Smart Billy: Chapter One Process Brainstorm

any feedback you have for me would be grand.

CHAPTER ONE Brainstorm
EAGLE CREEK OREGON, SPRING 1878:

Billy is fifteen. and here should be the Billy sentences, lots of them, of what he does, repetition of billy. Checking traplines, wondering at father’s eleven week absence, fashioning a homemade bear trap, one that will kill its quarry this time, not like last summer, losing his brother, everything falling apart after that, mother catatonic, father leaving, billy running household on own,

(secret: the father putting younger brother out of misery, covering his face, older brother walks in, to brother’s newly strong kicking. Hidden memory. Not until long after, a revelation, father leaving, not out of shame of the older, but out of shame for himself.)

Describe the carrying back of the comatose brother, of the wet powder from earlier, how the boy failed to fire at the bear, the father surviving by batting the butt of the rifle on the bear’s nose.

Billy finding this bear near punchbowl falls, by Tanner butte, indepth fashioning of this mankiller trap, not aboriginal, not a connection to the circle of life, but of revenge, of hatred for an animal, a quest for atonement.

EXPERIMENT: OPENING SCENE, BILLY TRYING TO FIT THE PIECES TOGETHER, TO NOT GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY, TO VALUE THE READER’S INTELLIGENCE, TO PIECE TOGETHER WHAT HAS HAPPENED, TO LEAVE SOME TO THE IMAGINATION, TO LEAVE SOME FOR LATER. WHAT ABOUT AN EXPERIMENT- A PROSE SESTINA, IS THERE SUCH A THING? 1 STANZA PER 2 PAGES, END LINE WORDS REPEATED OVER AND OVER IN A PARAGRAPH, 3 PARAGRAPHS PER PAGE SWITCH ORDER AS THE SESTINA SWITCHES.

END WORDS TO CONSIDER:
BILLY
BROTHER, BROTH, BROTHEL, BOTHER
GUN (POWDER?)
BEAR (GOOD, WITH HOMONYMS BEAR[A BURDEN] BARE)
FATHER, FARTHER (Water?)
MOTHER SMOTHER MOTH, OTHER
OPTIONAL, IN PLACE OF GUN: RIVER

Final stanza a realization, the father killing brother? Too soon? We’re setting up for the missionaries to find them, and take them, yes?

Just found this on the net, thought I invented something new. But googled "prose sestina" and found this little nugget:

The Prose Sestina. A narrative of seven paragraphs in which six words recur in each paragraph in the same order as dictated by the rules of a sestina: 123456, 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531, 652431. The paragraphs are of about the same length, except for the last paragraph, which is half as long as the others. (Ron McFarland)

Still, I was thinking a paragraph per word uttered several times, which would be new, would possibly be impossibly droll, or hypnotic, or shamanic, healing the boy, hurtling him toward revelation, to meaning, or at least hurtling him the hell out of his present circumstance-that may be all the exorcism anyone needs. Who knows? But Billy is in crisis, searching for answers by doing works in a routine, maybe needing to mix up the routine in different order to reassemble the puzzle, as it were. Can I do this with action and gesture and very little else, other than the form? Will the form stick out, like an ill-fitting suit, or will it suit Billy, in his tendencies, his story, what he has been mutely shouting to me for the last five years?

Jesus Billy, what are you trying to say to me? What are you needing me to help you figure out? Go home. Rest. The leaves are whispering in the trees. Go to sleep…