Category Archives: writing

The Power of Mystery

When an audience or reader has a deficit of information one of two possibilities is likely. They may become frustrated and confused, disengaging with the piece or they may become intrigued and start filling in the missing bits from their own imagination.

In 1975’s Jaws, the mechanical shark worked rarely, and the filmmakers were forced to scrap plans that would have shown the beast on screen much more than the final film. With clever tension building techniques they crafted a taunt masterpiece around not seeing the shark until the final act.

In the television series Babylon 5 the Vorlons and Shadows were powerful mysterious being playing at some struggle that stretched over eons. They captivated the imagination and speculation. Then, once their background was explained, these master races were reduced to disappointed children of a cosmic divorce.

Hannibal Lector, pulled from a supporting role in the novel The Silence of the Lambs to a central thematic element in the film adaptation sparked endless fascination now neutered by endless backstory excavations and explanations.

This brings me to Boba Fett.

Fett, ignoring the animated sequence in the Holiday Special, first appeared in Star Wars: The Empires Strikes Back as the laconic bounty hunter that outwitted Han Solo and captured him for Darth Bader and the Empire. Other than showing a cleverness equal to or greater than Solo’s and successfully backtalking to Darth Vader the character did very little and never revealed his face. A perfect combination to create mystery and fascination with exploded almost immediately. The characters casual end in the next film ignited outrage as already a myth had grown up around him.

Now we are treated to a limited series The Book of Boba Fett centered on the character and as he is seen and heard more and more, he has lost nearly all of his mythic standing.

Having watched 3 of seven episodes I can’t say that anything about the character is worthy of his legendary status. As a guest character in The Mandalorian he was able to maintain that air of mystery that supported him as a mythic character. Front and center of his own series, his own story, he cannot remain an unexplained mystery and like Hannibal Lecter he shrinks in stature.

Mystery is a delicate element in storytelling. Use too much and your story if befuddled and confused, reveal too much as is happening here and there is little to entice.

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The Artistry of Endings

 

A brief and pleasant interaction with professor and author Tananarive Due on Twitter yesterday has me thinking about endings of stories, both prose and film, and art that is required to land on the right one for the tale.

Our interaction had centered on Jordan Peele’s fantastic directorial debut with his horror film Get Out. Peele’s original vision had a much darker ending in mind for Chris, one that was a more likely outcome given the circumstances but when tested audiences rebelled against. A new ending, the one the film was released with was crafted, and the movie was a hit. A similar sequence happened around Emerald Fennell’s 2020 revenger film Promising Young Woman where a less probable victory of sorts is added to the film’s end over a more downbeat conclusion. Again the film is praised and while Promising Young Woman did not see the sort of box office magic Get Outproduced it is a very well respected and an amazing piece of art.

The wrong lesson to take away from these examples if that your story should avoid bitter or tragic endings.

1968’s Night of the Living Dead is famous for its bleak and uncompromising ending. (Spoilers ahead) Ben, the sole survivor of the characters besieged in the farmhouse, at the film’s end cautiously climbs out of the basement as roving bands of deputized citizens clear the area of the walking dead. Seen only at a glimpse through a window one mistakes him for a ghoul and shoots Ben dead.

One could easily imagine an alternate version where the vigilantes rescues Ben rather than kill him and I believed that if that had been released instead the film would be mostly forgotten. It is that futility that is at the heart of the movie and without that final punch the piece loses much of its power.

Invasion of the Body Snatcher played it both ways. The original 1956 film had the framing story with it implicitly hopeful ending added after audience screenings and the 1978 remake took a darker tone with no hope for humanity’s future.

Knowing the right ending for a story is pure art. There are no formulas, charts, graphs, or calculations that can determine correct tone and it is often the critical alchemy that elevates or dooms a piece.

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Back to the Spice Mines

 

Last year after I finished my science-fiction murder mystery and sent it out on submission I turned somewhat lazy.

Oh, I wrote detailed outlines for two novels, one a ‘no contact’ SF story where the aliens come to Earth and have nothing to do with humanity and the other a military SF space adventure but despite to large outlines and detailed plotting I did not turn to the pick and shovel work of prose on paper.

That changed this yesterday.

Finally shaking off these damn doldrums I began writing that outline military SF adventure. And it’s not a bad start, nearly 1000 words written on my lunch, flowing easily from brain to fingers to screen. And despite being a vomit draft not received horribly by my writing group.

One thousand words a day is not an unrealistic goal. In fact, it is one I can often exceed, even with the demands of a day-job. Should I maintain this pace the first draft will be complete in late May.

The time for laziness is past, the time of the writing has begun.

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Improving Dune (2021)

 

Don’t get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed Dune, seeing it twice, once as the theater and again at home, on the same day. It is an excellent adaptation of half the novel but there is room for some improvement.

A common complaint is that the film doesn’t feel like it has an ending but rather simply stops. This is because there is no arc for the character Paul and the final act lacks an objective for the protagonist to strive for. Both of these elements are simple fixes that could have been done in ADR and maybe a couple of pick-up shoots.

First, when Duncan is telling Paul about the Fremen  it is here that they should have established that the Fremen were bribing the Spacing Guild with spice to keep the skies free of spy satellites. This gets glossed over far too quickly in the current edit.

Next, when Paul and his mother Jessica escape, their guards they should make it clear their goal, now that the House has fallen and the planet is under the control of their enemies, is to make contact with the Fremen to bribe their way off Dune and back to Caladan where they have allies. This give the final act an objective and direction.

In the final scenes after Paul’s duel, the arc is completed when Paul makes the affirmative decision to not run for safety off-world but he will throw his lot with the Fremen. Now there is an emotional payoff to his decision giving the film a better overall shape.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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A Heretical Opinion on The Babylon 5 Re-Boot

 

From 1993 thru its conclusion in 1998 I watched J. Michael Straczynski’s (JMS) sci-fi saga Babylon 5. The series followed the events on the last of the Babylon stations conceived and constructed in the aftermath of a devastating stellar war as various races tried to form a lasting peace amid a struggle between light and dark, order and chaos, that had lasted eons. For many American the series was their introduction into serious long form television where the entire run of the show was meant to tell one large grand story, something that in today’s era of prestige television is not only common but expected.

With the flowering of prestige television is perhaps no surprise that the studio with the rights to Babylon 5, Warner Brothers, and who has a streaming service needing content, HBO Max, has announced its intent to reboot the franchise sitting in its vaults, even bring back the show’s original creator and writer JMS, to helm it once more.

Full disclosure I was fan, as I stated I watched the entire run of the series, cosplayed as a character at WorldCon, and even conceived of a dark episode with a writing partner but I think it would be prudent, wise, and in the show’s best interest if JMS this time refrained from writing nearly the entire series, nearly every script, himself, and turned that duty over to others.

JMS created a grand and fascinating setting, his characters have deep and conflicted inner lives, he possesses a rare talent, the ability to fully realize characters that are diametrically opposed to his own thinking without turning them into strawman arguments. He should show-run any reboot.

However, JMS has some glaring weaknesses as a writer. His dialog can be blunt and lacking subtly. Perhaps more importantly his handling of exposition is clumsy. During the series’ run I often referred to his ‘Exposition truck’ because of how often and blatantly the unfolding story would stop while characters ran us over with terrible, truly awful, exposition. Then once we had been left dead in the road from this writing hit-and-run, the script would gamely try to get momentum back into the story.

Because of mistreatment and disrespect by the people making feature films talented writers with tremendous gifts have been moving to television and we are so rich for it. JMS should seize this talent for his series and relinquish any scripting crafting duties himself.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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Why I Prefer the Theatrical Cut of Aliens

 

Seven years after Alien burst upon the scene and spawned countless imitators and knockoffs the James Cameron helmed sequel Aliens arrive for a fresh round of terror and action.

The version released to theaters in 1986 ran a total of 137 minutes, that two hours and 17 minutes making it a very long film for theatrical distribution. The more over two hours a film runs the fewer screenings a theater can screen in a single day. In 1991 an extended version running twenty minutes longer was released on laserdisc with both editions available on the Blu-ray boxed set collection. Writer/Director Cameron has stated that his preference is for the extended ‘Director’s Cut’ version of the film.

When I first saw the extended cut on DVD/Blu-Ray I agreed with Cameron but over time I’ve found that my preference has become for the theatrical cut.

In the making of documentaries packaged with the Blu-ray release Cameron reports that when the film came in longer than the studio preferred time and technology hampered going through the entire film and trimming scenes here and there to shorten the running time. In 1986 editing was still a physical processed of cutting and splicing film as non-linear editing had not yet become the industry standard. His producer and at the time wife Gale Anne Hurd suggested and entire reel of the film depicting the colony of Hadley’s Hope and the discovery of the alien vessel, and the parasite eggs could be dropped without damaging the narrative. That’s exactly what Cameron did.

It’s the introduction of the reel that I find doesn’t really work and it all comes down to Point of View.

In Alien it is not clear at all that Ripley is the protagonist of the story until late in the film. Perhaps as early as Dallas’ doomed foray into the airduct but certainly by the reveal of Ash’s true nature do we understand that Ripley is our real focus. Part of the terror of Alien is because we haven’t had the protagonist clearly defined, we are uncertain who is ‘safe’ due to storytelling conventions.

Before the first frame flashes past our eyes, before we have gotten our popcorn and taken our seat in Aliens, we know that Ripley is our hero and our eyes into the world. It is he struggle with PTSD and survivor’s guilt that drives the emotional heartbeat of the story. It is her pain that we empathize with and her restoration we are hoping for.

Given that to leap away from our protagonist, our viewpoint character for 15 or more minutes to meet the colonist is a violation of the story’s point of view. We don’t know these people and save for newt, who drives none of the deleted scenes, we will never meet them again. Leaving Ripley for these throw away characters saps emotional investment from the audience and wastes time. With this reel excised from the movie the story remains tight on Ripley, and we ride along with her, knowing no more than her as this fresh horror unfolds.

 

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Genre Blender

 

Genres are cool and useful guides to what a story is about. If I tell you a story is a horror you know that you should feel tense and unsettled as it unfolds and perhaps even after it is over. If it is a romance, you will hopefully feel joy and fulfillment by the end. When two genres are combined then something truly wonderful and magical is possible. Alien the movie that launched countless imitations artfully blended science-fiction with horror, it was by far not the first to do so but its unparalleled quality elevated it above the material that had come before. My own novel Vulcan’s Forge is a combination of colonial science-fiction and 40s styled film noir.

I have started in on a short story blending two genres that are wildly different and I hope I have the skill to pull it off even halfway decently, forward-looking science-fiction and tradition oriented folk horror.

Folk horror is a sub-genre of horror fiction that fixates on isolated usually rural setting and communities where the old ways are not only now forgotten but are usually embraced and practiced with zealotry. Where strangers confronted with unknown customs and filled with derision for these communities often meet untimely fates. A perfect example of this style of horror and one of my favorite films is 1973’s The Wicker Man.

I think science-fiction, with its emphasis on the new, the novel, and the future makes for an excellent contrast with folk horror with its dedication to tradition, custom, and the wisdom of the past. I hope I can do justice to moth forms.

 

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Folk Horror Inspiration

 

Recently, I stumbled across a YouTube video from The Evolution of Horror exploring the cinematic subgenre of Folk Horror. The video had a very nice overview of the subgenre and presented one filmmaker’s, Adam Scovell, essential elements of folk horror the chain of Rural Setting — Isolated Groups — Skewed Morals or Beliefs — and Supernatural or Violent Happenings. Several of my favorite horror films are often classified as Folk Horror including the original and incredible The Wicker Man and I instantly saw the possibilities of Scovell’s analysis.

This prompted me to ponder could I craft a science-fiction story that followed the chain and landed successfully as a folk horror tale? I mean sure you could grab bag plot and character elements, follow the chain, and produce something that met the criteria but that’s nothing more than copying someone else’s work much like all those terrible slasher movies that followed in the wake of John Carpenter’s Halloween. I wanted something more than a copy, a paint-by-numbers execution I wanted something that at least spoke to me individually.

Pieces, fragments, began coalescing in my imagination and the unique constituent that would drive the mystery and horror arrived and I knew that had the skeleton framework of a new short story. Everything is not there yet, there are ineffable elements still cooking but for the first time in years I have a short story cooking and it is going to be science-fiction folk horror.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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Character Wants, Needs, and Growth

 

In fiction writing it is often the case that a character has a want, something that the character is aware that they desire to obtain or achieve and a need which is a psychological element that the character is usually unaware of that they require to become their better self.

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate my point. In JawsChief Brody wants to make his community safe, in particular to stop the shark attacks. His need is to overcome his terror of the water. He doesn’t go around in the story saying or even acting like this is a goal, but it is the character growth and evolution that makes the story satisfying. In Back to the Future Marty wants to ensure his parents meet so that he and his siblings will exist, but his need is to gain the self-confidence for his own artistic pursuits. (A need that was ignored the sequels.) Achieving his wants allows him to meet his needs.

It is important to have needs and wants cleanly separate goals. In the musical/fantasy Xanadu Sonny’s need and his want are precisely the same thing. He wants to be inspired to create original art and it is his psychological need as well. In addition to the film’s numerous flaws, this means that there can be no arc, no character growth for Sonny. If a character’s need is the same as their want, there is no change to the character when they achieve it. A static unchanging character is ultimately unsatisfying it is why the final shot in The Hunt for Red October is critical, only by seeing Jack asleep on a plane, having fully met his need to overcome his fear of flying can we appreciate his character’s growth and change.

When you create character to drive your stories think about their wants, the plot, and their needs, the story, are distinct things for fuller richer tales.

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Facebook Memories

 

The thing that Facebook does where is previews for you posts you did one to several years prior on that date is really an odd trip for me.

There are quite a few posts about making progress on a writing project, nearly always unnamed, and as such I have no idea what stories or books these refer to. I am nearly always working at some level, on a project, usually oscillating between short stories and novels and they progress so quickly that without cues I simply can’t identify them.

This morning Facebook presented a memory from eight years ago that I had received a job offer following an interview and it took me a moment to work out which job offer that had been. Very close together I got two offers, both were temp jobs, both were with companies new to me, but I ended up working only at one.

Looking at the exact date I think I worked it out and it’s the anniversary of the offer to work at Kaiser as a temp. That turned out to be the very best job offer I ever received. Eight months later I transitioned from contract to regular full-time employee of KP and I have been there ever since.

I have never experienced a level of financial and job security like I have working for KP. In addition, I work with good people and generally can be proud that I am doing my best to working at a non-profit helping people access vital healthcare.

The financial security has led to emotional stability which enhances my creative work. All in all, this memory from eight years ago is a truly happy one.

 

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