My first inclination was to approach this from a D&D perspective, because magic in that world is cast through words and spell books. One could easily make “bookbinding” a literal thing, where you are actually magically binding a force or spell into a book.

In a completely unrelated conversation, when something I was about to say just vanished from my head (don’tcha hate that??)…I wondered aloud where all those thoughts go. Maybe there is an Aether of Lost Thoughts, where all Lost Thoughts go when they disappear from your head. Maybe this Aether is “hungry”, and at times will actually steal thoughts away before you can think them?

And then I thought, what if you could pluck these lost thoughts out of said Aether, and say, bind them into books?

But somehow you’d have to do this without actually thinking the thoughts, because…well, it’s not a Lost Thought anymore if someone thinks it, is it? Plus, maybe Lost Thoughts are also those thoughts that people push away because they’re too disturbing or awful or messed up to contemplate…like what you’d really like to do to that annoying relative or what sort of damage that really sharp knife could cause…stuff that kind of half passes through your head just before you mentally slap yourself. Those could be pretty dark. Spending too much time letting those kinds of Lost Thoughts pass through your head could drive you insane.

So perhaps the purpose of book binding is to get those thoughts out of the Aether without harming anyone in the process.

Then I liked the idea of drawing out Lost Thoughts with music. Perhaps there could be two classes of book-binding magical practitioners: Minders and Binders. Minders would be the ones trained to “listen” to the Aether, locate troublesome thoughts, and draw them out. Binders would be in charge of setting down onto paper what the Minders draw out. At first I thought about making a sort of music language, but that got too complicated. I think perhaps what the Binders would be doing is drawing, maybe something like Celtic knot work, complex patterns, fractals, etc. And because every Minder and every Binder is different, the music used to call and the drawings used to capture any given Thought will be wildly different, even if the Thoughts themselves were similar.

This gives the added advantage of these books not being “readable”, in the traditional sense. Random Villain X isn’t going to be able to come along and read a whole bunch of dark, dangerous thoughts out of these books…at least not easily.

Unless Random Villain X is a Minder. I imagine some Minders would eventually figure out not only how to draw out Lost Thoughts, but how to channel them into spells. And perhaps Binders can do other things…like transcribing a speech onto paper in such a way that the speaker and audience would both forget what they’ve just said and heard. Or changing memories by writing them down.

Perhaps a rivalry has built up between Minders and Binders over the years, despite the fact that they need each other in order to keep the Aether safe. That could be a starting background conflict for a story.

I have several story snippets that could be combined with this to make a story…but that’s a process that could take some time.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

But not all. So I went through, looked at the terrain each creature inhabited, and looked at which race lived there. I figured that, in a lot of cases, the name a certain race gave to a certain animal that lived in their home territory would be the name that stuck. In all other cases, the common language used by all the races would give the name. Vision’s “trade language” is Arader (the weasel/otter race), because the Arader are natural exploders and traders, and it was they who made the initial contact with various places, animals, and people.

(Their language is English, stripped as much as possible of words borrowed from other languages. Because any given word in any given tongue is, at its core, a description of what it represents. We call a rat a rat because the word “rat”…or rather the word “rat” evolved from, represented a gnawing sound and that’s what rats do. Native Americans have descriptive sounding names because they’ve been translated from their own tongue to English.)

I had already decided what culture and language each race would borrow from, way back when I was naming the lakes and mountains and cities. So for each creature, I looked up what it most closely resembled in the language of the race who would have named it. For example, the Feya’s tongue sounds a lot like French, so creatures in their homeland would have very French sounding names. (I discovered, in this process, that the Feya are excessively fond of seafood. Who knew?

Then I started “wearing the edges” off the names, paring them down in ways I imagined common use and exposure to different tongues would do. Sometimes I would end up rearranging the word so that it spelled the way I was instinctively pronouncing it. (For example: “yabbyervotzk”. Which is “jabberwock”, transliterated into Russian. I was mentally pronouncing it “yabber-ya-votzk” until I noticed the spelling, and decided I liked my pronunciation better. So now it’s “yabberyvotzk”). Sometimes I’d end up abandoning the native word and going with the familiar name. I didn’t want to fall into the fantasy “calling a rabbit a ‘shmearp’ simply because that sounds cooler than plain ‘rabbit’” trap. This process will continue as I work on the game.

Last week, I was thinking about the ecology of Avatar (Cameron’s version, not Airbender), and remembering how I admired the overall sense of unity that existed on that world. (Except the Na’vi, but that’s a whole different gripe…) Because what I needed for Amphiptere’s Vision was a particular trait or evolutionary connection. Partially to unify the world and partially to help fix the “shmearp” problem. What’s unique about this world?

First thing that came to mind was dragons. Well duh, most fantasy worlds have dragons, usually of the Western, winged variety. But no one ever seems to think about how unlikely such an animal is, evolutionarily speaking. A six-limbed reptile, where two of those limbs basically grow out of its back as wings? On worlds where most other creatures sport the typical two legs, two arms symmetry? Dragons in fantasy literature are like the Na’vi of Avatar. I look at the rest of the ecosystem and wonder: how in the hell did this aberration evolve, and why hasn’t anyone else noticed how weird it is?

(Dragons created by some kind of separate, magical or supernatural process, of course, are a different matter. But this is rarely explicitly the case).

So, one unique feature of the Visions world is the existence of creatures that evolved with two legs, two arms, and two wings, arranged just so. And I remembered that dragons weren’t the only six limbed creature I’d dumped into my bestiary. I had griffins. Hippogriffs. Chimeras. A four-armed ape/yeti creature. A four-winged bird, originally stolen from D&D, I think. Two of my races have wings that sprout from the back.

I Googled “dragon skeleton”, and found something interesting. About half of the depictions showed the dragon having essentially two separate sets of shoulder blades: one set for the forearms, one set a little higher up for the wings. But the other half used a sort of combination scapula, one that could accommodate both arms and wings. I liked that one better. What if every single creature in the world (except insects and octopi and the like) had such a bone inside them? What if they all had six limbs?

I modeled a combination scapula with clay so I could really get a sense of how this thing would work. Interestingly enough, I found that if I flipped the scapula upside down, I had something that could support a four-armed creature like my ape-yeti, where the lower set of arms appears to poke out of the ribcage. If I included this special shoulder blade in every creature, I would have my uniting factor…and the creativity could come from deciding how those six limbs would manifest.

I’ve also been taking each creature and picking several different animals to use as models…because then I can say with confidence that my shmearp is not just a rabbit, but rabbit + wasp, with a little squirrel thrown in (to use a made-up example). And variety makes it easier to incorporate two extra limbs. Eventually I’ll organize these drawings and notes into a D&D-like Monster Manual, although I plan to lay it out like a field guide. Maybe Spiderwick style.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

Many of my story ideas come from dreams. Usually two or three dreams that have been fleshed out, expanded upon, and changed where needed to make a coherent plot. Most often, the main element a dream will leave me with is a mood. How does this story feel? What emotions does it evoke? The more detailed dreams will provide me with several characters and maybe even some plot elements, but that mood is what I take the most time in analyzing and writing down.

But often, my dreams aren’t coherent enough, detailed enough, or removed enough from life to really use. What I call “story dreams” actually happen only once or twice a month, if that. Dreams where I wake up and say, “Man, that would make a great story!” and I rush to write it down. Such were the beginnings of Dragon Singer, Briar Rose, Dreamcatcher, Mask of Eldarmarch…the list goes on. Honestly, if they happened any more frequently, either I’d need to be a much faster writer, or my queue would be much, much longer (than it already is).

However, even the fuzzy, wacky dreams can yield ideas in the form of details. Details of life, of people, of feeling; stuff that sort of passes you by when you’re awake. Sometimes things like that are easier to notice in dreams because they occur bigger than normal, stranger than normal, or simply out of context.

For example, I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately relating to the nuclear problems they are having in Japan right now. Radioactive stuff and refugee type themes. Radiation frightens me. You can’t see it, hear it, smell it, or feel it, and you don’t sense anything off if it’s hitting you. Plus, nothing but distance can shield you it. And it kills in a rather painful, horrible way. That’s up there with velociraptors and tiny dark spaces on Nightphoenix’s DoNotWant list.

The latest in this dream series involved me taking care of a bunch of hairless rabbits who’d been exposed, and then trying and failing to stop some overlord from taking over a small imaginary country. (Yes, even in the dream, it was imaginary. And yet, its loss was terrible. Hard to explain.) I was traveling with the refugees, and this monarch of a neighboring friendly nation was giving the refugee children little bags full of tiny toys and candy. Specifically, red apple-spice candy. There was a moment where I was watching the line of sad refugees shuffle along past me, and all around was this miasma of sweet spicy apple-y scent on the air. For some reason, it was that smell and everything it represented that really made it sad for me. That’s what really stayed with me when I woke up.

That’s what good details do. They call attention to what’s really important in a scene in a subtle, in-world way. They meld all those abstract, powerful emotions into an object, a texture, a moment, something tangible the audience can take away with them. “That was a great love story” isn’t nearly as powerful as “I bawled my eyes out when he handed her that ring”. They might not remember anything else about the story, but they’ll remember the ring and the feelings associated with it. Think about the Phantom of the Opera’s rose with a black ribbon, or Joker’s joker playing card. Significant details often become symbols, reoccurring themes that crop up again and again in a story. (And any details mentioned when describing a room, or object, or person, ought to be significant: ie, if the protagonist always wears a blue headband, that should play some later role in the story…if only to identify or mark her).

So, today, I am reminded to mine my dreams for details missed in the waking world. Like hairless rabbits. And apple-spice candy.

Like this post?

Like!

2 likes

Anonymous(2)

I’ve been productive, which I suppose is part of the updating problem. Have plotted out the Waters story, and decided to give it an actual title: This Chosen Fate. Have also written nearly a full chapter of Promises, Like Tears. I’m getting a much better handle on Naeth’s character this time around. He’s actually supposed to be sort of annoying and not really all that likable when you first meet him, which will make his later improvements stand out all the more. I’ve been debating theology with friends, which easily turns into a time-sucker with me.

Also, one of the blogs I follow regularly, Slacktivist, moved to a new internet home last week, which sparked a…ruckus. Very quick sum-up: Within the community of commenters and lurkers that follow Slacktivist, many people had objections to the content of the new home site, Patheos, and felt that they could not in good conscience support such a site. The community seemed ready to split over the move. This is the type of situation that moves at internet speed and can only be kept up with if one is willing to follow 1000+ comments or so across the space of about 5 separate threads on two different websites. However, the community seems to have settled on a compromise: Fred will stay at Patheos to be a sort of light in the darkness, per se, but he’s handed the old space over to a few of the regulars from the community as a safe space for those who don’t want to or cannot bear to deal with the vile stuff on Patheos. Which, I have to say, is pretty awesome of him. But…following all the drama has taken up a lot of time this week.

Have also been cleaning the apartment, which is of course a never-ending job.

However, the truth is…I’m not sure where to take this blog. I definitely want it to remain about the writing, but really what it’s become is a sort of “update on me and my writing” space. Which is great (if a bit narcissistic) for me…but how interesting is that for other people? I’d like to give this place more of a direction, so people can come here and know more or less the sort of topics to expect.

I have two sort of hazy ideas. One, have the main theme be “the creative process”. The process of getting ideas. Turning those ideas into stories (or art, or…well, those are my two areas). Brainstorming. Worldbuilding. I could get even more specific, like: The Creative Process for Fantasy Writers. Or something. This could also incorporate the “real life meets writing” and “how such-and-such impacted me as a writer” posts that I do every so often.

The other idea would be to focus on the more nuts and bolts aspects of writing, like GMC and problematic plots and such. And how certain books and movies either succeed or fail based on these things. That’s kind of what Writing Excuses is, which makes it really interesting to me…but it’d essentially make this into a how-to blog. Dunno if I like that.

Anyway, I’ll be giving this more thought over the next few days. Just wanted to check in and say, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet.

Like this post?

Like!

2 likes

Anonymous(2)

I will start thinking about a set of characters, and playing with bits of dialogue in my head. Often, what they will say to each other is surprising, revealing solutions to plot and story problems that I would have never thought of on my own. (Of course, given that this is all going on inside my head…eh, who says writers are sane?) And I will have “Oh. OH! Oh, hey, that’s perfect!” moments.

Well, last night I was thinking about Alex and Lauren from my Waters story. They were standing on the bow of the Kalianne, looking out over a contested Shallow. Our dear antagonist Meeley had brought in her airships and the fighting was pretty fierce. Alex was debating whether to take the Kalianne in, and decided he didn’t want to risk a confrontation with Meeley just yet. So they’re watching from a distance.

Lauren frowns and says, “Why do they fight like that? What do they really want?”
“They want what everyone who gets stuck in this desolate wasteland wants.” Alex sighs. “They want to go home.”

Oh, so much to unpack from that single exchange. I already knew Alex was a pirate, and that his ship is not the only pirate ship on the Waters. I imagined that they do what pirates do: pillage, plunder, and acquire loot. But what if said loot is not riches and such? What the heck are you going to do with money on the Waters anyway? The most valuable asset on the Waters are the ways out: Docks, and Shallows.

Now, Docks can be built, and destroyed, but they are permanent in the sense that once a Dock is established between the Waters and a world, that Dock does not move. But Shallows…wander. The worldside effect is that Shallows come and go…that misty grove that was a Shallow yesterday may not be one today. The Waterside effect is that the Shallow that leads to one particular place and time today may lead somewhere (or somewhen) else tomorrow. The Waterside location of a Shallow is permanent, like an island, but where and when that Shallow will take you is always changing.

Perhaps Shallows occur in “clusters” on the Waters (like islands), and because of proximity, the Shallows within a clump of clusters, and more within individual clusters, will have something in common. One particular clump of Shallow clusters may all lead to Earth, for example, but each cluster will lead to a specific “time zone” within Earth’s timestream. So one cluster might take you to Earth, circa 1600 CE. A nearby cluster would also take you to Earth, but circa 2100 CE, or circa 2300 BCE. The individual Shallows within a cluster mark different places (which change, and migrate), like the Bermuda Triangle, Avalon, Roanoke, etc…and specific hours, days, weeks, months, or years, like June 11th, 2010 CE 12:04 PM EST- 5:06 PM EST… or March 1374 CE, or 1751: January – December. Shallows have a start time and a stop time: they drift to a spot in time, exist there for a little while, and then meander on.

And perhaps clusters are arranged in such a way on the Waters that in order to access specific clusters, one is actually forced to go through other Shallows, or skirt them very close.

(Docks are different. They are anchored to a place, not a time. Therefore, if a Dock was built in the Edinburgh Vaults of Scotland in 1800 CE, there will still be a Dock there in 2010, unless it is deliberately dismantled. Docks are valuable because they give pirates a steady access to supplies (like, you know, food?), and it’s useful to have control of a Dock within easy sailing distance of the Shallow clusters you control…but it’s not necessary. Thus, Docks are not as contested. Some Docks maintain their own small governments, world-side or Waterside, that require pirates to fly a flag of truce to “dock” and resupply there.”)

Now, if it is as Alex said in my mind, and most pirates marauding on the Waters are really just trying to get home, then Shallows are by far the most valuable commodity on the Waters. Especially if one of the quirks of Shallows is that the more people are around them, the more likely they are to shift. If it gets brushed by a few times, it may shift places sooner than it would naturally…which is no big deal. (Hey, if it takes you to Earth, October 6, 2010, who cares if it takes you to Bermuda or Japan? You’re home.) However, if too many people start passing through or around a Shallow cluster, they could start shifting times, eras, even worlds.

If that’s the case, then it behooves you to not only position your own people near certain Shallow clusters to monitor them, but also to keep other people away. Sometimes you can deliberately “agitate” a Shallow, in hopes that it will shift to a time or place closer to what you’re looking for, but it’s a delicate line to walk. You don’t want to shift a Shallow out of your general era (or world). Thus, you only want your own people agitating a given Shallow. And the best way to ensure that is to control the area around that cluster, and sink anyone who gets too close.

That gives a solid base for Alex and Meeley’s rivalry: they both come from Earth. Perhaps the Earth 1600 cluster and the Earth 1900 cluster are very close together, forcing each party to risk screwing up the other set of Shallows in order to reach their own. Add Lauren to the mix, with her needing to find an Earth 2000 cluster, and we have a pretty good setup for some juicy conflict.

(Incidentally, Earth does have Docks. However, the Docks that Alex tends to use aren’t Earth Docks, so Lauren will get to see some pretty interesting sights while aboard the Kalianne.)

~~~~

In other news, I’ve been working on the conference registration booklet for the SCWG again this year. Much easier, since I was able to recycle a lot of the formatting from last year’s book. My pen-wielding mouse from last year got to make a cameo appearance.

Also, I’ve finally tracked down a plugin that allows me to block spammers from registering on the blog. I get tired of having to clear out the approval box every few days, especially when it’s the same durn spammers over and over again. I was able to use my email backlogs to create a blacklist, which makes me glad I didn’t clear out that box.

Now, pray it actually works. And do let me know if you are a legitimate person and are getting blocked for some reason.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

I was able to get some work done on both Shades and Smell of November, and did some more brainstorming/researching on To Wake a Windmaker. Tennessee is where the kudzu is, after all, and one of my creatures in that story is a sort of kudzu giant. Took some pictures, and decided to base the anatomy of these creatures on gorillas. Long arms, short legs, walk kind of hunched. Found out that the whole Appalachian Trail can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to hike…not a weekend sort of thing, you know? So I’ve decided that Quintin and one or two of his buddies try to start a software company, or something, and it fails rather miserably. This isn’t the first of Quintin’s failed business ventures, and he’s become rather discouraged. So he decides to basically drop off the face of the planet for about 6 months, and do something he’d never normally do: hike.

Which is how a non-outdoors-ish computer software designer has the means/time/motivation to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Also, what vacation would be complete without me coming up with yet another story idea? Rather than coming from a dream, however, this one came from a random notion while reading Elantris (again). You know how many religions have a list or set of circumstances which must be accomplished in the world, and once they are, their God will supposedly come down to earth and reign? (Fjordell) Usually those circumstances involve making believers out of everyone in the world, by sword if necessary. And usually the protagonists of any given story will be pitted against said religion, so that the whole world doesn’t get conquered.

But what would happen if Fjordell had managed to destroy Elantris and convert the entire world…and then Jaddeth never showed up? Would the leaders freak out, or uncover/invent some unfinished clause that’s preventing their God’s descent? Would the people become disillusioned? Would they rise up against the religious leaders? Would the system collapse? What would take its place? (The answers to all these questions probably lie in how sincere any given believer is).

That was my random thought. It was particularly intriguing to me because there are several sects of real world believers who hold to a similar doctrine. One day every knee will bow, and so on. Once a certain set of circumstances are fulfilled, God will come and reign on earth. Whether or not it is thought that believers have any control over how and when said events will happen depends on how fringe the sect is…some believe that they have a responsibility to hasten the Apocalypse, through violence if necessary. So what would happen if every event in Revelation happened just as it was written, except Jesus never made that second appearance? What would happen if human hands had wrought said Apocalypse in the hopes that Jesus, or Allah, or Yahweh, or whoever, would come? I mean, what would a religion do if its God failed it that spectacularly?

Please Login or Register to view this.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

If they take it, I may turn it into a serial thing. Alan Hunter’s story makes a nice lead-in to the overall Grimms storyline, something I’ve wanted to get started on. One of the Grimms, on a rescue mission, meets Alan after he’s been recaptured. They all escape. The Alan/November romantic tragedy will be wrapped in as a subplot to the whole Grimm tale. I don’t think Alan will ever actually be a Grimm; he’ll function more as a solitary ally. He may not be the only one; the Grimms will probably acquire a network of allies as the story fleshes out. Rescued kids who make it back to their families, but still know. Faerie enthusiasts who are in on the truth. Maybe even a rogue Fae or two.

I’m still working on Shades. In the process of spreading out and raising stakes on an already tense scene. I think I’m approaching the point where I won’t have to change much more. I’m also pretty sure I’ve said that before. *sigh* On the upside, I get to burn some mansions down. What’s the point of having a cabal of Cowls in a Mantle city if they never wreak any havoc? Let’s just say it’s high time for some chaos.

I also had a germ of an idea in the car today. I’ve been reading more Percy Jackson books: am currently about halfway through Titan’s Curse. So I was thinking about Greek mythology and heroes, specifically about the so-called “fatal flaw”. And I wondered what it would be like to have a flaw you really couldn’t overcome, and one you knew it really would kill you one day. I mean, how do you live with that? I have this eternal sense of optimism that persuades me that any flaw can be overcome if one perseveres…but I mean, what if there was just no overcoming this?

I think that’s what intrigues me about the vampire myth. No matter what you do, once you’re bitten, once you’ve turned…the Beast within will win. Eventually. No matter how hard you fight. Every slip sends you one step closer to becoming a monster.

But so, what do you do? Maybe the answer lies not in working to overcoming the fatal flaw, but seeking to put it to use somehow. The Greek word for ‘fatal flaw’ is hamartia. Maybe if you combine your hamartia with someone else’s, it turns into a strength. And then I thought, what if there was a world where everyone was born with such a flaw, and the only way to save yourself was to find your flaw-partner. Once you found this person, the two of you together would become unstoppable.

No, not everyone in a world would have this problem. Maybe only a few are born with a Flaw. It would be sort of the opposite idea of Cashore’s Gracelings. It would be terribly unlucky to give birth to a Hamartia, a Flawed One, and so most would be exposed or abandoned at birth. The few that dare to raise a Hamartia child would send them out on a quest to find their Flaw-bound, probably as soon as possible. After all, you never know when a Flaw will reveal itself, or how many people will suffer as a result. Single Hamartia would be shunned in society, barred from public places, etc.

However, Flaw-bound pairs would be revered.

What other conflict could exist here?

Maybe Hamartia are not allowed to fall in love with normal people? Or each other? Maybe falling in love risks the Flaw-bond, as the two are no longer willing to do what’s needed to negate the other’s Flaw. Maybe only same-sex Flaw bonds work, or are trusted to work.

Maybe they just aren’t allowed to have children, as Hamartia always birth more Hamartia.

Or maybe a Flaw-bond has to be between a man and a woman, and for some reason, there are more male Hamartia than female, or vice versa. Maybe same-sex Flaw-bonds are viewed as inferior, or are outright forbidden.

Or maybe Flaw-bound consist of two people who inherently hate each other. After all, who better to mitigate one’s Flaw than someone who sees ALL your flaws and is unwilling to put up with them? Maybe Flawed pairs who last for longer than a couple of years are rare.

This is really only a germ of a magic system, but maybe I’ll dig through my queue of ideas and find a story to stick it into.

Like this post?

Like!

1 likes

Renegade

Please Login or Register to view this.

My ideas keep spawning bigger ideas. My queue is getting a little ridiculous.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

Geris takes particular delight in being from Lanschport, but then, he’s a weird, perverse kind of guy.

What would Raphel call his cabal? To the larger world, the name would be mostly irrelevant. Raphel is so famous that his cabal is simply going to be known by most people as “Raphel’s cabal”…they aren’t going to care what he himself calls it. But still, they must call themselves something…every group needs an identity.

I’m inclined toward something like “New Iadnah”, or something like that. The Cowls in Raphel’s cabal, or at least a good number of them, are survivors of the Siege of Iadnah. Raphel met Nasira in Iadnah during the siege, an event which definitely changed his life. It’s an identifying point with them…gives them particular reason to want to assassinate high-ranking Mantles. Only New Iadnah sounds a little presumptuous to me. But I dunno, maybe Raphel would name his group something presumptous. Maybe he did it when he took it over from Nasira when he was 18.

I’ll just have to think about it some more.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes

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.

Like this post?

Like!

0 likes