(Writing) Excuses and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Posted on Sunday, July 18th, 2010Sorry 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!
Tags: Avatar, Blog, Disney, Dual Melodies, Howard Taylor, Novels, Sick, Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Last Airbender, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Writing, Writing Excuses
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