Ceremonies
How we write a ceremony.
FIRST: figure out an OUTLINE
Who is this candidate? What do they WANT? What do they NOT want? Where and when do they live? Are there things that are super important to them that must be included? People, values, oaths, etc?
What is the dramatic action? What are you DOING here? What is the premise?
In general, we go looking for some kind of action that would have happened in the person’s time/place that CHANGES THEIR RANK.
OR
This is the SCA, they are getting a Peerage, all we need is a unique intro and done!
What are the parts?
Intro, speakers, oaths, get regalia, etc.
You have to figure out what physical action is happening during each spoken part. Is this said WHILE processing? Is this letter read while a cloak is placed on the person being elevated? (this can get re-arranged constantly through the process of writing)
How are all of these parts arranged??? What happens first?
KEEP A LIST OF WHAT STUFF YOU NEED! A ceremony includes stage directions, prop lists, etc.
WHO all needs to know this information?
WHO will be reading these lines? Has the Crown approved the ceremony (give this weeks)? How many heralds do you need (the usual number is TWO)? Do other people need to learn their lines? Is there a timeline for that?
Once we have an outline and a solid premise (which involves some research sometimes), then we go looking for RESEARCH. We are looking for actions and WORDS that fulfill what we want to be happening.
We look for records of public speech in the appropriate time/place. We look for public speech because that’s going to give us the closest to the correct “voice”. Here, we are looking for tone and word use. Also, academic papers ABOUT public speech, oaths, and rank changes. This can really inform the STRUCTURE of how parts go together.
Is public speech in this time/place poetic? All of it, or just parts? What is the cultural connotation/worth of oaths/ceremonies/rank changes?
Be clear about translations and if you are taking words directly, look for stuff that isn’t under specific copyright (don’t pull Tolkien-words, even if they are awesome).
To be blunt, we OFTEN copy and paste chunks of text into place and then adapt them to the situation. We go looking for the LINES WE NEED and mash them together. This is often much easier than it sounds like it would be, if you have a clear idea of what you NEED, then read the sources, those lines are often THERE. You put them in place. But to DO that, you need to understand what the overall ceremony is going to LOOK like, and what people in that time period/place expected public speech to BE.
AS YOU GO! Make a fully annotated version so you know where you GOT all these bits.
We OFTEN start with a Kingdom ceremony (or multiples that we’ve jigsawed together). We read them CAREFULLY for content, looking for subtext and making sure each action is what the person being elevated WANTS. Make SURE you know what is required in the Kingdom where it is being performed. We have made ones that represent a person’s history in the SCA with many Kingdoms’ ceremonies, but you need to be able to defend WHY you made these choices.
Must cover all the ESSENTIAL parts (we have Marya check ours to make sure they are “legal”).
We fiddle with the language of the base Kingdom ceremonies to make them match the tone. We often adjust the order of events within the ceremony for dramatic reasons (or preference of the person being elevated). It is important to know at what point in the ceremony the person’s rank changes, for example.
Be very sure that the oaths in the ceremony align with what the person being elevated wants to swear to.
So, in GENERAL, Peerage ceremonies usually have a unique intro which both sets the scene and introduces the candidate. You can go from there into a bog-standard ceremony, no other adaptation needed, or you can make the whole thing match (in tone, language use, etc). We are generally somewhere in the middle? Some changing of wording, making things match up, order of actions a little different, but we don’t USUALLY write an entire new plan.
SO.
At this point, you should have a giant annotated MESS that is all in the correct order.
NOW, talk to your coauthors, make sure it’s legal, that it makes dramatic sense, accomplishes what you want to do, etc.
Next up it is time for THE CLEAN COPY. This means one that you can READ for time, and have the person being elevated read, etc. Sections may be a surprise to the candidate, but they have to AGREE to that. NOTHING can be a surprise to Their Majesties.
The draft after that is the one that includes more details. If you want the sword of state, you have to say “bring forward the sword of state”. If something is supposed to be said while the procession moves, you need to SAY THAT. Make a specific color (or italics or something) and write stage directions all in one. This is a thing that you won’t get a rehearsal on, so practice and plan out the parts so they’ll all WORK on the day of.
This process varies wildly, sometimes there are a million sources and it just HAPPENS, sometimes you spend weeks reading technical papers about what oaths look like, sometimes there are lots of puns. We go around in circles, with drafts that make sense only to US. It is IMPORTANT to know what the person being elevated WANTS, and to make the ceremony fulfill that.
With the recipient's permission, we are attaching copies of some of the ceremonies we've written.
Note: Uhhhh….girlez MAKE STUFF.
In a lot of these ceremonies, you’ll find that we get to “present these items and say where they came from” and our line is almost always “uhhhh…we made it?”. I know most people get elevated with items that have extensive histories, but we’re a little, erm…different? Please see my persona section for some explanation of why we don’t fit real well into feudal patterns, but are a TOTALLY documentable group of foster-sisters doin’ a crafts.