The Players
Share Article Zeynep. Writes about FORM. She is 19+ now. Slight, small, tall, quiet, and serious with curly brown hair. Gifted with telepathic abilities and high artistic skills. Like the Others a Trickster. Lives in Bursa, Turkey. Her grandfather owns a restaurant. Her mother runs the till. Zeynep has no formal writing or art education. Her form and style is authentic. She co-authored The Language Company with Omar and Lucky Foot.
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Rita. Writes about SENSATION. Rita is 14+. Thin with deep dark eyes, long black hair, highly intuitive. She is a happy facilitator of courage and laughter. She is an orphan in a village outside Siem Reap in The Kingdom of Ghosts. She is a freelance Angkor Wat tour guide.
Her twin sister sells ice and writes books in Banlung, Cambodia, a wild west town south of Laos.
Their father and mother raised and sold pigs. The Khmer Rouge murdered their parents. The KR ate the pigs. They practiced cannibalism. They never found the bodies. Rain dissolved footprints and traces of cold, hard factual evidence
Life was hard. Desperate. Rita took her brothers and sisters and ran away. They lived in the jungle like wild animals for 1,000 years.
They learned the language of nature, plants, animals and essential survival instincts. Her English is excellent. She learned English selling trinkets to foreign tourists at Angkor Wat temples. Her home is a simple bamboo and fern one room shack. It is a standard dwelling for families in villages. Rita teaches children English in the village. Rita is a true survivor. She co-authored Ice Girl in Banlung. Surviving with determination is her form and style.
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Tran from Vietnam writes about SYMBOLS. Tran is ageless. He is a fortune-teller ahead of the future and a dust collector. He is slender with a shock of black hair. Malnourished yet content he is an amputee and orphan. His symbolic storytelling gifts combine elements of non-fiction, fiction, myth, legends and laughter’s healing energy. Like his friends, he uses imagination to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Buddha. His form and style adapt, adjust and evolve.
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Leo is a Zen monk. He is an exiled human rights activist. Writes about NOTHING. He has orange spiky hair, quick wit and average height and weight. He is a death mask expert. He wears an alarm clock around his neck as The Chief of Cannibals ... No why ...
His existence has evolved as a student surviving political hysteria and hypocritical hierarchies to surviving hard core Re-education through Labor slavery gulags near the Gobi hauling shit. He escaped to Tibet, the Land Of Snows and kept going. He is in transit with form, style, class, intention and meditative motivation. Keep breathing.
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Devina, from Indonesia has a PH.D in Educational Existential Theory. She is 11+. She is petite and a little sky because she is, like the others, a genius. She writes and lectures on the international motivational speaker circuit about THE WISDOM OF SILENCE and esoteric arcane alchemical intuitive matters like awareness and ontology. Her form and style are exceptional.
Three very important words in English are, I Need Help.
Other characters enjoy walk on roles in the la-ab, a play.
Omar is a blind Tuareg Griot and writer. There is also Grave Digger and word janitor.
There are the VOICE ones, VO and the SIGN ones, SO.
The VO use their voice to speak/talk. They are talking animals with low-medium-high levels of intelligence. Because they can talk they could write a book. It’s amazing so few do. Starting is the hardest part. They are afraid to face their fears, shadows and ghosts.
Lament said, Oh I want to write a book, I’ve been meaning to start. Someday ... I need more life experiences ... Sitting down, bleeding letters, syllables, words and facts with emotion, strength and dignity requires risk, play, letting go of ego outcomes, discipline, grit, stamina and focus ... Others don’t write because they are perfectionists ... So it goes.
Smart ones know a work of art is never finished it’s abandoned. Letting go feeling light is a healthy way.
Some know the end by working backwards. Some know the beginning and write to discover what happens. Others don’t have a clue what they’re doing, where they are, where they’re going, they just make it up and write it down as they go along. They ask, What if and let it play out.
Some put two characters in a room, lock the door and let them get it on. Like sex. They just start scripting and inventing. Inventing a character like Grave Digger. A place. A scene. Dialogue. A Quest. Conflict.
Like where’s the body, said Grave Digger, I’m ready. I have two hands. I know two external things exist. I have a shovel and a plot. My grave plot means turning soil, hubris and dust revealing human motivation, actions and memories. Plot is cold hard dead.
Dark is the night. Cold is the ground.
Patient excavations evolve with a honed blade, a genocide machete, a needle or a serrated edge cutting through laughter and destiny.
Action is Character.
Story before character.
Word janitors and orphans begin in the present ... look at all this word garbage. I’m alone, it’s dark and I’m scared. The beginning needs work. On her back ... In an orphanage ... I need help ... start in the present write in reverse to the past and continue through to the future.
We are alive today. Dig a well with a needle. I was there is a good writing prompt.
Yesterday we were somewhere beautiful on Earth skin searching for water. Today we jump into the abyss and life streams. Pushing the river is futile. Ideas are a small boat use them to get across the river and let them go, ho, ho, life is but a dream.
SO communicates using SIGN language. Gestures. Hands. Eyes. Faces. Skin talk. They work at Epic Arts, a cafe and arts center for the hearing/speech disadvantaged in Kampot.
They pay close attention to what others sign and do. They are empowered with dignity, self-esteem and integrity. They are awake.
