Writing Lessons From the Sci Fi Channel

I just watched a very bad Sci Fi Original Movie called Gryphon. There are a few writing lessons to be drawn from this movie, mostly about what not to do. The movie is set in a fictional pseudo-medieval world with two warring kingdoms that were once one land. An evil wizard brings the ancient Gryphon to life in order to rule the world and the hiers to the kingdoms must work together to defeat him. Surprise! The heirs are male and female and they fall in love. This movie has every possible cliche every imagined. In fact, I think that every single line of dialogue is advancing some kind of cliche. Also, the special effects are cheap and cheesy, even by TV movie standards. But all that does not make up the lesson for today.

The acting is horrible. The dialogue is incredibly bad and melodramatic. Now what are the similarities to writing? There are two parts to unbelievable acting, the dialogue and the actors. The dialogue is your fault. If you write schlocky melodrama then you can only be saved by some supremely talented actors. Question: Who are the actors in your writing? Answer: Your reader plays all the parts. Readers invent character voices and looks and actions in their head. Some readers can take great writing and ruin it by not being able to visualize it in their head. Some can take terrible writing and turn it in to mental Shakespere.

The lesson here? I don't really know. However, this does shed some light on how very bad novels get published when some works of genius are overlooked. It also is a warning to all writers; you may be writing the next Really Bad Novel.

(By the way, to see melodrama done right, you must watch Invader Zim FOR I COMMAND IT!)

Number Two Goes to Work

Today was fun. Son number two has been bugging me for some time to go to work with me. I finally let him come in and taught him how to generate invoices, mark up a sale item, drive the forklift, pressure wash our trucks (OK, my truck), take inventory and assemble trench boxes. We even got to drive out and see some customers. He stayed with it until the end and I'm pretty proud of him.

As for son number one, he went out in the new backyard and cleaned up renovation debris for about two hours last weekend. No complaints and two bags full.

I thank the Lord daily for the incredible family I have.

Recipe For An Interesting New Year

Ingredients:

1 Unsuspecting Family
Raised Rent
1 Better House
4 Children
Several Unexpected Renovation Delays
Good Friends
3 Good Friend's Children
1 Dog
2 Moving Trucks
Random Assortment of Too Much Stuff
Storage Unit
21 Days of Freezing Weather

In a large bowl, add unsuspecting family and suddenly introduce raised rent. Beat to a froth. Add better house when unsuspecting family is stiff and holds its peaks. Sprinkle in 4 children, one at a time, and let them become familiar with the mixture. Begin adding unexpected renovation delays (reserving one) and mix well, then remove children slowly and place in oversized Ziploc bag with all 3 good friend's children. Set aside first bowl. Add dog to bag and shake well. Let both mixtures stand after folding in several days of freezing weather. While mixtures are firming up, take first moving truck and insert a handful of good friends and as much of the assortment of too much stuff as will fit. Repeat. (Optional: scatter many scoops of too much stuff into other locations and collect up later for finished product.) Place too much stuff into storage unit and bake at 25 degrees for 7 days, add last unexpected renovation delay and bake at slightly colder temperature for 7 more days. Take second moving truck and any remaining good friends (there will be much fewer this time, that is normal) and remove too much stuff from storage unit. Place directly in better house. Open bag and separate children and dog with a fork. Run first mixture through a sieve and remove unsuspecting famliy, reunite with children and insert in better house. Garnish with 2 more days of freezing weather. Serve chilled.

The Briar King

I just added The Briar King to my list of recommended or reviewed books on the right hand side of the blog. I've been meaning to do this for some time but never got around to it. Since I just bought The Charnel Prince, book two of the series, I thought I should finally officially post a review.

The Briar King is just all around excellent. It has all the heroes and villains and strange magics you need in epic fantasy. The royal family is beset by intrigue and treachery. A young noble knight must protect the realm. A ranger in the King's forest must unravel the secret of the awakening legendary Briar King and his unnatural herald. A headstrong princess escapes would be assassins and finds an unlikely protector and ally. Good stuff. The writing is crisp and moves along, the characterization is realistic and the dialogue just corny enough to be epic without being cheesy. Another good thing that the book's plot has going for it is that everyone has their own part in the tale, with their own bad guy to deal with. The different stories are loosely intertwined and do come together near the end before running off on their own again. I can't speak highly enough about Keyes and his ability to tell a great story.

Get it and read it.

Faith Update

I sent a quick query email to the fiction director of Leading Edge magazine to see if 'Faith', which is technically an historical, would be appropriate to send to them. Hopefully they will take their time in answering because I still need to revise it.

Writing Lessons From Jack in the Box

A Fascinating Thing happened at Jack in the Box the other day. I sat down for lunch near a rather loud female type of young age. She went on about how difficult a job interview was for "a stinking $12 an hour job" and how the questions seemed like they were targeted at a corporate CEO. What's fascinating is not the whiny nature of this person and what that says about American youth. My interest is also not piqued by the singular perspective on today's job market. No, what is fascinating is the fact that a sniveling, ungrateful, future loser like her never seems to be the main character in a novel. I've read Clancy, Grisham, Koontz, and King and none of their main characters act or talk of think the way this person does.

Why? Most likely it's because she is simply not heroic. Who wants to read about her pedestrian travels through a world that she will always think is stacked against her. Now if there is change of some sort, which is what all stories lead to, then you might have something. But I think any reader would never make it past the first couple of pages. This character type does end up as a minor character and I remember a bit of writing advice from somewhere that states 'every minor character thinks they are the hero' but my bet is that she would not work out as that either.

Jack in the Box can be useful for a few things after all.

Robin of the Hood

I had some extra time yesterday and sat down at a Barnes and Noble to browse through Hood by Stephen Lawhead. After reading through the first several chapters I decided I couldn't wait and bought it. This book is outstanding. It's a retelling of the Robin Hood myth except this time the Prince of Thieves is a young Welsh nobleman, Sherwood Forest has been replaced by the wilderness between Cymru and England, and the bad guys are French. It just couldn't get any better.

The Truck That Sauron Built

When I reserved the UHaul I didn't think it would be Cinderalla's carriage but even I was a bit shocked at what I got. My first clue of impending doom should have been when they asked me if I could drive a stick shift. That's not a problem for this ol' farm boy so I said sure. Then around the corner comes this wheezing, grinding 30' long jalopy that looks like it was originally used by Jed Clampett to move the family to Californee. A walk around showed off its many scratches, bumps, dents, dings, and abrasions. I almost ran out of ink trying to mark up the contract with damge locations. After that I got to drive it home. Lucky for me this is all taking place in a three mile radius. I'll blog more about it later. (Probably when we set up the computer again, it's getting dismatled right after I hit 'publish' on this post.) Today we have another couple of trips to make and hopefully I'll figure out how second gear works.

Moving is Not Like Writing

We're moving into a house this weekend. I'd like to say that moving is a lot like writing but it's not. Moving is all about confusion, pain, and misery with nothing but eternal torment and no relief in sight. It's nothing like writing.

Good One From Number One

Son #1 came up with a clever question tonight. What happens if you've been naughty and you ask Santa Claus for a lump of coal?

Writing Lessons From Gymboree

Today I made the mistake of going the the local mall and trying to return stuff that my wife had mail ordered from Gymboree. I was in good spirits, I had a box of neatly arranged stuff with all the receipts, and it wasn't too busy yet. This is like the times when you have a good amount of time ahead of you, your outline is pretty solid, and you can't wait to get down to writing. You feel in control and you know that good things are about to happen. So I wait a bit and set my box down, the very nice lady starts matching up items to lines on the receipts, and everything's going great. This is like the illusion that you're actually going to have a good time writing and everything is going to flow naturally from your fingertips. Next thing that happened was she asked for the credit card that the stuff had been purchased on. I reached for my wallet. She said it was an American Express. Odd, I thought, we seldom use our American Express. This is like the time when you sense that the paragraph you just wrote didn't quite say what you thought it should but you plunge ahead anyway. Then I hand her my American Express. She looks at it and says that it's not the same card and company policy states she can't return anything without it. The immediate flaming rage I feel is a lot like that helpless feeling that washes over you when you realize that you haven't got any chance of writing anything worthwhile at all and you might as well type 'all work and no play make Jack a dull boy' over and over and over again.

Moral of the story: Don't go to Gymboree under any circumstances.

Discovering Infinity

I was doing research on some last little points for 'Faith' this weekend. I found that the definition of 'infinite' is now: "The amount of material regarding the Roman Empire that's available on the internet."

I haven't even gotten through Wikipedia.

I'm trying to nail down a couple of things. I'd like a better name for my centurion and there seems to be a naming convention that I could use with a little inventiveness. I'm also trying to find out which Roman legion was stationed in the area and how they operated; central location v. independent detachments. Little is said about the centurion who's servant was healed so much must be assumed from the historical record. Now that the story is finished, I don't feel like I'm avoiding real work by researching the details.

Writing the Too Big Story

Many of us have this problem: every story we come up with grows to novel size even though we're trying to keep it short. I gave some more thought to 'Skyman' and all the things I came up with seemed to take the story well out of the 10000 word range. I know it needs more filling out in order to become a complete tale but I'm not yet sure how much I want to put into it. Anyway, another thing this points out, to me at least, is that I'm now at a point where I can start to visualize how many words it takes to tell a story. When I think of ideas I seem to have a word count running alongside my train of thought. 5000 to work through this situation, 2000 to set up this side character's arc, etc. I think that's an important tool for writers. How many times have we started something and realized that the idea couldn't be captured in a nice neat bundle? It happens to me a lot, except now it happens in the idea exploration phase which handily saves me a lot of wasted writing.

Back In the Saddle

Weekend is over. 'Faith' went from rough draft to first draft. Taught sons #1 and #2 how to play poker. (Son #3 just wanted to gnaw on the chips.) Visited Astoria, OR. Ate lots of hotdogs and s'mores.