiftly and expressively. We riffed a little on how to further the tension of the piece, as well as exploring how one might shorten the scene even further to fit the constraints of converting it from a few minutes’ short story to a one page short.

Finally Adam, once again taking his lead from some of the greatest absurdist comedians and deciding to take the theme of bromance to its natural limits - homoerotic love. His scene, still incomplete, but filled with great intent, as well as some choice, thrilling details of what might go wrong when one tries to seek out the epitome of manly chat… there’s plenty to be done on the scene, of course, but Adam already had a sense of direction, and the voice of his rather self-pitying, but kindly protagonist was pleasingly engaging. I hope we see more of it in a later Fas. 

Next theme, GREEN. If you need help with ideas, hit me up. Thanks for all the support!