A few months ago at Steve Perry’s writing seminar, Steve made us jump through several literary hoops (commonly referred to as “Exercises”) with the admonition that they were what it was really like in the real world of writing. There were tons of cool things, real eye-openers some of them: The Three Plots, You Must Kill Your Darlings, Writing From Another Perspective, Stereotypes and Archetypes and The Five Minute Story Exercise were among my favorites (I failed the five minute thing horribly. I have an innate need to develop characters for several pages & Steve wanted PUDDING! NOW!)
One exercise that I felt particularly proud of was the Tagline:
“Describe your entire book, entailing the essence of it’s contents, in one or two sentences, no more.”
This one was way harder for many of the attendees than you could imagine. One or two sentences? But my story has robots! Villains! Romance! High Adventure! Hell, there’s even Pastry! I saw some severe brow-wrinkling as authors tried desperately to weigh out what could be included and what should be chucked for the sake of two sentences. Some were attempting to redefine exactly how long a sentence could even be.
There’s even going to be a time-vortex thingy.
*SIGH*
I’m Soooooo misunderstood by my generation.
8 comments:
Hello Mr. Edmonds. Just wanted to say this post cracked me up. You're truly a funny guy. Btw, I'm a Filipino, a fellow MA (Tabimina Balintawak), and also an amateur writer. More power and happy holidays.
"I really AM writing a story involving Asian Vampire Vixens battling an Ancient Squid God for the Fate of Humanity in Historic Charleston, S.C."
That is so you. Why would anyone think that was a joke? Unless, that is... no, never mind.
So, flipping around the channels last p.m. and I came across Ghost Rider. After your sterling rec, I had to check it out.
I figured, Well, Bobbe gets on these rants and it couldn't be *that* bad.
I sit corrected. It was so bad, I couldn't stop watching it. Like a train wreck in slo-mo, it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
Truly awful.
I'm guessing everybody connected to it had to back up to collect their paychecks, not being able to look anybody in the eye and keep from looking away in shame -- or maybe just keep a straight face ...
Well, I AM judgmental, no argument there. But it's only for things I have a high expectation of. F'rinstance, if you were to make the linear sequential movie in the Arthur C. Clarke "Odyssey" books (which would be "2061", for those in the know), I would EXPECT GREAT THINGS.
You have source material written by a genius in the SciFi fiction field.
The first movie is legendary in historical films, and taught in major universities as an example of extraordinary camera technique of the day.
The second movie, while not a "triumph" per se, was a great flick that has aged well and preserves it's watchability over the years. It's also got some mid-range logic play that can attract a wide audience without losing anybody to what I call "over-science"...That point where SciFi books ramble off into the sunset about the most minuscule details of the Proton for several irrelevant pages, both boring and losing the reader (unless you're the bastard child of Richard Feynman and Robert Oppenheimer).
So, with a pedigree like this, I would expect Hollywood to take the actual people who pay their salaries (Us, the fans, the geeks, the people who loved robots and spaceships in High School because girls wouldn't look at us) into consideration when filming. If I heard Brett Ratner was gonna direct it & Brad Pitt was playing the part of Heywood Floyd, well, let's just say I would be performing fellatio on my Baretta 9mm before the previews commercial was over.
So having said that, Ghost Rider was one of the ones I held a high standard to. It was one of Marvel's earliest diversions into DIFFERENT. It was occultish, dark, and evil, the main character was tortured with bearing a demon under his skin that he couldn't control, and it was pure evil while Johnny Blaze was good. The story lines were great, and it was my favorite comic of the late 70's & early 80's. In the mid 80's they took it a different direction (which is the type you see in the movie...Ghost Rider is a force for good) and lost much of their fanbase, eventually discontinuing the series.
Now, the choice of actors: I've never seen Nicholas Cage play anything but a fucking loony, and although he does it with relish, it's getting a tad old.
Sam Elliot is always a sure bet, but they fall back to his old standard "Grizzled Old Wise Man" act, which although he does extremely well, is also a bit watery for the flick.
Eva Mandez is Latino eye-candy, nothing more. You could have cut her role from the flick and not missed it at all.
So that's why I was so down on it. The Hellcycle was great, but the CGI acting far outshined the real actors. When you have it in your power to make something extraordinary and you can't be bothered to look up between toots of coke to proof-read a script, well...It makes me sad to think of what movies could become in another 10-15 years.
Why Charleston, SC?
Hi Irene!
I chose Charleston because I was born there, and if there's one culture I have down COLD, it's the South. I was raised all over South Carolina & was actually living in North Myrtle Beach when Hurricane Hugo hit us.
Like Pat Conroy, lots of my stories have some southern flair to them, in one way or another. When you are a South Carolinian, they never let you live it down that your state was the first to secede from the Union.
"I've never seen Nicholas Cage play anything but a fucking loony"
You didn't see "The Rock"? Good movie.
I did see the Rock, and it was a good movie. But Cage still couldn't keep "looney" off the menu from time to time. But I have to admit he does a good job when he's reigned in.
Maybe I should say "Twitchy"...
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