Growing a Meme Library

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 18, 2011 None comments

Memes are self-replicating ideas. You might think of them as viruses of the imagination, spreading from one person to another, transmitted by things being interesting or attractive to our thoughts in some way. Like normal viruses, memes can spread rapidly. The Internet has a big role to play in this. Forums, blindly forwarded email and websites devoted to wasting hours of your time at a go hoard and breed memes, weeding out the weak and endlessly dissecting and replicating the strong.

As a writer, memes can be very useful. So can tropes, a subset of memetics. A trope is an idea that has appeared in different media enough times that it is recognisable as a pattern. These can range from general down to very specific. Tropes differ from memes in that a trope refers to a set of characteristics that appears multiple times in different media. A meme changes and shifts as it replicates, but shares common links with its predecessors.

Steampunk is a powerful meme. Photo: Sam Howzit


An example of a meme could be the emergent popularity of steampunk writing over the last few years. While it’s been around – incubating, even – for decades longer, steampunk has had an explosion of popularity since the early 2000′s. New waves of steampunk books, movies, clothing and cultural events sweep back an forth across the world. Of course, as they do, they subtly change and refine themselves, yet are recognisable under one broad umbrella. Or parasol.

An example of a trope could be a ray-gun, popular with steampunks everywhere. While the individual construction of any given ray-gun is likely to be unique, a ray-gun is essentially interchangeable with its fellows. Tropes are also generally signifiers of a ‘possessive’ meme: antiquated ray-guns are likely to appear in steampunk, alternate history, etc. They are unlikely to appear in, for example, romantic comedies and literature.

A vast repository of them can be found at TvTropes.. A word of warning, though: it is very, very easy to get lost in there. I’ve spent hours reading through the website, and I’m not alone in this weakness. In fact, the addictiveness of hunting for tropes has itself become a meme.

Roots and origins
It’s difficult to have a purely original idea these days. In fact, I’d say not to bother trying. Whatever you come up with, a quick Google check will invariably point out that someone has come up with the same premise as you. This can naturally be a touch disheartening.

So, instead, don’t worry about finding a perfectly ‘original’ idea. Instead, develop and exploit your own personal meme library in order to better understand where your stories are coming from. Do you feel like a particular character is missing? Does ending a scene in a certain way feel right to you? Most simple ideas you have for stories will likely fit into a memetic narrative string. You might even combine two or three. An increased awareness of how stories fit themselves together inside your brain will how you where to look for how it’s been done in the past. With an awareness of what’s come before you, you can write something unique in execution.

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Discounting Christopher Booker’s premise that we’re all narratively drawn to variations on Seven Basic Plots, is it really surprising that we identify with particular memes? I’ve done this myself on more than one occasion when writing out stories. I end a short story with what I could swear blind to be an original twist, only to discover to my consternation that it’s the same ending as some half-forgotten episode of Captain Planet from my childhood.

Observe with diligence.
The best way to grow your own meme library is to observe with diligence. Note with interest when you encounter familiar ideas in your own reading. Note with more studious interest ever time you come across something and sy “Oh, that’s neat!”. You don’t need to go to the stage of formalising any of this observing. You could if you want, but I don’t think t would be a worthwhile exercise compared to getting some more writing done.

As you enter into a practise of observing ideas in other people’s works, here’s what’s going to happen. Your brain is very good at detecting patterns. So good, in fact, that it intuitively will make connections and try and establish patterns even when there are none to be observed. The more you practise thinking about things like memes, the more obvious they will be to you in everything you see. Advertisements. Magazine articles. Letters to the Editor. Episodes of your favourite TV show. You might start to form your own mental classifications. Oh – here’s a Crowning Moment of Awesome at the end of a series. Here’s the Dramatic Finale. There’s the Disreputable Drug Dealer.

Better, you’ll start to see patterns in what you observe. This is what those teachers in English class were trying to instill into you: a sense of critical thinking. That thinking will let you identify patterns not only in other’s writing but also in your own. Are you predictably following the path of a certain meme? How are you distinguishing your characters from others with the same characteristics?

Exploit your meme library.
Once you’ve developed memetic awareness, start to harness what you know for your creative writing. Deliberately engage with or subvert memes, depending on what you feel suits your writing style. Don’t try and avoid them together. It’s practically impossible and hardly useful. Instead, embrace the fact that other creators have trodden over the same ground you have. Understand that your execution of your ideas is what makes your work unique. And take heart from the fact that you know it can be done!

5 Writing Lies You Tell Yourself

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 15, 2011 10 comments

Here are 5 writing lies that you tell yourself. When you hear them running through your thoughts, stop, realise what they are, and take appropriate action.

1. I’ll write more tomorrow

No, you won’t. This has been proven time and time again: procrastination kills productivity. The human brain is great at tricking itself in a variety of ways. One of them is thinking that you’l be able to catch up tomorrow.

This is a lie for two reasons. One, you won’t catch up tomorrow. Two, you’re letting yourself fall out of a habit or pattern you’re deliberately trying to ingrain yourself with. If you’ve set yourself a goal of writing an amount of words per day, then you need to stick to it. This is why I suggest using a 30 day trial to see if you can manage a certain output.

Build willpower and writing habits by taking small, manageable steps. You may not be able to write 2,000 words a day, every day. Most professional writers can’t. You can certainly write 500 words a day. 500 words a day is more than one full draft of a decent sized novel per year.

Don’t write more tomorrow. Write enough today.

2. This edit is good enough.

It’s not. If you’re not sick of seeing your words, then you haven’t read over them enough. If you catch yourself saying ‘Yeah, this is good enough‘, then your brain is being lazy and trying to get out of the hard work of editing nd revising your work. This is especially true if you’re trying to edit for length. Killing words is hard. Doing so is worthwhile.

How will you know when your edits are good enough? When you don’t have to tell yourself they are. When your bones are full of the deep-rooted knowledge that you’ve polished and revised. Your words will be the best they can be.

3. This is a totally original idea!

No it’s not. If you think you’ve had a totally original idea, you haven’t read broadly or deeply enough. And if you’ve Googled the idea and can’t find a single other instance of it anywhere in written history, don’t get your hopes up. The Chinese invented it three thousand years ago and it’s sitting in a scroll in the Imperial Archives.

Don’t worry, though. What matters is not so much the idea but the execution. How you execute an idea is entirely yours. Borrow, steal, misappropriate, remix, mash-up and hybridize all the ideas you can. Ignore the false hope of coming up with a perfectly original idea. Find something that excites you and concentrate on doing it well.

4. The editor will see past that.

Have a penchant for referring to people’s hair color every third sentence? Use too many adverbs? Don’t know how to use a semicolon, but feel like throwing one in anyway? “It’s OK,” you think, “That’s what editors are for.” Then you send your submission off to wherever it’s going, and wonder why the results are always so negative.

Editors – the ones you submit your writing to – are not there to tidy up your work. They’re there to pick diamonds out of the thousands and thousands of lumps fo coal that get sent their way. Do you think your writing is in the top 0.03% of submissions that end up getting published? Great. Submit it.

Poke-in-the-eye, wake-up-and-pay-attention fact time: if you make an editor blink by dropping punctuation, misspelling something, or not following their guidelines exactly, you’re giving them an excuse to drop your work and move onto something else. You are not the exception to this rule. Arrogance is a virtue only when used for good. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the creative writing world will make allowances for you.

5. This is a guaranteed bestseller!

You can secretly think this if you want. But don’t say it to anyone, ever. Not your grandmother, who’s read everything you’ve written since you were three and shows all the ladies at lawn bowls. Not your partner, who’s suffered through months of your ups, downs, temper tantrums and delirious bouts of optimism.

Definitely never say it to your agent, editor, marketers or publishers. Don’t even think it loudly around them. Do you know how many people say this? All the time? And what percentage of those actually go on to be read, let alone considered, let alone published? Few. Very few. Don’t make your innocent optimism mark you out as a gormless amateur.

Your writing may be a success. It may be a rampant success. You may end up with journalists and screaming fans camped outside your door, day and night, as you work on your next multimillion-dollar-advance-book.

It’s unlikely, though. The difference between healthy optimism and blind ignorance can be measured in precisely how many times you say this in your writing career. Here’s a hint: more than zero is bad.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies
There are other little writing lies that you tell yourself. Tell me them! If you think of a writing lie that I’ve missed, please let me know in the comments section below.

The Spirit Rebellion, Rachel Aaron

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 11, 2011 None comments

In Short
The Spirit Rebellion by Rachel Aaron (Book 2 of The Legend of Eli Monpress)
Orbit Books, Fantasy, 426 pages, paperback edition.
My copy: Purchased.
Pros: Fun, great worldbuilding, fantastic protagonists
Cons: Heavily troped.
In a line: World’s greatest thief finds it hard to resist enticing trap.
Score: 7.5/10

The Spirit Rebellion is a fantastic sequel to Aaron’s first novel in the series, The Spirit Thief. With a more complex and intriguing plot, an increasingly fleshed-out set of characters, and a host of mysterious and engrossing villains on the horizon, The Spirit Rebellion is an excellent sequel to a promising debut.

From the blurb:

Eli Monpress is brilliant. He’s incorrigible. And he’s a thief.

He’s also still at learge, which drives Miranda Lyonette crazy. Since she’s been kicked out of the Spirit Court, Eli’s had plenty of time to plan his next adventure. But now the tables have been turned,because Miranda has a new job – and an opportunity to capture a certain thief.

Things are about to get exciting for Eli.He’s picked a winner for his newest heist. His target: the Duke of Gaol’s famous ‘thief-proof’ citadel. Eli knows Gaol is a trap, but what’s life without challenges? Except the Duke is one of the wealthiest men in the world, a wizard who rules hus duchy with an iron first and an obsessive perfectionist with only one hobby: Eli.

It seems that everyone wants to get their hands on Eli Monpress…

Increasing excellence
Eli Monpress is fast growing in my regard as an excellent Gentleman Thief. Throughout The Spirit Rebellion, we start to see more than the simple, shallow dimensions we were given in his previous adventures. He occasionally lets altruism and nobler motives other than his massive egotism guide his actions, which is nearly as endearing as watching him get petulant when someone challenges his overinflated ego.

Of more interest is the excellent development in Eli’s companions, Josef the swordsman and Nico the demonseed. Josef engages in more dialogue with his spiritually ‘awakened’ blade, the Heart of War. Awesome title notwithstanding, Aaron has made the Heart of War into its own, quite reasonable persona and not a cliche’d blood-thirsting demonic fiend, which I can only assume took a great deal of willpower on her end. The Heart is rightly annoyed with Josef’s stubborn resistance to using it. After all, if you’re the greatest awakened blade in existence, what point are you if you don’t get to cleave some opponents from time to time?

Luckily for us, Josef is forced into a deadly confrontation with an impressive opponent. We get a nice action scene with plenty of smitings – Nico gets to let rip as well, which is very satisfying – and a little exposition, which helps the world-building efforts no end.

Nico’s history and the problem of the demonseed growing inside her gets nicely fleshed out in this story as well. The heroes early on meet up with a master craftsman, Heinricht Slorn, who is very acquainted with the control and power necessary to keep a growing demonseed imprisoned. We are given glimpses of the shadowy League of Storms who watch over the realms unseen, hunting down escaped demonseeds and killing them before they can damage the world. Nico is indirectly threatened, the League held at bay by mysterious Puppet Masters. We can only assume that her story will reach a peak in the third book, The Spirit Eater, to be reviewed shortly.

Our other main storyline, that of Miranda Lyonette, is also a satisfying one. Moving at a slower pace than Eli’s adventures, Miranda finds herself unjustly reprimanded for her heroic actions at the end of the first book. Outmanoeuvred by political opponents, Miranda is stripped of her authority by the Spirit Court and barely escapes imprisonment.

Stung by the betrayal of her peers, Miranda is picked up by another powerful figure in the world, and re-assigned to the purpose that caused her banishment: the capture of Eli Monpress. With a powerful ally in the Great Spirit Mellinor in her service, and with vengeance in mind, Miranda starts to track Eli down.

Rollicking adventures
Aaron has done a fine job with The Spirit Rebellion. Her characters are fleshed out and more three-dimensional. The villains are less transparent, and there’s a nice balance of explanations and further mysteries as her plots progress. Miranda has grown from being almost dim in the first book to a more adult, quick-thinking character. This is particularly handy because Eli, lovable rogue that he is, is in fine form, trading pithy insults with everyone around him and generally being a rapscallion.

Everything that was good about the first book is here, polished and smoother. Aaron’s occasionally unconvincing dialogue has been tightened dramatically. Her story flows smoothly, and she handles transitions between plot points without needing to re-visit old ground, something which irked me occasionally in The Spirit Thief.

We’re still focussed heavily on Eli’s exploits, but we get a glimpse of where Josef, Nico and Miranda will be heading with their character arcs. I expect excellent things from The Spirit Eater, the third book in the series of five books. Impressively, Aaron has a very tight publishing schedule, each book coming out from Orbit within a few months of each other. This means that rather than the interminable waits forced on us by other fantasy authors, the entire series of novels is available within a very short window.

The Spirit Rebellion is a worth successor to The Spirit Thief. Tighter, smoother, grittier and more fun, Aaron’s hit her stride with this one. I happily give The Spirit Rebellion seven and a half enchanted rings.

The first and third books, The Spirit Thief and The Spirit Eater respectively, have also been reviewed. Rachel Aaron has also interviewed Write-Thing, and that excellent interview can be found here.

How to Write Your Own Wedding Vows and Ceremony

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 8, 2011 1 comments

There are lots of wedding vows and ceremonies out there. Most of them are boring and generic. I’ll show you how to write your own wedding vows and ceremony. Why? It’s easier than you’d think. It’ll make your day special, unique. People will remember your ceremony. And you’ll have memories of a day that was truly yours to treasure for a lifetime.

I got married quite recently. My partner and I agreed early on that we would write the ceremony ourselves, but when we went online there wasn’t much information on how to go about it. We didn’t want to just copy what someone else had done. I set about putting something together that was uniquely ‘us’. After several drafts and a few adjustments, these were the vows we came up with. Guests at the wedding pulled us aside to compliment us on the uniqueness of our ceremony, so in that respect we got what we were aiming for!

Standard Wedding Vows Suck.
Most standard wedding vows suck. If you get a priest to do it, they’ll get you to do the same vows they’ve said a hundred times before, because that’s what they’re comfortable with. If you get a celebrant to marry you, they’ll do the same. You might be offered a choice of vows or things to say during the ceremony.

This is because religious ministers and celebrants are human. They want familiarity and routine. They’ve got these words down pat, and changing them is, from their point of view, unnecessary. If you go with a pre-packaged option for your vows and ceremony, the content isn’t going to be original. If you’re lucky, the priest or celebrant will slip in a few words off-the-cuff about you as a couple. Most of what is said will be tedious truisms.

If you’re not bothered with that, fine. Your celebrants and priests aren’t stupid. They marry people for a living. They aren’t going to choose or write vows that are insulting or irreverent. But they will, by necessity, have to be generic. They will apply to you as well as they applied to the last couple. There’s nothing wrong with that as such, but we all know you can do better.

A good set of wedding vows, wrapped up in a ceremony that has meaning for both of you, will make your wedding something that everyone else will remember as fondly as you. It’s not that hard to write your own vows. Whoever is marrying you shouldn’t have any issues with having a ceremony done the way you want to.

Legal and religious considerations.
There are thousands of websites around the Internet devoted to working out the perfect wedding. What dress you wear, how you word the invitations, and how to pick the venue are all decisions you need to make. They are not something we’re concerned with here. What we’re looking at is how the words we write will shape the day you’re going to have.

The first thing to consider when writing your wedding ceremony is what’s set in stone. You will have to do certain things, by law, in order for the authorities to recognise you as legally married. In most places, this means saying certain words, usually in front of witnesses. Everything else is optional.

If you don’t want to do those things in your wedding ceremony, you don’t have to. When I got married, we considered doing the formal, legalistic parts of the wedding the day beforehand at a registry office to get them out of the way. We decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and worked the formal vows into our ceremony.

Your religious beliefs will strongly influence your wedding ceremony. Depending on how strictly you follow the guidance of religious advisors, you will have a varying say in what happens during your ceremony. Strictly orthodox religious ministers may not want to preside over a ceremony where there is irreverence or ‘silliness’. Others will take a more relaxed attitude and may even join in the fun.

Your guests will expect what you lead them to expect. If you let people know that you are going to have a relaxed wedding, then nobody should get offended if you break the rules a little.

If you and your partner share religious beliefs, then working those into your wedding ceremony shouldn’t be a challenge. If you have differing beliefs, then you’ve got some sorting out to do. This is one point of contention where people’s families tend to weigh in with their opinions. Take them on board, but remember the day is about you joining together as a couple. If you can’t find a way to make acknowledgment of both your religions work, then consider having a more secular ceremony and have religious celebrations another time.

My partner and I are atheists, but several of our family members have strong spiritual and religious feelings. We knew that they would respect our beliefs while at our wedding. At the same time, we concentrated more on the universal themes of marriage – love, togetherness, commitment, joy – rather than trying to fit our ceremony into one particular religious context or another.

The vows themselves.
When you come to writing the wedding vows themselves, here are some things you may want to think about declaring, in one way or another:

* Your love for each other.
* Your commitment to joint happiness.
* Your desire to spend your lives together.
* Any religious scripture or mention you want made.
* What ceremonies you want.

When you consider wedding vows, it’s easy to see that there are certain assumptions you can make that are going to guide what you’re going to say.

It’s a fair assumption to make that two people getting married are in love. They want to spend the rest of their lives together. They want to celebrate their union with friends and family. Certain rituals will be observed. You are your partner will have ideas as to how weddings ‘should’ go.

These are not constraints. They are guidelines to work within. What you want to say, and how you want to say it, is up to you. Write something that flows like you want it to.

Ceremonies
It is not compulsory to get married where and how your parents want you to. Nor do you need to have a wedding lifted out of the pages of a bridal magazine, tourist brochure, or romantic comedy.

There are as many different wedding ceremonies as there are wedded couples. you feel like including something a little out of the ordinary – and why wouldn’t you – you can justify it easily with a little bit of dodgy ‘genealogy research’. Have a fancy to carry your wife off slung over your shoulder, beating off your in-laws with a wooden sword? Well, it’s just your good luck that your great-great-great-great uncle was Olaf the Vicious.

Hand-fasting. Fire-jumping. Apple-bobbing. Ritualised slapping dances. Wailing relatives. Whatever you want, the only limitations on your ceremony are your imagination and your capacity to Google for inspiration.

If you’ve been to or seen a wedding and liked elements of it, steal and borrow shamelessly. I can guarantee you that your friends aren’t going to mind if you adapt something you saw at their wedding. If anything, they’ll be flattered, and pleased that you chose to celebrate your union like they did.

Nobody’s going to care if you borrow lines from a movie or TV show. They have professional writers putting these things together for a reason.

Themed weddings
Themed weddings are a category on their own, and unfortunately not one I have a lot of first-hand experience with. I can only say ‘go for it!’ and, if you and your partner have something in mind, encourage you to get married in a way that really stands out. If you’re going to do a themed wedding, make sure your guests know about it well in advance, and be prepared to help out the incompetent, especially if costuming is involved.

Having looked at amazing photos from other people’s weddings, though, I think it’s worth the effort. I’ve got plans for my anniversary…

Practise your ceremony
Once you’ve knocked together a first draft, play-act out your ceremony with your partner. Get someone to stand in for the celebrant or priest if they aren’t available. Run through what you’ve written. Reading from a script is OK for a rehearsal!

This is a time to practise non-attachment to your first draft. It’s unlikely what you write the first time around is going to be even close to what you end up with. Things that seem elegant on paper can sound mawkish or cliched when said aloud. Truths that seemed too simple become moving and honest. As you rehearse the ceremony, keep asking yourself questions.

Did it feel like the right length?
If you were watching it, would you enjoy it all or start to get bored?
Did the words feel right, or were they forced?
If you had to pick ten sentences to change, which ones would they be?
Does any part of the ceremony feel unnatural, or make you uncomfortable?

Remember that both partners need to be totally honest about this process. Discuss what worked, and what didn’t. Play with the language you’re using. Save multiple drafts, and try speaking the versions aloud to each other. Try swapping roles, so you read your partner’s part of the ceremony.

Some more hints:

  • Make it conversational: When people who don’t write regularly need to write something, it tends to come out very formally. It doesn’t need to be in this instance. Don’t say “Angela and Ben want to express their pleasure that you were able to attend” when you’d normally say “Angela and Ben want to thank you for coming. It means a lot to them to have you here.”
  • Don’t work from ‘should’: If, while you’re writing, you say ‘Oh, we should do X’, stop yourself. It’s your ceremony. It’s your special day. Don’t do things you aren’t keen on unless there’s a good reason. ‘Should’ is a way of trickily justifying something you don’t want to do. You have to do that enough every other day of your life. Don’t compromise your wedding day.
  • Speak from the heart: Say what you genuinely feel. Or what you think you’ll be feeling. For me, that was mostly gratitude. I felt thankful that my wife loves me as I love her. Honoured that my friends would travel to celebrate our day with us. And relieved that everything had worked out! Be bold and say what you genuinely feel.
  • Be as funny as you want: I’m naturally a pretty loquacious guy. It’s been mentioned more than once that I tend to prattle on, especially when nervous or excited. I made sure to take a jab at myself during the ceremony. Anecdotes, quips, quotes and even a bit of play-acting are all welcome additions to what is traditionally a fairly stolid process. If you and your partner lead in the fun-making, your guests will be comfortable with it.
  • Give yourself a few days break: When you’ve got your ceremony the way you want it, take a few days break. Then come back and rehearse it again. It’s important to run through it one more time, even if it’s only with your partner. A couple of days of will let you see and hear it afresh and spot problems you may have overlooked previously.
  • Aim for minimal acting: Acting, like all artistic endeavours, is harder to do well than it seems. If your script has someone playing a character, don’t expect an interpretation exactly true to your ideals. Let people form their own versions of how they’re going to do things. Generally, ideas like movements or simple actions are best. “When trumpet solo starts, Adam sprints down aisle and crash-tackles the clown”. Let Adam figure out exactly how he’s going to do that.
  • Anything with dancing is likely to be dorky: The vast majority of people in this world can’t dance. They will try, though, if you make them. Don’t expect much, unless you and your friends are into social dancing. The best you can expect without major rehearsals is some coordinated jiggling.
  • Take three deep breaths: Wedding planning doesn’t have to be stressful. It’s likely to be challenging, though. I nearly lost my temper several times, and I have the advantage of genial in-laws and a relaxed temperament. Keep consciously relaxing. The preparation you do now is groundwork for a hassle-free wedding. Remember: three deep breaths turns fear into excitement.

Have fun!

Pip

P.S. If you want some inspiration, I’ve put up a copy of my own wedding vows. Feel free to take whatever you’d like from them. And if you come up with something original that you’d like to share, please contact me and I’ll add your words to Write-Thing’s archive to inspire future couples!

A Princess Bride Flavoured Wedding Ceremony

Posted by Pip Hunn on February 8, 2011 5 comments

As I’ve explained in my article here about writing your own wedding vows and ceremony, you need to find something that suits you and your partner. In my own case, our relationship has been cheeky, fun, spirited and deliberately irreverent.

It was with these qualities in mind that I started to draft a wedding ceremony. My partner and I didn’t want to offend any of our guests, many of whom were more conservative than us.

This is what we came up with:

The Players:
Felicity, bride
Pip, bridegroom
Mike, friend and orator
Oli, friend and actor
Lorraine, marriage celebrant

With grandparents attending, we didn't want to be too irreverent.

The Setting:
The lush and verdant Chapel Hill, 8km west of Brisbane, the tropical capital of Queensland, Australia. A perfectly sunny day, snuck in between weeks of torrential rain that would eventually result in the 2010-2011 Queensland Floods. Excellent timing was a feature of the wedding.

Wedding guests enter down a path to a park, where Felicity and Pip await them under a tree laden with intricate wire sculptures. They are brought in to the resounding pulse of Taiko drumming, an art which the couple have passionately enjoyed for years.

The Wedding Ceremony
Mike: Here we meet to celebrate not the beginning of a relationship but the continuation of one, a single moment in what will become two lifetimes, joyously intertwined.

We are here, this morning, for the simplest and best of reasons. It is not destiny that has brought Fel and Pip together. Nor is it fate, or the workings of invisible flitting spirits, nor the alignment of planets, that bring you all here. It is the primal human emotion. It is our finest and most base state of being. Love has brought Fel and Pip here, and love has brought you here to witness their union.

This is one moment in time. We will enjoy it as it happens, and treasure it once it has passed. And in being here, we want to recognise that this is the culmination, not only of two year’s of moments of love between Pip and Fel, but of thousands more moments, just like this one, stretching throughout all of our lives and histories.

We should also recognise that this coming together did not happen by accident, nor did it happen overnight. This has been coming a long time, long before these two met and fell for each other. All of us have been involved, and Fel and Pip want to thank and honour you for the parts you have played.

(Pip and Fel bow humbly)

The moments of love and friendship that came when you first met these two. The times you’ve shared with them. The history of your connections, your friendships, your love, have shaped Fel and Pip into who they are now.

And going back, further, the love that brought you into this world, and the love that brought your parents and grandparents into this world, the couplings of joy and wonderment that have stretched back in unbroken chains for hundreds and thousands of years. All of that love, coalesced into a gathering of people, here, in this park!

Fel and Pip realise the commitment they’re making. We all know the energy and vivacity each of them carry through their lives. Their energy is infectious, free-spirited, unshakeable. They live to the greatest expressions of joy. They want to live their lives together, to support, encourage, and enjoy each other.

They are aware of their own mortality. Far from being something negative, their knowledge of the transience of life is an inspiration to them both. Having only one life to share, Fel and Pip are determined to make the most of it, to love each other fiercely, to cleave to each other throughout the adventures that will come.

Before we take a few moments to officiate the beginning of the middle of the rest of this journey, through that wonder of modern life – paperwork – we invite you to listen to a song that sums up the solemnity and the gaiety of marriage. The poem is by the old Sufi poet Rumi, and the song is set by Eric Whitacre.

This Marriage
May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcomes the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage.

The Official Bit
Lorraine: My name is Lorraine Holden and I am duly authorised by law to solemnise
marriages according to law.

Before you, Pip, and you, Felicity, are joined in marriage in my presence and in the presence of
these witnesses, I am to remind you of the solemn and binding nature of the relationship into
which you are now about to enter. Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a
man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.
Do you understand the nature of this commitment?
Pip: I do.
Fel: I do.
Lorraine: Repeat after me:
Pip: I call upon the people here present to witness that I, Pip Hunn,
take you, Felicity Clark to be my lawful, wedded wife.
Felicity: I call upon the people here present to witness that I, Felicity Clark,
take you, Pip Hunn, to be my lawful, wedded husband.

Signatures and choiring
The choir sings while the paperwork is being filled out.

Getting the paperwork out of the way.

The Marriage
Oli: It is strange, perhaps, to pick an instance in time, and to say, “this is the moment”. Nevertheless, that moment has come. There has been some debate as to the exact wording of the vows that Fel and Pip will to say to each other. Everyone that knows Pip well, especially, will know that he is rarely at a loss for words. But in this instance, Pip’s have departed. So in a homage to the laughter of their childhoods, they’ve decided to go with a ring ceremony inspired by the simplicity of one of cinema’s greatest films, The Princess Bride.

Oli turns and puts on a Pope Hat.

Oli does his best Terry Jones impression.

Mawwiage.
Mawwiage is what bwings us togeffer, today.
Mawwiage, that bweffed awwangement, that dweam wifin a dweam.
And we pway that wuv, twue wuv, wiww fowwow you fowever…
Pip: Skip to the end.
Oli: Have you the wing?
Pip puts Ring on Fel and vice versa and both look expectantly at Oli.
Oli: Pip, do you?
Pip: Yes yes, get on with it.
Oli: Felicity, do you?
Fel: I do.
Speaker: Fen, by the powew inwested in me…
Pip: Man and WIFE, say man and WIFE!
Speaker: Man and wife.
The couple raise questioning eyebrows at Oli. He nods.
Pip and Fel kiss, hold hands, and turn to face the crowd.
Oli removes Pope Hat.

Friends, family, would you please joining me in congratulating Felicity Clark and Pip Hunn in their marriage.

Followed immediately by a party with lots more singing, performances, and champagne!

There you have it, folks. If you like any of the words in the ceremony above, please take them and enjoy them. If you’re after more inspiration, read the article on how to write your own wedding vows and ceremony.

Thanks,
Pip.