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.

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Renegade

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

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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.

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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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This one was about vampires. Well, sort of.

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Fanfic is mostly done, and I’m losing the urge to finish it. This is good, because it means that I’ve got that out of my system and can move on, mentally. It’s a good scene, to me at least, and I think it will actually end up helping me write Raphel’s prequel. (Going to try to write his backstory in first person. Gods help me, but I think I know him well enough to do it.)

I’ve decided that my characters in Shades need last names, or at least more than just a first name. I’ve made such a big deal over the power of a name this second time around that I need to make sure that names are as unique as possible. Also, there’s just something more…iconic…about a character with a first and last name, you know? So on Verre, names are: first, second, hometown, son/daughter of (mother’s name). You give your first name as a sign of trust…if you don’t trust someone, you give a nickname, or say nothing at all. Refusal to give your true name can be prudent in some circumstances, and a grave insult in others. It marks you, qi-wise, but not as thoroughly as the whole name would. (That’s why Saeli was able to find Raphel through the sorarc…he was close enough that his first name was enough.) A person’s hometown is usually common knowledge; an informal name is first+hometown. Saeli’s professors would call her Saeli of Aschera in a formal setting, and just Saeli in a classroom setting. The mother’s name is used because determining a baby’s mother is simple, while paternity can be a more complicated issue.

Your whole name is something you reveal to a person you really, really trust…like a spouse or a mentor, something of that ilk. It’s that second name that’s really the hidden one, the one that makes you very vulnerable to someone else’s qi.

Pertinent to the story itself:

I’ve only picked out Saeli’s and Raphel’s full names. I’ll come up with the others if/when I need to.

Saeli Neyel of Aschera, Tammar’s daughter
Raphel Kalias of Amiri, Danae’s son

The High Priestess knows Raphel’s full name, but she was not able to use it before his big fight with her because she wasn’t absolutely sure it was him until he revealed his face. It is telling that although she knew his name, she was still unable to defeat him (however, when you are face-to-face with an opponent, names don’t matter so much anymore). Raphel doesn’t even know the HP’s first name.

Saeli knows Raphel’s full name after the High Priestess reveals it to her. I haven’t decided if Saeli will do anything with this knowledge, or even whether she will ever reveal to Raphel that she knows. Raphel knows everything except Saeli’s second name, which he’ll probably pick out of her head when he becomes a god. She won’t willingly surrender it, anyway.

Kaladan knows the HP’s full name. That’s part of the reason she freaked out when Saeli revealed that he was still alive, and a Cowl. However, Kaladan keeps that knowledge to himself until after the Priestess dies, out of respect for the woman he used to love. Raphel didn’t know Kaladan knew that name, and that argument becomes the first of many moments where Kaladan proves that he’s capable of working against what Raphel wants.

All student full names are on record at Aschamon, open only to professors and the High Priestess. Professors never use full names in the classroom, though they can be used during formal ceremonies (usually in a low voice, so that the general audience does not hear). Professors never reveal their full name to students. The High Priestess didn’t give hers to Kaladan until after he graduated, and only because she was his mentor and they were both part of the siege of Iadnah.

Everyone in a cabal is on a first name basis with each other, but the exchanging of full names is frowned upon (in the event that someone in the cabal is captured and questioned…you can’t reveal what you don’t know). A ras and his/her second almost always know each other’s full names, and a ras may share his/her full name with other members, if necessary. Mora and Kaladan both know Raphel’s full name. Raphel knows Mora’s. Incidentally, nobody knows Kaladan’s second name now (except Kaladan himself), because Yuril changed it when he took the Cowl. The High Priestess knew Kaladan’s original full name.

Immortals can pick out a full name out of anyone’s head, but only rarely do they use it as a weapon against the person. (Edges very close to tampering with free will, and breaking the Oath). Occasionally a god will reveal a person’s full name to others, if they ask, either to enforce a sense of trust or to make that person’s life difficult.

Tomorrow is Friday, which hopefully means I’ll be able to get some writing done.

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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.

Nickelback - How You Remind Me 

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.

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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.

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