The Vase - What a story!

As I'm rereading and improving the writing of The Vase, I'm finding myself in awe. Not of the writing, which, btw, is improving with every read-through, as it should. I'm in awe of the story. What a story! I was noting in yesterday's blog post that it's the most original story ever. And as I'm reading it, and improving the prose, I'm remembering why. You'll never read or watch a story as original as this. But originality by itself is not what makes a story great. You've got to have great characters too. And as you'll see below the header of this blog, there are great characters in this story.

Not just the Palestinian potter. There's an art professor, who works for Shin Bet. There's an IDF captain who leads Kidon. And there's the beautiful assistant to the director of Shin Bet, herself a former IDF captain. Not to mention the reality series ghost hunter, and his show's producer!

Oh, and there are bad guys. Who else? Hamas terrorists. Except they're not Hamas. You see in this story Hamas strikes a temporary truce with the Israeli government which is to last at least as long as the Pope's tour of the Holy Land. But typical of any extremist group, there's a faction of Hamas who will have nothing to do with a truce with Israelis. And the Israelis of course have their own faction who shares the same extremist view, meaning they won't tolerate a truce either. And you wonder why peace is so hard to come by in that region!

So yeah, put all that together and you have great characters and great villains and a great backdrop and a great original premise that blows your mind. That premise being a VASE. A vase that has ancient recordings contained in its grooves. And not just one vase, really. There are a lot of vases that have recordings in them, and they span the length of two thousand years. Yes, in the story we get to see actual scenes from history that date back to two thousand years ago.

Can't wait to finish the rewrite. It's not really a rewrite, it's more like a revision or edit. But it will make the story better, and most definitely the writing will be tons better. So my decision is to once again try to break into the Big Five. It's not time to give up yet. Not with the greatest story that's been written in this current century going for me. That's saying a lot. But I believe it.