Category Archives: writing

Nailing the Ending

For me endings are where the meaning and themes of the story come together into a synergistic whole. The point if the story, be it a film or prose, usually lies in how that tale concludes and this places an especially important weight on getting your endings correct.

Here I am not talking about how the plot resolves, but rather the character beat that wraps up the transformation, for good or for ill, that was the protagonist’s journey.

In 1987’s Robocop  the film originally ended with one final news break segment that let the audience know that Murphy’s partner, Lewis, not only survived the film but had not been transform into a cyborg as Murphy had but once the filmmakers watched the final confrontation and it’s final line ‘Murphy’ they knew that beat ended the movie, there was no story after he reclaimed his humanity.

2008’s Iron Man  went through a similar edit. The script ended with Tony Stark coming home and having his meeting with Nick Fury and the hint of further adventures to come with ‘the Avengers’ imitative. However just as with Robocop  the director found that his story had ended with the line ‘I am Iron Man.’ Unlike Robocop  Iron Mancarried the weight of teasing the wider Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Nick Fury scene could not be discarded and the Marvel Post Credit Sequence tradition was born. Marvel did not invent this, before Iron Mancame along these were called buttons and the occasional film make tossed them in a treat for audiences that sat through the entire end credit sequence. (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearlhad on with the monkey Jack grabbing a curse coin.)

I know that when I was editing my novel that comes out next year I discovered that I had done a similar thing. From the start I had a particular line that I wanted to end the book on and yet as I edited I discovered my story ended half a page ahead of my beautiful sentence. I killed my darling and the book ends where it needs to, or at least how it looks to me.

It is reported that Avengers: Endgame has no post credit sequence because the movie acts as the thematic end for the current cycle of the MCU films. I will see Endgame  this Sunday morning, the traditional times that my sweetie-wife and I go together to the movies, and I hope hoping that not only do they give me a satisfying ending to the Infinity War saga but also to the unique 22 film experiment that is the birth of the MCU.

Share

Poison or Protect: or Doing Sex Scenes Correctly

As I have said before my blog is not a book review site. Because of the rather small community of editors and writers I do think it is a conflict of interest to pretend to be objective concerning an industry that I participate in. That means when I discuss a book it is because I liked it and I thought it delivered well on some aspect and such is the case with Poison or Protect a romantic novella set in the Parasol Protectorate setting by Gail Carriger. (Full disclosure Gail has been a friend for many years but that is not why I am here to praise her work with this piece.)

Poison or Protect  concerns a mountain of a man Gavin, a retired military man, a Scot, whose has been dispatched to protect a politician from a potential assassination who suddenly finds himself overwhelmingly attracted to Preshea a woman who has left such a trail of dead husbands in her wake that she has been dubbed ‘The Mourning Star’ and who may be the very assassin. Preshea has been sent to the country house by other political powers with additional agendas and finds herself off balanced by the impressive Scotsman. This is a lighthearted roman with serious emotional undertones and more than one Hard R rated sex scene. The humor fires on all cylinders with engaging and memorable characters but I want to focus on the sex scenes.

I am one of those writers that tends to close the discreetly on my character’s sexual adventures but that is not from prudishness but rather my philosophy about writing in general. A scene should do one or more things, further plot, reveal character, establish mood or perform world-building, and ideally a scene does several of these things at once and most sex scenes are usually just that, the characters having their fun. What Gail performs admirably in this novella is that not only do the sex scenes reveal essential character elements for both Gavin and Preshea, the exact nature of the sex, the advances and retreats all give us a much fuller understanding of the characters than any other scene could have hoped to achieve. Not only does her sex scenes reveal character it is very difficult to imagine a more elegant way to reveal these very aspect, making Gail’s sex scenes critical elements that are unable to be excised from the text without destroying the fabric of the tale. The sex scenes are not ‘fan service’ but rather the emotional heart of the story and a perfect example of how to craft character illuminative sequences.

Share

A Dreaded Task

This weekend I will be undertaking a difficult and unpleasant task related to my recent victory in selling a novel. No, I am not talking about responding to an editorial direction, reviewing copy edits, or even languishing in the doldrums of the ‘what do I write now?’ blues but rather it is time to take and select — an authorial photograph.

Like many people I am nearly always unhappy with any photo of myself. I have never learned the model’s skill of an easy and natural smile and yet I am also unable to produce on demand the solemn and serious looking of deeply thoughtful person. With the assistance of my sweetie-wife we’re going to use my DSLR, which I got just recently and I am thoroughly enjoying, and see if we can produce, at least to me, a least objectionable photograph.

Share

The Day has Come

Sorry for the couple of days missed at this blog but things have been a little hectic. Good hectic as I am about to tell you but hectic all the same.

So after sitting on the news while I wait for all the details to be finalized and all the signatures collected I can now announce that I sold my SF/Noir novel ‘Vulcan’s Forge’ to Flame Tree Press and it is currently slotted for publication May 2020.

This has been quite a road and there have been a number of lessons learned as I traveled it. I won’t go into too many details as I think some of them will be better served in dedicated posting but here are a couple of highlights of lessons learned.

One: write what you love. I did not write ‘Vulcan’s Forge’ with any sort of an eye to the market, rather it was my own desire to see a blending of science-fiction with noir that spoke to my sensibilities. There are plenty of fine SF stories that blend with the noir traditions but the vast majority of them do so through the lens of the private detective and I wanted something that came at it from more a James M. Caine perspective where ordinary people get in over their heads in the sordid criminal life. When I outlined and wrote the novel my plans were to self publish it because it was more for myself than anyone else.

Two: Never self reject. I mentioned my plans were for self-publication but I still examined the publishing market and Flame Tree who publishes both crime and SF novels seemed to be the kind of house that might publish my cynical noir. If I had not submitted the book and self published it I would have never discovered that there are others who share this taste that I explored.  Always submit the material.

I am thrilled to be working with Flame Tree Press and I am over the moon excited about bringing ‘Vulcan’s Forge’ to market next year.

Share

Sexual Assault in Dramatic Narratives

After watching No Blade of Grass I started thinking more about sexual violence in media because this film has a nearly perfect example of a gratuitous rape which serves no purpose in the narrative and I can use that to discuss why sexual violence is so often something that should be removed from a piece.

In the story John Custance, his wife Ann and daughter Mary are waylaid by evil men who knock out John, abduct Ann and Mary and rape them. John and the other in their band of survivors find the men, interrupt the assault, and kill them, Anne killing one herself. Then the band moves on, back on their quest for the safety of the potato far.

A scene in a narrative piece needs to fulfill a function the most common function for a scene include; Advancing the Plot, Revealing Character, Motivating Characters, and World Building/Exposition. It is not only possible but also preferable that a scene performs more than a single function but it should serve at least one of those goals. So let’s look at this sequence and see what functions it may fit into.

1) Advancing the Plot. This attack and its resolution in no way advances the plot. The characters quest remains the same after the incident as before and the attack doesn’t change their approach to their goals. There is no alteration to their methods that later effect their progress. The plot is utterly unaffected.

2) Revealing Character. The Point of View character for this film is John Custance and other characters, particularly given the movie’s brief running time, are scarcely explored at all. The assault reveals nothing new or hidden from the viewers. No unexpected reaction, no dark history revelation.

3) Motivating Characters. This is an old action movie cliché, the hero’s significant other is assaulted by the bad guy or his henchmen and the hero is finally propelled into action and the third act of the movie. It is sexual assault and major trauma reduced to a motivational excuse. In No Blade of Grass  the attack doesn’t even service that purpose. It takes place about the middle of the second act and the attackers end up dead adding no revenge element to the story. It should also be noted that the assault, while it produces some changes in the Ann and Mary, these changes are give only as surface treatment and are principally shown in how they affect their respective romantic partners.

4) World Building and Exposition. I think it is fairly likely that the filmmakers thought that the inclusion of this scene dramatized the cruel and violent world born of this disaster but that is a quite naive viewpoint. Rape is a daily reality. Stranger rape and gang rapes are a reality, one that women are quite aware of. If this is meant as world building then it sadly fails to understand how our world already works.

Major trauma should only be deployed for major story elements. Such real life terrors should never be used as a motivational gimmick to get a hero moving. If you need to rape someone to give the hero motivation, then make it the hero who is assaulted and leave side characters for side quests and lesser elements.

Share