Tag Archives: Writing

No Battle Plan …

So I had expected to be deep into writing my next novel by this point but I am still outlining the brute. Now I am very happy with the outlining so far. It’s a really detailed document pretty much taking the scene by scene through the entire narrative, but even doing the outline is not going according to plan.

I had a set idea about the end of act four and hour it leads into act five where everything comes together for the ending and then today a new idea slithered into my head.

It’s very different but follows so naturally from the earlier scenes and characters that there is no way to ignore it. Luckily for me it does not blow up the ending and in fact I think make the whole novel much stronger. However I really want to test drive it, kick the tires, and make sure this thing is in shape before I commit to utilizing it. That means it si time for a get away from everyone I know, lose my self in a crowd, and think for a number of hours.

Normally this would call for a Sunday trip to Universal Studios Hollywood but I have one of those planned for next month and it will be me and two friends being crazy and silly together, not plotting out novels. I don’t want to take off for a Sunday two months in a row, missing my walks and lunches with my sweetie-wife so something else will have to be done.

This time it will be the San Diego Zoo Safari, formerly the Wild Animal Park. It’s MUCH larger that the zoo located in the center of the city but it is only about 30 minutes away. The plan is to take Tuesday off from work and spend most of the day in the North County looking at animals, getting in a lot of walking, and making sure this idea is as solid as it looks.

Wish me luck.

 

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Critique: Passengers (2016)

This is not a movie review but a critique where I give you my opinion on specific elements of the film and story. In this case I will be discussing what did not work for me and why. Unlike a review spoilers will abound and if you want to remain unspoiled stop reading now.

Synopsis:

Passengers is an SF movie about an extravagantly luxurious colony ship en route from Earth to the colony of Homeworld II. The ship travels at about half the speed of light and the journey is expected to take over a hundred years. because of this the crew and passengers are in cold sleep, the lives suspended between life and death for all but the final four months of the trip. The ship encounters that tired trope of SF movies, a meteor storm and in damaged. Cascading failures results in a passenger, Jim Preston, being awakened from cold sleep. He discovers there are more than 90 years until they reach Homeworld II and there is no way for him to return to hibernation. Jim will spend his life alone on the ship, never reaching the new world. After little more than a year, his will breaks and he awakens another passenger, Aurora Lane, a beautiful writer and lies to her telling her that her cold sleep pod malfunctioned as his did. They get to know each other, they fall into a romantic/sexual relationship, and then of course the lie is exposed. Of course she reacts angrily and they live separate lives, time-sharing the android bartender for company. A third person awakens, a ship’s crew member. He discovers some of the information about the nature of the ships damage and malfunctions, passes to them the access to the secured areas and then dies from his faulty awakening. Together Jim and Aurora discover the precise damage and what is required to fix the ship. Jim is nearly killed but Aurora saves him. Jim discovers that with the Crew Chief’s access he can put Aurora back into hibernation using the ship’s ONLY autodoc. She refuses and stays with him. Ninety years later he crew awakens to discover the ship changed and the record Aurora left behind as both have died of old age.

 

This film has a number of glaring problems and failures in execution. Unlike the movie I watched the night before, Get Out, Passengers becomes worse the more I consider it. Of course let’s get the monstrous sin out of the way first; Jim waking Aurora is an evil act. Perhaps you can understand his motivations, driven to near madness by isolation is a powerful thing, but understanding and excusing are two radically different things. Jim kidnapped Aurora from her life and forced her to live his. He did this to satisfy his needs and his desires. Some have called her eventual reaction to him ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ and I can’t argue with that. I am sure the writers think of it as love, but it’s hard to buy that when she has no choice and no options.

Next up on the great fail parade is the nature of the two characters. Jim is going to Homeworld II because he is a mechanic and no one Earth fixes anything anymore. He is going to fulfill his professional need to build things, and there he will help build a new world, a new society. Aurora is also going to fulfill a professional need. She is searching for the story that will allow her to outshine her father a great and award winning writer as well. He plans were to go, spend a year there and return, half slept through more than two hundred years for the chance at this great tale.

On the surface these characters seem to be treated very much alike, but they are not. With Aurora we get little video messages from her friends she has kept spelling out that what she really needs is not a great jump professionally, but someone to fill the hole in her heart. To be a complete person she must find love, but Jim has no such lacking or hole in his heart. Going there to build is enough. This is a classic bit of bad writing when approaching female characters. Their needs are too often about finding emotional completeness, and they find that in a man.

Another failure in executing her character is that Aurora has no agency in her storyline. I don’t mean that Jim forces her into the situation, but after she is awake and supposedly a full character she has no decision points, no action of hers material advances her story or her plot line. Her only meaningful decisions are about Jim and accepting him back or not. Everything about who she is gets reduced to her call on him. It’s crap writing for any character and especially for female characters.

The crew Chief is nothing more that Chief Exposition. he is awakened to grant access to Jim and Aurora, explain the situation, and then die getting his ‘mentor’ archetype out of the way for the third act. It’s lazy, blatant, and boring.

There are also the plot holes in the story.

There are no faculties for putting someone into hibernation/cold sleep aboard the ship, but there is a crew to run her at the destination. Did they not need a crew to launcher her? They only need it to bring her into orbit? Also there are no provisions for the crew to awaken during malfunctions? No regular awakenings to inspect the ship for function and damage? This is a terribly designed mission and I would not step aboard for that flight.

Passengers is a failed film that looks good and competently acted, but at its heart it is stupid and immoral.

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Tell, Don’t Show

Wait Bob, isn’t that backwards? Nope, that’s exactly the advices I want to speak about today.

Beginning writers are told, it’s really hammered into their head, Show do not tell. A lot of the time this is really good advice. It takes skill, time, and patience to slow down and show the reader the character, the world, and the important details of the story. Many times if you are a novice at fiction writing you are so energized by the ideas and characters cascading through your head that you do not take that requisite time in crafting scenes and rush to tell the grand glorious tale. In those case the advices, Show, don’t tell is spot on.

But there are other cases, where writers slow down the pacing of otherwise wonderful stories to show every detail of the character’s life and each tiny action in the scene. Here they need to skip the show and just tell us.

So what the yardstick to measure if you show or tell?

Of course there is no one answer, but for me the default is what is the drama of scene? If there are no stakes, no drama, then skip writing it out as a scene and just tell the reader in narrative what happened.

For Example:

 

Bill enjoyed his usual Sunday Brunch. He stopped over at the cafe, consumed his favorite breakfast at a leisurely pace, savoring the late morning decadence Stepping outside, the cool autumn air brushing his hair across his face, the sky blackened with the arrival of the invader’s massive starships.

 

Where is the drama in that bit? Right there at the end when alien invaders arrive. That last sentence will transition from telling into showing as we follow Bill and his now very unusual day. Everything that happened before is set-up and while it can be expanded a bit to illustrate character there is little there we have to experience directly. I could write pages about that brunch. Where he sat, how the smells, sounds and light of the dinner created an atmosphere, his banter with the waiter, even loving descriptions of the food itself, but there is no drama in any of that. A little bit for flavor and mood is great but too much and the reader’s desire, if they possess any left, is to skip ahead to where ‘something happens.’

In many ways this ends up at Elmore Leonard’s advice to writers: “Cut out the parts that people skip.”

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CRS – Chronic Rewriting Syndrome

This is not to be confused with the prevalent and related issue of Terminal Rewriting Syndrome(TRS). Those afflicted with TRS rework their prose and poetry, revising, rewriting, and refusing to consider a piece complete until they have wring all life from whatever art that had nearly crafted.

Chronic Rewriting Syndrome, while related, displays itself in different symptomology. Patients afflicted with CRS suffer distress when encountering writing that varies from their own style. Their minds instantly edit and rewrite the prose and product of others, wishing it to conform to their own standards. Afflicted persons can often be heard mumbling out their preferred lines while viewing television and feature film presentations.

There is currently no cure or treatment to alleviate the symptoms.

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Writing Advice you may be Missing

Anyone who reads my postings knows that I love film. Movie have been a part of my life as long as I can literally remember. The advent of home media, first VHS/Betamax, then DVD and Blu-rays has been heaven for the cinephile in me but it has also become a boon to my writing.

A common piece bonus material included in DVS and Blu-ray’s is the commentary track. Here writers, directors, producers, and actors will record a liver running commentary as they watch the film. Sometimes these are funny and filled with behind the antics, or peeks into how the magic of movies works. Those sort of commentary track are fun and I enjoy them, but there are commentary track where the writers and directors will spend the two or so hours talking about the story. What made them want to tell it, what it means to them, and how that approached the challenges.

If you are a writer and you are not listening to these you should. Heavens knows everyone looks at writing and stories from a different point of view, but seeing those points of views can illuminate your own, expand your vistas for crafting a story. These are lectures from professionals and all you need to do is block out a couple of hours – or more in the case of Peter Jackson and his endless Lord or the Rings running times – and soak in the teachings.

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Retire This Trope

The other night on Hulu I watched some of the movie Deep Impact. If you haven’t heard of this Earth versus Comet movie it is because it was utterly buried at the box office by that stupidly insulting example of Michael bay’s work, Armageddon. Beside show casing Elijah Wood before The Lord of The Rings, this film was a serious attempt to convey a story about a comet on a collision and the difficulty in diverting it.

Overall this film scores well in its science. It has some concept of the distances and energies involved. In fact the ship dispatched to divert the comet is powered by an Orion drive, something we had considered building; a ship that flies on a series of atomic explosions.

The movie did engage in one of the oldest trope in SF movies, the astronaut who gets separated from the craft and flies off into cold limitless space.

People, this is not the problem Hollywood would have you think it is.

Everything in space is about velocity. Velocity determines the size and period of your orbits. Go fast enough around the Earth and you are in orbit around the planet. Go faster and you may leave the planet but then you are orbiting the sun. Go a hell of a lot faster and you leave the sun’s influence and now you’re orbiting the center of the galaxy.

If you are working over the side on a spaceship lose you grip you may float away, but your velocity did not change all that much. You are still in the same orbit as the ship you left. Yeah it is out of reach but guess what you can move. With just a tiny burp of it orbital thrusters, not its main engines, and they can come and get you. The same is true if that ship is on its way to the moon, or Mars, or even the outer solar system. The difference between your new velocity and your old one, which was the same as the ships, is going to be insignificant compared to the ship’s ability to change its velocity.

But you know, I am starting to get an idea for a story…

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It Means What you Think, but that is not what was Meant

At one of the panels this past weekend the classic SF/Horror film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers was mentioned. Naturally when the film came up people started discussing it’s message and meaning.

Of Course it is an allegory for Communism and the soul crushing power of the totalitarian state.

Of Course it is an allegory for McCarthyism and crushing power of political terror forcing everyone into the same march.

Of Course it is an allegory for Social Conventions and the crushing power of culture, particularly that of mid-20th century America to crushing people into conformity.

Which of these is correct?

Why all of them, of course. A piece of art means to you what it means. That is not to say that was its intended meaning. Various interviews have revealed the actors, director, and writers, harbored not direct allegory. Some going so far as to say they merely intended to craft a good thriller. (check that box) Do not confuse the message you take away with the artist’s intent.

A perfect example of this is the recent on-line war between John Carpenter and the Alt-Right over the meaning of his film They Live. As I mentioned in passing when I recently discussed that film here, it could be read in an anti-Semitic manner. Now if you know anything of Mr. Carpenter you know that the intended message was on attacking Yuppies, Capitalism, and Consumerism. However those of the Alt0Right saw a different theme, one that is easy to see if that us what you *want* to see.

And there is the great truth of art, everyone brings their own life experiences and filters the process through them. What you see as a clear symbol is to someone else just a jar of baby food.

When you talk about tv shows and movies and what they really meant, be wary of putting your meaning into someone else’s mouth.

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Condor 2017

This weekend is Condor, San Diego local SF convention. I will be attended as panelist and fan.

Here are the list of panel that I will be participating on if you want to stop by and listen.

Friday

Zombies, Werewolves, Vampires, and Other Tropes 12:00 noon

Writing What you Know 1:00 Pm

Mad Scientists in books and Film 3:pm

Saturday

Horror in Harry Potter 1:00 pm

Bad Science in Movies & TV 7:00 pm

Sunday

How Big will Science-Fiction Get? 2:00 pm

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Dream Project

Artists of all stripes have projects that they dream of attempting and I am no different. The project I have in mind is an already existing property and as I understand it totally tangled in rights issues so I have no reasonable hope of doing this.

I’d love to reboot Blake’s Seven in a series of novels.

For those not in the know Blake’s Seven is a late 70s and early 80s BBC SciFi series. Set in a galaxy under the thumb of dictatorial Federation the series deals with a band of rebels and outlaws. Once describe by its creator Terry Nation as ‘the Dirty Dozen’ in space the rebels in this show are hardly paragons of virtue, with most well across the line into criminality.

There’s Rog Blake, the engineer, idealist, and a man who has been set-up by the authorities as someone guilty of sex crimes against children. He’s the passionate do anything required to beat the government leader of the group.

Today Kerr Avon would be depicted as a hacker, but in the late 70’s few television writers understood computers (hell few understand them today) and he’s presented as more technician. Avon’s image is the self-centered criminal, sticking with Blake because its safer than being on his own, but somehow when the chips are down he never really betrays his own, so I also so him as a broken idealist.

Jenna Stannis was a smuggler before falling into Blake’s orbit where his passion and charisma converted her to a political animal, committed to the cause.

Villa Restal a talent thief he doesn’t really care about the fight but lacking the spine to cross those more powerful than himself, he follows Blake and Avon.

There are several more characters – more than seven in fact- that came and went over the series 4 season run.

The show was hampered from the start with a budget far too limited for the creator’s vision. (It had been given the budget of the show it replaced – a police procedural.) Still with duct taped costumes and sets that shook when touched they managed to craft compelling characters in a dark cynical setting.

It would be so fun to tackle rebooting the concept. Work out the world building ahead of time and really explore hard choices of heroes who aren’t always heroic.

It’ll never happen for me, but a guy can dream can’t he?

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Why I use Outlines

Outlines for fictions writing are not for everyone. The population of writers is often divided into two great camps; the pantsers who write without an outline, powering through their daily prose by force to spontaneous creativity and plotters who plan and detail the map of the work before setting out to explore the lands of their imagination.

Neither approach is superior to the other. Every writer has to find the tools and the techniques that work for them. Hell from project to project your approach may change. On some books by outlines are fairly spare, barely more than dozen pages for a full novel and yet for the current work in progress I have nearly 30 pages of outline and I have yet to reach the middle of the story.

Aside from a natural inclination and effects of being trained as an plotter, why do I use outlines? What are the tangible benefits they produce for me?

First of foremost it keep me from getting lost in the weeds of the plot. With a good outline I can survey where I am in the writing and look forward to when I need to be. If I feel stuck and confused, re-reading the outline will often show me where I took a wrong turn and enable me to resume the right course.

But even before I get to the writing stage the outline is a helpful tool. As I step through the story, the outline forces me to take the vague concepts and character and look at them through the hard prism of scenes. What do I need to make the story move forward? What have I not considered?

For example as I outline a sequence in the WIP where characters board another ship i found myself thinking about the security forces and what would be needed. hat prompted the questions did the ship carry any Marine? If not then who provides the physical security for the mission?

Learning about those questions in the outlining stage and therefore answering them long before I get to writing those scenes saves me time and allows for proper establishment. Now it’s possible to answer to questions as you write, pantsers do it all the time. But for me when I answer those questions in the outline it also means that I get to see the consequences of the answers I selected before they become trouble. The wrong answer could imperil the resolution of the plot and I for one hate the idea of rewriting half a book or more because I went with the wrong answer.

As I have said this tool is not for everyone and if you know that, more power to you, but if you have not yet found your method, at least explore the outline.

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