First Draft Done, What I Have Learned, and Publishing Coaches

30 11 2017

This will be  my usual post about writing, terse yet rambling, with some sundry crits at the end of movies and writers who have caught my brain.

doggo

So! Finished with draft one of Lampreyhead at 25K words. The world building was fun. The story is set in contemporary Philadelphia because I know the Northeast US well. Religious aspects appeared, were inevitable really, which added a whole new layer to the characters and conflict. The jokes are good. There may be one darling, but we’ll see if it survives (the “moist” joke I posted on my FB three weeks ago.)

How did I write the draft and what did I learn? I did a bit of an outline, but it was way too spare. I discovered a good way to outline a few weeks ago, but I also discovered that very few writers enjoy writing outlines or synopsis.  New method for outlining is like the Snowflake Method of writing novels: one line summary of each chapter, then add three lines to each summary, then add three more lines to each of those lines, etc. I’ll try to do that next time.

So, with what I thought was an adequate outline, I used Rachel Aaron’s method of speed writing, so I wrote the fun scenes first and backfilled the remainder of the plot. Writing the filler was not only a bit tedious, it exposed the gaps in my outline. Writing the draft took longer than it needed to, but this is how we learn.

I had a tough time getting a grip on the protagonist. I had behavior for scenes, I had previous short stories, but I didn’t have a deeper character profile that could support this work.

I kept his nerdiness and built around that. I considered that LH was 700 years old and that he would be a little bored. Being made Evil, he knew there is a God because religious items caused injury. However, I had him go 700 years without knowing who made him or why. His problem became the reverse of Mortality: is there a Satan to justify his existence?

Supporting characters fulfilled their functions, but they need more depth in the second draft. He meets the werewolf who will be a recurring character in the series, but the were doesn’t have a lot of agency. The Mortal in this story (needed to help bring out the supernatural world-building) became a sophisticated businesswoman thrill-seeker; can I pull off this complicated character?

I was hoping to market this series as “Erotic Paranormal”, but I have no experience in writing erotica. Besides, the plot only has one valid erotic scene. I’m now looking at the humor market.

I have to finish the second draft for my writers group, that deadline being Sunday.

I learned about Publishing Coaches on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast. My research has provided a couple of names and I will be contacting them tonight.

Recent discoveries: the movie “The Devil’s Candy” is a pleasant throwback haunted house horror that’s well made. “The Midnight Meat Train” squandered a great production on a weak Clive Barker story. “Cult of Chucky” still camps it up, but keep an eye on Fionna Dorrif, because she is excellent. Belgian horror “Raw” takes your unsettling French moodiness to a college for veteranarians, but worry not, the animals are safe from the cannibal sisters. “Demonic” takes ghost hunters to a haunted house, but even Maria Bello can’t save us from a flat ending.

 





Learn Writing From Wince Inducing Comments About “Blade Runner 2045”

9 10 2017

There is nothing wrong with loving without qualification. It opens your heart, lowers blood pressure, extends endocrine life, whatever. As I seem to be a wet blanket with in rare exceptions, I rarely have that rosy glow of fan-a-vision to distract me from a media’s problems.

How do we know that rosy glow of fan-a-vision is blocking our critical eye? Have you used these phrases?

“It was fantastic for the first two parts, but fell apart in the last third.” The last third of anything falls apart because of the first two parts. A resolution falls apart because the conflict had flaws. In Blade Runner 2045 (BR2045), the world was so complicated it stumbled over itself.

SPOILERS ON

Let’s work backwards: The MacGuffin chick was going to procreate and lead the Replicants…with a immune system that makes skin-to-skin contact impossible. Deckard’s body wasn’t going to be found…in a world where a drone can locate a box buried 30 feet. Quasi-Rachel had the wrong color eyes…after Jared Leto could have double-checked her DNA off the original’s skull. There’s more, but I’m bored.

SPOILERS OFF

You’ll note that none of these details had direct bearing on the plot. The immunity, the location technology, the skull, were all details which could have easily been fixed. But the plot was so damn complicated, the details tripped up the cohesion. One can overlook a few sparkles, but in a 2 hour 40 minute film, the sparkles become a haze.

“The artistry of (actor/director/whoever artist) stood out.” In a work of art, nothing is supposed to be a darling. The previous comment was applied to Jared Leto’s villain. Jared Leto did a great creepy job. He was a great creep. He had to be exceedingly, noticably creepy, because the script gave him absolutely nothing else to do but sit and be creepy. In the first BR, the genius scientist played chess, day-traded stocks, explained genetics, and was understated in creepiness. (In real life, company CEOs are dynamic and involved with their corporation.) Here in BR2045, Jared Leto had nothing to do except two acts of ewww, forcing the director to have Leto overact. Again, a weak script.

“Such a beautiful movie!” How much money was spent on this movie? It better damn well be pretty. Again, dazzling doesn’t help a weak script.

You know how you’re not supposed to let your darlings in, no matter how pretty? The Rachel’s Eye scene could have been a flat-out rejection of artifice instead of eye-color. The Zen CEO could have been deleted and the heavy lifting given to his henchwoman. McGuffin Chick could have been healthy.

All of those fixes would have smoothed out the wrinkles in the plot. But man, their scenes sure were pretty, SFX laden set-pieces.

I’m guessing this movie will fare better than Prometheus in movie history. But not by much.

Use darlings sparingly and avoid screwed up plots.

 

 

 

 

 





Colonel Sanders and the Demonic Lover

1 06 2017

I love the conjunction of genres and the taming of monsters that occurs in paranormal romance, and much of OGOM’s research centres on this. The demon lovers of paranormal romance range from vampires (of course), through faeries, angels, and werewolves; the odder candidates include mermen, gargoyles, and even ghosts and zombies. But the monstrous lover…

via Colonel Sanders and the Demonic Lover — Open Graves, Open Minds





Horror Movies With Dark Endings

29 04 2017

What separates a good horror movie from a great one is the ending. Some horror films just don’t know when or how to end. But when a horror flick gets the ending right, then you have something really special. And by “right,” I mean dark and/or disturbing. But be warned: … Read More… The post…

via Horror Movies with Dark F*ucking Endings!! — AnythingHorror.com





Writers: Find These Shows And Mine Them For Ideas

17 04 2017

FeaturedInsideNo9

This is a great article! I am going to amazon.uk and buying two of these series!





Horror Movies for Easter

15 04 2017

Yes, a lovely spring afternoon, the eve of Easter, and one’s thoughts turn naturally to gentle bunnies. Candy, jelly beans, chocolate eggs. But not all that gentle according to Phil Brown on CGMAGONLINE.COM! Yes, from Jan Svankmajer’s ALICE to DONNY DARKO bunnies have their own dark side as well, and let us not forget WATERSHIP […]

via Bunnies Unite, Ten Top Horror Films for Easter Enjoyment — jamesdorrwriter





“Write Your Novel In a Month”! hahahahahahha….

13 04 2017

I am a sucker for titles like this, because I want to increase word rate, brain speed, income, and become a Singularity of Slack.

However.

Once again, I fell for a title — this time a podcast — making the very claim in this post title.

Once again, the writer said something like: “I was stuck in my writing and questioning the value of my very Krebs Cycle. Then I joined up with the ______________ Method. I got it my novel done in fifteen days!”

Then: “I-spent-the-next-several-months-rewriting-because-it-was-a-first-draft.”

Yeha-NO.

Hell, I’ll even mention the method, because it’s getting such promotion

CHRIS FOX “Write 10,000 Words An Hour!” Method!

I’ve heard three people on podcasts including Fox describing the method. Just from the description there are obvious flaws in the method. Namely:

  1. Dictation into Dragon software or into a recorder is not “writing”. You still have to spend time deciphering your yammering into a transcript.
  2. If your 10K words are crap, it’s good you can write another 10K words of revision tomorrow — oh wait, that needs proofreading and rearranging and imposition of structure. Which takes time.
  3. Kevin Anderson can do the dictation into novel stuff because he has years of practice, a secretarial staff, and an editor employed exclusively with him.
  4. Lastly, I’ll go here: take a moment and read a bit of Chris Fox’s fiction on Amazon’s Sneak Peek. His finished novels read like treatments of other people’s novels. How does he support himself? Living off savings from his Silicon Valley job and you already figured it out by selling books promising 10K Word Output yadda.

Do not fall for this “Novel In A Month” crap. I’m a lazy, unreasonable ass and I haven’t found anything that works and creates anything signing your name to.

Keep writing, friends.





Writers: Your Weird Obsession Will Become Fodder For Future Grad Student Thesis

8 04 2017

“…it’s what happens in the United States when a truly radical ideology takes over.” This is George Romero’s answer to the question of what his film Night of the Living Dead is about. To me, this is a most thoughtful and complete assessment, and perhaps what explains the movie’s enduring success. Of course, on […]

via The Importance of Theme in Horror… and Zombies… and Dogshit — S.E. Casey Author





Writers: “Weird Fiction” Via Movie “The Void”

6 04 2017

First the trailer:

 

Now the review:

If Stuart Gordon’s “From Beyond” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing” were to have a baby in the hospital from “Hellraiser II”,  that baby would grow up short of its potential and  be “The Void”. I don’t mean that in an insulting way, but if you like your body horror with a dash of Weird, then “The Void” is for you.

Describing the plot is difficult because much of the backstory is revealed as the plot unfolds. Two rural guys shoot people dead, one flees and is picked up by a sheriff and taken to the local hospital. This hospital is closing soon due to a recent fire. Which killed the child the sheriff had with his ex-wife the ER nurse. Speaking of preggers, a country teen is about to give birth and her grandpa is there for support.  A kindly doctor, another nurse, a trainee, and another patient are introduced. A state trooper arrives.

Then within fifteen minutes of film time, there is a three-way guns out stand-off, four of these characters are dead and one has mutated into part Grizzly Bear, part butt polyp. Lovecraftian hijinks ensue. In a place beyond time and space, pacing is a problem in “The Void”.

There are magic tomes. There is a sub-basement where none existed before. There are strikingly-clad anonymous cultists. There are double-crosses and mistaken motives.

The plot holds together. The magic system is kept as simple as possible. The actors do great work with an occasionally awkward dialogue.  However, the effects rule this movie. The undead polyp creatures are all practical effects and they are gooshy. Gourmets of  horror movies will see “homages” to “Hellraiser II”, “The Thing”, “The Fly”, “From Beyond”, “In The Mouth Of Madness” and probably more.

Was there anything fresh? It’s a hell of a thing to note, but frankly, cutting pieces off your face doesn’t have the shock it once had.

First time script writers and directors here, they kept to the tried and comfortable, yet kept out of the actors way, so the performances were quite good. Someone once said you can tell if a horror was written by guys in his 20s, because those horrors will have churning uteruses, and that’s because guys in their 20s are just finding out how gross pregnancy can be. And man do uteruses churn in “The Void”! It’s all within the theme of birth and fate, but still dudes, there’s a reason why men have a waiting room.

Wait for “The Void” on Netflix.

Now the writing blather:

Note that I noted “homages”. I do not understand “homages”. An artist’s job is to swipe ideas and before using them, file off the serial numbers. Filing off serial numbers is an art. If a reader can immediately recognize a reference, the writer has only mimicked, and not made the most of the reader’s time.

That said, what is “Weird Horror” or “Weird Fiction”, and what can we do about it?

Here’s Wikipedia.

You will notice in Wikipedia that Lovecraft’s definition is essentially “spooky stories where spooks can get you anywhere”. Noted editor S.T. Joshi’s academic sub-categories have diluted that dread further until it has become watery Red Bull.

The problem is that back in the 1930’s, the Weird creatures invented by Mr. Weird himself H.P. Lovecraft, those creatures were unfathomable. Now they make Cthulhu plushtoys. Non-Christian monsters are the norm now.

For me,  “Weird” contains these elements:

  1. Unknown forces existing outside our dimensions (“beyond Time and Space”).
  2. The questioning of reality itself (are we in a movie? Is that crazy guy actually shaping reality?)
  3. The interrogation of how consciousness fits within reality, especially within flesh.

For me, the goal is to create nausea, not just polypy-squid nausea. Existential nausea is the feeling you get when you consider that not only will existence go on without you, it has been without you for longer than you can comprehend both before and after, in a place that is the briefest flash in existence, if indeed “existence” actually has objective substance. Hold me.

The use of a nameless cult who know The Truth, or a scientist finding The Secret, or an artist who can shape The Universe, is how we get the reader to connect with nausea. The POV character has one assumption peeled away (like the real purpose of mission), then another (that his mission is safe), leaving to fall away the rules of society, of perception, of nature, of value, then finally, of comprehension.

If you want to learn more about “Weird”, try the movies mentioned above, especially “From Beyond” and “In The Mouth Of Madness”. Also try:

  • “Resolution”, like “ITMoM”
  • “Absentia”, for critters beyond T&S

In fiction, try:

  • Any H.P. Lovecraft, especially “The Whisperer In Darkness” and “The Color Out Of Space”. They would be standard Doctor Who fare now, but that tells you something.
  • “The Grin In The Dark”, as much as he bumbles in this book, Ramsey Campbell has some really cool ideas about the development of consciousness.

Do not try “The Weird”, a compendium by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. I love this book, but their definition spreads so far afield as to be nearly meaningless.  Read it for entertainment.

These brief lists are of media which provokes that feeling I described.

Are there books or movies that make you wonder if you are safe at all, or sane, or even exist?  TELL ME.





Writers: Create A Truer Dystopia With Neurotic Cannibals

5 04 2017

The times being what they are, a lot more dystopias have been popping up in media. Lately, I’ve noticed these new dysfunctional societies have these things in common:

  1. Centralized planning, both economic and political
  2. Industrial efficiency valued more than privacy
  3. Poverty
  4. No distractions like sports, art, holidays, contests.
  5. Discrete cannibalism

Maybe it’s just me just cherry-picking, but it’s what I’m noticing. Here’s an example from Pseudopod: “Meat” by Sandra M. Odell.

That this is a short story makes no difference in world building. A word here, a phrase there, adds to the fleshing out (sorry) of the environment and adding to the reader’s ability to relate without detracting from the plot.

For me, a pared-down dystopia is unbelievable.

Consider the archetype for the dystopic story, the novel “1984”. Grungy, war-weary, and soul sucking. Yet it had the very basics of distraction. There was music. There were museums and newpapers. There were viewscreens. All of it was government approved, sure, but it took the proles minds away from their drudgery, and made them more efficient for the long haul.

There were pubs and perhaps illicit drugs. There was a lottery with announced winners (invented prizes for invented winners, but still, a distraction). There was chocolate, weak and smoky in flavor, which makes me assume there were spices, so maybe a culinary culture for homemakers.

Why do I find these distractions important? Without these distractions, the citizens would very quickly go insane.

Now, insanity is a further opportunity for worldbuilding. Cultures have their own, distinct neurosis in response the culture’s environment and social pressures. These neurosis are called “culture-bound syndromes”. We know about amok , a murderous rage found in Indonesia (and source of the term “to run amok”). What of  taijin kyofusho in Japan, which makes a citizen so afraid of making social blunders that he refuses to leave his home? A disorder among the Inuit called piblokto is thought to be caused by both isolation and Vitamin A deficiency. Last, we have the origin of hysteria in Western Europe, first defined as a woman’s disorder which caused emotional excess leading to rebelliousness.

A dystopia would have any one of these, plus oppressive treatments for their removal.

Note in “Meat” that there are “crazy heads” who are condemned to “Processing” and that the protagonist herself has a rather nifty psychosis developing for solid social reasons. Well done there.

I know you’re asking “what about the cannibalism”?

I’m wondering if a reader could still relate to an industrial dystopia where cannibalism is considered a duty. In “Logan’s Run”, killing people off at the age of 30 was sanctified by a supernatural “renewal” ritual. There are primitive societies where eating enemies or the brains of deceased relatives was encouraged, the latter creating a culture bound syndrome (subject of the X-Files episode “Kuru”).  What would it take for your closest city to dig in?

Did “Soylent Green” have side-effects?

What dystopia strikes you as believable? How messed up is it?








%d