March 2016 Winner of the 140 Character Short Story
Watch the Winning Twitter Short Story: SARAH
Get to know writer Napoléon Doom
1) What is your very short story about?
The unexpected demise of a murderess.
2) What motivated you to write this story and submit it to the festival?
Looking back, I’ve known many destructive people in my life. These people always seemed determined to sabotage the ambitions and ideas of those around them, in essence murdering them. The story “Sarah” examines one such person, exposing the wreckage they’ve left in their wake as being born from their own emptiness.
3) What movie have you seen the most in your life?
Beetlejuice. I saw it for the first time when I was 8, and can watch it over and over again. I just loved the puppetry, the makeup, the idea of the afterlife as this fantastical German expressionistic macrocosm… I’d never seen anything like it before. I guess I’ll always be a Goth kid at heart!
4) How many scripts and stories have you written?
Dozens, but I’m very timid about putting my work out for scrutiny. I kind of have that George Mcfly mentality where “I just don’t think I can take that kind of rejection.” (The Back To The Future trilogy places closely behind Beetlejuice.) However, I’m slowly accepting that you can’t live in a fear driven mindset and submitting my work more often. Most recently, I’ve been writing and illustrating a webcomic about my lucid dreams for The Grimerica Show http://www.grimerica.ca/ You can read it at http://www.grimerica.ca/category/bread/ and I hope to have my website up and both ebook and hardcopy versions available soon. I’ve also recently collaborated with Matt Schmitz, http://amazon.com/author/mattschmitz providing the illustrations for a collection of short stories he’s writing. You can check out the first in the series, “A Far and Reaching Darkness” here:http://www.barnesandnoble.com/mobile/w/the-far-reaching-darkness-matt-schmitz/1123406832?ean=2940152622140
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/614188
5) What artists would you love to work with?
I got turned on to the artwork of Moebius sometime in my late teens/early twenties, and will always regret that he passed on before I could meet him. However, animation director Pascal Blais and his production studio http://pascalblais.com/ have picked up his torch, and are working on an animated version of Moebius and Jodorowsky’s graphic novel “The Incal” I saw a preview for it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Vkyzrs1Fk and was completely blown away. I’d love to be involved with that studio somehow, even if its just making coffee runs.
6) What is your passion in life?
Storytelling, be it through my writing, art , sculpture or make-up and costume design. I’m an escapist yet at the same time, I’m an idealist. There’s no guarantee we get anything more in life than the daily drudgery we just sort of shuffle through. It is for that reason that I think stories, dreams and fantasies are so important. Not only do we need a place of refuge, but we need to be able to visualise the world as we might want to see it, otherwise we can never initiate change.
7) Any tips for other writers who want to write a 140 character short story?
I think parring down a vast, unending concept in your head into a limited amount of characters is perhaps the greatest challenge you can offer a creative mind. However, its a challenge you should be eager to take. In today’s fast paced world, people will only willingly offer you a snippet of their time. Learning to express yourself concisely is the way in which you can draw them in. It’s an invitation into your internal universe, and the stories you’ve been waiting to tell. If you don’t extend that invitation, you sentence all those dreams, ideas and characters you harbour to simply die within you.
WILDsound Festival 