Have We Learned Nothing From Indiana Jones?

I saw the Jack Reacher movie the other day. Now, before anyone harps all over the diminutive casting choice, I have not read the books. After the movie initially came out, and seeing the furor and the obvious popularity, I did pull one off the library shelf. After reading the dust jacket, I promptly put it back. All of the blurbs read like too much Marty Stu guy fantasy fulfillment, and the movie, while for the most part entertaining, did nothing to disabuse that notion. While I will spend two hours on a movie that does that, the time invested in a book is another matter.

(I used to read things like that back when I was younger; I just grew out of them after a while. Which is not to imply I "grew up" or anything else, just that tastes change as we get older. A trip through the cd's that have been sitting in a box in my closet for years will demonstrate that.)

But I did have one major problem with the film, and something I hope was Hollywood insertion. At the climax of the film, in the midst of the big action scene, Reacher has just gone several rounds of both gunplay and hand to hand with the big bad's burly henchman, and has finally managed to mostly overcome him. A henchman who has spent a good deal of the film attempting to kill - often successfully - numerous people, including the hero and the leading lady. A henchman whom, there is no doubt, our hero will have to shoot.

Now, just to further the Raiders of the Lost Ark comparison here, the leading lady is, at that very moment, in danger. It would behoove our hero to be done with the henchman as absolutely quickly as possible, as decisively as possible, before the bad guy kills the leading lady.

Fortunately, in the ensuing struggle, Reacher has wound up with the gun, whereas the henchman has not. Reacher has him point blank, and all he has to do is shoot.

Which is when he throws the gun away in order to go mano a mano in fisticuffs with the guy.

I'm pretty sure that's the moment I yelled at my tv.

Now, I know there are certain conventions in the movies. Cars blow up, even when someone just bumps the fender. Heroes shake off concussions like they've been okayed to play by the team doctor. Every explosion is a gas explosion with a giant fireball (see the aforementioned car). I accept this, even though I know it's wrong, and it's okay. It's called suspension of disbelief. (Also a Michael Bay film.) Even so, I would think we had put to rest this dumb as a post macho need to go fist to fist with the bad guy when we can just *shoot* the guy and it's expedient to do so.

Even Andrew Dice Clay knew better than this in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. Yes, I am citing the Dice Man as a supporting reference here. That's how put to bed this trope should be. It does not prove the hero is a manly man. It does not demonstrate a sense of honor (which, it should be said, Indy has, to a certain extent, as did film Reacher, but they both demonstrated a great deal of flexibility with that, too). All it demonstrates is that they put testosterone (because this is by and large a failing of male heroes. Female heroes seem much more willing to just shoot the bastards, and rightly so) over the need to do what they should be doing in the first place.

Which, I will remind you, was saving the person Reacher had deliberately gone there to rescue in the first place.

So please, Hollywood and writers everywhere, learn from Indiana Jones: just shoot them.

Throwing the Sacred Cow to the Wolves

I am not watching "Bitten." This is despite the fact that I have had a crush on Laura Vandervoort since Smallville. This is also despite the fact that I read and - at the time - enjoyed the books. I'd like at some point to finish the Otherworld series, which I never got around to doing, but know that as this point I'd have to reread in order to catch up, and I've been putting that off for the same reason I'm not watching the show.

I have a problem with the central relationship of the show (and the first such relationship in the books). A big problem, that I think gets glossed over far too frequently in the genre. It comes in two parts, the first one being the idea that the two people in the relationship, Clay and Elena, are "meant" to be together. I know this is a standard trope, especially in paranormal romance, but I viewed many of the Otherworld books as leaning more towards straight Urban Fantasy than its romantic subset. And to be fair, I don't remember it being as strong a push toward them as a couple as it usually is in what I have heard referred to as the "fated mates" trope.

Instead, to the best of my recollection, it's more of a "the author has decided this couple should go together, so they will, and damn any uncomfortable repercussions." (Not too very different from JK Rowling's recent pronouncement about Harry and Hermione. Which, being in the middle of rereading the Harry Potter series, I take issue with. But that's another post.) But we'll get back to the fated mates thing. And there are some unsettling issues that arise from that push. Oh yes indeed there are.

Clay assaults Elena. And yet they end up The Couple. Because, of course, Clay is hot. And this makes up for the fact that he is a Class 1 Jerk ... and that he assaults her. Now, I know, some of you out there are at this point screaming at the monitor that he does not do any such thing. He "just" bites her.

That's crap.

And not only is it crap, it's recognized as crap in the book. Clay, in biting her, does something he is not supposed to do. Something that is treated - in the book - as a major offense. Something that gets him punished, severely. Only later on is seemingly all is forgiven when Elena falls in love because, hey, Clay's hot so it's okay.

Which is still crap. Even leaving out the arguments laid down in the novel itself about why it is very much NOT OKAY, think of it from this perspective. He bites her. That, by itself, in human context, is an assault. If someone just came up to you and bit you, you'd be pissed. If a dog just came up to you and bit you, they'd put it down. Beyond that, not only does she get bit, but it completely upsets her life, results in her questioning who she is, forces her out of the life she had been living (quite happily, mind you), and all for the sole reason that Clay can have someone like himself. Because let's be clear here, being a werewolf in that universe is not seen as this great thing, especially not from Elena's standpoint.

Clay's action is violent, selfish, self-serving, and puts Elena through real physical and psychological trauma. ... And yet, they end up the couple. Take away the werewolf bit, and would anyone out there argue that this is right?

Nor is this the only example. I started reading another series of books. (I'm leaving this one nameless, because unlike the Otherworld books the central POV does not switch people, so this incident pretty much damns the whole series for me.) I liked them. Up until the main heroine is forced into marrying the Alpha Male - which is a ridiculous and wholly manufactured concept anyway in wolves - immediately after she'd been raped.

Yes, you read that right. The assault in question this time at least comes from the bad guy, at the end of the previous book. And at first, with the next book, the aftereffects of this are taken seriously. The heroine is having issues with simply being touched, where it's setting off anxiety attacks and making her physically ill. Even when she's touched by someone she likes - including, specifically, the aforementioned alpha male who has, until this point, been competing for her affections with someone else. (Remember that point, too.)

And then the big bad of the new book rears its head. And, to "keep her safe," this same alpha - who, remember, she just got sick when he went to just hug her - forces her not only to choose him as the person she loves, but also to immediately be married to him.

And it's treated as being entirely okay. Because, again, he's attractive and charming and hey she had a thing for him anyway. So who cares that she's just been through something where she was forced into something against her will? That was different, because that was the bad guy. This is the good guy, so his taking the decision from her, forcing his relationship on her, because he decides it's in her best interest, that's okay.

Remember, he wasn't even her only romantic interest. She had pointedly still been unsure of which guy she wanted not ten pages earlier, and still reeling from the assault. But, again, it's okay that the alpha forces her, because that's the way it's meant to be.

Look, folks, I'm sorry, but it does not get to be okay when a guy forces a woman to do anything along these lines, no matter what argument you make about him being the "right" guy. Because under any other circumstances, the very fact that he forces this on her would most definitely not make him the "right" guy and would, in fact, make him the opposite of the right guy. But because it's a romantic trope, because the guy is hot and charming or suave and dangerous, that somehow makes it right.

No, no it does not.

Fantasy or not, there is no circumstance under which something like that is all right. As a trope, it needs to go, and there needs to be a harder look at this idea that force is an acceptable way to ensure a relationship when it's the "right" guy. This isn't about fantasy, anyway. These characters weren't playacting a role (which is different). These were two men forcing two women into a way of life without giving them the option to choose.

Find me any other setting where that is something that should be condoned, and maybe then I'll start watching "Bitten."

Bus Stop to Nowhere

There is a bus stop to nowhere. It sits outside a nursing home somewhere, and from time to time someone from inside wanders out to it. But no bus ever shows up, and no one ever goes anywhere (other than back into the home). In all other respects, it looks like a regular bus stop, and no doubt the people who wander out to it expect to go somewhere. They may not have any particular destination in mind, and even if they do it doesn't seem to bother them that the bus itself never shows.

As much as this might sound like the concept for a short story (or the initial set-up for some sort of bizarre anthology series, much the way Rod Serling would intro the Twilight Zone) it is completely non-fiction. The bus stop was the rather ingenious solution one nursing home came up with to keep their residents from wandering off. Before they put up their faux bus stop at the end of their sidewalk, when those residents afflicted with wanderlust would manage to slip out the doors, they would walk down the street to the actual bus stop, where they would congregate until someone from the home showed up to collect them. One or two of them might have even wound up on the bus.

Someone noticed that this was where the residents were winding up, and got the idea to put up the fake bus stop out in front of the nursing home. It seemed a much more simple and humane solution (and cost-efficient) than putting ankle bracelets on all the residents likely to wander. Surprisingly enough, it seems to work. They no longer have residents wandering down the street to a functional bust stop. They all congregate out front, where the staff can easily collect them. It seems to be enough for the residents that they manage to get that far.

It's a simple, elegant solution, and the reason why it works has to do with a number of psychological things that are not within my purview. What struck me about it, though, was that it was the sort of idea that we, as writers, are supposed to have. We're supposed to be good at looking at something - doesn't have to be a problem - and positing an unusual "what if" approach. Sometimes the answers will work, sometimes they won't. But it's the process of sitting around and playing with each idea, at least for a little bit, and giving it a chance to work that is just as important.

Somone could have, and probably did, laughed at the idea of a non-functioning bus stop as a preventative measure. And perhaps if there had been more funds for alarms and other traditional security measures, it would never have been built. But someone had the ability to look at the scenario and give it just the right sort of spin in their head to come up with an unusual, and ultimately effective, solution. And then they put it into practice, to see what would come of it. The most they would have been out was the funds and time for a bench and a sign.

The most we are out, as writers, when our ideas fall flat is the words on the page and the time it took to put them down. Like most writers, I have written my fair share of things that ultimately turned out not to work. But I've also had more that did, more times when I sat down and thought "what if" and approached something in a new (or new to me) way that might have seemed a bit unconventional at first. This is how, even though we are all told there are only five basic stories - at least I think it's supposed to be five - we are also told we can put our own spin on those five plots and make them work.

Yet I don't ever regard those words that didn't work as a waste (possibly an idea for another entry) even when they don't go anywhere. That, of course, is perhaps the irony of this comparison.

Unlike the bus stop to nowhere, when our ideas work they take us places.

I Blame the Little Undead Doggie

A fellow writer foisted this upon me, for no good reason I think other than my name alliterated nicely with his two other choices. But that's as good a reason as any, I suppose. Normally I eschew these kinds of things, as they remind me a little too much of those character profiles you're supposed to fill out. I've never seen much utility in those. If my character collects stamps, well, that's all well and fine if the story involves stamps or some crucial plot point hinges on knowing when the first Elvis stamp appeared. Otherwise, it's mostly just an exercise that doesn't put words on the pages.

On the other hand, the style question was too good to pass up.



1. If you could have any superpower, what would you have? Why?

Aquaman's. That whole super-swimming breathe underwater talk to the fishies thing. Or possibly Namor's. (I don't need to talk to fish, and flying in addition to swimming might be fun.) I just love the water, though, and that would be what I'd go with.

Assuming I can't get my hands on a power ring.

2. Who is your style icon?

Paul Bunyan. I embrace my inner flannel.

Writing? Raymond Chandler. Prose ought to alternate between being so crisp it snaps, and descriptive enough to envelop you in one of those famous noir fogs.

3. What is your favorite quote?

Without resorting to quoting Yoda, that would likely be the quote at the top of my blog. I rather like the idea of drawing on my inner child.

4. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received?

I was complimented once on my humanity. It would take too much to explain, but it was by far the best thing anyone has ever said to me.

5. What playlist/CD is in your CD Player/iPod right now?

A mix of the blues: Chris Thomas King, Robert Johnson, R.L. Burnside, etc. Tomorrow it might be something completely different.

6. Are you a night owl or a morning person?

Depends. Is it a school night or not?

7. Do you prefer dogs or cats?

I like both, but my cat has never rolled in something that smelled like it died in the Truman era and just kept getting riper. Cats are also easier when you rent, so until I can afford my house in the country, felines it is.

8. What is the meaning behind your blog name?

I explained this, way back when, in one of the very first posts. It was a curse made up by a co-worker. "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits." It stuck with me.

And, in the spirit in which this came to me, I foisted it upon others:

• The Ace (who assures me he'll have his answer up soon)
• The Antagonist

The Writing Diet

This is not about food. Just wanted to get that out of the way up front, lest anyone expects recipes or exercise tips here. (I could give those out, but once down that path forever would it dominate this blog. Here endeth the Star Wars reference.) Instead, this is about how the general smart and sensible approach to diet and exercise ought to work just as well for writing. I point out, in advance, I am an expert on none of those three. I try and eat right, I try and exercise, and I write. And while I have done the third well enough to be paid for it, that alone does not make one an expert, as any tour of the bookstore and DVD rentals will tell you. I struggle at all three (including a recent bout of homophone issues in my writing).

My particular issue is with adverbs, and how they have become the poster child for bad writing. I'm not sure where or when it started (Stephen King, who I think in general probably knows a bit more about the craft of fiction than I do simply by sheer weight of experience, mentions it in his writing memoir On Writing, so it's been around at least a decade), only that it seems to be the default position of all and sundry. Fellow writers have offered up critiques of things I thought were perfectly passable - which I didn't write - based solely on the presence of adverbs.

I'm here to say I think they're wrong. I'm not saying all adverbs are good, and like anything else they can be overused, but they are hardly the harbringer of impending writerly apocalypses. Like diet and exercise, I think it comes down to proper mediation.

Every so often, a new diet or exercise trend comes down the pipe. It never lasts (anyone remember Tae-bo? Anyone still doing it?) but while it's around it's the end-all be-all for all conerned. Until the fad fades or the supposed science behind the diet is disproved. Take that whole Atkin's thing, for example. Carbs were bad. Carbs were evil. Carbohydrates would lead to the dark side, which apparently meant cake. (Is cake a carb?) Or at least potatoes and pasta. Consumption of carbs would lead to dirigible-sized pants.

Only... it turns out, this is not so much the case. Now, at the time, there were enough people saying "Hey, wait, this is wrong and probably a little unhealthy," but they were by and large ignored by the dieting populace. Like all dieting fads before, the experts were ignored in favor of celebrity endorsements, and the themed cookbooks flew off the shelves for a while. And where are they now?

As in most things, the key turned out to be moderation. Sure, you don't want to gorge on pasta, and like most things on the American menu portion size is an important determinant, but carbs themselves were not inherently bad. Several million Italians can't all be wrong, after all.

Adverbs, I think, are like carbs. Or a glass of wine. A glass with dinner is considered a good thing. Two isn't bad. Downing a bottle on certain occasions is also okay. Emptying your wine cellar in a single outing is usually frowned upon, however. There is a line to be drawn, a balance to be struck. Some might argue otherwise, as I know there are places where even a glass of wine a night would be viewed as the moral equivalent of a bender, or a single dish of spaghetti as an all you can eat deep friend Twinkie binge.

(And on a complete aside, I think no single food more sums up everything wrong with current American dietary trends than the deep fried Twinkie. No matter how good they may be - and I have heard they are quite good.)

Adverbs are good things. There, I said it. They can be overused, certainly, and they aren't always appropriate (pasta doesn't go with every meal, for example), but they are a valuable part of speech. You can't really write without them. Sure, they can become a crutch in lieu of better descriptions, and they do facilitate the slide into "telling" as opposed to "showing," and I will adamantly agree they don't belong in dialogue tags, ever. But they aren't inherently bad.

If, by chance, you think I'm wrong about this, I encourage you to pick up any classic novel. Gatsby, for example. Now go through and look at all the adverbs. The text isn't drowning in them, by any means, but Fitzgerald certainly uses them. (Do not highlight or underline in your book. Just don't. Your librarian will thank you.) As does any other writer, even that master of spartan sentences, Hemingway. I am nowhere near their league, but I figure if adverbs were good enough for them, they are good enough for me.

Value-Added

Have you ever noticed how it's "A penny for your thoughts" if someone else wants to know what you're thinking, but if you just opine on your own it's your "two cents?"

I'm not sure if this reflects a growing inflationary trend between when the two phrases entered into the lexicon, or if it's perhaps an indication that for most of us, whatever it is we have to say is a little less valuable than we think it is? I realize the irony of espousing such a position here, of all places, but nonetheless I stand by my contention that for the most part what we say is of somewhat less importance than we are oft inclined to give it.

Especially writers.

This is not always the case. I can think of a couple of writers who seem more than aware of the limitations of their own musings, whether in giving their opinions or in the pages of their stories. Of course, for every writer who claims to be just a humble author - who may even live up to that most of the time - there's always usually at least one story or incident where they do take themselves a little too seriously. There's that theme, or moral, or just their magnum opus that by the time they're done with it you can tell it had taken on a life and importance of it's own, particularly in the author's head.

Now, guilty as I am of this myself, I would also posit it's a necessary conceit. Somewhere along the lines we decided that, whatever it was we had to say, it was worth sharing. Beyond just conversation with friends or families or co-workers, beyond whatever social circle we may inscribe around ourselves on the internet, we have the need to share what we write. You can quibble over whether the need to entertain equates with importance (and there are certainly arguments to be made on both sides of that, though for myself I would state in strident terms the importance of entertainment), but you can't argue that we feel our stories are worth sharing.

Not always more so than anyone else. For those of us who know other writers, unless you're being harsh - which sometimes you ought to be - we're by default associating with others who have the same conceit as we do and may well be more justified in that. We establish something of an equal footing, wherein we say "Yes, you're good, and worth sharing, but look at me, too." In part this may simply come about because unlike other, non-writers, we're willing to put in the time and effort to get it out there in the first place. While there is some satisfaction that comes in admiring your own work for a job well done, we are conditioned as human beings to want that external pat on the head or hearty "good job" from someone else.

Certainly more so than say your Uncle Bob, though. Maybe you have one of these (apologies to you if you do). He's the guy always telling jokes or stories at family get togethers. Might not even be Uncle Bob. He (or she) might be co-worker Bob. Or friend of a friend Bob. Whatever. He's always got stories to tell. But not beyond the confines of that small group he inhabits with you. It's the same reason someone who tells jokes on the golf course doesn't go into stand-up comedy. That impulse to share it with a wider audience, the self-confidence to believe it's worth putting out there, that's lacking in Uncle Bob. He doesn't need it, and doesn't think what he has to say is worth that extra penny to the world at large.

(Even if he thinks it's all worth it's weight in gold amongst his relatives/friends/coworkers.)

This applies to far more than just writers, of course, as the entire industry of talk radio and cable news seems to run on this. In some cases you could make the argument that their audience values the thoughts of the hosts more so than their own, thereby reversing the analogy, but it still holds for all the pundits.

So are our own thoughts really worth the extra penny? I think perhaps that depends on whether we're asking others to assess our opinions at that higher cost, or whether it's more a case of how much we have to chip in to get them to listen in the first place. But that's another entry entirely.

The Exotic Familiar

We're told, as writers, to "write what we know." There are, I am sure, entire chapters in writing books devoted to this or some variation of it. Like all advice, it only goes so far, and often times it might be felt it doesn't go far enough. For example, what if you've never gone anywhere? What if all you know is middle of nowhere small town America? That hardly seems like enough of "what you know" to be able to hang a story on.

"I don't know enough to write anything interesting," some might cry. "It's all so boring and familiar."

Well, of course it is if you've lived there all your life. But to an outsider, someone who hasn't been there, it may seem as much an exotic locale as Paris seems to the small-towner. Case in point: Las Vegas is not someplace I would ever consider "exotic." It is so not exotic, so familiar, that in fact I feel comfortable referring to it by the short version of it's name: Vegas. (No one does this with Los Angeles, though, at least not to my knowledge. That may well be another topic for discussion some other time.)

Some of this comes from it being an American city. While it's not one I have ever visited, it's certainly shown up in a fair amount of movies and television shows, some even eponymously titled after their locale, so in some way I feel I know it. It's not even like New York City, which I recognize as being so large and complex that despite being a loyal Law & Order fan, other than a generic sense of where things are I don't know anything about it. I couldn't begin to tell you where Brooklyn or the Bronx is.

Vegas, though, tends to reduce itself down to one main feature: the Strip. And the Strip I have seen, from it's early incarnations - courtesy of The Godfather - to it's more recent trend towards themed, family-friendly casinos - courtesy of both CSI and Ocean's Eleven. The remake, that is. I wouldn't exactly file this under "what I know" if we're equating that with having walked it's streets. But I am inclined to suspect that, armed with a map, I could, to paraphrase Neil Gaiman's comment about being a Brit writing about the US, do as good a job as any other person who doesn't live there.

All of which simply points to the fact that, to me, Vegas does not seem exotic. Mind you, it's got show girls, which my home town doesn't have (nor, come to think of it, have any of the places I've ever lived) but it's still not enough of an "other" for me to qualify as exotic. Not the way that even someplace that shares a similar culture and language, like London, for example, would fall under that category. London, to me, is exotic. Part of this is that I half expect it to still retain some intangible connection to the late Victorian-era London of Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens. I know full well modern London no more resembles that than Boston still retains any of its Colonial American feel - with the exception of historic markers and the occasionally still-standing structure. But, to me, it's someplace that I could feel safe in calling exotic.

Then again, I'm not Helen Mirren. (Which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.) In an interview I was listening to about a month ago, she raised this exact point in discussing why she'd taken on a role as a Vegas madam. To her, Vegas was someplace exotic. London, and by extension England, was the familiar, the thing she knew, whereas Vegas was the unknown other. Listening to her explain this, and actually referring to Vegas as being "exotic," got me thinking about all those times - including for a current project - where I have critiqued my own work as being too dull, too boring, too familiar to be of interest to the reader. Those times where I feel compelled to take a place and make it more interesting, when the truth is, it could stand just as well on it's own, provided I do a good enough job capturing the place.

The truth is, writing what I know may not seem very exotic or interesting to me some of the times, but for someone else, if I do it well, I can transport them someplace that, to them, will be a completely new experience. And that, I think, is at the heart of the exotic. After all, it's all familiar to someone out there.

Where's My Flashback?

They say during certain moments your life flashes before your eyes. There are presumably moments when you know or think you're going to die. It's a cliche at this point, one used and abused and occasionally handled with a deft touch and a hint of humor. (The current Burger King commercial with the chicken sandwich is not such an example. The one line that commented that, even in those last moments, "A.I. still felt too long" was such an example. Only wish I could remember where that came from.)

It's also completely untrue, at least in my own personal experience. Mostly what happens at those moments when things go completely sideways (literally, but I'll get to that) is that the adrenalin in your body shuts down everything but your focus on the moment and trying to get through it. Your brain, I suspect, does not want to be diverted from it's task of trying to save your ass just to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane.

Afterwards you might have cause to reflect on your life and the choices that you've made, perhaps in that moment when you're waiting for the ambulance, or if you're more fortunate just counting your blessings that you've come through the whole thing intact. But during? Nope, not so far, not for me anyway.

I had cause to put this to the test the other day when I lost control of my car. This makes two winters in a row, and I suspect it's due as much to my being out of practice driving in the snow and ice as it does to local conditions. I am not looking for the hat trick next year, so I'll have to see what all can be done about that, but this time around was far less scary than the first time. This time it was just my little coupe, and even though it was on a bridge over an icy creek, the bridge was solid concrete and I never once considered the car was going over the edge. As it turned out I was supremely lucky, the air bags didn't go off, and the damage to my car, while not cheap, is relatively minor.

At no point did I flash back to that fourth grade play where I had to dress up like a leprechaun. That got played on local access over and over and over again, and earned me an unfortunate nickname from one of my friend's parents which I have as yet to live down. You'd think that would have made a sufficient impression to flash by at least once.

All I was thinking was first, trying to steer my way out of it, and then second, when it became obvious that wasn't going to happen, going with the flow. I might have been praying, but if so it wasn't conscious. There is a second trope of hyper-awareness during events like this, and that one I will confirm. I remember every second of it vividly.

As I do for the accident last year, which in terms of just how badly it frightened me beat this week's accident hands down. Last year was in an SUV that I was unused to driving, and I ended up off the road with snow coming up and over the hood. That one scared me, and remains the longest ten seconds of my life. I doubt it was actually ten seconds, it was honestly more like a couple of seconds between the time I felt the back end go and when we plowed sideways into the snowbank on the far side of the road. But it'll always be ten seconds because that's the most my brain is willing to reduce it to. I suspect if it was up to my subjective experiences, the whole ordeal took minutes.

And again, in that space, there was no life flashing before my eyes. Just a whole lot of adrenalin that took me nearly an hour to fully come down from. After which I went to church, which is where I had been headed in the first place. I missed most of it, but that didn't really matter.

Now, perhaps, neither one of these was serious enough to qualify for having my life flash before my eyes. I wasn't worried about dying this week on the bridge. A year ago... that's another story. I didn't have time to think about it during the actual event, which I suspect might be key to this. If I was skydiving and my chute failed, and I had a minute or two to ponder such things, then perhaps my brain would conjure up images from my life. Hopefully not that fourth grade play, though.

I suspect, however, that it is nothing more than a convenient literary device which does not apply to the real world. Like being blown back by the force of being shot, or sound in space. Things that make for good fiction, if not for real life.

All things being equal, however, I'd just as soon not put it to the test again.

Housecleaning

Just a quick warning: this post is on a topic that, in my experience, many of you out there find distasteful. You've been warned. Those of you who don't mind housework, read on.

I was cleaning house this morning. Just one of those things that had gotten away from me. I'd been staring at the dust on the television, the little bits of paper or whatever on the carpet, and meaning to get it done. For whatever reasons, I hadn't, and then this morning after breakfast I just went and got out the vacuum. When that was done, I grabbed the dust rag and polish. Half an hour later, I had a clean house.

Okay, I had a clean first floor, more or less.

While it's not like the place was a sty or anything, or even my sister's room, it certainly looked a lot better having been cleaned. It's funny how the little things can add up, and pretty soon you forget it can look a lot better than it does. Or maybe it's just the contrast between the before and after. I happen to be someone who likes things neat, even if the state of my desk sometimes gets away from me and makes it seem otherwise. (Speaking of which, as I look around, I see a project for this afternoon or perhaps tomorrow.)

It's also something where if you keep at it, doing a little bit each day, it seems less daunting than when you let it go for a while. Which is sort of like writing. The longer you sit and stare at the blank screen, sometimes the harder it becomes to put words down on it. On the other hand, if you manage to get in a little each day, it adds up, and pretty soon it's going smoothly and you're no longer faced with the overwhelming horror of the blank page. At least until you let it go again.

They say you should write a little each day. It's one of the reasons I keep this blog (along with another that's been sadly neglected). I have a couple of projects that are ongoing, and numerous ideas in my head. There's no reason, really, why I can't sit down and get at least something out each day. Just as there's no reason not to spare the thirty minutes or so it takes each week, at most, to get things clean. (Maybe an hour if I really get going and clean everything all at once.) No good reason at least.

I'm tempted to think sometimes that I ought to be able to channel my slightly obsessive nature more effectively than I do. Having a house that's less than neat bothers me, so too does having an empty page. But all too often it's too easy to walk past the vacuum or the keyboard and get sidetracked elsewhere. Then it starts piling up, and before I know it what was once a simple task now seems monumental.

Then I tackle that task, and realize it wasn't really so monumental after all. It just needed to be done.

Odd Combinations

I was staring into my freezer the other day at what little remained of the mint chocolate chip ice cream. (Which is no longer green, much to my disappointment. Granted, I think the coloring is purely a result of food dye, so it doesn't need to be green. Nor does white mint chocolate chip ice cream taste any different, at least according to my mouth. However, it was missing... something. More on that in another entry, I think.) There wasn't much left, maybe a scoop and a half, which is about all I eat anymore anyway in keeping with my general philosophy on "moderation in all things." Which I abandoned New Year's Eve but hey, some occasions are worth it. This occasion, however, was mostly an "I feel like ice cream" occasion.

More specifically, I felt like an orange juice float. Now orange juice (or soda, but honestly I prefer juice) and vanilla ice cream is, as far as I am concerned, one of the greatest taste creations of all time. My wanting for one on this day came from having acquired a very simple recipe to create an Orange Julius at home without paying for the trademark. That said, I wasn't in the mood to bother with even the simple recipe - mostly on the strength of not wanting to dig out and then afterwards wash the blender. So I opted for a simpler float. Only the only ice cream I had in the house was the aforementioned mint chocolate chip.

Now, in theory, there was nothing about the combination that shouldn't have gone well together. I've had those chocolate oranges, which are great, and orange mint, and chocolate mint. It was just putting all three of them together, in the forms I had, that might have yielded strange results. Erring on the safe side, I opted to try it first with a spoonful of ice cream and a shot glass of orange juice. Which is the most action my shot glasses have seen in quite some time. Anymore I think they're just decorative in my house.

The combination, as odd as it might have sounded at first, came out very well, and it got me thinking about other slightly odd combinations, but in writing. Now as what few followers and/or faithful readers I have here will already know, I tend to write things that fall into the interstices between genres. There tends to be a bit of dark humor and comedy that creeps into things, even if I'm writing something that might ostensibly be horror. My ongoing works are also a mix of science fiction and other things, as I busily write along creating my own genres. Sort of.

I'm not the only one who's done this, though, and certainly not the most famous example. The best example that comes to mind for me is when Dean Koontz penned a children's book. Now Koontz is one of those authors that I invariably read while freely admitting that his catalog is somewhat hit or miss for me. (Though I recommend the "Odd Thomas" series to anyone.) He is also, along with King, one of the few authors I have ever read who have managed to scare me just by reading a book. I don't remember the title, though I think it was "Night Chills," and it had to do with rats. Large quantities of evil rats, in the dark, crawling over everything, and peering out from shadows so you could only see their eyes. Gives me shivers just thinking about it.

Yet not only did he write a children's picture book, he wrote one about Santa Claus. Having read it, I will affirm that it works well as a children's book and a piece of horror. Slightly more humorous in that vein is a book we have home from the library in the Skippyjon Jones series. It's not really horror, per se, but parts of it lean toward that end, and yet, again, the combination works really well.

Horror and comedy have also been put to good use, even if sometimes it's black humor. The zombie sheep movie was... well, just hilarious on the face of it. Zombie sheep? Who comes up with these things? Shaun of the Dead also falls into this category.

Odd combinations can also get you reading other genres you wouldn't normally venture into. I picked up a romance novel once thinking it was something else from the description. It was, but it was also clearly romance. It was also a good read. (And the sex scenes steamed up my glasses.) I didn't continue to read the author because her emphasis was on the romance genre and hence her plots were somewhat formulaic, but it broadened my horizons some. (Literary-wise, mind you, not karma sutra-wise.)

Often times these ventures get labeled cross-overs, but I don't think that really fits. Especially when it's what the author regularly does. "Cross-over" to me implies a once only foray into a genre. Lack an actor who normally does action flicks attempting comedy or romance or something. I'm not saying there needs to be a new terminology, at least not yet, but I think there ought to be more room to exist between the labels. We tend to have to package things as "either/or" in order to convey what it is, and tend to rely on the old adage that as long as it's good it doesn't matter what it is, but it does matter what you call it, especially when you're trying to get someone to try it.

As for me, I'm off to buy more mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Getting Outside Your Range

Placido Domingo is singing as a baritone. Mind you, I only know he's a tenor, normally, because of that thing he did with the other two guys - only one of whom I can name off the top of my head. Not that I don't listen to opera, as I do, but I don't listen to it frequently enough to really know much about any of the stars or recognize them by voice. In part because my local radio doesn't carry that "Sunday at the Met" program, assuming it's still airing at all. Also in part because I just don't listen to that much opera.

None of which really relates to my point today. It turns out that Placido started as a baritone, and then early in his career moved up to a tenor. Where he proceeded to make his career. Now, in part because his voice is aging, and in part just because he wants to, he's come back down (musically speaking) to a baritone. By the sounds of it, he's just as comfortable as a baritone as he was as a tenor, but I am reasonably sure it took a bit of an adjustment. I'm also sure, because the guy on NPR said so, that having sung as a tenor Placido now brings a little extra something to being a baritone.

That's the part that got me thinking about how at least once in your life you ought to try something outside your normal range. Speaking as a writer, you could probably substitute "genre" for that last word without too much trouble, as that's really what I'm talking about here. However, it also applies to dabbling in poetry if you normally writer novels, or short stories if you write poetry, or something that requires you to follow a different set of guidelines than you normally do.

It does violate the old trope of "write what you know" but let's face it, in this day and age research is at the tip of your fingers anyway. There are limits on the usefulness of any rule like "write what you know" anyway, at least if you're going to be too much of a stickler about it.

This has a couple of advantages, not least of which is exercising some of your creative muscles that you might not normally use. If you spend most of your time thinking about spaceships, writing about a modern-day setting, or even getting historical, presents brand new challenges for you. Good writing is, of course, good writing, regardless of genre. And you don't necessarily need to come all the way out of your normal comfort zone to make it work. Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series contains elements of the Western and high fantasy that don't show up much at all in his other works, for example, and it remains I think some of his best writing. (Hated the ending, no matter how much it fit, but that's another entry altogether.) Robert Parker has also written some fine westerns that are far removed from the streets of Spencer's Boston.

The results aren't always good, of course, and sometimes writing exercises are just that and no more. But another advantage to when they do work is a fresh perspective. When you normally write in a particular genre, you can get too accustomed to the trappings of that genre. Switching can help shake you out of those trappings, and not just by getting you to work within a new set of guidelines. A different mode of writing can liven up some of the tropes - which every genre has - not only in the genre with which you are experimenting, but then when you return to your comfort zone. It's like taking a vacation, appreciating the change of scenery, and then coming home and appreciating what you have anew.

Then again, some people go on vacation and decided to stay.

Wasting Villains

No, this isn't about shooting the bad guys with an oversized gun designed to compensate for the hero's masculinity issues. This is about when a villain's potential goes to waste. When, despite the hype, they're barley on the screen (looking squarely at you, George Lucas, for Episode I) or in the book. When the author makes a big deal about just how evil, and powerful, the villain is, or has created a really great villain... and then doesn't do anything with them.

I have a particular author in mind for this little rant, but I won't name names. (Other than George Lucas... because, really, as much as I like Christopher Lee, Darth Maul deserved more screen time.) Mostly, in the case of the unnamed author, it seemed as though the villain had been relegated to the role of sub-plot, and if you're going to do that, it's all well and good providing that 1: it's the kind of thing you usually write so the audience has no reason to expect otherwise and 2: you don't create a really cool villain that you normally would have done lots with.

This was something I thought Silence of the Lambs did well. Aside from the screen presence of Lecter, he lived up to his potential. He wasn't just the scary guy safely in the glass cage. He gets out. Better still, though he is the subplot, the main villain is also satisfying. (Neither the movie nor the book would have worked half so well otherwise. Sub-plot should never completely overshadow plot.) It was also something the movie sequel screwed up, namely because the director, whom I normally enjoy, went for the shock ending. Only the Lecter we all know and love would never have allowed himself to be in that position.

(Not to mention he doesn't have to amputate his hand. Far less risky to simply take off the thumb, if it comes to that.)

Which illustrates another peril here: you can waste your villain with a single mis-timed scene. Something that doesn't ring true to character. At that point, you leave audiences scratching their heads and wondering what happened to the villain they've been watching all along. Hannibal isn't the only film guilty of this. (The book avoided this pitfall, but fell into another one.)

Mind you, some of those wasted villains have provided me with fodder for my own evil characters. I fully plan to steal the concept for one villain from a certain author who didn't know enough to use what she'd created. Well, "steal" is such a harsh word. I intend to appropriate and use for my own ends.

If you're going to create a strong villain, then you ought to use them appropriately. If not, you might want to start asking yourself if your story needs a villain at all, or if perhaps the motivation for your characters is something else entirely. Villains should be treated like the famous gun Chekov talks about: if they're there, they ought to be used.

The Appeal of Cemeteries

I like cemeteries. Which I realize might sound kind of creepy at first, but as I think I've mentioned I'm a bit of a history buff. So I'm not hanging out in cemeteries to do anything creepy or occultish. I like roaming amongst the headstones, particularly ones that are old, and thinking about the history that is more or less buried beneath my feet.

Obviously older cemeteries are better for this kind of thing. There's a small local cemetery here in town, not very big, and while some of the stones are new, the town itself dates back to Colonial times. I think the town wasn't officially founded until after the Revolutionary War, but there's a historical marker where George Washington passed through on some sort of campaign. None of the headstones in the cemetery were quite that old. There is a marker for the town's founder, who is buried there, but it's clear he was reburied some time long after the initial internment.

Which I did not deduce from some careful historical study, but because I read it on the marker accompanying the grave site.

There are a number of stones that went back as far as the mid 19th Century, and possibly some that went even farther back but which had sadly been worn past the point where they could be read. Part of the appeal is simply knowing I'm looking at something that was put in place over a hundred years or so before I was born. I like being able to touch history, it's one of the reasons old architecture appeals to me.

Of course, the appeal of cemeteries in fiction and other media is usually based on other ideas often associated with them. Those would usually be the creepy aspects. Interestingly, most of those cemeteries all look about the same on celluloid. One of the things I have noticed in my travels is that cemeteries come in all shapes and sizes. On film, and in illustrations (with the notable exception of Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame) they all tend to follow one common layout, with the round headstones and the more spaced-out layout. This was the practice in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, like my neck of the woods, because space and cultures allowed for it. But it's not always the case.

Asian cemeteries are much different, in part I think because they often cremate and thus have no bodies to bury and take up space. Despite another stereotype, not all Native Americans had a "burial ground." Some cultures wandered off into the woods, others made biers. And Eastern European cemeteries are just... cool. Lots of differing headstones and tombs, often with a great deal of iconography. And of course, even cemeteries around where I live are often a mix of different styles. There are no angles or cherubs in the cemetery here, but there are some obelisks and crosses, along with more traditional slabs. (Including one depicting a golf scene that looks to be from the early part of the 20th Century.)

All of which just illustrates the point that research is important if you're going to set a scene in a cemetery and have it matter what kind of cemetery they're in. Which sometimes might matter even if you don't think it does. No one's robbing graves in New Orleans with a shovel, after all.

Death of a Character 2: He's Dead, Jim

That will likely be the last Star Trek reference I make - in this entry, anyway, and only because I can't think of any other way to tie Star Trek into this particular topic. My geekdom knows few bounds. But the death of the redshirts (okay, so that's another reference) doesn't really apply to the topic today, despite the high turnover rate in their ranks.

While this is about people who die and stay dead, it's also about when significant characters die and stay dead. Not the incidentals or the guest stars. There can be any number of reasons why an important character might die, not all of which are good reasons, if you ask me.

The first reason, and the best, is when it's necessary to further the story. Sometimes it's just necessary for someone to die. If you write horror or mystery, this is probably a given. Most murder mysteries circumvent this some because the character usually starts dead, or is given only a brief introduction before being killed. (Unless you're in one of those Agatha Christie type stories where people are slowly but surely killed off.) They become a central character of sorts because they're dead. In contrast, in a horror story characters tend to die to illustrate the idea that no one is safe. Sometimes, though, someone simply has to die. Would Luke have put his faith in the Force during the Death Star run without the death of Obi-wan? Possibly, but likely not, and it would have carried much less gravitas to have Obi-wan telling Luke to "Use the Force" over the intercom.

Sometimes a character dies simply because the writer has run out of uses for them. They create a character who serves a purpose the plot, but then it becomes murky as to what purpose the character continues to serve once they've fulfilled their function. I happen to think that killing off such a character represents poor planning on the part of the author, and that killing them is the easy way out. Rather than having figured out how to integrate the character into the whole story, they only plotted it out so far, and when things got difficult they pushed the character out of the moving vehicle and into traffic. There are times when this gives the story a bit more of a realistic feel, especially if the death of the character taints the "happy ever after" of the ending, but they can irritate me some when they happen.

What really irritates me, though, is when characters are killed for no good reason other than shock value. An instance that comes to mind is Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series. Dumbledore, too, to a certain extent, although I think that falls more into the second scenario detailed above - the final battle needed to be Dumbledore-free so he couldn't somehow save the day, and killing him off is the surest way to accomplish that. Also set up the whole thing with Snape. However, it was somewhat undermined by Sirius's death in the previous book.

After the fourth installment, it felt to me as if J.K. Rowling felt the need to end the next two books with a death. (The final book was a series of deaths in and of itself, and, honestly, most of those took the easy way out. I didn't feel the loss of any of them, really, except Hedwig.) Sirius was probably the logical choice, by which I mean the biggest shock value. May also have been a case of not knowing what to do with him, though I think that could have been solved. I didn't feel it served any purpose to kill all of Harry's family (except the Dursely's... and really, if there were people who needed killing...) other than just the shock value.

It seemed to me that by killing the character the author in fact marginalized the character. Just watch the movies and this becomes apparent. Other than to die in the fifth installment, what else did Gary Oldman really have to do? And there was a great deal of potential in the character, particularly as a darker foil to Harry, someone he looked up to who wasn't the ideal of the other mentor figures in the book. (Course, maybe that was sort of the moral point. In which case I really dislike his death.)

The Harry Potter series aren't the only case of killing a character for shock value with no other discernible purpose, but it was the one that came to mind. So I guess the moral of the story here is, if your character is going to stay dead, it ought to be for a good reason and not because you wrote yourself into a corner, or wanted to shock the audience.

Death with a purpose, in other words.

There's a third part to this series, and I'll put it up as soon as I remember what it was going to be.

Even Dracula Wasn't This Creepy

I was watching the television a few nights ago when I saw a promo for something that made me stop and think. (Yes, yes, I know, television is evil, it rots your brain, etc... but like most things which are bad for you it's fun. And occasionally informative. More on that duality in a later entry, I think.) This one was for the "Vampire Diaries" which I gather is based on the YA series of the same name. Now, I could rail against the current trend of angsty vampires in high school - with or without sparkles - but if I was going to do that, which I might some day, I'd have to go back to Anne Rice. Because Louis had ANGST. Lestat less so, in the beginning, but then things just got weird. However, something else in the promo struck me and got the old gears in my head churning.

Namely, the unaddressed subtext of hebephilia, or if I'm going to be a little generous, ephebophilia. To get away from the technical terms (because they're hard to spell and way too big for me to keep typing over and over again), this is the kind of behavior for which society has such things as "age of consent" and statutory rape. It should not be confused with pedophilia, which is a somewhat different thing, though it's still creepy.

Think "Lolita," only 16 instead of 12. Or whatever she was in the original. Which I think was 12.

Here's the bit that got me thinking along these lines: once again, as in the sparkly vamp saga, there is a vampire. Who, for some insane reason, goes to high school. (You didn't see Kiefer Sutherland hanging out in high school. He was hanging upside down, sure, but who would voluntarily go back to high school to be a student?) And once again, falls in love with a human girl.

(Which begs the question, what happened to all those homo/bi-sexual vampires from Anne Rice? Or at least a little bromance vampage? Okay, I'll stop digressing now and try and stick to my point.)

Yet in the promo, they specifically mentioned this is a vampire who is a century old. As in 100 years. So regardless of how he looks, which, being a teen on television means he looks like he ought to be working on his Master's thesis instead of his diploma, he's had a century of experiences. Plenty of time to mature, develop, etc. This was a theme explored by Anne Rice with her child-like vampire, Claudia, who was a little girl but only on the outside.

The fact is, there's more to getting old than just numbers, and puberty. Which, considering they're posing as high schoolers, they've all been through anyway. There is the sum of our experiences, the things we do, the places we go, the things we see, and these more so than any biochemical processes are what shapes us into the adults we are. No matter how the vampire might look on the outside, on the inside he is, by all human definitions, old.

Which makes you wonder what he would see in a high-school aged girl. (Other than the obvious "Lolita" inferences. Or, if you've not read it, go listen to "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by the Police. Classic stuff.) I can understand liking them young - though not that young - so I have to ask, why not just go to college? Granted, it would still be somewhat creepy, but at least they'd all be over the age of consent. Not to mentioned more experienced in terms of their life.

I would think anyone of a mature enough age - and at a century you'd think that would qualify -would find the life and interests of a high school student to be rather mundane and trivial. Not that it's unimportant to them, but let's face it, even those who have an interest in the lives of high schoolers, such as teachers, don't socialize with them. They certainly don't date them, or at least they aren't supposed to and society gets very upset when they do. To have an interest, and more than that, an attraction, to someone so young and immature....

It's just creepy.

Going After Stereotypes With an Axe

Read a story about Backcountry Mail Service and it got me thinking about stereotypes and other elements of story-telling. At one point in the article someone remarks that just because they're living out where it's remote doesn't mean they don't want to be modern. (One of them gets Netflix, for example, even though it's 30 miles to the nearest town... and probably not all of that is over what would count as "road.") Yet that's one of the automatic assumptions lots of people make about life way out in the woods. That it's all backwards, rustic, oil lamps and firewood and outhouses, and that everyone needs to use an axe for just about anything.

(Actually, the axe is, I have heard, pretty indispensable.)

And while some of these places may not have indoor bathrooms (though in this day and age I doubt that - you can put an enclosed septic system in just about anywhere), that doesn't mean they aren't connected to the world at large. Satellite tv and internet has largely solved that problem - after all you can't get Netflix without a computer I don't think - and so the automatic assumption many make that backcountry equals backwards just doesn't fly.

I think the trick as a writer is to recognize when you're making those assumptions as a shortcut for developing character. I myself have written characters who live off in the back woods someplace, and yes, they are anti-social. This isn't always a stereotype, though, as I had a great uncle Jim who remarked in all earnestness that it was time to move the day he saw three cars go past his house. Not at a time, mind you, just all day. Three cars per day was too much for Uncle Jim. The important part is not to let your setting or other aspects become a too-easy shorthand for establishing your own character. If you don't do that, you've lost a dimension to your character that could have made him or her much more interesting.

Getting back to the news story, it's the little details that can help set things apart from the stereotype and make things more personal, more individual. The fact that the pilot needs a pillow to sit on, or that the other pilots purposefully overbid to make sure the guy who's done the job since the 70's got to keep the contract, are things that make the news article more vivid, more personal, these take the people (who are in this case real people, not characters) from a cookie-cutter image of what people who live out there must be like to a more nuance portrayal of who they really are.

And not one of them was mentioned as having a really big beard.

Vampires of Lake Wobegon

No, Garrison Keiller is not venturing into the urban fantasy genre. While I think it would be hysterical if he did, I understand his particular brand of often laconic humor might not carry over well into the realm of vampires and werewolves and fairies. ... Or then again it might. What prompted this post and title though, was a skit on "A Prairie Home Companion" last weekend where in one of the skits he played the author of a series of vampire novels. His books were apparently the kind with much soul-searching and lots of emotion (and tree vampires dragging off young unsuspecting writers), the kind that had entranced the local librarian who often seems to suffer from delusions of grand romance.

It's a recurring skit, the librarian. (For those who don't listen.)

What got me thinking though was how we seem to have de-fanged many of our monsters. I know this has been remarked on elsewhere by others with far more letters and publications after their names than I have, but around about the time psychology started making a major comeback in the public perception, we began to seek reasons and explanations for our monsters. They all have back-stories now, some childhood trauma or longing for understanding that makes them tragic figures. They are almost never *just* monsters.

In some ways, of course, this makes them far more interesting. Having a back story gives the creator/audience something to explore, creates characters with nuance and subtlety, and in some ways allows us to relate to them. Which is not always a bad thing, if by relating we start to understand that there but for the grace of god (or fate, or circumstances, or whatever moves your particular heaven) go we. That a shove here, a push there in a different direction and many of us have the capacity to be monsters ourselves. As writers we're told to do this, that even if we don't put it down on the page, we ought to know our character's history so we can better understand their actions, and therefore write them more convincingly.

Understanding, though, is not the same as sympathy, or worse yet the idea that all monsters are sympathetic on some level. Because they aren't, and this is one of the pitfalls I have found in our romanticizing of our monsters. It tends to make us overlook the presence of true evil, of that monster without a backstory, the monster that just *is.*

I am a fan of modern psychology, and acknowledge that in many instances a large percentage of the criminal element is, in fact, "made" - that is, a product of environment and circumstances as much as any inborn tendency. But not all. Sometimes, the monsters just come into being as they are, no shaping, no environment, just something in them that makes them monsters.

Our figurative monsters - the vampires, the werewolves - have always been extensions of ourselves, the creative manifestation of our fears of our darker impulses. It concerns me that in attempting to relate to the manifestations, we are losing their other purpose: to remind us that evil is real, is lurking out there in the shadows.

And that if we aren't careful, it will get us.

The Same Old Story

They say all the good stories have already been told. (I'm not sure who "they" are, precisely, though I envision hoary old men, much like my 10th grade English teacher. Who I revered, by the way, much like my 11th grade teacher only with a certain amount of fear. Mind you, that's a different "they" than I envision for grammar... which is embodied by my 9th grade teacher and a coworker I once knew. They could have been sisters, only my coworker was also far less scary. Come to think of it, it seems like every other English teacher I ever had exuded that scary vibe. Hmmm... oh well, that's another post entirely.)

As any writer/reader knows, to some extent "they" are right. All stories boil down to a few simple plot lines. (Add a little salt and some celery and you have soup.) Usually these are defined as the "man vs" stories, though that's probably passe and not in keeping with gender-neutral stories. Though "person vs" doesn't quite fit. Not to mention it's not always people anyway. "Watership Down" was about rabbits, though as with any animal as protagonist book they were at once stand-ins for people and a way to look at ourselves without appearing to scrutinize ourselves too much.

Or simply a way to approach otherwise unapproachable subjects. I was in high school before I read "Dracula" but back in middle school there was "Bunnicula." The average 6th grader isn't tackling wooden stakes and sexual undertones, but vampire rabbits - and well-meaning but slightly insane cats trying to pound a t-bone through the bunny's heart - those are doable. And still funny three decades later.

Which brings me around to my point, despite the meanderings. All the stories have been told, of course, but it's the way in which they are told that matters. "Romeo and Juliet" is essentially "boy meets girl," and "West Side Story" is essentially "Romeo and Juliet" set to music. Catchy music, no less. Sometimes even telling the same story can be important if you change who is telling it. I was listening to a story on NPR the other day, and a reviewer was commenting how he has seen a specific opera probably a dozen or so times. And yet the last time he went to see it, something about the performers at that time made it more poignant, more involving.

"A Christmas Carol" has been told hundreds of times, but I still prefer to hear Captain Picard do it. (My apologies to Patrick Stewart for typecasting him. He was also excellent as Professor X. ... No, seriously, he's a good actor.)

So just because it's been done before, doesn't mean it can't be done again. Or done better.

It's in the Details

It's an ongoing thing here in my house that when we watch a program, we inevitably end up picking apart the details on things where the writers or whomever should have gotten it right - and yet didn't. It's not always the obvious things, either, like the guy in blue jeans in that scene from "Gladiator." (Which, yes, I've seen. Unlike the shoe in Star Wars or the car in LOTR that everyone claims is there yet I've not seen actual proof of.) No, it's often the kind of detail that someone in research should have caught, and is either omitted - or added - for dramatic effect, or just glossed over because the editors or producers or someone figured no one would ever notice.

Yet we do.

Take "Mission Impossible III" for example. Aside from all my other problems with the movie - and they were numerous, starting with the idiots who made "MI:II" and decided the first movie was "too cerebral" (I get irked when they dumb things down, but that's another post entirely) - my biggest one was that they came all the way to Shanghai, and got it wrong. They got it completely wrong, actually, not just from the moment he jumps out of the building and somehow lands on the other side of the city, which is like jumping out of the Chrysler building and landing in Queens. No, they botched up the ending, which takes place not in Shanghai at all- at least according to what I saw on the screen.

Now, I lived there, so I catch this, and it's likely I was one of only a handful who did, but that's not the point. I can forgive shows like "Smallville" which send their characters to Shanghai's "mountain" because I doubt it was a detail they were concerned with. Even though a cursory check of the Wiki gods would have probably told them that Shanghai sits in a river delta and is flatter than Nebraska. But hey, it's on the CW. It doesn't star Tom Cruise. It didn't pony up the time and money for location shots.

If you're going to take the time to scout the location, you need to get it right.

Likewise, in the opening bit in "The Descent," when they're all in the mountains of Appalachia. The scenery is nice and ominous, and there's the bit of the shock scene... and then the wolf howls. Um, excuse me? But there are no wolves in Appalachia. It's the kind of thing a ten-minute fact check, heck, a ten second fact check (go on, Google "wolf habitat" and see how long it takes you. You might have to add the United States to the search terms, but it shouldn't take very long.)

It's things like this that can take away from the enjoyment of a film or television show. They may not ruin it completely, but they provide moments of exasperation that suck you out of the make-believe world they're trying to sell you.

Do What You Like

They say you should do what you like. It's not a writing specific guideline, like "write what you know" (which like all such writing guidelines is a little vague, a little misleading, and yet still at times dead-on). It's a job mantra, the one everyone tells you to follow. Do what you like to do, have a job that you enjoy going to - at least in principle - and don't worry about the money. I can interject here that this is a cultural, as in other parts of the world the attitude is clearly "worry about the money." But I didn't grow up there, and so I don't share the attitude that how much money I make determines my happiness.

Though it would be nice to be rich and dismissive of that rather than poor and dismissive.

Anyway, I have tried for the most part to follow that advice. Hence I've never (yet) worked in fast food. One of my most enjoyable jobs was the least clean, back when I worked as a dishwasher, but the work there had a certain satisfaction to it when everything was clean which appealed to my own sensibilities. Also helped that the people were good to work with and I was fed very, very well. Certainly better fare than the orange meatloaf they tried to pass off on us one night in the Commons.

In attempting to follow this advice I have looked for work as a writer. This is in addition to the other work I look for which suits my other interests and skills. For the most part it has been somewhat successful, especially as I've had a late start at it. It's not making me rich, as I never expected it to, but it has provided supplemental income. Which lately has been all my income. However, in writing for money I am sometimes forced to take on those topics in which I have no interest in. They are, in other words, nothing I like. And yet... I need to get paid.

Sometimes it's mostly a question of just generating the enthusiasm for a topic, because I have a diverse enough interests and an undying sense of curiosity, so almost anything will eventually interest me if I take the time to get into it. But it's acquiring that motivation to get interested that can be rather difficult. (Which I think is another blog entry somewhere down the line.)

If I could find someone to pay me to write reviews of movies, books, food, locations (and pay for my expenses) or just humor my opinions for a paycheck, I'd be all set. In the meantime, until the day when the fiction pays me well enough not to have to do anything else, I'm stuck researching the odd and esoteric.

Which is still better than working in fast food.