Not that I don’t want other people to read my writing…I do. Eventually. And it’s not that I don’t have readers in mind while I write. I’m always thinking, “Okay, is this going to interest anyone other than me?” and “This is going to bore people” and things like that. But ultimately I write these stories because I want to see them on paper. I suppose I’m writing the sort of book I’d like to read. Even if everyone else thinks the book stinks, I’ll still want to read it. Bit narcissistic, I guess. My point is, I’m not really doing this FOR anyone else. I want people to be interested, but I’m not going to write stories just to please them.

Now art, on the other hand, is a whole different thing with me. And when I say “my art”, let me clarify that I’m talking about the art I do that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m writing. If I’m drawing book stuff, I’m still technically in writer mode. Other than story-related pieces, I really don’t make art for myself. I’m not one to make stuff that I’d hang on the wall…unless I was creating the piece specifically TO hang on the wall. I think my wands even fall into this category. I like making them, but I’m not so much making them for me as I am making them for Someone Else.

And when I do make art for a specific purpose, or for a specific person, I work much faster. What would probably take me a week doing it for myself, I can create in a day for someone else. The whole process just becomes easier. I don’t know why that is…I’ve only recently observed THAT it is, for me. I don’t do art for its own sake. I don’t just draw because I “feel” like it. I have to have a purpose in mind.

And on the other hand, when I try to write something for someone else? The process bogs down. I hate writing essays, for instance, and how-to’s. Even if it’s a subject that interests me, it’s just never as satisfying as working on my novel. Have anyone else noticed that book and movie reviews on this blog are few and far between? I don’t enjoy writing them. Because it’s the sort of writing one does more for other people than for yourself (after all, you’ve read the book or seen the movie…you don’t have to tell yourself what you thought about it). It’s difficult, and the result is not satisfying. I have to write for its own sake; trying to squeeze an objective in there is hard.

So I have two creative outlets which I enjoy and am fairly skilled at: writing and visual art. My writing belongs to me. My art belongs to the world, I guess. I wonder if I was always like this, or if choosing to pursue writing over art caused my brain to wire itself this way. If I’d chosen to concentrate on art instead, would it be the other way around?

Has anyone else with multiple creative interests noticed something like this about themselves?

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“For some, music is not just a pastime.
It’s an undeniable fact of living.
A blissful slavery of mind, body and soul.
To rise above the ashes of mediocrity is rare,
Yet the gift of song is freely handed out to anyone who cares to receive it,
Instantly shattering our daily drudgery.

“And so they say – Watch Me Bleed”

By Hanson. Of course.

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As you may notice, I’ve added a page on top with pictures of all the wands and such that I’ve made. Like the Projects page, I will be updating it from time to time as I finish new pieces.

I’m also going to add an Artwork page, but I haven’t quite decided whether to restrict it to art that’s related to my writing, or have it just be anything and everything. What would people like to see?

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But I was especially struck by the three girls. They were perfect for the role they had in the story, and they really called something to my attention that I hadn’t thought about before: how children are portrayed in movies now, versus how they are portrayed in much older movies, like Pinocchio and Peter Pan. Despicable Me had a tight soundtrack, one where you notice the music because the action in the movie is moving right with it (as opposed to just background ambiance). The three girls’ theme exemplified them perfectly: it kept the hip-hopish rhythm and beat that ran through the whole movie, but it had this very innocent, upbeat flute melody floating on top.

Children in movies now, when they are actual characters in the story, are much more worldly than they are in, say, movies from 50 years ago. Monsters Inc. actually played with this idea a little; the monsters were having energy shortages because children were getting harder to scare. The girls in Despicable Me were never afraid of Gru (the main character), even though he was what amounted to a super-villain. And it wasn’t because they were too young or stupid to see what he was. They didn’t like him. They didn’t trust him. At times, they were a bit intimidated by him. But he didn’t scare them. Perhaps they saw through him? He really wasn’t such a bad guy, after all. In that way, they remind me of Boo, from Monsters Inc. The only monster Boo was really afraid of was Randall, but I don’t think she was afraid of him because he was a monster…she was afraid of him because he was bad. Sully came through her closet just like Randall would have, but she was never afraid of Sully (except for that one time when she saw him act like, well, a monster.)

The kids in Peter Pan, even though they dealt with pirates and Indians on an almost daily basis, were really very innocent. It was all a game to them. Even the pirates and Indians in Neverland, in a sense, were more like children than adults…after all, only a child would be utterly humiliated by being forced by another child to say “I’m a codfish”, as Hook was forced by Peter Pan to do at the end. Also, children in popular media from 50 years ago always expect to be rescued. I think that stems from a basic expectation that children needed to be saved, protected, sheltered from bad situations. However, today’s media is not afraid to point out that sometimes children don’t get rescued, don’t get protected, don’t get sheltered from bad situations…and that sometimes a child is forced to save themselves, as it were.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I really don’t think that children from 50 years ago were actually more sheltered or more protected from bad situations than they are today. Parents have always fought. Kids have always been abandoned, beaten, neglected, etc. However, today’s society and today’s movies, books, television, etc are, on the whole, more willing to acknowledge such troubled childhoods. Childhood is, perhaps, not the idol it was in years past…and so we’re not afraid to show the tainted, dark sides of it. Thus, children in movies today are more adult, more shrewd, more self-sufficient on the whole than children in movies were in the past…and I think it has to do with both that toppling of the idol of idyllic childhood, and with the relatively modern shift to a more transparent society, where taboo behaviors are exposed and discussed instead of shoved away and ignored.

The boys in Pinocchio were probably about as worldly as boys that age could get, but there was still a basic innocence to their characters. They were drinking, smoking, playing pool, vandalizing stuff…but it was almost like they were playing dress-up with adult behaviors. They had no understanding of the dark feelings and tragedies that drive adults to do destructive things…they were just imitating what they saw. They didn’t get it, you know? They were portrayed as being naughty because they were boys, and that was just something boys did. The same scene, if played out in a movie today, would have those same boys being naughty because their parents are divorced, or because their father drinks and beats their mother, or because their mom is dating a man who hates them. In general, it’s less socially taboo to portray dark motivations and scary skeletons onscreen now, and that’s especially apparent in the portrayal of children. Compare the three orphan girls in Despicable Me to Penny from the Rescuers, or Oliver from Oliver and Company (Oliver is a cat, but he’s essentially a child).

However, the ever-increasing worldliness of children in popular media has not swallowed up the essential innocence of childhood…in fact, the worldliness makes the innocence stand out all the more to me. Children are still essentially good in most movies. I think this really comes out in the modern onscreen child’s ability to sense which grown-ups are truly good and truly evil, no matter how those grown-ups appear or act to everyone else. In fact, children are often the only ones not fooled by appearances. A combination of worldly shrewdness and childlike innocence, perhaps? It’s almost like children are portrayed as understanding the adult world better than the adults do, in a sense. They see the crap (as opposed to being sheltered from it), and they see through the crap because they still have a child’s innocent understanding of How Things Ought to Work.

Interesting. Children in movies like Peter Pan teach by demonstrating the purity of childish foolishness. Children in movies like Despicable Me teach by demonstrating the incorruptibility of childish wisdom. Children in older movies are pure because they don’t see or understand adult things. Children in modern movies are pure despite seeing and understanding adult things. So has the basic concept of childhood really changed over the years? Is it more corrupted…or is it actually less corruptible?

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Toy Story 3 was good, but surprisingly…well, dark. I mean, some of stuff those toys were doing, some of the scenes, whew. Just the fact that these are children’s toys makes it all the more disturbing when they imprison and hurt each other, you know? It reminded me of one of the interesting aspects of faery lore: the grotesque is hidden within the enchanting and innocent. Everything seems fine and beautiful, but there’s something…off…that you just can’t put your finger on. Until it’s too late.

But they wrapped up the Toy Story saga quite well. Yes, I cried.

The Karate Kid was a different beast altogether.

I’m very glad we opted to see it without Eli. I’ll not review the movie itself except to say that I found it a pretty good retelling of the original. I really don’t think it was trying to be anything else…just updating a classic story. What struck me was the intensity of the martial arts.

I have a second degree black belt in Taekwon-Do. Normally when I watch a martial arts movie, I find myself thinking something along the lines of, “I could do that, if I really wanted to.” I’m familiar with the basic breakdown of moves. It’s not so much that I think I could hop up and mimic the moves right then and there (ha!)…but I know what they are doing. It’s something I could learn. You know? I do the same thing with art. I can look at a painting and be reasonably confident that if I don’t already know the technique, I could learn it.

So when I watched this round of The Karate Kid, I had the rather unusual experience of watching with my mouth hanging open and thinking, “There’s no way in hell I could do that. Even at my peak, I wasn’t anywhere close to that good.” It was a humbling experience. I suppose those are good for me. It started me thinking about humility in general, and how it relates to something a person is good at.

It’s easy to be humble in the presence of skill you don’t have and don’t have any particular wish to acquire. For instance, I’m constantly in contented awe of Hanson’s ability to produce good music. I have dozens of favorite bands (who doesn’t?). But I’m not a musician. I can go on and on about stellar music because I’m under no delusion that I could create stellar music. It’s not a skill of mine.

However, I have a rather different relationship with art. For example, I can vividly remember being jealous of NeonDragon’s work, because, well, she was better at drawing than me. Knowing intellectually that there will always be people more and less skilled than you in a particular area is not quite the same thing as actually being confronted with it. I discovered that you can either stay annoyed, or you can choose to be inspired. Ideally, a person can train themselves to automatically choose the latter, but I think the better you are at something, the harder this is. And, paradoxically, the easier it is, because you can more easily discern how you could improve.

(By the way, I would highly recommend NeonDragon’s books. They are awesome!)

Again with the martial arts. Now, martial arts is not something I’d consider a primary skill of mine, and so I’m not as inclined to be jealous when I encounter someone who’s a lot better than I am. I suppose in that area, I’m easily inspired. Maybe because I don’t have a burning need to be really, really good…it’s fun, and I like it, but it’s not a passion with me, like writing or art. (And when I talk about needing to be good, understand that I’m not talking about needing to be better than everyone else. It’s about a personal drive to make the best work I possibly can.)

Writing is a relatively new passion for me. I haven’t yet come across any writing that has truly humbled me, in the way that The Karate Kid’s martial arts humbled me (in that “no way in hell” sort of way). I have seen writing that affected me the way NeonDragon’s art did (in that “grrr, this is really good” sort of way) But I haven’t been jealous.

Now, the thing I’m not sure of is whether that’s a humble reaction, or a terribly arrogant one.

Hopefully it means that I’ve learned to be inspired by greatness, instead of annoyed by it. I’m not in competition with anyone. Every writer has their own style, and every author will have readers who enjoy that style. I think maybe it helps that I love to read, and so I like finding writers who write amazing stuff because, well, I enjoy reading it. Maybe it also helps that I stepped into writing with no real knowledge of the craft…I mean, I knew how to *write*, but crafting a novel is not quite as simple as barfing words onto a page.

I can be titchy about art because I’ve been drawing all my life. I have to struggle more to be gracious. It’s easier to be gracious when you’re a student, which is what I feel I am as a writer. I haven’t really earned any authority or credibility in that area. I can happily admit that I’m not very good at certain aspect of writing. Whereas with art, when I was in high school, I was an authority because I was skilled at it. It becomes harder to admit that I’m not as good as some artists, because I’m used to people expecting me to be. I’m better at having a humble attitude than I was…or at least, I’d like to think I am.

I know that the student mindset is a healthier one for me to have, especially in the writing business, when it’s necessary to cultivate a thick skin. I’m not entirely sure how I would react to a piece of writing that just blows me away and makes me think, “Wow, I could never do that.” Especially if that happens after I’ve been published, and have a few books under my belt, as it were. Part of me is convinced that would never happen, that the most I’d think is, “Wow, I can’t do that…yet.”

Is that arrogance, or confidence?

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Which is, by the way, not a bad movie, and I quite enjoyed it. It wasn’t on par with Pirates, and I decided that a lot of that was because it didn’t have a Jack Sparrow to carry it. The actors in Prince of Persia weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either…imagine Pirates without Jack Sparrow or Elizabeth Swan. I honestly don’t know why a lot of the critics were saying that the plot of Prince of Persia didn’t make sense, because I didn’t have any trouble following what was going on. No, it’s not realistic…you’ve got a dagger that can turn back time, for pity’s sake. The whole premise is unbelievable, but at least it’s internally consistent and the story works. I’ll admit that I spent a great deal of the movie admiring Dastan’s arms. And thinking that his particular brand of crazy “I’ll handle the impossible gate” bravado is a lot like Raphel’s.

The movie worked. Most movies do, or at least pieces of them do. Even movies like Avatar, with one dimensional characters and a cliched, recycled plot…they work. I’ve concocted a theory that movies contain certain moments, moments where you forget those are actors and you’re in a movie theater, moments that really get you in the heart…and it’s these payoffs that make the movie worth watching. When you watch the movie again, these are the moments that you find yourself looking forward to.

Several weeks ago, we went to see Clash of the Titans, and I was struck by something. That movie does not have any such payoff moments. I walked out of the theater feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Something was missing from that movie, and I could not put my finger on it. It wasn’t so different from other films of its genre, after all, and it wasn’t bad, so what was wrong? And I realized that there was never a moment in Clash of the Titans where my breath caught, where I was really touched. There wasn’t a single moment I really remembered. I cannot think of a single scene I’d like to see again.

And so I’ve been thinking through all the movies I’ve seen over the years, trying to identify those payoff moments and come up with some principles they have in common.

I also wondered how this theory would apply to novels and the written word. Books have payoff, too, but it’s done very differently than it is onscreen. I would be willing to bet that this is why we get so many book-turned-movies that are so very bad. They try to translate the book’s payoffs directly onto the screen and it doesn’t work.

So far I’ve come up with two components that must be there in a cinematic payoff: character and scale.

Character: This is fundamental. However, I would say it’s not necessarily limited to people. A ship can be a character, or a tree, or a city…depends on the movie. But the payoff moment has to arise from a character acting absolutely in character, and the audience has to care about that character. Alice had her moment while fighting the Jabberwock and reciting her six impossible things, ending with “I can slay the jabberwock”. Lucy had her moment in Prince Caspian when she walked out onto the bridge alone and pulled her dagger. Zuko had his moment when he redirected the lighting his father shot at him. Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy (in the most recent incarnation of the film) had their moment when Mr. Darcy walks out of the fog the morning after Elizabeth defies his aunt.

One way such character moments fall flat is when a character does something simply because it looks cool onscreen, not necessarily because it arises from within the character. Such moments ARE cool, and they serve a purpose, but that aren’t the kind of payoff moments I’m talking about. For example, Legolas’ sequence in Return of the King when he single-handedly slays an oliphant and its drivers is very, very cool. It’s something Legolas would do, but I think he did it because the writers knew it would be an awesome sequence, not because Legolas himself wanted to do it. And thus, yes, it’s memorable, but it’s not payoff.

Gandalf, with his white robes, staff, and horse, leading Eomer and his men down the mountainside during the battle of Helm’s Deep…now that was a moment.

Which leads to the other component: Scale.

A payoff moment has to be big. The bigness can be physical (something large is destroyed) or thematic (good vs. evil). I believe that the destruction of Hometree in Avatar succeeded as a moment by virtue of sheer scale, both in the physical and the thematic. You can’t watch something that big fall down without feeling something. Battles are often payoff moments because they are, by nature, big. When the Narnians swoop down on the White Witch’s forces, that’s payoff. The Lord of the Rings movies are full of battle moments. But big thematic moments can be small and insignificant on a physical scale: like Carl flipping through his wife’s adventure book in Up, or the naming of Kirk in the newest incarnation of Star Trek, where the theme is bigger than the event itself.

I think having several weighty elements of the story come together at once contributes to scale, and to these payoff moments. You can’t have a big payoff moment if it doesn’t mean anything to the story. Mr. Darcy walking out of the fog might not seem big until one considers that the entire story has been leading up to that moment. When Caspian doesn’t kill Miraz, that’s a relatively small thing in the overall series of events, but it’s huge for him personally, and it wraps up the Caspian/Miraz subplot. When Katara and Sokka fly a wounded Aang out of the Earth Kingdom at the end of the second season, Katara’s “The Earth Kingdom has fallen” moment carries the weight of the entire second season.

Music can definitely contribute to scale in cinema, because music is by definition expansive. Can you imagine Death Vader without the Imperial March playing in the background? Gandalf’s death in the Fellowship of the Ring, if I recall, was almost completely silent except for the soundtrack…the music pulls that single moment out of the flight scene that follows and makes it bigger than it might be on its own. Michael Scofield’s bleeding nose at the end of Prison Break is made bigger and more poignant by the soundtrack.

So, character and scale, and those go for both books and movies. I’m sure there are others. What I may do is pick three or four book turned movie examples, analyze their payoff moments, and pull out how it’s done in each medium.

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There was this kingdom, which bordered another kingdom that had been swallowed in evil and darkness; trees weighed down by noxious moss, poisoned water, goblins that killed and ate people, trees that ate people, always dark.

There was a princess, looking for a cure for her country. She has limited magic, but most of it was corrupted along with her land. She has brought some of her nobles into the neighboring kingdom, where they have been disrupting things, trying to take over, though they really aren’t trying to do anything *bad*. (Nobody really knows what they want, actually). The princess herself is rarely seen, and her nobles seem arrogant and dangerous to everyone.

There was a soldier, a knight of this neighboring kingdom who is mistrustful of these new “nobles”. He makes a plan to expose their hidden activities. The plan fails, and he and his cohorts get themselves thrown into the forbidden kingdom to die. In a twist of happenstance, the populace turns against the princess and she is thrown in with them. The soldier is inclined to hate her at first, but he ends up befriending her and learning the truth about the hellhole they’re in. He decides that the only way they’ll all survive is by lifting the curse on the corrupted kingdom.

Classic fantasy fodder, as it were. Not a young adult story, because of the age I’m going to have to make these characters. The princess was old enough to know her parents, to know some magic, and to have a general understanding of what happened when her kingdom fell to darkness. That puts her, I’ve decided, around 9 or 10 years old at the time of the incident. This fallen kingdom also needs some time to gain some notoriety in the surrounding regions, which means a decade or two needs to have passed. That will put the princess in her late 20’s or early 30’s when the story opens. My soldier also needs to be in his 30’s…long enough to have been in the army for some time, to have the loyalty of his comrades and the respect of his superiors, perhaps to have earned some rank.

I’ve only figured out a few details beyond the original dream, and probably won’t take it much further before it goes on the backburner like all the others.

Raethe is my soldier character. He comes from a poor family and has had to fight his way to where he is. As a result, he tends to have a low opinion of nobility, who have everything handed to them on a silver platter. He is extremely loyal to his kingdom, Itasia, and its ailing king, and he especially mistrusts the “new nobles”, whom he feels are here to take advantage of the king’s illness. Raethe is a careful, calculating kind of guy, who doesn’t like to make mistakes and feels responsible for everyone around him. He has a soft spot for the weak and innocent.

These are the characters whom he will recruit for his plan to expose the nobles:

Tril- one of the few female soldiers in the army. Technically women are not permitted in the ranks, but a few always join and the commanders tend to turn a blind eye. She and Raethe have been friends for many years…they might have a romantic past, but it’s a casual one.

Vors and Wills- twin brothers, also soldiers in the army

Issat- palace scribe, one of the group’s “insiders”

Delartes- disgraced noble who was packed into the army because his family didn’t know what else to do with him. A bit of a womanizer. One of the few people of noble blood Raethe trusts.

Perine- one of the foreign nobles’ maids, the group’s other “insider”

Eolissa is the princess from Uskelia, the forsaken kingdom. The place is now more commonly known as the Skels. A soothsayer made a prophesy about Eo when she was a little girl, predicting her death and the death of the land. Her parents, who loved their little girl, tried to prevent the prophesy from happening (and in doing so, of course, they brought it about). They sheltered her, and when she turned 10, they sent her away and enacted a magic they thought would protect her. But the magic went wild and destroyed Uskelia, turning it into a living hell. The only Uskelians who didn’t die in the curse were those outside the borders of the kingdom: the princess and the loyal nobles who’d accompanied her.

Tydairin is Eo’s older brother, and they were very close. He disappeared like everyone else in the curse, but Eo stubbornly believes that he is still alive. She claims she hears him speak to her in her dreams, sometimes. When she and the others are banished to the Skels, one of her primary objectives is to find Tydairin. He probably is indeed alive, but if so, he’s at the center of the curse. Rescuing him may be the key in curing the land.

Raethe and Eolissa will fall in love, of course. At first, Raethe will dislike her and resent her because she is royalty. But her innocence and isolation will eventually get to him, and win him over. She loves her kingdom and sincerely mourns for its present state, and she desperately misses her brother. All of these things will endear her to Raethe. He will probably frighten Eo at first, because soldiers and commoners aren’t the sort of people she’s used to, but she’ll quickly pick up on his kind nature.

Don’t know where this one will get dumped in the queue. Probably somewhere with the Syoja story and the zombie short story.

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Coordinator: “I just talked to the officer here…apparently they got four 911 calls!”
Zombie: “What would that sound like? ‘Hello, 911, I just saw a horde of zombies walking down the street’?”

Survivor: “Zombie bodies sure generate a lot of heat for being undead.”

Zombie: “Eat the ninja!!”

“Well, we must be in the right place. A car full of zombies just pulled up next to us.”

Waitress at Steak n’ Shake: “Even zombies need forks.”

Waitress at Steak n’ Shake: “You better find you a ride pretty soon, hun, because nobody’s going to pick up up on the side of the road looking like that.” (this one was directed at me personally)

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On Saturday evening, I’m going to be participating in a zombie walk in downtown Melbourne. Which means I have to put together a zombie costume in the next week…which I’ve never done. Zombies don’t appeal to me much, on the whole, but the experience sounds like fun. The idea of being among a herd of 400+ zombies invading the Melbourne Steak n’ Shake is something I’m particularly looking forward to. Then, on Sunday, I will be heading to Gainsville to participate in a rally protesting the presence of Westboro. (Yeah, they’re coming to FL. *groan*). I’ve bought the foam-board to make a sign, and I know what I want it to say. I just need to design it, and get it done.

Side one:
“I find hope and it gives me rest
I find hope in a beating chest
I find hope in what eyes don’t see
I find hope in your hate for me

Side two:
“Have no fear when the waters rise
We can conquer this great divide.”

Ngi Ne Themba

(which means “I have hope” or “I find hope”)

It’s from:
Hanson - Great Divide

I was sitting around trying to figure out what I’d write on a protest sign, and this song was playing in my headphones. I turned my attention to it and realized it was perfect. Been trying to get some fellow Fansons together for this thing in Gainsville, but I don’t know if any of them will actually be able to make it. Oh well. I’ll go it alone if I must. Westboro is just that annoying to me…I can’t stand the idea of them being in MY state and me doing nothing. Even if all our counter-protesting doesn’t work, it’s…something.

I think all this is distracting me from my usual creativity. Politics do. That’s part of the reason I usually avoid them.

I know what’s slowing me down with Shades. It’s that damn portal spell that I’m weaving into the plot…it’s an interesting part of what’s going on, and has a lot of worldbuilding information, but it’s just not any fun to write. It’s highly technical, magical theory, ergo it has to be internally logical and consistent. I also have to keep track of where Saeli is in the form with all the other crud going on, and when I lose my writing momentum, that means going back through the previous chapter and picking out the form bits to remind myself of where I am. And it’s also frustrating because I had all that DONE in the chapter I lost. The form was basically done. I can rewrite all the interaction between Yuril and Raphel and Saeli and Brendan easily, because it’s a highly emotional scene for all of them. But that form? I don’t like having to rewrite that. Ugh.

Rewriting the lost chapter and writing the next chapter in tandem is only working so well. I can’t get any momentum generated on the next chapter because I can’t go back and look at what I’ve already written. I hadn’t realized how much I depend on being able to do that. It’s not usually a problem, because I write my chapters in order (as opposed to when I have a good idea for a scene, etc.). One chapter builds from the next, often in ways I can’t anticipate. Things fall together in ways that just don’t happen when I try writing a random scene. It’s like the magic doesn’t happen unless I know where the characters were five minutes earlier, or five years earlier. Brendan and Raphel are about to fight to the death, for pity’s sake, and I still can’t seem to generate any emotional response from myself.

Part of this has to do with my inner critic, who has been giving me trouble lately. “This scene is taking too long to get going…this scene has too much dialogue…the scene is too slow…Saeli isn’t scared/concerned enough…blah, blah, blah”. I feel like yelling, “Shut up, Fathead!”…though if I did that in the middle of Books-a-Million, I might get some concerned looks.

Maybe that will be my mental theme for the week. Shut up, Fathead, and let me write!

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This one was about vampires. Well, sort of.

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