The Writings and Musings of B.A. Matthews

(Writing) Excuses and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Sorry for the very few posts this week.  Some killer flu bug knocked me out, although I think it may have just been a continuation of whatever knocked me out last week as well.  Regardless, the last five days my schedule has been nothing but sleeping for nearly forteen hours out of every day, working eight and a half hours, and about an hour of travel time.  Most days, after four hours of being awake, I felt as if I’d been awake for a full twenty-four hours and wanted nothing more than to sleep again.  So, one again, this is a ferfent apology for lack of posts.  Next week will be much better (I assume) as today (for the first time in a week) I finally woke up before the alarm went off!   Such a little thing to make me so happy, but there you have it.  Now, on to more interesting matters!

No matter how ill I am I always listen to Writing Excuses and this week, as usual, was a doozy.  Their topic was major overhauls to broken stories and, having done this once before, I found it really informative.  A little over a year ago, I had to do a major overhaul on the Memories Written in Moonlight.  I had found out that when I wrote it, the brilliant story I had in my head hadn’t translated at all to what was actually on the page.  Due mainly to all the writing I’d been doing and all of the insight I’d gotten by listening to Writing Excuses, I was able to tell what I’d messed up and how I could fix it.  Realizing that I’d ignored everything in favour of the relationship between the main characters, I decided finally to craft a new plot for the characters, giving them more freedom to advance as characters, defining them better as individuals and placing them in situations that placed them in much more conflict between each other and their surroundings.  That story has been turning out much better in the rewrite, and will be worth the point of just editing, and not entirely rewriting it.

Howard Taylor (the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary)from Writing Excuses also made a comment that I think I’ll take to heart and really try to apply in my writing.  He suggested a book to us because, as he put it, “It had stand up and cheer moments that were not the epically heroic, lone warrior against a million demons… but moments … that were triumphs of character, moments of courage in the face of small pettiness…”  And I think that writers, especially new writers, like myself, really need to remember that sometimes it’s not the regular hero moments that we as readers will cheer for.  After all, we see those successes every day in the movies and in the books we read.  However, those character moments when your favourite character stands up to a bully and tells him to screw off… you really identify with the character at that moment.  It’s that moment of identification that will make readers continue to be sympathetic with your hero long after the moment of victory has taken place.  And it’s that sympathy towards the hero that will leave people remembering them long after they’ve put your book down.

In other news, me and a few friends got to head to the theatre today and we got to watch Disney’s new movie, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  I must admit, it’s a good movie and Disney seems to have succeeded finally in a movie kids will like for the explosions and yet a plot and characters set that the adults won’t mind watching.  The basic premise (in case you don’t know) is an epic centuries long battle between good and evil wizards culminating in a final battle between the sorcerer told of in prophesy and the head of the evil organization.  The world of the sorcerers lies in ours, just hidden through concentrated effort on the side of the good wizards.  The movie had an engaging plot, made fun of itself in all the right places, fun characters with generally complete motivations and a great CG budget that didn’t take away from the plot.  Some of the decisions were silly or obvious and, of course, the story had its share of shaky science along with a bit of a weak info-dump opening scene, but these didn’t really take away from the movie.  There was only one promise that I felt the movie didn’t quite keep at the end, and even then, they kept the promise, just not in a way I thought worked with the plot.  Basically, instead of taking something one twist further they stopped and went with the first choice.  I put off that minor disappointment to me temporarily forgetting that this was a Disney movie… and that they are not known for taking their twists one step further.

My final assessment though is that this movie is worth the money to go see.  It will definitely be entering my video collection when it comes out on video.  Especially if you are a fan of Urban Fantasy (meaning modern day mixes of magic and science) this is definitely a movie you’ll be able to appreciate.  Oh, Kudos go to Nicholas Cage who plays his part brilliantly and yet, every other character in the movie held their own weight as well.  Unlike with The Last Airbender, it was not two actors doing a brilliant job, but everyone coming through with a good performance based on their characters.  Hey, that means we actually got a good movie with decent acting… definitely something worth taking a look at, right?

I promise, now that my health is on the uprise, I will have more to discuss with you next week, as well as both the next part of Dual Melodies and a new music review for you to read, to make up for my inability to post things up as often as I would have otherwise enjoyed the last two weeks.  See you all then!

Posted in Blogs on July 18th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 14 Comments »

The last Airbender and Character Updates

Well, I’m back after way too long an absence.  It’s been nearly a week after all.  I only got one post up and no writing up this week either. I do apologize.  I was supposed to have more time than I ended up finding.  On the other hand, it turned out to be an odd week all around, so perhaps it’s just par for the course.

Unfortunately, I found out that the weekend long game that I mentioned previously had been cancelled.  So my weekend plans died, to be replaced by other more regular plans, although still busy enough that every day had something (for instance, Saturday officially became “recover/sleep day” from the party the night before).  Speaking of which, on Thursday my husband and I went to see The Last Airbender.

It was a really fun movie and I’d suggest going to see it.  However, I do suggest that you go in with low expectations.  Expect a great action movie, with wonderful element-bending effects, but don’t expect much else.  The acting was terrible (generally, at least. Assif Mondi did a great job as a villian, and the woman who played Princess Yue was exceptional.  Uncle Iro was great, although true to the original he was not, and yet his character motivations were definitely still in place.)  The story, unfortunately, turned into one big info dump and Aang decided that scaring an army without ever hurting a man, was the best way to deal with them… ‘cause you know, when army men get scared they always turn tail and run away instead of desperately attacking the thing that threatened them.  I’d actually suggest watching the cartoon instead.  It was much better in the places that mattered like plot and story, even if it wasn’t so cool in the “3-D/live-action” end of it.

Other than the movie though (and a new book I’m reading… don’t worry I’ll be posting a review of it next week), all I’ve been doing is gaming recently.

Alehandra, my priestess/summoner(also known as the Scourge of Lirr), has been saving people left/right and centre and had to make one of the harder decisions she’s had to make in a while.  We found a torturer and one of his victims… not a pretty site, especially since the girl was still alive.  Alehandra realized that she couldn’t save the woman, so she killed her out of mercy.  The men in the group had tried taking on the guy, but were getting their asses whooped… and even when that’s due to insane roles on the GM’s part, it’s scary.  Knowing that my character could die, especially if this guy was higher level than us, I decided that Alehandra still would insist that this evil man had to die.  So, my character healed up the party and started the attack against him again.  By a wonder we succeeded!  My character is so energized about it.  Now if we can just get these rescued people out of here, we’ll have it made.

Talia, the kick-ass swords-genasi-woman, has a just found out about a meeting arranged with her superior at work.  She’s busy wondering what she could have done wrong lately, though it’s more likely that they’ll be commending her on getting Dremere to turn himself in and getting him to join the watch than wanting to punish her for something… maybe another job that they’re having trouble with?  Also, her date with a Dwarven priest has been postponed, which means she may end up choosing Dremere accidently, even if as a guy he’s all wrong for her.  Mind you, the dwarf did mention that it was clan matters calling him back… I’d hate to not give him a fair chance due to family concerns.

Rapture, the cheerleader sorceress, may be having the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk with her boyfriend… which is surprising in that it’s not Rapture dumping him, but him dumping her.  Not that this relationship has been a match made in heaven by any means.  He got out of a bad relationship about a year ago, and hasn’t really gotten on well since.  And right now, Rapture seems pretty damned perfect since she’s a nympho who he can actually talk to about metaphysical stuff.  The real problem is that his old fiancé is still holding a torch for him and trying to ruin the relationship.  She’s smearing Rapture’s reputation by calling her a whore, and her boyfriend just made the situation worse by getting drunk and “buying” her away from her boss for an evening.  On the other hand, I suppose she has just cause.  Not only did Rapture steal her guy, but she also smashed the girl verbally at a party, before she knew who she was.  In fact, if memory serves me, she told the girl that while Rapture’s dress may have been bought by her boyfriend, that at least she hadn’t needed her father to buy her a date.  Yeah… A great smack-down, considering I had no idea who she was at the time.  **Sigh** Good times, good times.

I don’t have my new brothel owner finished yet, but as I won’t get a chance to play her for a few more weeks, I can work on finishing it.

I will be putting a few of the pictures I’ve drawn up soon… I do give everybody some warning though.  I’m only a hobby artist at the best of times.  On the writing front, I am doing Julnowrimo, but as of Day Three, I hadn’t gotten a chance to do any writing yet.  Not that I expected much more, since I knew that this week was going to be insane.  I can’t wait to start writing tomorrow though… hopefully some before my game (yes, more D&D.  This time I’m playing a catgirl Battle Dancer named Mmrumbra or ‘Rum for short) and definitely some afterwards!

Posted in Blogs on July 4th, 2010 by B.A. Matthews | | 6 Comments »

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