Evaluating Masterclasses - Part 1

This is the second essay from my NAW Professional Development Portfolio. Comprised of two parts, it is my personal view of the masterclasses I have attended - which means it is not a reflection of the quality or content but my perception of how useful those masterclasses have been to me and my learning:

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The masterclasses have covered a wide range of discussions and skillsets. But, I have found that many aspects of these discussions have been rhetorical, anecdotal, or statistical in nature. Only a few have had practical analysis.

A second issue hinges on the timeliness of a masterclass and where the student is (in their own head). A student involved with reassessing their style or troubled by how exactly they should weight the pace of their narrative is not going to find a talk on the current trends and necessities of submissions to agents of any relevance – which does not diminish the quality of the talk itself. It does mean that areas of perceived irrelevance may lead to the listener overlooking an important message about core skills. Furthermore, much of what has been said that was not of a statistical and set-in-stone nature may be thought of as a one-off or very personal situation for the speaker.

The masterclasses I’ve observed may be categorised into one of the following types:

• Anecodotal inconsequence (this is how I did it)
• Informative rhetoric (this is how it is)
• Practical applicator (this is how you can do it)
• Skills implementation (try this for yourself)

However, there is always a message of some significance in every masterclass. While the categorisations above don’t necessarily make one more important than another, I have ordered the categories, as I perceive them, from least to most effective. The practical applicator and skills implementation types are more applicable to my current needs and mindset, which are: choosing scenes for their appropriateness and relevance to a story and maintaining brevity by avoiding irrelevant description that does not further the action or narrative.

Talks and classes falling into the category of anecdotal inconsequence may enthuse one listener but bore another. Their topics and situations are not directly replicated by, or transferable to, the circumstances of the students – but are unique to the speaker and their subject.

Barry Turner was one such speaker, whose positive and affirming discussion opened our course in January 2007. The encouraging tale he told of his own introduction to media and onwards into writing was interesting but indicative of the time at which he started out – the launch of television and radio. It had little or no significance other than anecdotally. Again, this by no means diminishes what Barry had to say for his “carpe diem” boldness really excited the students.

The next masterclass was the polar opposite of Barry’s. Jim Crace talked us cautiously through our intended directions and interests and mulled over the difficulties of our labours of love. His was a very sobering discussion, making it clear that we needed to be the passionate ones about our work, that we aren’t guaranteed success, and that some people may have the inclination to write, but not the ability. It ended somewhat bluntly with his admission that he would, in two books time, stop writing altogether! What were we to make of this? Do writers have a self imposed shelf life, only so much in themselves to lend to paper?

The different stances of these two speakers seemed to say far more about their outlook on life, their journey to publication, and successes or setbacks than they did about the audience’s own future endeavours. In Jim’s case this had a greater sense of realism given his interest in the education of new writers. Whatever their positions, cynical realism or intrepid optimism, perhaps both messages were affirming and bookend every masterclass and lesson that followed: encouragement to strive for what we want to achieve matched alongside (not against) our egos stripped of all naivety. That this may be a good thing does not necessarily mean they were of any proactive assistance to the studying writer.

Working for a library service I have attended several author events and talks (Tracey Chevalier, Jodi Picoult, Salley Vickers, Colin Dexter, Lionel Shriver, Freya North, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, Ann Widdecombe). All were pitched at a readership level, with interests in the writers’ origins and the concoction of characters and plot. The anecdotal inconsequence never focused any deeper than biography or research, i.e. never touching on the elements that comprise a certain paragraph: on changing subjects, using a metaphor to infer a character’s point of view, or relating a memory that provides synchronicity to the unfolding scene.

The anecdotal inconsequence of Catherine O’Flynn’s masterclass was symptomatic of those other writers. She has an innate ability to write without consideration for how she does it. She has a set routine that she maintains but she doesn’t appear to worry over the disparate skills necessary to juggle the creation of a story. As with the other writers her talk never entered into deep discussions on the complexities of maintaining reader interest, while levelling their narrative for clarity, pace, action and dialogue.

The masterclasses have covered a number of subjects, from self publishing to the expectations of an agent to the operations of the Times Newspaper. We have been handed the broad canvas of the industry’s workings as well as views of the many doorways that might provide access. However, I am reminded that, short of being a celebrity, the only thing that truly sells a manuscript to an agent or publisher is the manuscript, and thereby the talent of the writer – everything else is decoration. In my particular case – a single-minded view to becoming a novelist – the decoration, aside from being informative, is irrelevant. Counter to this is the argument that these masterclasses are meant to refocus my attention and reinforce the lesson that Jim, in particular, went to great lengths to explain: no-one can do it but me.

Though, again, that is not to diminish the masterclasses, since all the speakers that have taken the time to prepare and discuss their subjects with us have been supportive and they have been open to students contacting them at a later date.

Writer's Digest

Thanks to Donna, who stumbled upon the following link:

Writer's Digest - What's in and out, what's no longer shaking about.

Indispensable for us all, especially considering the tightening noose of recession that is putting the squeeze on the industry, knowing what is hot and not is the best way to prepare our writing for the future.

And while you're there, don't miss the brilliant list of sub-genre descriptions.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Published in 1987, Watchmen was hailed as peerless, groundbreaking and a masterwork. It has sat in the recesses of my mind as cipher to something I could never even contemplate. I'd never read it, never even seen it and yet, somehow, that image of the smiley yellow face, soiled by the blood stain was ingrained on me.

It is only now as I read Alan Moore's amazing piece of work in its entirety that I begin to see what a wonderful creation it is. It has so many themes and ideas, works on so many levels, and weaves intricately between the characters and the plots, sifting through back stories of these multi-faceted, psychologically complex adventurers that I am amazed that it was conceived in a time so backward as 1987.

How could I not have read this earlier? As a child? As a teen? As a writer? This stuff is dynamite.

From Wikipedia:
Watchmen is set in 1985, in an alternative history United States where costumed adventurers are real and the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (the Doomsday Clock is at five minutes to midnight). It tells the story of a group of past and present superheroes and the events surrounding the mysterious murder of one of their own. Watchmen depicts superheroes as real people who must confront ethical and personal issues, who struggle with neuroses and failings, and who - with one notable exception - lack anything recognizable as super powers. Watchmen's deconstruction of the conventional superhero archetype, combined with its innovative adaptation of cinematic techniques and heavy use of symbolism, multi-layered dialogue, and metafiction, has influenced both comics and film.

Since it is due out next year in movie format (a scenario the writer, Alan Moore, detests the thought of - neither V for Vendetta or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen faired particularly well) I had to get my hands on it, and I insist that you do too.

Not least for the following reasons:

From XKCD:

• Watchmen isn't a world of moral absolutes. None of the characters are Superman or Spidey. Their lives don't revolve around the notion of wholly good logic and what must be done to save people. The Watchmen are driven to protect their own ideology of what is good, or patriotic, or best for the planet, or best for themselves.
• They angtsy, driven by human desires and character flaws that we've only seen in the likes of poor dark Batman (you'll have to forgive me as I'm only a pseudo-comicbook geek)
• These aren't superheroes. They wear costumes, but aside from Ozymandias and Dr Manhattan, they operate on technology and strength alone. They're vigilanties, not superheroes.
• Sub stories cross over one another, linking disparate scenes and or dialogue with each other to match or symbolise what is happening in another scene.

The themes run very deep throughout the entire plot. It raises the question about men with causes (women too... obviously) - people who have given their entire lives over to a certain issue or situation, for example, fighting against racism or homophobia, antiwar, save the rainforests. What happens to these people when their cause is gone or removed from them. When they no longer have to fight that which they have elected to fight?

While by the end of the story we have the overarching theme of "Who Watches the Watchmen", particularly in its attempts to show the characters going to whatever odds to preserve peace, throughout we are struck by the sadness of losing one's place in the world, and being misunderstood because of it.


It is also interesting to think of how very special this piece of work is and how lucky we are that Moore has so brilliantly devised his plot, especially considering what it has given us as off shoots (just as George Lucas gave us so much when he created Star Wars). However, there is a flipside... there are so many novels and comic strips, and movies, and songs, that are so derivative of that standard formula that Watchmen has eschewed. These derivatives, created after the likes of Watchmen and Star Wars still leak out into the ether as if wonderous and complex creations such as Watchmen never existed and never raised new questions about character and plot creation and moral issues.

I am set in my mind now to write a young adult novel that is as morally ambiguous as Watchmen, that isn't oh-so Harry Potter in its appeal, and that changes allegiances between books from one side to the other... because life is complicated and it isn't all cut and dried. And most importantly, people lie to protect themselves and their ideologies. So few of us our good, moral people. We always let slip, don't we, just to make our own lives easier.

I think it's time we had a YA novel that reflected that.

Here's hoping I can pull it off.

No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

There's a funny story to tell with how I came to read this book... I had seen the trailer over on Apple's Trailers site and it piqued my interest, so much so that I avidly watched for its arrival at my local cinema... any one of the four. Of course, what with me living in the anti-cultural capital of England, none of them felt the need to show anything that didn't appeal to children or Horror-meisters.

Alas I will have to wait.

And so it was that midweek, MG Harris said she'd spotted her book Invisible City on the shelves in Oxford (two weeks early), and I raced out to the local Waterstones to see if I could buy it too. And again, the local businesses let me down. But instead I stumbled upon Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. Hazarr!

Bought it half price too, and finished just minutes before we did last night's Litopia podcast.

I'm in two minds over the book itself, or is that I'm in one mind over the book and in another mind regarding the writer?

The book is constructed in two separate povs. Since the title and the subject of the piece regard Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones in the movie) we open with a monologue of his:

I sent one boy to the gas chamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didn't have to go but I did. I sure didn't want to. He'd killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasn't no passion to it. He'd been datin' this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin' to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was goin' to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. I thought I'd never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin' if maybe he was some new kind.

And then we slide into the chapter proper, with a third person pov that allows us to shift easily between characters at separate locations. It's all good stuff, nice and simple prose that any reader can understand without too much concentration, and yet in these main narrative moments I was driven to great distraction by McCarthy's choice of structuring:

He ran cold water over his wrists until they stopped bleeding and he tore strips from a hand towel with his teeth and wrapped his wrists and went back into the office. He sat on the desk and fastened the toweling with tape from a dispenser, studying the dead man gaping up from the floor. When he was done he got the deputy's wallet out of his pocket and took the money and put it in the pocket of his shirt and dropped the wallet to the floor. Then he picked up his air tank and the stun gun and walked out the door and got into the deputy's car and started the engine and backed around and pulled out and headed up the road.

How can I recommend this book to anyone when every other word is surely and? It isn't easy.

And yet through this style we know exactly what and where and how - but it doesn't half begin to grate! Use a comma, a full stop or something... please?

The next problem for the reader lies in the lack of quotation marks for dialogue (single or double). Narrative runs into dialogue and others follow without attribution to characters, often leaving a lazy reader (or tired, as I was) a little lost, and in need of some backtracking.

And yet, the story is cracking and the idiosyncrasies of the characters bring them alive enough that any hate I had for McCarthy's style had to be endured to find out what happened next - and I was surprised by the turns in the story. I'm not sure if I like the direction it took at the end (but I guess that's what you get when you're riding shotgun with a writer like McCarthy).

I can recommend this on story and character alone - it may be better just to watch the movie (at least that is up for Oscars). And on a side note, I do enjoy watching the trailer for a movie and then reading the book, all the characters are fleshed out for me - it helps that the movie seems to follow the book faithfully (don't get me started on I Am Legend).

Charolastra's Treasure 2

As sequels go, it's a very typical premise...

Back in June I brought to you the Secret of Charolastra's Treasure, a single idea on emotional content and context. Now, she's come up with a gem of a discovery - research - and something in particular for the children's market that I wouldn't have stumbled upon on my own: Children as Audience.

This is indispensable stuff seeing as I'm intent on writing a children's novel for my final project this year (oh, I haven't written anything of length for such a long time, I'm afraid).

As an aside note, Sequels and second parts have raised plenty of discussions between my brother and I in the past in response to advertising that marks the difference between what should be termed a sequel and what should be termed part or chapter two/three/four, etc.

It's a similar rub to the misuse by journos and marketers of the word "epic" which didn't originally mean lots of people fighting in the woods/desert/mountain/sea. Neither did it mean a long and arduous journey - alas we subvert the true meaning of something and make it our own.

Anyhoo, a sequel is another story using the same characters (main characters at least) but where the story does not link up with the first. The situation and badguys are different. The Spiderman films, X-Men, 48 Hours, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, etc. These are all examples of sequels. You can watch one without need to have watched any of the others and they standalone.

Star Wars does not consist of sequels. Neither does Lord of the Rings - I do get upset when people describe them as such. Erm... sorry, gone off on one - I only raise this to point out that Charolastra's treasure (the first one from June) is completely separate from this latest topic... I've lost you haven't I?!

Completion - Fiction & Reading into Writing Modules

Happy New Year to one and all. I'm still a bit dizzy from the festivities (though I was the nominated driver and drank nothing). We attended a formal dinner at a lovely French restaurant - Frere Jacques - along the river in Kingston upon Thames, only to discover it had gone a little down market for celebration time. Initially we moved the tat, party hats, poppers, streamers, cheap wind-up cars, bowl filled with tiny coloured balls and two multi-coloured blowpipes - yes, blowpipes! We felt certain that no one would take up this rather mental idea of wearing hats and parping at each other. We were all civilised adults (excepts for the kids, and even they'd dressed up).

So it was, by 10pm December 31st, we realised we'd been sat in the worst of all places. Two factions had been established between the right and left sides of the restaurant, and we were smack bang in the middle, taking flack from both sides. The coloured balls were tightly wound spitballs, meant for use in the blowpipes! We needed cover and we needed vengeance for being pelted on the heads.

When those dining outside felt the need to come to the doorway and join in, I ducked under the table and began retaliatory fire (you can fire up to four spitballs and once from those things, you know). I quickly discovered that from my mostly-safe vantage point on the floor, a pillar at my back and a line of tables and chairs to protect my front I took advantage of rebound shots - being able to judge the right point at which to fire a volley and ricochet it off the ceiling.

Similarly amusing then was to fire on the waiters and waitresses who had served up the most exquisite Breast of Pheasant with grilled Portobello Mushroom, Red Onion compote honey-roasted Parsnips and Rosemary Jus, and a divine Rack of Lamb: Roti Dijonnaise,Gratin Dauophinois & sautéed Salsifi with Red Wine Jus (naturally I had to finish Laura's meal off), and who were still stuck with taking orders for drinks and having to dart back and forth across the battlefield.

My knees were scuffed up something rotten and I've never spent so much time scrabbling around on a restaurant floor fighting an 8 year-old child for control of spitballs!

Anyhoo, on with the writing:

I have just packaged and posted my two module assignments and am now looking ahead to the Professional Development module (still much to do, and much to be done while away in New Zealand - side note: you can catch up with our antics over at http://discovernewzealand.blogspot.com where I will be blogging about our travels).

So, in the meantime, you can catch up on what I've been doing for the past four months over on my website's NAW page, or you may wish to peruse the module's pdfs:

Reading into Writing
You can now read the full short story of Morgan le Fay (that I have been badgering on about for weeks).

• Morgan le Fay and the Green Knight - Creative Response.pdf
  - A 3,000 word creative response to the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight text - the machinations of Morgana.
  
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Account of Literary Qualities.pdf
  - Assessing the literary qualities of the Sir Gawain text and how I've interpreted and utilised them in my response.
  
• Reading into Writing - 4 Reviews.pdf
  - Four reviews. Three of the four books we read on the course and one as chosen by myself.

Fiction
And included here is what was originally the opening to an urban-fantasy novel, and has now become a short literary story.

• Pride and Pretence.pdf
  - A 6,000 word short story on love, licentiousness and loss in the 1950s.
  
• Pride and Pretence - Commentary.pdf
  - A commentary on my short story, considering its conception, creation, placement, weaknesses and themes.
  

I Am Legend - Adapting A Story

I Am Legend is in its fourth incarnation, following the book, by Richard Matheson, the Vincent Price film The Last Man, and Charlton Heston's The Omega Man. A story that is half character-play on the loneliness and psychological effects of being without human contact for three years and half horror-actioner, which, for the most part, works on both counts.

I'm not going to discuss the film as a review, because you can get those all over the place on the net. You don't need me for that. What interests me is the adaptation aspect of going from a book to a film. I gave a brief rundown of the book back in June, and you can read that here - again it's not a review as such, and I was also strict with myself not to give the ending away - just in case the new film ended on the same note.

Sadly it does not, and I will have to break the Spoiler code in order to discuss it - but I will advise you when I'm about to do that. So, what am I trying to do here? I'm trying to highlight areas of failure between adaptations.

Let me first say that I am usually of an open mind with book to film adaptations - Lord of the Rings I accepted with no concern about the little changes, the minutiae omitions and the jiggling of the timeline between The Two Towers and Return of the King. Harry Potter too would have been far too long with everything left in. LA Confidential excelled in taking a different course, Equilibrium's failings were elsewhere (and following the book would have made for a weak film anyway), The Golden Compass had lost nothing in its screen translation... so, why is it that, despite having already intended to write about the adaptation of I Am Legend, I'm disappointed by the options the filmmakers chose?

General Troublespots

I can accept much of what the film is because it is essentially about the isolation, and while this makes for slow moments that probably won't lend themselves well to repeat viewing it does draw you in to Robert Neville's inner world. However, in typical Hollywood fashion, explanations are glossed over with shortcuts or ignored. For example, in the book Nevilleis immune because, he suspects, he was bitten by a bat when holidaying in Panama. The film gives no explanation of why Neville (of all people) is immune, and just so happens to be a Colonel and the Scientist attempting to stop the virus.

Secondly, Neville falls into a trap that throws the last half of the film into its tense-filled action sequences (which I'm all for). The nature of the trap however is questionable. The trap is designed exactly the way Neville has been setting his traps (he captures the dead/vampires/mutants / infected so as to test his serum on them) and is far too elaborate for the infected to concoct, yet Neville (having lost his marbles for little apparent reason, and no, I didn't buy it) gets himself caught in the trap and wakes as the sun goes down with the Alpha Male infected and infected dogs bearing down on him - it seemed to present the infected as having prepared everything, and yet this couldn't be true (since the only other things they do is attack, climb, destroy, headbut and eat). The flipside is that we hadn't had enough evidence of Neville's mini-psychosis. He just wouldn't have put himself in that position and we needed more examples of him losing his marbles (more than just wanting to chat to the lady in the shop).

There is a big argument in favour of the infected having set the trap - the Alpha Male appears to have a beef with Neville (1. When Neville takes the female infected, the Alpha Male risks the UV light. 2. The Alpha Male is at the trap, clearly intent upon getting Neville - he at least has higher brain functions. 3. In the denouement he pushes past all the others and is the one to headbut the partition, trying to get at Neville). In the book Neville's old neighbour seems to portray the more self-aware infected and this is potentially a throwback to that, though in the case of the film it is poorly pulled off, since those discussing this point cannot agree on a solution. There is insufficient evidence for either camp to be right, and this is the fault of the filmmakers.

Psychological Evacuations

A big part of the book is the psychology of the vampires, that the virus as a biological agent that alters the victims physically and psychologically. There is no reason for them to fear mirrors or crosses and yet they do. They are allergic to a compound in garlic and their skin is too fragile to withstand UV light. All fair enough. Neville is very interested in trying to understand why they fear mirrors and crosses, since neither can harm them in anyway - a throwback to an indoctrinated belief by the infected that they really are vampires.

This is a wasted opportunity in the film where it prefers to deal instead with the God debate (which is actually shoe-horned in at the last minute). The book is about psychology to its very core: Neville dealing day-to-day with his isolation and the loss of civilisation; the two kinds of infected and their psychological fears; and, the book's outcome which is a brilliant twist on the notion of being a legend - more on this later.

Unfortunately the film eschews the investigations of psychology by labeling the infected thusly (instead of vampires). As such it places the badguys in the typical Hollywood positions of the brainless goons whose only purpose is for in-scene tensions and action sequences (the Alpha Male aside).

The Ending (Spoilers)

So, here we are. I can cope with much of what went on with the film. I don't mind that Neville was a colonel and not a normal guy, that his family died in a helicopter crash and not infected, that its present day, not the 50s, that his day to day business and what he endures at night is completely different, he has a dog from the start, even that he isn't infiltrated by another woman (of questionable origins). It's fine - films and novels work differently and have to rely on their own toolkits to keep audience interest.

What didn't work was...

1. God versus Science

I suppose I have to give the film credit for trying to argue this case. The book is clearly pro-science as the cause and solution. Neville in the film argues for science but when Anna arrives they argue over there being a higher purpose. Given that this is shoe-horned in only once Anna is introduced in the last third we are given a very different story idea from that with which we started.

2. Symbolism

Once we reach the end we have an overt bout of symbolism shoved down our throats. Sam, the dog, watches a butterfly, Marley, Neville's child, makes a butterfly with her hands and Anna has a butterfly tattoo, and upon seeing the tattoo (having previously disregarded Anna's assertion that God has a purpose) remembers what Marley had said and realises God is telling him to act - sheesh! Symbolism in films is meant to be subtle so that those of us who want greater depth to our stories can look for them and discuss what they mean. They're not meant to be used in a way that says: "Look audience, the clues were here all along, this is a story about God's path... yippee!"

It's as cheap as the ending of The Reckoning (don't even get me started). And of course, the first thing we hear when Anna reaches her final destination, is a church bell - oh, wondrous saviour - this seems to be an attempt to appease the Catholic League as a complete reversal to The Golden Compass, by actually saying we must all believe in God.

What we have, as many people have noticed, is 28 Days Later by way of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs. An interesting but wholly flawed concept.

3. Altered States

This, we realise, is meant to draw us away from the original ending (of the book, and possibly of the movie). As a side note there was some hoo-har about the original ending of the film, in that test audiences didn't like it and/or Will Smith gave away the ending during a press conference in Tokyo.

There has been a definite change, since the following image from the trailer, is not in the final film (hmmm)...4. The Title's Meaning

I didn't give away the ending did I? Well here we go... In the film Neville gives Anna a vial with the cure and sacrifices himself. She can then travel north (as she was originally going to do), taking the cure with her - the cure being Neville's Legend. Though, really this is just his legacy.

In order to understand just how disappointing this is for those of us who read the book and buy into the original intent of the story, you too need to know the original ending.

5. I Am Legend

In the book there are two types of infected - 1) the dead who are pretty much as they are in the film, mostly psychotic monsters, 2) the living who have the same symptoms (aversion to sunlight and garlic but who still have their own mental faculties).

The fact that there are two kinds is key. In the book Neville goes from building to building locating infected and killing them. They are induced into deep sleeps during the day as a way of keeping away from the light and to Neville, not knowing that there are two kinds of infected, both types look the same. Of course, towards the end we discover that he has been killing both kinds.

The living infected are trying to start a new civilisation. They have become mutated or evolved (if you will) and must put up with what they've got. And they would be able to move on (they too kill the dead infected), but for the fact that the monster, Neville, is killing them. They are in fear for their lives because Neville will come for them and wipe them out.

As such, they set about trying to trap him in order to kill him, and this is why he is Legend. And since the book is all about perceived psychological scenarios and beliefs (isolation / doing good / fear of benign objects such as crosses) and the fact that Neville's actions have made him (as the minority) the monster (the Grendel character). He is a Legend among the living infected.

6. Concept of the Adaptations

Of the other two adaptations, neither chose to use the title I Am Legend, despite Vincent Price's The Last Man Alive being far closer to the original concept. This is ever more interesting when considering that the latest film cops out on the ending, chooses a different theme and subverts the meaning of the title with a weak and saccharine view that seems to work for everyone but those who read the book. I guess they fell in love with the title! But how wrong can an audience's expectations get? With the original two movie adaptations the omition of the original title gives them license to go where they please with the story... with the latest, they're giving a nod to the original text (as they do with much of the concept, character, and idea) but they're relying upon the "coolness" of the title without being gutsy enough to remain faithful to the concept.

Again, the quick and easy answer is that it doesn't matter. It's a title and writers / directors have free license to make a film any which way they please. So, why do I feel it needs to be said to all writers to be true to your audience? Because, as I argued in the latest Litopia Podcast (Is Story Dead?) that an audience does not need to know what will happen at the end before they get there (as Alex Kavallierou stated) but that they need to have a sense of the ending - comedy / tragedy. There are conventions that must be followed.

Akiva Goldsman (prolific Hollywood writer - A Beautiful Mind; I, Robot; The Client) - actually his scripts are standard fare (top-Hollywood grosers certainly, but nothing special) - has been quoted as acknowledging that fans of the book will be annoyed by what happens in the film.

"Fundamentally I think that there's an obligation to attempt to be true in spirit to the source. And you have to make a determination about what the source is…"

- Firstshowing.net

Interestingly, another writer made this comment:

Do you know how weird it is to see Will Smith on the cover of a book called "I Am Legend" as the hero of the story only to open up the book and read that the guy is an alcoholic smoker of English-German descent with blond hair, a scraggly beard and blue eyes? It throws you for a second and makes it hard to read at first because you have to push everything you have seen in Warner Bros.' attempts to market this film out of your mind.

It is an interesting concept about misleading an audience, and it harks back to the remake of The Italian Job, which wasn't a remake at all - it used names, locations and the mini chase, but replaced absolutely everything else. It comes down to a marketing ploy - the filmmakers aren't making the original because they think they're going their own - better - way, but they are piggybacking off the success of the originals by way of saying to all the fans: "You loved that, you'll love this, and we'll lie by implication because we won't admit until after you've seen it that it's going to end differently."

And while I must say that the latest film version of I Am Legend is good in its own right, we're all missing out on the potential for a much better version (the book version) because the writers think (and have failed) they can do better.

Sigh! Lesson to be learned: follow the original or use a different name.

Masterclass - Self Publishing (Olympic Mind Games) by Robert Ronsson

Robert Ronsson started writing his latest (and first) release in response to a competition for Saga magazine in December 2005 - I was planning on entering it too, but apparantly I wasn't old enough - the brief was to write for children (proving that it doesn't matter how old you are, you can still relate).

He didn't win, but that was only a minor stumbling block. He submitted the completed work to a self-publishing company called Pen Press. They have this to say:

Self-financed publication is no longer regarded as the final option to get into print but as a viable and sometimes preferable alternative, and we have authors on our lists who have actually turned away from potential deals with mainstream publishers in favour of publishing themselves using the bona fide and quality services we can provide.

And though Ronsson had to stump up his own cash for the project, this is no vanity publishing business. Pen Press, Ronsson says, has a quality hurdle. It doens't just print every author that darkens its door. And, they don't just leave it up to the author to manage the deliverables. Pen Press provides a basic editing service to ensure the manuscript is free of general errors (they won't go into any prose stripping or discussions on plotting/pacing/narrative). They print and assist in distribution and provide marketing support, though, again, it is up to the author to pay marketing costs.

Ronsson says that if you are looking into self publishing and, like him, you are more interested in generating official sales, rather than a quick buck, then check that the self-publishing house does provide distribution. If your book can get onto the Gardners lists then you can practically get your book sourced and sold to anywhere in the UK - the next step is to convince the shops to buy it. And that requires marketing. Ronsson says that with Pen Press, as long as you are active and doing something Pen Press will reciprocate, and assist where they can.

So, first off, their plan for world domination required an Elevator Speech.

Elevator Speech

The Elevator Speech is a blurb of the book. Something succinct, fluid and easily given to brief alterations so as not to sound stilted but delivered simply off the tongue. You have it on a card and you leave it by the phone, just in the off chance that the media phone up asking questions. You can immediately run off the elevator speech without stumbling.

His book, Olympic Mind Games, has the following elevator speech:

It’s 2012. The world is in terrible danger and Jack Donovan, 13, is the only person who knows.

He has to hide out in London’s Olympic Village if he’s going to emerge from the shadow of his super-achieving twin sister and defeat the forces committed to the world’s destruction.

Marketing / Charity

The next step was to secure ways of getting the book out there, and since the book places itself at the Olympic village, uses the subject of sport and is generally very active, Ronsson and Pen Press looked to a sports charity. The idea was to give £1 from every book sale to the charity and in return the charity would assist in promotion. Ronsson says that the key is finding something topical, mainstream and positive to link your work with. How can it benefit people?

Brickwall

That was before the charity questioned the use of the Olympic within the title. So it was that the Olympic commitee were questioned on the matter and a furore was unleashed in which at first they wanted to put the kybosh on the whole thing, arguing that Olympic is registered to them!

As it stands, a simple search on Amazon proves that 4,305 books have been published with Olympic in the title, 103 DVDs, 34 Video Games and 179 Music items. It appears that the Olympic team had been a little lax in enforcing their brand.

Anyhoo, the BBC ran a news item on the story, here. Ronsson had a choice. Here was a chance to really put his work out there on the edge. He'd created controversy. How could he use it? But hey could sue him. His decision wasn't an easy one, but based upon the following decision, he and Pen Press went ahead with the title:

• We have right on our side
• Print with the title we wanted
• Be prepared to pulp the first print run
• Try to get public opinion on our side

Courting the Media

By coincidence alone, Ronsson had previously met a BBC journalist on a train to a football match. They had got chatting and now as the publication of his book was starting to teeter into an abyss, he called in a favour - and they might be able to get him on the air to talk about it. This became his first mistake. When the media did call Ronsson was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They wanted him to come to them... that day. But he'd already made other plans and had to turn them down. Unfortunately that meant his story was already old news. They might be able to fit him in the next day, but then, newer stories would probably crop up and he'd no longer be relevant.

Ronsson thought fast, and by a fluke of guess work, contacted BBC journalist John Humphreys who hosts the Radio 4 Today programme:

Did you know that the word 'Olympic' has been copyrighted? If you wanted to call your next book My Olympic Struggle for Political Honesty you wouldn't be allowed to until the year 2013 when the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) loses its protection.

Ronsson had planned carefully, ensuring that his e-mail said exactly what it should, and it was enough. Humphrys came back to him:

fascinating ... worth following up... I'll alert my editor
JH

They went to interview, with Humphrys first warning Ronsson that the worst that could happen was that the Olympics sue him - what the hell?!

15 Minutes of Fame

• BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester (3 Minutes)
• BBC Radio 4 Today (5 Minutes)
• BBC TV Midlands Today (5 Minutes)
• BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester (2 Minutes)

The story was picked up by Guardian, Telegraph, Bookseller, Writers’ News, and by the end of it, even the New York Times had run a brief story:

WORD GAMES London 2012, the organizers of London’s coming Olympic Games, had a problem with Robert Ronsson’s science-fiction novel for children, “Donovan Twins: Olympic Mind Games.” They sent the author e-mail warning him not to use Olympic in his title, saying it was a breach of trademark rights (bbc.co.uk).

Undaunted, the publisher Pen Press printed 300 copies of the book, which has to do with aliens, not sports. The organizers relented somewhat. Given the small press run, a spokesman told BBC News, it would be “disproportionate to take a heavy-handed approach.” But he said London 2012 still found the title “disappointing” and that it hoped to reach an “amicable solution.”

Mr. Ronsson said he found the group’s actions to be “extraordinarily strange.”

The world is a small place after all. And all this free promotion has meant three print runs. At the height of it all his book had reached the top 500 on Amazon's book sales.

The Grind

With the limelight switched off, Ronsson still had work to do. Self-marketing requires a lot of on-the-road action. You've got to court your local outless, he says, and I've discovered that's at least a 50 mile radius - bookshops / newspapers / radio stations. In fact, he says, local press love to hear about a local author. Independent bookseller too, giving them the opportunity to host events. You can't be a shrinking violet.

The three main booksellers he tried were WH Smith, Waterstones and Borders, and of the three, for a self published author, the only one worth attempting is Waterstones. This is, he says, because Waterstones allows managers to pick some of the books they stock. The other two don't and whilst Waterstones even provides a budget for its managers to read a little wider (so as to deliver the best options to its customers), the other two are blinkered to the possibility.

In this money-dominated business (aren't they all - sigh) there is little place for the small author trying to break out. Just the other day there was an article about the lack of dangerous publishers - if you look at the best seller lists it would seem we've entered a time warp and gone back at least 20 years (same old authors in the fiction lists). And that pile of books you meet as you enter Waterstones... the publishers have paid a grand amount to get those stacked there. They don't just appear in the 3 for 2 by serendipity you know.

Know your demograph

Ronsson has it slighlty easier than most. He's pitching to the biggest market, where the bucks are made. But it's still not an easy ride. He's had to put himself around quite a bit:

• Literacy Hours in Primary School
• Guide Scout Meeting
• 6th Form Creative Writing Workshop
• ‘Chatterbooks’
• School Christmas Fair

He's working his audience, getting himself in there with them. The key is not to stop.

Why all the work?

Specifically in Ronsson's case, he's attempting to generate as many physical sales as possible. They are recorded by Gardners, which means that he can take that data to a mainstream publisher and negotiate for them to take him on. It's all business.

He can argue now, after a big sale in Bewdley, that he was the best selling author in North Worcestershire. Also, after a Reverend from Cornwall read the book, he purchased 8 copies for his family, making Ronsson the best selling author in the far-west. It all adds up.

What's next

He has a plan, and it's geared towards cashing in on the foundations he's already built. But it would be unfair of me to speak of those here.

Litopia on Facebook

To commemorate the launch of the Litopia After Dark Podcast, we now have a Facebook Group, bringing together writers and readers across the world. So, come along, join up, and start listening.

- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7537786594

The Fiction Module - Class 1

Yesterday we got the Fiction module under way, and it was an interesting experience to again be able to sit, interact and discuss the issues of narrative structure, what we liked/didn't like about stories, and cover some ground work, all face to face. Here I will try to give a run down of what we covered:

1. Firstly, we were given three items - drinking glass, button, wastebasket - the task being to choose one and write down as many uses as possible:
   
   Button: choke on, as Button Moon, eyes for a teddy, fixing clothing, finish off a cup cake, start/stop machinery, nuke the world, allow/prevent access...
   
   You get the point. It's about freeing the mind, getting us to broaden our imagination (whilst also being a warm up exercise to get the group used to one another)
   
   
2. Next, write down a list of concrete nouns:
   
   Water, Bomb, Fireplace, Toilet, Lamp, Car, Bus, Shelter, Button, Echidna, Leaf, Tree, Vine, Boat Sun
   
   Now, choose one: Lamp
   
   Finally, use the word Lamp to describe the abstract noun: Life.
   
   

   Life exists when the lamp turns on. Like the lamp it dazzles when first it pushes back the darkness, drawing warmth and comfort about itself. That lamp may shine on, seemingly forever strong, and good, and bright. But, it doesn't last forever and if the lamp gives out of its own accord, the filament snapped like a snuffed candle caught by a breath, the cold and darkness shall return. And though the lamp may be replaced with the light of another - for light and life do go on - this warning must be heeded: The lamp, like life, can exist in the hands of another, who, by their own whimsy may so switch off the lamp as they please, thus ending its illumination prematurely.

   
   
3. The third task was Consequences. Each person takes a loose sheet of paper. Everybody starts by writing a man's name at the top. They then fold a line of the sheet over and pass the sheet onto the next person. That person writes a woman's name, folds passes on... writes something the man says, folds, passes... writes something the woman says... fold, passes... writes a consequence (or outcome), folds, passes... and the final person, unfolds the sheet and reads out the story.
   
   For example:
   
   Man: Englebert Humperdink
   Woman: T. J. Pink
   Man says: "Hmm, loose lips and wide hips. No thanks, I think I'll pass."
   Woman says: "Don't you like my tight sweater?"
   Consequence: The man gave up fishing.
   
   Not very evocative, not in the least bit exciting, but it shows a basic narrative structure, that all the stories passed (and developed at random) around the group possess.
   
   
4. We discussed two very different short stories, one by Ernest Hemingway and the other by Amy Hempel:
   
   Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway
   The Harvest - Amy Hempel
   
   Hemingway's piece is stark in its description, choosing the describe the place in a functional manner, to evoke time and place, but not describing the characters or associating them to who is speaking at any one time. There's no he said, she said, there isn't even the description of the man translating for the girl - he simply repeats what is said before. What is important about the story is that Hemingway has written everything important into the subtext. The characters are at a crossroads - having travelled for such a long time (their suitcases have a load of country stamps upon them) - the girl is pregnant, and they are to seek an abortion (thanks to Nick for advising us all of the meaning of "To let a little air in")
   Of course, neither of them say this. Instead they talk about other things, such as drinking, and whether or not the other is happy with the decision. There's a great moment when he goes to the bar alone and drinks in there by himself, kind of reliving the life they had before complication.
   
   Perhaps though, because the piece takes a couple of reads to really absorb its deeper meanings, it doesn't work as well as it might - but isn't that why so many people are turned off by Hemingway?
   
   In complete contrast, Hempel's piece is American Minimalist. It is a postmodern story about an accident... well it's not, because it's really about garnering sympathy and how to weight a story by bending the truth or lying about the situation to make it sound worse than it was, or to embellish the circumstances to try to ellicit different emotional responses from the audience.
   
   I felt that this was something akin to the style of Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club), to which my tutor said that Hempel's short story is Chuck's favourite - yay! on the money.
   
   There is very little dialogue, and it's a completely different style to Hemingway. Interesting to consider both in this manner - the very antithesis of each other.
   
   
5. Before the lunch break we each discussed a chosen book we'd read recently - and surprisingly out of the entire group of 12, none of us chose the same book. I reviewed John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany - which you can read from some months back, here.
   
   
6. After that, and after none of us could come up with a book that we'd all read (we were going to cover a narrative structure from start to finish using a novel we all knew) - the closest we came was the Hungry Caterpillar! - we entered into our critique groups. More to follow on that later.
   

Fairytales

Despite having numerous ideas for novels blatting around my psyche already, a new one has elbowed its way in - a fairytale in fact, that matches the present day against the past (or rather the perceived past of a fairytale setting).

I guess that it's serendipitous that MJ mentioned he'd bought the Brothers Grimm collection (which one, I don't know) whilst I was already in possession of the Hans Christian Anderson collection (slightly less violent me thinks, and yet, so very... violent!). I felt the need to go out in search of the Brothers Grimm also - If I'm to write a semi-pastiche then I need to understand the machinations and standard themes (note, I've decided not to pursue a pastiche, but a completely new idea).

My initial idea was sparked whilst at the Police concert, listening to Wrapped Around Your Finger and the wonderful lyrics that I'd always associated with a magician and his apprentice and the powerplay between them - suddenly I felt the urge to write about it (nope, I've not written a thing yet). Over the course of the past month (has it been a month already?) I've toyed with that same idea - trying to make it work in a fictional novel context without it being entirely Sting's idea - it's not, I can assure you.

So, over the month I've stretched it out, drawing on previous story ideas and reworking the mythology of Sting's song to a secondary level that I'm not prepared to discuss here.

So it was that I bought a copy of the Grimms, and with it came a free copy of Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (short story collection based upon fairytales), which includes the original version of the film Company of Wolves. Why is this suddenly important?

Well, having read the title story I realise that it's the kind of style I want my novel-fairytale to include. Admittedly it's bleak, and I'd want to include some humour in my story, but her choice of words are as sublime as any Solvejg has ever used in his narratives:

His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.

After the Terror, in the early days of the Directory, the aristos who'd escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound. And his grandmother, taken with the notion, had her ribbon made up in rubies; such a gesture of luxurious defiance! That night at the opera comes back to me even now... the white dress; the frail child within it; and the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood.

And that singular item, the ruby choker, wreaths the entire first story of the Bloody Chamber like a soiled bandage, such is Carter's well-planned imagery.

Now then, how might I copy?

The Police

As a kid I was brought up on a mix of Dire Straits, Cliff Richard, Neil Diamond, Eddy Grant and Harry Chapin, not really having a musical choice of my own until those Sunday mornings when The Roxy would play on the TV, or the family would all gather in the lounge after an episode of the original Robin Hood television series ended and we switched on the radio to listen to the Radio 1 chart show. 1987 was the year Michael Jackson released Bad, my very first cassette tape - I had to wait until Christmas to get my copy and I was seriously miffed because my best friend, Paul, got his copy for his birthday in October.

At that point in my buck-teethed, bowl-cut hair life I had no idea who The Police were. Their last album had come out in 83 and they'd split up soon after. At that time I was 4 or 5 and more interested in moving from playgroup to the infants and primary school, and whilst their Singles album had come out in 86, it hadn't touched my radar.


It wasn't until another year later, in 1988, that I first came across them and my musical appreciation changed forever. I was 8, approaching 9.

On and off over the years I'd spend time with my nextdoor neighbour, Chris, often playing on their Atari - that old classic Out Run, or Ranarama - discussing or swapping Fighting Fantasy gamebooks or playing with his parent's spanking new hi-fi equipment, reading funny stories to each other with a golden-headed microphone and making funny noises with the effects for our own amusement. We'd met proper at primary school. At the time Chris had a best friend called... Chris, and my first foray into their world was a crazy playground sing off, with them assailing my ears with Michael Jackson's Beat It (as a way of trying to clear me off their patch of grass) and me returning their 'diss' with the strains of Bros's I Owe You Nothing (oh for the love of God, how embarrassing)!

Fortunately we became friends because I desperately needed someone to show me right music from wrong music.

And so it was in 1988 that one day I knocked on Chris's door and he invited me in with such enthusiasm that I thought we'd (as in his dad) had bought a new game for the Atari (Leisure Suit Larry was on the horizon), but no. Chris wanted to show me firstly his parents' new CD player (the first I ever saw), and notably one of his Dad's first albums: The Police's The Singles. He wanted me to listen to his favourite song - Every Little Thing She Does is Magic - and whilst I struggled with the notion of choosing the track you wanted to listen to instead of having to fast forward and rewind, finding first which side of the tape you were trying to listen to before choosing direction (I wouldn't get my own CD Player until late in 93) he played one of what I thought was a truly phenomenal song - that building open of keyboard and guitar, the dash of hi-hat, the drop out followed by a carribean chorus sound, was like nothing I'd heard before, and Crikey! I'd been on this planet for some 8 years.

We sat on his parents's lounge carpet for most of the day skipping back and forth through that album, him always returning us to Every Little Thing, and me pushing for Message In A Bottle.

I think that what struck me most was the drumming. I'd had no previous experience in the music I'd listened to previously of a drummer playing an active role. In the majority of songs I'd listened to the drums seemed to follow a simple set pattern that was repeated adinfinitum, but in Copeland's drumming there seemed little uniformity and it was as if Sting and Andy Summers were rushing to the chorus so that Stewart could unleash himself.

The songs all sounded so different (I'd no idea they spanned 5 years and 5 albums or that these had each been a hit) and yet they went together like a strange story I'd no real concept of - I wouldn't properly understand Roxanne until my parents explained prostitution, that Invisible Sun concerned Northern Ireland, what the hell The Scylla and Charybdis were, referred to in Wrapped Around Your Finger or the irony of Don't Stand So Close To Me (my brother would end up in a similar situation some 15 years later).

The whole album was alive, every instrument playing as if to assert itself over all the others, and Sting's voice, and his lyrics drawing it all together, making it all real.

Somehow I managed to buy a tape copy, whether from my own pocket money or begged off my parents, and that tape sat solidly in the tapedeck for years to come, accompanying us on holiday in the car tape player, or when my family grew bored and wanted to listen to my brother's Billy Joel album, I'd pop it in my walkman. Either that or Dad' would turn it off because he found the gorgeous King of Pain too depressing.

I pored over the lyrics until I had them down and I sang and sang. Dad would later ruin Roxanne for me by squealing the title as Sting did just to annoy me (at the time I was going out with a South African girl, funnily enough called Roxanne - yes, we were quite young), and long after we split up and I was in emotional turmoil over my loss, Dad would remind me: "rrrrrrrrROCKS-ANNNNNN". I wonder what ever happened to her? She moved to the States the year I went to secondary school. *SIGH*

Message in a Bottle I'd ruin myself, only this year in fact - with the release of Guitar Hero 2. Those damn chords are just too quick to play without breaking my middle digit.

Anyhoo, they're back! And tonight, the first of the UK concerts, starts in Birmingham, and - YAY - I'm gonna be there, 14 rows from the front on the floor in front of the stage.

14 rows! They can sweat on me!


So, this is a big thanks to Chris for giving me musical sense and helping me fall in love with the greatest rock band in the world... in my opinion ;)

RIP - Douglas Hill

I'm always in awe of the nature of coincidence. Strange serendipity brought me to Douglas Hill's obituary today. I'd returned to Waterstones to de-bear from my blue costume (I was sweating like a... big blue bear in summer) and was cooling down with a copy of Waterstones's The Bookseller when I came across it.

Douglas Hill is best known for his Last Legionary quartet, which I'm sure many of us read in school. Anyhoo, why has this affected me so?

Back in 2004 I'd just joined Litopia and had simultaneously started writing a new piece of fiction - Mephisto - I'd sent it off to Real-Writers and paid the handsome sum of £50 for a professional critique. It was the first one I'd ever gone for beside attempting to bug Terry Pratchett once in 1998 via e-mail for him to read my fantasy novel and tell me how to make it better (he wasn't best pleased).

Douglas Hill was the poor pro who had to wade through my turgid prose - The Douglas Hill (come on, work with me here people). He was blunt, to the point, and absolutely brilliant. Along with the support at Litopia and Douglas's deft chop at the crap I was secreting I don't think I'd be anywhere near to the writer I am at the moment (hopefully still moving up). Reading back through it, it's fairly amusing. Here's the covering letter that came with it:

The appraisal of your novel extract is enclosed.

It isn't very promising, I'm afraid. Douglas Hill felt you have a lot to learn if you are going to pull off a novel like this. It's clear you have great enthusiasm and a vivid imagination, but writing fiction is hard work, and successful novelists have taken the time to learn the skills before embarking on anything too ambitious.

You may find Douglas's criticism harsh, but at Real Writers we see little point in telling anything less than the truth as we see it. Douglas has many years of experience in publishing; he is a fantasy writer of some renown, and has also worked both in-house and freelance as an editor. So he knows what works, and what publishers look for; his opinion is worth having, even when he doesn't say what you want to hear.

God Rest in Peace, Douglas. Thanks for your help.

Murakami

Oh, Haruki Murakami is good! I've never read anything by him before, but I just picked up his newest After Dark and having only read the following paragraph (the first), I've gotta' say I love it. Just as Crace's opening to The Pesthouse drew us into the life of Ferrytown effortlessly, so too does Murakami draw us upon his breath and simply blow:

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature - or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a cointinuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.

Beautiful. The reader gets drawn into, the senses brought alive not by the stating of colour, or real movement but by simply metaphors. Murakami captures the essence of a city's dreaming life, choosing words of movement and life. When he comes to the end of the paragraph it is to listen to basal metabolisms, basso continuo's and the city's moan. Not forgetting the wonderful three line repetition that sounds and feels like slow breathing; the living of the city.

I'm going to enjoy this, and you should too...

The Hoosiers

Saturday night, we're driving home from the Yangtze (best all-you-can-eat Chinese), in Windsor, when on the radio, we heard a fairly catchy tune, though it had the strange lyric of "tippy-toes, my tippy-toes". Laura surmised that there's a big book for musicians where artists get extra credit for working in the odd lyric. Take Just Jack's "casting aspersions" for example.

Anyhoo, the song was darned catchy, but I forgot about it. Then, round my hairdresser's, she tells me, you remember Alan Sharland? Well, erm, of course I do. I went to school with his brother, of course I know Alan. He was in the year below.

Turns out his band finally came of age. The Hoosiers are here with their first single Worried About Ray... and it rocks. Buy their album!

Check them out on You Tube

Discovering the Treasure of Charolastra

And so it is uncovered, this gold from deep within the Aztec-ian hills:
It comes down to not so much writing what you know, but writing what makes you feel. You get that emotional connection between subconscious, your real world, and the world inside the pages, and you can construct a story that makes an impact on you.

Both Solvey and Mr. Cox have shouted in my ear for emotional content, and MG's references are only now striking a chord (C Major, I think). There is a time and a place for learning and development. We strike up the mountain of knowledge and end up on a stretching plateau where we believe we're not learning anything. Simply put we must consolidate upon what we have learnt previously before going on. I hope this means I'm about to take my next step up. Maybe I won't get it :)

It goes hand in hand with my new book (well, not my new book): Writing for Emotional Impact, by Karl Iglesias. People want emotional relativity in what they see, read, interact with. Let's see if I can turn that onto my new fiction project.

Bitchin' Pitchin'

So, there I am with my screenplay all dust-jacketed, the episodes plotted and the analysis jiggled into something that might make sense to others. I've tagged the pitch to the end and sent in that analysis document to my tutor. Thankfully he has this to say:

You’ve gone way beyond the call of duty in actually applying ALL the paradigms and then some on top to your work. It’s really interesting to see how each one added something new to the story, and you discuss them brilliantly.

Well thank Gawd for that! However, my pitch:

When Edward Baker, an IT Consultant with a guilty conscience and an impulse for taking responsibility, starts predicting the future, he agrees to help Hakim Sahir, a dead Islamic Mystic, save an illusive Russian girl with a secret from being kidnapped. But, Hakim isn’t being wholly honest with Edward, and Edward must come to terms with the fact that whilst no one can change the future, in order to save the ones he loves, he must try.

Dark Machine is an 8 episode series that takes the mythologies of shows like X Files, Lost and Heroes and matches them against the mind-bending situation of Life on Mars with a dash of Cronenberg. Like Heroes, Dark Machine establishes an audience-friendly system of regular plot questions and pay offs, whilst the cliff-hanger ending provides sufficient answers and a hook for the second season.

... and breathe! It's a little bit stiff, like a runaway train that takes you on the journey but won't let you stop for photos. My tutor says:

The industry pitch is perhaps a little too dry, which is understandable coming out of an academic essay. For instance you could use simpler language (i.e. rather than say ‘an impulse for taking responsibility’ I’d say ‘an impulse for taking on too much’).

And then he directed me to this absolutely amazing example, which couldn't have come out at a better time. The examples really signify the difference between a good and a bad pitch... Robin Kelly.

I Was Legend

I was as surprised by Richard Matheson's I Am Legend as I was over John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids and Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 - these three great moments in SF lore aren't huge opus's, they aren't epic, they don't flourish with golden language. They are well written, tight prosed, introspective stories of potential horror (potential of course if you can suspend disbelief).

Triffids was a discard I picked up from the library, Farenheit, I read because I'd found the film Equilibrium had interesting ideas... and Legend, I read because Will Smith is starring in it at the end of the year.

Let's get the weaknesses out the way: Matheson relies heavily upon simple body movements to show feeling, sickness, worry, anger. And much of that ends up regarding a thinned mouth or the movement of a throat (I wasn't sure if they were feeling sick or just swallowing though). Those tight thin lines that the mouths became reminded me of what my screenwriting tutor had said about making sure I don't put too many physical directions for my characters, lest they all turn into nodding-head dogs! Finally, the word palsied crops up far too often, and I still haven't checked what it really means...

Dictionary.com says:

any of a variety of atonal muscular conditions characterized by tremors of the body parts, as the hands, arms, or legs, or of the entire body.

Yeah, I thought as much! No, actually I didn't care. One of the other members of my NAW class mentioned that there was a time during the 1990s when the word preternatural had to be used, and it drove him crazy. About as crazy as the drive for, when he was in business, the use of the word paradigm. He was horrified to hear it had come back again.

Anyhoo, Dictionary.com says preternatural means:

1. out of the ordinary course of nature; exceptional or abnormal: preternatural powers.
2. outside of nature; supernatural.

These three stories are vastly different and have led in their own way to so many other ideas and story concepts (just as George Lucas has touched everything CGI with the firey brand that begot Star Wars). But in the case of Legend in particular I see how this has related to the likes of Blade, Resident Evil, even the Channel 4 TV series Ultraviolet. The boiling down into science, baccili and germs, which comes across as very well thought out... so much so that I wonder why fewer other Vampire writers took up this mantle.

The obvious answer is that Legend doesn't hold any romantic notion of the Vampiric state. There's no Brad Pitt's Louis evading Tom Cruise's Lestat or some Godly references to the Queen of the Damned. Surely that offers too much hope.

Anyhoo. Short of giving away the ending, the about turn of the novel, the realisation and denoument give the book the edge that often the midway through ramblings of Robert Neville's loner loses. It's not an out and out fight to the blood and guts end, it's the inner fight of a man dealing with the fact he's the last man on Earth... and he's not alone.

Blink

This week's Doctor Who sure was scary, and actually, really, bloody good! I was surprised by that. I love Doctor Who because it's sci-fi, quirky, people die, the Doctor is an interesting character and often they come up with good ideas for the show (sometimes not, but that's life), and most importantly, the Doctor Who theme rocks.

Anyhoo, this weeks episode Blink was truly a speciality, funny, scary, well written, convoluted plot that really makes use of the time-travel mythos, and puts the Doctor into a minor role, kind of as mentor.


Usually the narrative for Doctor Who is straight forward, the tension meek and the dramatics overly, er... dramatic, but not here, not this one. And no wonder, writer Steve Moffat has done some great writing in the past. You're only as good as your script. And with that in mind, I'm back off to look at how I can bolster mine.

Check out some of the plot for Blink.

The Alienation Effect

I'm sat here at my desk, having completed my 40 page Screenplay and my 2 page season/episode guide - I've decided to stick to 8 episodes in total and match that against the 3 Act Structure, just as I did with my screenplay itself as a way of matching the rise and fall of plot points, action and tension - and now's the time to look at the essay I've got to write on the analysis of dramatic structure in relation to the paradigms I've looked at on the module.

Dramatic Structure led me to Freytag (who coined the 5 Act structure), but we'd not covered him on the course, and he's fairly obsolete:

So, I looked again, coming up with this article on Bertolt Brecht. Which, in itself, isn't really what I'm looking for, but then, it gave me pause to think. In the article I came across Brecht's Alienation-Effect:

"The achievement of the A-effect constitutes something utterly ordinary, recurrent; it is just a widely practised way of drawing one's own or someone else's attention to a thing . . . . The A-effect consists in turning the object of which it is to be made aware, to which one's attention is to be drawn, from something ordinary, familiar, immediately accessible, into something peculiar, striking and unexpected""A common use of the A-effect is when someone says:
'Have you ever looked really closely at your watch?'"

- Brecht "Short Description of a New Technique of Acting"

If we head over to Wikipedia, we get:

... a theatrical and cinematic device "which prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer."

Along with:

The Alienation-effect is achieved by the way the "artist never acts as if there were a fourth wall besides the three surrounding him [...] The audience can no longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event which is really taking place." The use of direct audience-address disrupts stage illusion and generates the A-effect. In performance the performer "observes himself"; his object "to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself and his work." Musical and pantomimic effects also are used as barriers to empathy.

Which in turn led me to Defamiliarization:

To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child’s sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar [. . .] this is the character and privilege of genius."

What this is all about is the making something the audience/reader takes for granted and taking it out of the ordinary. Good writers do this with strong metaphors or similies - Crace used strong decriptions for his dream highways in The Pesthouse. These were really just motorways, but could not simply be called as such for his character had no knowledge of their prior use.

Therefore, what we're doing as writers, to keep our readership awake and turning those pages is taking the familiar and spicing it up through the opticles of new eyes.

Further to this, some writers provide narrator asides to the text, be it as the narrator or as the point of view character - either affording the reader extra information they wouldn't otherwise know, or simply an observation of a situation or person ie: the moment Crace's narrator in The Pesthouse advised the reader that Mags would never see the Boses again. These break the reader from their passive subjectivity and puts them into an objective position, just as Brecht suggested his Alienation Effect would remove the fourth wall from theatre, and involve the character directly with the audience.

One last (and slightly separate point) from Barry Mauer:

I think that discovering intentionality is the key to any drama, conventional or interactive. If I were directing a project, I would focus on how to discover/interpret/invent intentions first, and all other considerations should be considered less important.

Though Mauer is discussing the direction of theatre, I believe this can be turned to authorship also. In this sense we are looking at the narrative and the decision over what is important to narrate to the reader. Referring back to my previous post on how I haven't given my character choices, I believe the above statement now goes hand-in-hand with that: important and interesting narrative focuses as much on discovery/interpretation/invention of a character's intentions as it does on showing action and the movement of plot, for is not character plot?