Chasing MY Bard
Posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010Today, while listening to Writing Excuses podcast on style editing, I realized that I tend to remove too much of my voice during the editing process. I took the advice to heart that I was going to want to leave everything in and that I was going to have to be super hard with myself to come out with anything good. Realizing that this was what I tended to do my writing made me stop for a moment though. I know I need a few classes in editing properly, but until I can take those classes, this was excessively useful. It reminds me that my style is what will get readers to stick with me and that by trying to remove my voice from my writing, all I’m really doing is a disservice to myself. By doing that, all I’m telling others and even worse, proving to myself are those dark fears that my style isn’t good enough. Telling myself “I am…” is the fastest way to make it so. Therefore I’m going to stop that immediately, and instead work on a plan to counteract the flaw.
It also reminded me that there are different types of editing, and that until I’m better at editing I may want to take the time to do all three instead of slopping all of them together. It’s something worth thinking about, and something that I think will help my writing immensely as soon as I puzzle out how to do it properly. More on this when I give it a try on my next bit of writing to come out, I’m sure.
I found the time to go see Inception as well, earlier this week, and I must admit that I was impressed. And even though I also gave Sorcerer’s Apprentice a good review, please don’t think that means I give most movies a good review. In general, I’m actually pretty tough on my movies and movies only get a really good rating if they were exceptional. Let me say now, that Inception is.
It’s not just the CG (which is amazing) or the acting (which was emotionally charged), or even the way it left you feeling (incredible and active)… no, what really stood out for me here was the story told and the rules given. You can’t carry a movie on CG or good acting alone… there has to be an engaging story and the movie can’t break the disbelief, otherwise it has failed in its task.
As an example, while I enjoyed the movie “Avatar”, there were a few moments that pulled me away from the movie. Why send in ground troops for an aerial bombing? Why not blast the area from space? Why “Unobtainium” and is that strange metal related to “Atmospherium” of The-Lost-Skeleton-of-Cadavra fame? Why were the aliens humanoid in shape when almost every other native creature had at least 6 limbs (a throwback of genetics, perhaps)? On the other hand, character motivations were good, the acting was good, the new technology succeeded. To quote Howard Taylor (Schlock Mercenary and Writing Excuses podcast) “It was the best ‘Fern Gully’ remake, ever!”
It was good, but it left me with too many bad queries, questioning the science, the intelligence of the enemies or the intelligence of the writers (Open Rant – Unobtainium… I still can’t get over that. Come up with something different. “Garonomium” or “Skotepinium” perhaps. I don’t care if it sounds silly, so long as it’s not an obviously understandable word with the last letter or three taken off and “-ium” tacked on the end – End Rant). Now, following the common book saying that a gun seen in the first act must be used in the second, I’ll compare this to Inception.
The technology in Inception, while not described fully, was good. It had its own jargon, equipment and uses which were explained as they became pertinent to the story. And they did this smoke and mirrors well enough that you don’t even notice it being done. The story is solid and even with the “apprentice” character introductions to what you can do with the technology and the inevitable “working montage”, the story wouldn’t have been complete without it. The characters were intelligent and even the apprentice caught on quickly. I can’t think of an instance where anybody got caught by the same mistake twice. Even the character whose flaws were noticeable compensated for their arrival whenever he could.
The movie didn’t break disbelief fortunately; the scenes looked awesome and were done brilliantly and they were all stitched together seamlessly. The only scene that almost took me out for a moment was a single gunfight near the end of the movie where I thought it was unreasonable and added in simply to hype up the movie goers. Even in that instance, directly after the fight they explained why the scene had been necessary and discussed how they were to deal with the repercussions drawn up from it. I loved the chance The characters all stuck to their motivations and yet, I don’t think any of them were obviously cliché. They looked, acted and felt real because the scriptwriters took the time to make them so and the actors furthered this by truly getting into their roles. Even Leonardo DiCaprio gave a worthy performance!
If you were wondering whether to see this movie, I would suggest doing so. If you only see one movie this summer make it this one.
In other news, I ran into a friend of mine from the Nanowrimo group here in Calgary yesterday (Hey Kai!). I was quite embarrassed since I had convinced her to participate in Julno, and then had done so badly at it myself. I haven’t done an actual count yet, but I think my total in fiction words is sitting at 2 – 5K for the month. Now, I know this happens every year at this time and I had been hoping to break myself out of the rhythm. While I wasn’t able to succeed, this gentle nudge (perhaps more of a trip since she managed to get about 25K and she started on the 16th) from my friend reminded me that I do have control of this, and that while I may like to say “I get Writer’s Block from May to September”, it’s not true. I get a severe case of procrastination and don’t WANT to do anything during this time.
I did manage to come up with a plan to help me out which mainly involves me listening to podcasts designed to kick my butt, get me thinking and therefore writing again. Writing Excuses isn’t quite as good for this (since I’ve listened to every episode 2-3 times now… What can I say… I get very bored at work), so I pulled out the big guns. An old episode of Tee Morris’s Podcast “The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy”, aptly named, “Easy Distrac- – Oh hey, A Butterfly!”. While the podcast is now over, I really enjoyed it and he’s been kind enough to leave up the audio files. This episode details how what I’m doing is definitely procrastination. And while Writing Excuses gets me eager to write, Tee’s way of slapping you in the face and reminding you that if you want to write for a living then you have to consider it a business is exactly what I need right now. Offhand (since I’m being distracted anyway), Tee Morris has the sexiest male voice ever. Give him a listen on Chasing the Bard, a podcast novel by Philippa Ballantine and I promise, if you like sexy voices, you’ll swoon (if you like the ladies, listen for Phillipa herself… Gods that woman’s voice could make me “curious”.)
Oh, I also heard the best quote ever today. “Disneyland is like falling in love, someone’s taking your hand and you go on this enchanting evening and you look into his eyes and its all romantic and nice. Six Flags is like being repeatedly fucked hard over and over again until you just leave shaking and exhausted, but ultimately better for having that experience.” Thank you Alex Day… I think you may have just made mine.
Tags: Avatar, Blog, Chasing the Bard, Inception, julno, Julnowrimo, July Novel Writing Month, Leonardo DiCaprio, motivation, Nanowrimo, Novels, Philippa Ballantine, Tee Morris, The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy, Writing
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