Category Archives: Writing

Writing, WTF

WTF? Jump Street In Black?

There are some things that happen to exist in a perpetual state of rumor and possibility. Ghostbusters 3 was rumored to be happening for 20 years before a reboot came down the pipeline. A sequel to Independence Day was whispered about for almost as long. The possibility of a Star Wars Episode 7 has been rumored for as long as there’s been an episode 6. And as of the last couple years, Men and Black was supposedly going to cross over with 21 Jump Street.

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For the longest time I thought it was a joke, especially since rumors of it always happen around April. No one in the industry would be so bankrupt of common sense as to shove these two franchises together, force them to hold, and then fuse them in some freakish science experiment. Hollywood defies all reason and logic but they usually have to have a reason to do something like this. Freddie vs Jason was a no-brainer that people were wanting to happen since the 80s. Alien vs. Predator was also just something that made sense and had a successful series of video games. And Batman vs Superman? That’s been something every kid’s been doing with their action figures since action figures were a thing!

supes bats

But 21 Jump Street and Men In Black? Who asked for this? What fevered dream did this thing emerge from? Were people just throwing darts at a board and picking franchises at random while dressed in a Captain America costume? This can’t be real! This is one of the most ridiculous concepts to have come out of the rumor mill ever and it has to have been an April Fools joke. Why does it keep getting repeated? Why do people keep citing insiders in the rumors of it? Why is there a writer? Why does this thing have a director now?!

W. T. F?! Continue reading WTF? Jump Street In Black? →

Miscellaneous, Observations, Writing, WTF

Overlooked Lesson of “Gods of Egypt”

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Not very long ago, as part of my Alternative Mythologies series, I talked about how Egyptian lore was actually a fairly good resource to be used for the fantasy genre. Lo and behold, not long after I posted it, there were suddenly multiple projects being set in Egypt and a lot of them turned out to be… horrible. A lot of reasons have been suggested over time but what I’ve started to realize is that there’s a reason overlooked heavily by most people because most people just don’t know the source material very well. By knowing the source material, you start to realize that people aren’t catching the real reason why these projects suck, and the most recent attempt really drove it home for me.

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Gods of Egypt, to almost no one’s surprise, turned out to be a critical failure and a box office bomb. The trailers were poorly received, the promotional material was left wanting, the casting drew criticism from almost square one, and nothing they really did from then on out really made it any better. In the several months since this movie’s promotion started I have yet to see a single positive article about the thing. But even there, I don’t think any of them actually noticed the reason why this thing was doomed to fail.

Most people quickly jumped on the skin-tone of the actors (and quite rightly, given the majority of the cast looked more pseudo-Greek than anything). But I’ve already covered the white washing of Egypt in the past and the fact that Egyptians could have, in part, featured a diverse range of skin-tones (…though clearly not the North European ones that apparently dominate casting calls). Others jumped on the fact that it didn’t seem to fit the mythology, what with Ra having a ship in space that flew over the planet during the daytime. Just, one problem for those guys, Ra totally did.

ra

So while these are valid concerns to be had, they weren’t the thing that immediately jumped out at me as the reason this thing was doomed from the start. No, the thing that jumped out at me and started to make me really question whether I was right to recommend Horus’ story as a great source of fantasy adaptations, was the fact that I came to realize that this:

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Was pretty much built on the same model as this:

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And that’s kind of the root of all their problems…

Continue reading Overlooked Lesson of “Gods of Egypt” →

Writing

Regaining Momentum

Getting in the zone can be difficult. It’s not simply about finding beginnings, but about keeping momentum when you have it and not letting it slide. Mental exercises take a lot of dedication, focus, and clarity to be able to pull off. So, when something happens to make you lose that momentum, it can be incredibly hard to get it back. Maybe the holidays got in the way, maybe you were forced to work on something temporarily more important, or maybe your motherboard burned itself in such a fashion that the marking looked like a shit stain on your life.

But whatever happened, it can be incredibly difficult for some people to get back into the swing of things and back on top of it. Hell, I know I’m struggling with it right now after having finished my recent repairs and the holiday nonsense. Momentum is, by its very nature, a form of inertia and inertia tends to be hard to start and stop without some outside force. So you’d be forgiven for sitting back down and realizing that the forward motion you had before has suddenly turned into spinning your wheels like you’d just rolled into the mud.

stuck
No problem, right?

So, how do you do it?

Continue reading Regaining Momentum →

Publishing, Writing

Finishing What You Started

Finishing things – it’s kind of a pain in the ass and most of us have a hard time sealing the deal. Sure, sometimes, we get motivated and we make a lot of progress in the right direction. But finishing things? That’s harder than we like to admit more often than not. Follow-through is both a challenge and burden and no one really wants any part of those if they have the option out. Ironically, when it happens, we’re generally harder on ourselves than others. So today I find myself looking at last month’s (as of this writing) NaNoWriMo and thinking “I wonder how many people hit 50k and need to do more.”

The answer is that it really depends on what people were hoping to get out of it. Most people don’t really go into NaNo with the intention of actually being an author. They go in with the intention of proving they can do something of that scale but have no aspirations for greater. Others, as I’ve pointed out in the past, have far different goals in mind. Everyone’s come to the task with a different endgame. If you were just aiming to hit 50k and don’t have much care for a follow through, then congrats on hitting the goal and hope you give it another go next time. On the other hand, if you’re one of those people who were using that event as a starting point, I know from experience that the months after NaNo can be harder than the challenge itself.

Honestly, being a writer itself – especially a beginning writer – is harder than the NaNoWriMo challenge. If it were the leisurely task that people think it is from time to time, it wouldn’t require a month dedicated to it. After all, who needs a challenge to do something you work on all the time? If it were something easy, there wouldn’t be a need. Even the writers I know look at the challenge as something of an excuse to get motivated again. So… the question that’s been posed to me once is, “how do you keep going?”

And, besides being stubborn (and even angry at times), the answer is… Continue reading Finishing What You Started →

Writing

Deadlines – Safely Pushing The Limits

So, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve visited the blog in the last week, I’ve been trying to ward people away from burning out. It’s NaNoWriMo as of this writing and I’ve known more than one or two writers in the past who’ve gotten behind on their word count and pushed themselves until they declared with an angry sigh, “fuck it.” Even outside of NaNo there’s still that chance you could get caught up in fear of failure and just keep pushing until you fail because of that fear. You’re more likely to crash and burn if you go beyond your limits than you are by to keeping steady throughout.

Still, there’s a damn good chance you’re going to ignore my warnings. I’m probably not the first hallucination you’ve had since you gave up on sleep. You didn’t listen to the last couple, you’re probably not going to listen to me. After all, I’m just some guy with a blog, that doesn’t hold nearly as much weight as when Snuffleupagus was singing to you about what letter to use next. Though that might have been Sesame Street playing in the background… or Good Morning America…

snuff steph
Maybe even Stephanopoulos…

The point is, clearly the deadline is more important to you than I’m giving you credit for.  It’s time to give you the kind of bat-shit advice that got me writing 8k a day one year when I had nothing left to lose… Continue reading Deadlines – Safely Pushing The Limits →

Observations, Writing

Deadline vs The Redline

Deadlines, they loom large over us all. Though not all from the same sources, we all have something that has “time sensitive” stamped across it. And, of course, most of us are horrible at keeping those deadlines. Many a soul has spent a great deal of time procrastinating before eventually getting to work at the last possible minute. College students, especially those with challenging majors, probably suffer a soft form of PTSD from the mere mention of an “all-nighter”. Clearly, humanity was not meant to be on time.

The question then becomes, when you’ve finished your procrastination, can you actually make good on the promise of completing the task on time? Most of us have the ability, when pressed, to get things completed just in time, cutting it close like game of chicken with utter failure. Sure, you may not die, but you probably felt like it along the way.

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And that’s when we start pushing the red line. The red line, a term I’m borrowing from cars, is when you’re pushing yourself so far that you’re risking a burn out to get ahead. Cars have an indicator on them that you’re running the engine too hard, a little red line showing you the dangerous zone. Generally, we all know that running the car at that rate for long is going to cause major damage. By default, most of us avoid doing that. But when it comes to ourselves there’s rarely a second thought to push those limits.

Why? Continue reading Deadline vs The Redline →

Writing

Meaning To Your Story, Story To Your Meaning

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Everyone wants to leave an impression on the world. The human lifespan is woefully too short and we all worry that someday we’ll be gone and forgotten. It’s because of this that we spend so much time trying to leave a legacy and try to find ways to make ourselves memorable. We want to be the life of the party, we want to change the hearts and minds of others, we want someone to realize we were here. Deep down, that’s one of the greatest driving forces of human civilization. We will always work to be more comfortable, but we’ll work harder to make sure the next generation remembers us.

because its there

I think that’s why it gets so hard for us to reel ourselves back when it comes to our opinions. It has become a common accusation that the modern generation is self-absorbed but that’s assuming there was ever a time where a civilization wasn’t. We may tweet about our day to day lives, but previous generations carved faces into mountains and constructed monuments to their own ego. Say what you will about our need to self-promote, it’s not a new aspect of human nature – just easier today.

So it comes as no surprise that a recent trend in fiction, especially speculative fiction, is that people may overwhelm their story with their message. I talked about this once before, some time ago, and dealt with the idea of being humble. But in the course of talking about humility I left out something else that needed to be addressed. Unfortunately, people can sometimes be humble but still manage to overwhelm their message. The reason for this?

Sometimes people aren’t being arrogant, sometimes people are just worried they’ll be misunderstood. Continue reading Meaning To Your Story, Story To Your Meaning →

Observations, Writing

Beginnings and Endings: The Terrible Two?

As of this writing we are a good two weeks into the annual National Novel Writing Month. It’s about now that the people taking part have neatly divided into four categories. Some people who are just doing it for a lark are going to be well on their way to finishing 50,000 words and never looking back. Others are just realizing that what they’ve started is going to take a lot more than 50k to be “finished”. A third group is realizing they have no damn clue how they’re going to finish what they’ve started. And the fourth group has, unfortunately, spent half of the month struggling through the beginning of their project.

Those last two groups aren’t just part of the NaNoWriMo tradition, they’re part of writing as a whole. Throughout the community you’ll find people who struggle with beginning and ending their work. A lot of writers even debate as to which is harder, a good beginning or a good ending. I’ve rarely met a writer myself who didn’t have an opinion on the topic and have strong feelings towards one of these things. So, with so many people struggling with it, you can easily understand why this would be the debate they have.

However, like with character vs. plot, I don’t really think that people are considering the actual problem. People have an instinct to become upset with something without stopping to understand why it’s an issue. Even those educated in the art of writing will usually have only a vague grasp of why these things are challenging to beginning writers. But what if I told you that the thing you’re having a problem with isn’t beginnings or endings?

What if I told you that you’re having a problem with everything else? Continue reading Beginnings and Endings: The Terrible Two? →

About me, Writing

NaNoWriMo – A Trial of Focus

So, it’s a bit of time into NaNoWriMo and, if I’m familiar with the community as much as I think I am – a lot of you have fallen behind. Generally, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t fallen behind at least once over the course of a NaNoWriMo. It even happens to the professional and semi-professional writers I know. So for those of you who have, fear not, many of us have done it and you’re far from alone. As for those of you who haven’t – well aren’t you just perfect?

oblivious
Kidding, kidding, keep up the good work

Seriously though, keeping up on your word count can be a challenging task and a lot of us end up psyching ourselves out by saying it’s somehow harder for us than for others. It feels strange, when you think about it, that the NaNoWriMo challenge is only 50,000 words when Stephen King insists every writer should hit 2,000 a day. If we were keeping up with Stephen then no one would lose. But a lot of us struggle to get beyond 1,667 words a day (the average that people need to hit to do it in November) and it’s usually for the same damn reason… Continue reading NaNoWriMo – A Trial of Focus →

Writing

Finding Your Way Through The Block

So as I mentioned recently, it’s NaNoWriMo time and there are a lot of first time writers out there trying their hand at it. Hell, there’s a lot of second or third time writers too. So it’s also time for me to give some of the basic advice that could be helpful to those people. After all, getting started is usually the hardest part of the hobby and is definitely the hardest part of the profession. So why not give a little help?

For a bit I was stumped as to what to write, I’ve spent a lot of this year providing writing tips regardless. With a regular feature on this blog being exactly this, it can be a little rough thinking of something unique to NaNoWriMo. But then a friend pointed out something that would be tremendously helpful to everyone, especially on a month where everyone is aiming for 50,000 words or more. It’ll even be helpful once the month is completed and there’s a chance you’ll find this down the line. What is it?

How do you avoid getting stuck and frustrated enough to want to quit?

It’s easy for more seasoned writers to take for granted how hard it is to break past that inertia. We all have writer’s block, but it’s really not common after a point for you to have writers block in the middle of an idea. Time and again I’ve had it hit me before even starting only to find that everything’s smooth sailing once the work is underway. Rarely is the same true in the other direction. So what about the people just starting or haven’t developed that ability to just plow ahead? Well, this post’s for you… Continue reading Finding Your Way Through The Block →