TV Tuesdays, Movie Mondays, and other word play

Too campy?

As you might have read from my last post, in the interest of posting something in here every day, I’m thinking of giving myself a theme to work with for each day of the week. TV and movies are easy topics: they’re not entirely unrelated to writing and they’re everywhere. At most, you could expect a review from me; at the very least, a memorable quote.

Book reviews I think I’ll do on Fridays (Fiction Fridays? Still trying to be all clever and stuff). Saturdays and Sundays could be song lyric days, as I’m usually pretty busy and wouldn’t have time to post much else. Wednesday could be Writer Wisdom day. That leaves Thursday. Hmm. The only thing left is art…Artsy Thursdays? I really should get some of my wand photos up here, and other story related artwork.

So, in the interest of TV Tuesdays, here’s a quote from a show that I really like, despite the genre.

MICHAEL: “If I surrender now, I lose everyone I love.”
PRIEST: “But do you lose your soul in the process?”
MICHAEL: “Well, we all have our crosses to bear.”

That pretty much sums up the kind of guy Michael Scofield is in Prison Break. This scene occurs somewhere in the second season, after he’s broken his brother out of prison and is on the run. Michael has just stolen a GPS that he couldn’t afford, and is having a crisis of conscience about it. He goes into a confessional booth to have a conversation with a priest about everything he’s done up to this point to save his brother. Ultimately he is the type of person who would sacrifice his own soul to save someone else.

Prison Break is one of those shows that looks like it’s going to just be all grit and violence (and there is that), but underneath it has these great characters and a really strong story. It’s unusual, as prison stories go, in that all the characters except one are actually guilty of the crimes that put them there, even the main protagonist. The worst villains in the show have enough backstory and complexity to make them into sympathetic characters, which I really like. Even T-Bag, who is about as bad as you can get…you do kind of end up feeling sorry for the guy.

I initially started watching the show simply to see Wentworth Miller in action, because the moment I laid eyes on that actor, I said, “Holy crap, if that guy had hair, he’d look exactly like Raphel.” I mean, he can even glare the way I had imagined. Now I like the show for its own sake, and I really respect Miller as an actor.

Tags: ideas, prison break, shows

Raphel is afraid of the dark

Did that get your attention? It got mine. Blame Saeli for the revelation.

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Tags: characters, editing, ideas, Mora, Raphel, revisions, Saeli, Shades

An interesting article about Ayn Rand

Don’t know how many Objectivist fans I have on board here, but this is an extremely well-written article by Nathaniel Branden, one of Rand’s close associates for a number of years. He highlights precisely what is attractive about Rand’s philosophy, and where it falls short. More eloquence than I’d be capable of on the subject.

Read the whole article…it’s worth it

Here’s a quote from within the article, which quite nicely sums up why I still admire the woman’s philosophy, even if I disagree with some of its finer points:

“Ayn Rand has an incredible vision to offer—in many respects a radiantly rational one. I am convinced that there are errors in that vision and elements that need to be changed, eliminated, modified, or added and amplified, but I am also convinced that there is a great deal in her vision that will stand the test of time.

Her vision is a very uplifting one, it is inspiring. It doesn’t tell you your mind is impotent. It doesn’t tell you that you’re rotten and powerless. It doesn’t tell you that your life is futile. It doesn’t tell you that you are doomed. It doesn’t tell you that your existence is meaningless. It tells you just the opposite.

It tells you that your main problem is that you have not learned to understand the nature of your own power and, therefore, of your own possibilities. It tells you that your mind is and can be efficacious, that you are competent to understand, that achievement is possible, and that happiness is possible. It tells you that life is not about dread and defeat and anguish but about achievement and exaltation.”

I think I’ve said it before in another post, but I maintain to this day that there were a number of things that Ayn Rand hit dead on.

Tags: advice, ideas

Grimms, revisited

The hubby wants me to come up with a short story that we could possibly turn into a short video. I keep coming back to the Grimms concept because it has such potential to be a serial tale. (Quick recap, Grimms: a woman escapes from Arcadia and begins rescuing other children from the Fae. Some of these children join forces with her, take on fairy tale personas, and form a team called the Grimms, after Grimm’s Fairy Tales). While we were waiting to see Avatar, we started brainstorming about special Fae abilities these kids could have as a result of the time spend among the Fae.

Here’s what we came up with:

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I think this will be a fun story concept to play with.

Tags: characters, Grimms, ideas

More reviews, and a new idea

I finished Industrial Magic, and I still agree with my previous post. Urban fantasy, not paranormal romance. Good, though. I’m definitely going to track down the first one.

I also finished:

Hidden Currents: by Christine Feehan

This seems to be part of a series of unrelated books all dealing with the same characters: the Drake sisters. All the sisters are varying degrees of psychic. This story was about the youngest one, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, who gets to carry on the legacy and have seven (!) girls of her own.

General thoughts: The conceit was interesting, but I think this particular story failed on several levels. It begins with the girl getting captured by this really depraved mega-millionaire, who trades sex slaves on the black market. She is badly abused by this guy, sexually, physically, psychically (oh yeah, the guy’s a psychic, too). Okay, now I understand this sort of abuse really happens, and I think I’m a reasonably sympathetic person who gets appropriately outraged when I hear about it. However, it’s just not something I want to see in a romance novel. Stories like this are supposed to be, first and foremost, entertainment. Abuse does not entertain me. I don’t want to read about it in my free time, thank you.

So then, the girl, Elle, is rescued about three or four chapters into the story (which, by the way, makes the entire back cover blurb completely misleading), by the love of her life (whom she’d given up on) and her sisters’ boyfriends. The entire rest of the story is given over to her recovering from abuse, and rekindling her romance with her guy, Jackson. I hate to say it, but this author has obviously never read accounts or interviewed anyone who had actually been abused. Elle has little panic attacks, in the beginning. By the middle of the book, she’s happily having sex with Jackson and really shows little other sign of trauma other than being a little nervous in crowds. Bullshit. It should have been weeks, months, before she could bear another man to touch her. Hold her. Let alone have sex with her. You just don’t get over that kind of abuse that easily. Epic fail in the realistic catagory.

The story was just interesting enough to keep me reading, but really, not all that memorable. Everything the characters devised pretty much worked, which should never be the case. Elle’s setbacks are almost inconsequentially small, and are quickly fixed. Example: the climax. The sisters’ guys devise a way to defeat the millionaire villain. They execute said plan. Said plan goes over without a hitch. The villain is defeated. Boring, boring, boring! Most of the writing was given over to Jackson reassuring Elle that he really loved her, how he’d never leave, how he’d never let her abuser find her, etc. Elle also did a fair bit of that, too; she’s not going to give up, she believed in the two of them, blah blah blah. Yeah, characters need that, but it really did get old after the twentieth time or so.

Relationships: The book was too erotic for my taste, plain and simple. I finished it, but I did a lot of skimming, honestly. I guess people must like it, though, because there’s an awful lot of it on the market. I can read a sex scene, but seriously, 8 pages devoted to a blow job? *gagging noises* There were, again, a lot of body parts. I’m a grown married woman, so I’m quite familiar with what the parts do. I care more about the emotions of the characters. Also, and this is a personal peeve of mine, but I really hate it when a penis is referred to as a “cock”. It’s just…vulgar, to me. I cringe every time I read it. Let’s just say that I did a lot of cringing while reading this book. I suppose “member” or some other clever metaphor (spear? sword? let’s not go there) isn’t much better. I say, why name it at all? We know it’s there, we know what it’s doing. I’d rather read about how the characters feel inside.

Another problem was that the sex was too idealized for my liking. Even in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles, the author, along with describing the normal sensations, didn’t forget to mention when the heroine’s hair pins were digging into her head, or a bedpost poking her back, or the coldness of the floor. In this book, there’s none of that. The scenes have a setting, but the setting exists solely for atmosphere…it doesn’t actually interact with the characters at all (at least, not after they are getting it on). Even if I was having the greatest sex of my life, I think I’d still at least notice being bent back on a piano. In reality, I think that would be majorly uncomfortable.

And I guess there’s only so many ways to elaborate on “pleasure washed through his/her body” without getting redundant. Really, really redundant.

In other news, I’ve started a 1500 word short story that I might also submit to Writer’s Digest. This is a different contest than the one I sent the Smell of November to, and the possible cash prizes are higher. I had known about the contest, but wasn’t going to bother with it because I didn’t have any good ideas. I had read on Westerfeld’s blog about the concept of a “dialogue spine”, and how you can punch out the bare bones of a story using only two characters talking to each other. Then I remembered the hubby and I tossing around the idea of what it would be like to be a blind vampire. Then I listened to End Transmission by AFI, and I had my character: a blind vampire who is tired of what he is, and wants to die.

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Shades is coming along. Saeli has her Mantle now, and knows she’s a cleric. Trying to decide how to get her to that party without too many extraneous words.

Tags: ideas, Reviews, revisions, vampires

The Waters between the worlds

We watched Spirited Away last weekend, and I was once again struck by the train sequence. I started to imagine what kind of stories the spirit train itself had collected before Chihiro even gets on: where it goes, who the spirits are that get on and off, its connection to the real world, etc. A vague story idea began to take shape in my head. Something about a character lost and riding the train between the worlds (or some other transportation device), trying to find his or her way home…or possibly a different character falling in love with the lost one.

I’ve let the idea percolate a little bit over the last few days, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far.

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I don’t know where this one will go in the queue. Possibly pretty far back, as it’s relatively undeveloped at this point.

In other news, I’m 5 scenes into the Shades rewrite, and am actually in scene 8 from the first draft. The High Priestess has a little more of a presence at this point than she did in the first draft, which I’m hoping will make her fight with Raphel more meaningful. I’ve actually almost reached that scene…yay for me!

Tags: characters, ideas, the Waters

Writing prompts, because I can

For your amusement. I find prompts don’t work very well on me, but people seem to like them.

“You are driving in a suburban neighborhood and see a lampshade sitting on the side of the road. Curious, you stop your car and investigate. Underneath the lampshade is a (very) dead squirrel. Now make up a story about how the dead squirrel ended up under that lampshade on the side of the road.”

The hubby and I really did see a lampshade on the side of the road on Viera Blvd, though we didn’t check for squirrels underneath.

“You are in Walmart at 10PM. The person in front of you in the checkout lane is an older gentleman, a bit on the scruffy side, and his only purchase is a single jar of olives. What is his story, and what is he going to do with those olives?”

This actually happened to me. Perfectly nice guy…olives just seemed like an odd thing to get all by itself.

Tags: humor, ideas, prompts

Midnight toothbrushing inspiration

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Tags: angelics, ideas, Raphel, revisions, Saeli, Shades, the Keeper of the Oath

Shades update

I committed a grave writer’s sin the other day, and started revising a portion of Shades before the rough draft is done. In my defense, I really can’t help it if good ideas occur to me at inopportune times. Not only am I not done with the ending yet, I was driving when I had the brainwave and had to wait until I got home to play with it.

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Tags: editing, ideas, revisions, Shades

Shades update

I think I could get the first draft done this week if I really, really worked on it. Literally, if I wrote for 2 hours every day…and more importantly, didn’t spend that time going back through what I’ve already written…I could get there. As always, however, whether that will actually happen shall be dictated by circumstance and the cooperation of a certain three year old.

Then the cutting process will begin. I know of two whole scenes I can nix without even thinking about it, and numerous other bits and pieces. I’m sure I’ll find more once I actually re-read, especially in the first section. The angelic subplot can get cut…I started it on Dheu and then never had the space to take it anywhere. It just kind of fizzles out. The Keeper subplot can probably be streamlined, since it took me three quarters of the story to finally figure out where I was going with it. Let’s see, what else. A lot of Saeli’s interaction with Cara and Brendan at the beginning can be steamlined, if not cut altogether. Naeth isn’t as big a player as I thought he was going to be, so he probably actually has enough screen time…I just need to focus it a little better. I think, like Brendan, he doesn’t actually have to BE on screen to be vitally important.

Interestingly, the process of closing this story is providing more and more material for a sequel. Please Login or Register to view this.

Wow, I just totally went on a sequel tangent. *sigh* I have a lot of work to do before January, and the next two months are going to be ridiculous. I’ve agreed to design the conference booklet for the SCWG this year…which is, btw, really cool, and I’m flattered that I was asked. That has to be done by mid-September. I have to polish off the first draft of Shades so I can start editing it. I want to enter a short story in the SCWG writing contest for the conference…which means I have to write, edit, and polish a 2000 word story by Oct. 15th. (Short stories are not my forte. I have a hard time thinking small enough). I need to finish editing my short story for the Writer’s Digest contest before Nov. 2nd. We have friends coming to visit the weekend of Oct. 17th, and my Hanson concert is the 24th. That’s two weekends shot. Oh, yeah, and my birthday is in there somewhere. (Did I mention I have to have Shades done…DONE, as in: cut, edited, copyedited, polished…by January, if I want to have a complete manuscript at the conference??)

I’m sure I’m even forgetting something in this list.

Which reminds me…it’s bedtime, and I have laundry to do tomorrow.

Tags: angelics, ideas, revisions, Saeli, sequels, Shades