The Gravest Feedback Mistake

 

I am engaged in a regular writer’s group that meets twice a month and of course as a novelist I also solicit for beta readers for works in progress all of which gives me a prime perch to watch and hear people giving feedback on a writer’s work.

Now, there are plenty of different styles in how to give feedback, personally whenever possible I try to sandwich the critique as good stuff – stuff that didn’t work for me – and more good stuff. Opening and closing with things worked and that you like I think makes it much easier for the harder material to be heard and digested.

There is one approach that see repeatedly used and it’s not one that the critique is choosing but rather falls into without be actually aware of it that hampers giving good feedback, and that is wanting the story to be a different story all together.

Except for a few beta readers those giving feedback are usually writers themselves and there is often an unconscious attempt to mold the story being critiqued into one they would have written and that is not helpful to the author.

Say I am critiquing a story about a woman on the American Plains in the mid 1800s and it’s about her coming to grips with her sexuality and desires for women after the passing of her husband. Okay that is one story and one with lots of potential but if I come to author and suggest that it’s not exciting because there isn’t lots of combat with the local native tribes and it would be much more interesting if we had more characters from the cavalry involved then I am not critiquing the story before me but rather trying to get one written that I might write.

(Not that I have ever had a desire to write western fiction this is merely example.)

It is vital that even if it is not the kind of fiction you would ever write you keep in the forefront of your mind what story that writer is actually trying to tell and not the one you wish for. Critiques that fall into the trap aren’t bad or trying to sabotage the work they have simply fallen into a very natural but not helpful case of mirroring. They are thinking of the story they would write and not this one. Once you are aware and on the alert for this you can give much better critiques that will help your fellow writers.

 

Share

Streaming Review: A Song Called Hate

 

My sweetie-wife is a fan of an Icelandic BDSM inspired metal band called Hatari. This weekend a documentary about the band’s entry into the 2019 Eurovision contest dropping on the streaming service Vimeo but region locked against the US and the UK. Luckily, I had just upgraded my Norton anti-virus subscription to include their VPN (Virtual Private Network) capability and after resetting out location to Finland managed to unlock and rent the documentary.

First time documentary director Anna Hildur follows the controversial band noted for their outspoken style as they prepare to play in Tel Aviv Israel with a clear intention to violate Eurovision’s prohibition on making any political statement as part of the contest.

As anyone who really knows me understands Metal is not one of my preferred musical genres. However, that doesn’t impede my ability to enjoy a good documentary and have respect for artists willing to risk standing and cash in order to make a stand for what they believe is right. Art, on some level, is always political. Even if an artist makes even conscious choice to avoid political statements or stands that itself is a political stand. I am not here to comment on the correctness or fallacy of Hatari’s position concerning the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I will respect that they did not take their position lightly or without forethought.

A Song Called Hate does a very admirable job of revealing the member of Hatari as people and moves beyond the surface level of their costumes and performance. Without having been told there was nothing about the production that would have informed me that this was a first-time feature documentary director. At 90 minutes the run time perfectly balances the need to probe deep into its subjects but without overstaying in any particular scene.

All in all, thought the music is not to my taste and I am far from equipped to judge its quality A Song Called Hate is an illuminating and well-crafted piece of documentary cinema.

Share

Streaming Review: The Last Drive-In; Ginger Snaps

 

This weekend I decided to give Shudder’s original series The Last Drive In a test spin. Hosted by Joe Bob Briggs the series is a throwback to local television stations hosting horror themed fare. Briggs dismisses using an overtly horror inspired host gimmick instead going for a ‘regular’ country guy on his porch approach while provide production details and commentary during breaks in the presentation. Overall, I am not sold on this approach except for possibly campy and over-the-top titles which Ginger Snaps is not.

Ginger Snaps is a Canadian werewolf movie from 2000 starring Emily Perkins and Katherine Isabelle as sisters Brigitte and Ginger respectfully. Ginger is the older sister at sixteen while Brigette is just a year younger. Both are outcast, fascinated by the dark and morbid and thoroughly devoted to each other. When the film opens the suburban development where they live Bailey Downs is already in turmoil as some unknown beast has been killing the dogs of the area. While out on a nocturnal mission of revenge for Brigette’s abuse at the hand of a local bully the girls are attacked by the beast and Ginger bitten starting a chain of events that drives a wedge between the sister as Ginger embraces her new condition.

This film, while a very entertaining horror movie with a fresh take on the werewolf myth, blatantly discarding most of the tropes introduced in 1941’s The Wolf-Man is at its heart a coming-of-age story and deals with the tragic and traumatizing transformation from adolescence to adulthood by way of blood, gore, and horror. Written by Karen Walton the film has a distinctive female perspective and never losses focus on the sisters and their relationship. While modestly budgets at just 4.5 million dollars Ginger Snaps retains a high level of production value with lovely cinematography that provides an atmospheric mood of dread in a dull suburban setting.

The film found its following on home video and repeat broadcasts on HBO mainly because it never got distribution in the United States. It had an offer, but the distributer wanted a PG-13 rating and the direct was unwilling to censor the films prodigious use of ‘fuck’ in the script. (Good for him.) Still, it found enough success to develop a cult following and spawn a few sequels of questionable quality.

Ginger Snaps is a fun, thrilling, and thoughtful film that uses the lycanthrope trope to talk about identity and growing up. It is well worth watching.

Share

Buffy’s Broken World Building

 

The feature film Buffy the Vampire Slayer made little impression upon the world and vanished with little notice but the television series that followed became a cultural sensation skyrocketing its show runner Joss Whedon into celebrated creator status that only recently crashed back to Earth with scandal and controversy.

Running for seven seasons, the first five being well made with the final two in my opinion suffering from turnover in the writing that’s that severely damaged the integrity of the series the series followed the trial and adventures of Buffy Summer the titular Slayer a young woman mystically selected to protect the world from demon, supernatural threats, chiefly vampires.

In the pilot episode Buffy’s watcher Giles explains that contrary to legend the world did not start out as a paradise but rather was thoroughly infested with demons who were eventually dimensionally expelled with the Slayer now the appointed guardian of the barrier between the demon dimension and our own. A clear and unambiguous refuting of Christian cosmology. (One that Whedon in the audio commentary for the episode said he expected to initiate a flood of letters and complaints that somehow never arrived.) Dismissing Christian cosmology for your won is perfectly acceptable world building and, in many cases, a preferrable one but it left the series with an unanswerable question.

Why do crosses repel vampires?

It is not because there is any actual truth behind the symbol, Gile’s ‘actual’ history dispels that possibility. It also cannot be because the user has actual faith that powers the repulsion as when it became necessary to mystically revoke a vampire invitation to Willow’s home a required element was a cross on the wall and not a symbol from Willow’s Jewish faith.

This also raises the question about historical vampires from before the common era. In pre-Christian Rome or other parts of antiquity there were slayers and vampires did the cross repel them even before the advent of Christianity?

I know that these may seem like pedantic and pointless questions. After all it was just a TV series and used as the basis for much of its mythology concepts incorporated into vampire lore from a struggling Irish stage manager and a century of horror films, but it is exactly these sort of the backstory question that bedevil my mind. I would invite you if you were writing vampire stories to ask these sorts of questions and think deeper on the why of your mythology and not simply copy and paste from a century of cinema.

 

Share

Reading TENET

 

Using the application ‘Weekend Read’ developed by scriptwriter John August’s company, I am reading Christopher Nolan’s script for last year’s film Tenet.

Tenet was Nolan’s venture in the globe-trotting super spy genre starring John David Washington as the story’s protagonist battling a world threatening conspiracy implemented by a Russian arms dealer played by Kenneth Branagh.

This wouldn’t be a Christopher Nolan movie if time didn’t play a critical aspect in how the story unfolded, in Memento to simulate Leonard’s inability to make new memories Nolan sequenced events backwards and in in The Prestige extensive use of flashback reordered the tale in Tenet time itself is a critical element of the plot. Deploying hand waving science-fiction about ‘reversing entropy’ objects and people are ‘inverted’ and experience time backwards leading to visually stunning and mind-bending sequences of action throughout the film.

But how does this read?

First off Nolan’s decision to leave the character unnamed is much more ‘in your face’ in the script. In a prose story, particularly one recounted in the first person, it’s fairly easy to hide the fact that the viewpoint character is unnamed, script format doesn’t allow for such subtleties hence often and glaringly Washington’s character is ‘The Protagonist.’ And when he refers to himself as the protagonist of the operation this is only heightens the effect that breaks the spell between document and reader.

Secondly the mixing of forward time and reverse time events in the script are no clearer than when first viewed in the film. Text is dreadfully limiting in recounting simultaneous events and doubly so for such events running in opposite directions through time. Where a piece of prose can slow down and provided critical and essential exposition a script just as a film cannot and must delivery that information vis visuals and character dialog.

Tenet’s script perfectly captures the experience of watching Tenet and in that manner is an exceptionally well written scrip and just as with the film it requires repeated readings to fully see all of the intent.

Share

Various Political Thoughts

 

First up: Abortion. Well, the SCOTUS has taken up a major abortion case where a state law plainly contradicts the landmark ruling Row v Wade which recognized the right to an abortion. With its new 6/3 conservative dominance it is not inconceivable that Roeis overturned opening the door to GOP states across the nations to ban the procedure. It is also possible that instead of overturning the ruling could be gutted to the point where it scarcely matters but technically remains in force, a zombie precedent. No matter how is comes out it is likely to send blast waves through the political landscape as this decision will arrive during the heat of the 2022 midterm elections. How it effects the voters is unknown. What is clear is that turbulent times are ahead.

Second: We were lucky that Trump is an idiot. When RBG died during the final weeks of the 2020 election I feared that Trump would actually leave the seat vacant as a threat to the Republicans who dislike him and were unlikely to vote for him. ‘re-elect me or lose the seat,’ so to speak. Given his thuggish nature and that it would pressure those fence sitters to side with him it could have given him that election. Only as few tens of thousands of votes in the right places and he could have won it while being behind by 7 million votes. But Trump was far too stupid to see such a plainly obvious strategy and now he’s being criminally investigated by state and federal offices.

Third: The 2022 midterms may be the most consequential election in our times or even our history. The GOP has forsaken democracy, betrayed the precepts of the union, dishonored the memory of the people who gave their lives in service to our system of government and replaced all ideology with devotion to a single person, Trump. They have embraced the ‘big lie’, convinced millions that the election was fraudulent, and have demonstrated that nothing it beyond their amoral horizons to gain and retain power. If the GOP wins congress in 2022 it is that class that will have their hands on the levers of power the next presidential election and they will not need the prompting of a murderous traitorous mob to steal the election.

Share

Back From my Time Off

 

Friday was my birthday and after a year of pandemic restricted travel and not yet ready to travel again I decided to take both Friday and Monday off to celebrate and simply luxuriate in a long weekend. So here are some quick thoughts and reports to bring everyone back up to speed.

Birthday Haul: My lovely sweetie-wife presented me 3 Blu-rays as gifts, The Fog, John Carpenter 1980 horror classic on a Shout Factory special edition, The Invasion the 2007 remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, and The Night of the Big Heat which sounds like a film noir title but is a Hammer-ish Sci-Fi film starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee about a far north island on the UK in the dead of winter suffering an extreme heat wave due to an alien invasion.

I had originally planned to have friends over for movies and gaming, but our guest bathroom is currently disassembled due to water damage from the unit above and so the weekend was just me and my sweetie-wife.

However, on Friday I did for the first time in over a year go out to theater. I watched Nobody an action film starring Bob Odenkirk. It was a lot of fun. What could have been tedious was made fun because the film makers understood that humor and a light touch can carry an audience through over-the-top action.

Writing: The Work in Progress novel has been copy-edited and proofed and my SF murder mystery clocks in at 102,000 words, making it longer than my noir Vulcan’s Forge but still trim compared to so many genre novels these days. Now I just need to wait for the feedback from the beta readers to see if it requires any serious surgery.

My mind continues to work on the next book though I am not yet to the outlining stage so writing-wise things are not too bad.

Ta Ta For Now

 

Share

Narrative Gravity

 

As I wait for m beta readers to complete my latest novel and hope that the piece survives the process my mind chews over the problems, characters, and themes of my next project.

While I am a plotter, creating outlines of varying detail for my novels, there’s a lot of pre-work that happens in the background of my grey matter before I ever get to the butt-in-chair & fingers-on-keyboard stage of outlining. Not only do I have to I know the ending I need to have a strong intuitive sense of the characters. The key word there is intuitive. While aspects of the character may be derived from plot or designed for thematic purpose large aspects simply fall into place by some sort of narrative gravity. If I attempt to deviate from that aspects there’s a psychic pushback that produces a force trying to return the character or plot to what fell into place.

This new story forming up in my head has already exhibited such a factor. The manuscript off to the beta readers now has my first female protagonist in a novel length work and I had thought that while I wait for the verdict on that work it would be best if I returned to a male protagonist for this new piece.

Narrative gravity disagreed.

A female character is the one that appears in my mental wanderings as I consider the story. She’s the one clearly driving the plot, making the decisions, and while I had wanted to return to a comfortable zone for this writing it is clear now that I do not always get what I want.

 

Share

Star Trek the Noir

 

I recently re-watched the Original Series episode The Conscience of the King in which Kirk must discover if the leader of a traveling actor troop is in reality a mass murderer who has escape justice.

As indicated by the title taken from Hamlet the scrip has numerous references to the Bard and his works but on this viewing I was taken by just how much the episode leaned into the conventions of film noir.

The story’s spine is a mystery with Kirk playing the role of the detective, searching for clues amongst a forest of lies and deception. He is enamored by a mysterious beauty who ultimately proves to be quite lethal a near perfect femme fatale. The obvious answer to the mystery turns out to be only near correct with a final act twist that reveals a darker and more tragic answer to the series of murders.

In addition to the thematic and plot elements that line up so perfectly with noir that series, though still displaying the bright television set selling colors, Finnerman the director of photography still manages to utilize shadow through the episode giving it a darker image befitting the story.

In my opinion there is no doubt that Star Trek’s The Conscience of the King is film noir.

 

Share

And Now for a Good Movie: The Courier

 

In addition to watching the wretched The Creeping Flesh my sweetie-wife and I also rented The Courier a Cold War espionage thriller starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

Set in the early 60s and lead up to the Cuban Missile CrisisThe Courier is based upon historical events and characters and from my Wikipedia level of research seems to have gotten the broad strokes of events correct but as always one should never attempt to learn history from cinema.

Greville Wynne (Cumberbatch) is a British businessman and salesman who frequently travels behind the Iron Curtain. When Penkovsky, a high-ranking member of the Soviet GRU (military intelligence), messages the Americans that he is willing to delivery secrets to them Wynne is recruited by MI6 and the CIA to act as a courier between the agent and the west. Wynne and Penkovsky become close friends and when their operation starts to become exposed Wynn is forced to decide what is the true nature of loyalty.

The Courier is an excellent film that keeps itself ground in the realism of the day. This is no James Bond adventure but more of a John le Carre style story though without the deep and all-encompassing cynicism Le Carre was so fond of. Directed by Dominic Cooke and written by Tim O’Connor The Courier rarely puts a foot wrong, principally keeping us in Wynne’s point of view and conveying the risks and consequences of the characters’ action. Sean Bobbit’s cinematography captures the sense of alien coldness permeating the scenes set in the Soviet Union as Wynne finds himself lost the labyrinth of modern spying.

The Courier is currently in some theaters and available for the ‘Theater at home’ rentals.

 

Share