constablewrites

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Since this is randomly getting notes years later, I feel like I should add that on the next draft, this scene got cut completely and I never had to do that research. I have a bad habit of falling down rabbit holes, so this is something I should honestly be doing more often.

Them: How’s the writing going?

Me: *looks down at the thing I wrote just now*

Me: Going great!

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if you’re white and wanna write a poc character and feel awkward about it i implore you to ignore any twitblr stuff treating it as a massive ethical burden and instead come in more with the same mindset you’d have if you wanted to write about idk firefighters but didn’t know anything about firefighters so you do... research. Like fuck off with the weird kinda creepy calls for spiritual introspection you’re not writing about god damn space aliens you’re writing about humans and if you think you need more perspective of different life experiences just read?

[constablewrites]

In Which I Give Way Too Much Thought to the Sex Lives of Animated Characters

I’ve fallen off the wagon on my weekly posts here, because ::gestures vaguely at 2020:: It isn’t that I haven’t had observations to make, more that I lacked the particular motivation to actually write them up. But there’s one thing that can always drive me to the keyboard: getting nice and annoyed!

Star Wars Rebels is a deeply irritating show, mainly because when it is good, it is truly excellent, but there’s a lot of meh to wade through to reach those moments. It seems to be aimed at a younger audience than Clone Wars, and lacks that show’s advantages of both the well-established characters from the films and its urgent newsreel energy (because who needs Act I when Tom Kane can just yell exposition at you). There are a lot of interesting ideas and setups in Rebels that just never get properly explored, but the one I found most disappointing was the relationship between Kanan and Hera.

(Major spoilers after the cut. Go watch the show, it’s not terribly long and, as I said, the good stuff is really good.)

I was surprised by how much Kanan’s character grabbed me. Maybe it’s because I find the concept--someone who knows he’s unfit to be a mentor but has no choice but to fake his way through--to be highly relatable as an elder millennial, or maybe it’s just that I glom onto protector characters. He has great chemistry with Hera, and I am a shipper of the highest order. So when the final season started focusing on their romance, it should have been catnip for me.

Reader, it was not.

Oh, the interrupted kiss when they’re trying to get out of the city on Lothal is solid ship-tease stuff, to be sure. But then you get to 4x7 “Kindred” (not gonna link a video because I couldn’t find a good one and the damn things always get taken down later anyway). Kanan asks if she’s ever thought about their future together, Hera demurs and says that he knows how she feels. He isn’t so sure, so after a bit of cockblocking from the A-plot, she kisses him for the first time (that we see). The exchange is brief and doesn’t quite fit the established dynamic, but it’s fine.

The problem is, immediately after that kiss, she gets on a ship and leaves for rebel command. The next time Kanan sees her is the rescue mission that kills him. So for the [Babies Ever After] epilogue to make sense, one of these things must be true:

Force ghosts can fuck

They find time during the harrowing escape to sneak away and hook up

Hera is already pregnant when she leaves Lothal

Not only do the first two seem unlikely, but the third point works with most of the rest of the series. A show with such a young audience was probably never going to state outright that two characters are doing it, so they just have to imply it in ways that older viewers will pick up on: Hera calls Kanan “dear” in the very first episode. They talk to each other about things they don’t talk about with the rest of the crew. And Kanan being squirrelly on Ryloth? That isn’t a guy meeting the father of his best friend or even his crush, that is [recognizably] a guy meeting the father of the girl he’s boinking.

I don’t have a problem with a kids’ show not getting into detail about the love lives of its parental figures, and I honestly think more media should feature healthy, established couples. But I feel like the writers realized that they couldn’t show the impact Kanan’s death has on Hera if their relationship is entirely off-screen. So they did finally make it clear that this is a romance--but they did it in a way that makes it seem like the romance started right there at the end, since Hera’s unhappy “We’ve talked about this before” gives the impression that she’s turned him down in the past. And that just doesn’t add up. (Not to mention the sudden ramp-up makes it pretty obvious that one of them is gonna die.)

But this isn’t Fandom Bitching Wednesdays. Was there a way to do it differently?

Potential fix: Cut the kid. Probably the most straightforward, since that’s what creates the out-and-out plot hole Issues: Also the most depressing option. Kanan’s son is the thing that gives him a happy(ish) ending, allowing a part of him to live on beyond just the memories of his friends. Plus, it makes their interactions in the early seasons kinda confusing if they were never supposed to be in a relationship at all.

Potential fix: They were in a relationship but were very private about it and avoided any PDA around the rest of the crew. Conversation plays out more or less the same, but Hera’s reluctance to talk is because she’s aware that the others are watching, and the kiss is significant because she’s choosing not to hide anymore. Issues: My vote for most satisfying option, but would still benefit from a scene or two earlier in the series setting it up. Also means that if you wanted to keep the bit at the fuel depot where Hera tells Kanan she loves him as a big climactic moment, you would definitely need to establish why she’s never said it before. (Especially because she calls him “love” during the evacuation of Chopper Base.) There are plenty of options for this that would fit in with her character--perhaps something about her own parents, or how they’re in a war, or how she just thinks it’s less complicated if no one knows--but you would have to pick one and show it.

Potential fix: They were in a relationship but it wasn’t “serious,” or perhaps was even a strictly friends-with-benefits arrangement. So when Kanan is asking about their future, it’s not a new thing but an escalation, and builds more naturally toward Hera saying she loves him. Issues: This is how I tried to headcanon it initially, because it’s the only thing that makes any of it make sense as-is. And it’s easy to see how Kanan would have initially been happy with that setup (more on that in a second), but less so for Hera, with her pet names and talk of how they’re a family. As above, her reason for putting up that barrier, and for keeping it up this long, would need to be clearly established.

Potential fix: FWB but reverse this scene: Hera is the one who wants more and Kanan is resisting. I mean, come on guys, the “Jedi are forbidden to form attachments” thing was right there. It’s a stupid rule, but you have the opportunity for Kanan to acknowledge it as a stupid rule and reject it. Kanan is also exactly the kind of guy who would try to ride out the loophole of “It’s okay that I’m in love with her if I never say it or call her my girlfriend.” Variant: they were in a typical relationship but Kanan pulled back when he trained with Bendu to control his emotions, so what Hera wants isn’t something new, but rather what they had before. Issues: The dynamic of “girl wants romance, boy can’t express emotions” is pretty played out. The fact that Kanan broaches the topic by asking what would end her involvement with the Rebellion further adds an interesting angle that builds on stuff that’s been brought up before--war is all she’s ever known so she doesn’t shy from it, while he feels like he’s already survived one war and wants to be done with it--and you lose that if she’s the one who raises the question. It also follows that he would then be the one to say “I love you” at the fuel depot, which somewhat dampens the power of his sacrifice to say that for him.

Perhaps the real lesson here is that sometimes there aren’t any perfect solutions to story problems, just a series of trade-offs. This is especially true in a serialized medium, where part of the story might already be out there by the time you realize you would need to make changes to it to properly set up where you want to take it. If you missed the chance to show us a very important conversation, the best you can do might just be to reference that it happened and hope (in vain) that your audience will just roll with it instead of being nitpicky bastards.

And maybe Force ghosts just fuck, I dunno.

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The latest kerfuffle on Publishing Twitter concerns this tweet by Janet Reid (aka the Query Shark):

I can't believe I need to say this AGAIN! Please do not, under any circumstances, email clients to ask what I'm like to work with BEFORE YOU'VE GOTTEN AN OFFER or even queried!! They tell me about it, and your name goes on my list of people I don't want to work with. Ever.

And people seem to be getting all huffy at the implication that authors shouldn’t be doing this kind of vetting at all, and how dare agents try to cut off this kind of communication, and what are you trying to hide, etc.

Which is weird, because that’s not what she’s saying at all. She’s gone on record elsewhere saying she will gladly put prospective clients in touch with her authors. People somehow seem to have missed the part that’s in all caps...

Look, you should absolutely be doing some basic diligence before you put an agent on your list to query. That means things like: Are they in AAR? Does your novel match up with their wish list? Do they rep your genre and category? Are they actively acquiring? What have they sold? This is all stuff you should be able to find on your own, using the agent’s social media, the agency website, Publisher’s Marketplace, just Google, etc.

And you should definitely want to talk to their authors before you sign, to find out things like: How responsive are they? Are they editorial? Do they help when you’re kicking around an idea or do they only want to be brought in when there’s a finished draft? Were you satisfied with the terms of the contract they got you? Have you ever had an instance where their vision for a book didn’t match yours, and how was that handled?

Trying to dig into all that information BEFORE YOU’VE EVEN QUERIED is, frankly, bonkers. It’s a question of scale.

Agents receive hundreds of queries per week. Based on those who give info about their response rates, they’re only going to even request material from about 5-10% of those. Of the requests they make, they’re only offering on 5-10% of THOSE. So statistically, a given agent is probably gonna reject you. Which means from the author’s end, you’re likely to submit to dozens if not hundreds of agents before signing with someone. Does it really make sense to go into that kind of depth for every.single.one of them? And does it make sense for authors to take the time to answer those kinds of (frankly rather personal) questions about what it’s like to work with their agent for people who more than likely never will?

I’d liken it to calling up HR to talk about benefits when you’re looking for a job. It would absolutely be foolish to take the job without finding out that information. But calling them up before you’ve been asked to interview? Before you’ve even applied? That... is not making the impression you think it will. And from the other side of that analogy, it’s very reasonable for a job candidate to request that their references not be contacted until the final stages. They’re not saying not to contact them at all, just that it’s not a good use of anyone’s time if they might still get knocked out of the running for other reasons. It should also be noted that if you have an established relationship with someone, reaching out to them for an inside scoop plays completely differently than if they’re a total stranger.

(I’m also a bit bemused that so many of these indignant responses are from established authors who are like, “My agent is great, I’d love to recommend them!” Yeah, I’d figure an NYT bestseller would generally be pretty satisfied with the agent who got them there. I want to hear from the midlist author whose first series just did okay and is trying to place their second, or the author who’s just about to debut, or the author whose publisher went under and had to fight to get paid. Plus, something tells me that if those authors were regularly fielding from hundreds of people the kind of detailed questions I listed earlier, they’d probably add some caveats to that statement.)

In general I think the scale thing flummoxes a lot of writers trying to get published. They’re only seeing their one book, their one question, their one submission. They’re not asking for much of someone’s attention, just a few minutes! But those few minutes add up so, so fast. (If you take 5 minutes to respond to a query, answering 480 of them would make up a full work week. I’ve heard of agents getting that many in a single day.) If their boundaries seem overly restrictive, that just usually means they’re in a position where they’re okay with potentially missing out on something good because they’ve already got enough on their plate.

I do think the idea of someone being blacklisted for messing this up is a bit much. But I also think that if an author is reaching out to their agent all “You believe this shit?” they’re probably not reacting to a single email wanting to ask a couple of questions. Someone who cares about messing these things up is probably not doing it. The people who get themselves blacklisted are the ones who think the rules don’t apply to them, not the ones who are trying to follow the rules but aren’t clear on what they are.

In short, if you’re thinking you might want to query an agent, just send the damn query (according to their submission guidelines). Don’t start picking apart the clauses in the wedding venue contract before you’ve even been on a date.

[constablewrites]

Reclaiming Cinderella

The other day, my husband told me about a conversation he had with a woman who claimed not to like Disney’s Cinderella because she’s a feminist. It’s not the first time I’ve heard such an argument, and I never cease to find it to be bullshit. I wish I could have asked the woman when she had last watched the movie, because I’m guessing it hasn’t been since puberty. So many of these knee-jerk dismissals of things like the classic Disney canon are based on vague recollections of movies the person half-watched decades ago, rather than the actual text. (And the actual texts definitely merit a second look as an adult, if only for the frequent what-the-fuckery, like how Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio is a hobo who hits on every remotely feminine entity in the movie, up to and including wooden carvings and the fish.) There’s this perception that Cinderella is a wholly passive character who just sits around and waits for a prince to rescue her, but that’s just not supported by the film itself.

For starters, Cinderella’s not going to the ball for the prince. When the invitation arrives, her stepsisters are the ones who burble at the idea of seeing the prince, but Cinderella presses for her chance to go because, dammit, she was invited too. She never equates her unspecified wishes and dreams with this invitation or implies that her whole world is riding on it; she simply wants to be treated like an equal, to have a night off and enjoy herself. When it’s all over, she’s thrilled to have been left with the one glass slipper and the memory of a dance with a hottie. The idea that he’s the prince, or that she could have a shot at marrying him, doesn’t even occur to her until the news gets out the next morning. Hell, she didn’t even seek him out at the ball; he’s the one who came over to her, and never managed to introduce himself while they were dancing.

Then there’s the tricky question of agency. This is the image that detractors seem to point to as the essence of the issues with the story: Cinderella weeping while the Fairy Godmother comes out of nowhere to solve all her problems.  

But that’s not quite what’s going on here.  When she appears, FG implies that Cinderella actually summoned her. (“Nonsense, child.  If you’d lost all your faith, I couldn’t be here.”) True, that would indicate a power that Cinderella doesn’t otherwise demonstrate–except when she’s singing. She harmonizes with herself in multiple parts on “Sing, Sweet Nightingale”, and immediately before FG materializes, Cinderella is having a conversation with the background music. Seriously, there’s no other way to explain her dialogue there.  A little later, she duets with the prince on “So This is Love” without either of them opening their mouths. It’s not a direct correlation, but it’s enough unnatural shenanigans to underscore the repeated refrain that believing hard enough (not just possessing a belief, but the action of believing) will make a wish come true.

But that’s still passive, right? She’s not actually doing anything, just bursts into tears and gives up. Well, she did do something about going to the ball: she finished up an inhuman workload and found an outfit, which her menagerie did an extreme makeover on.  She earned her chance and then was fucking assaulted, forced to watch in horror while her dress, a memento of her dead mother and a gift from her only friends, was destroyed. Of course she breaks down. Holy shit, guys, give the girl a minute. All FG is doing is restoring the balance, popping in like Sam Beckett to set right what just went wrong.

Of course, the dress was only presentable in the first place because of the mice and the birds. So let’s talk about them for a second, shall we? After all, the Tom and Jerry bullshit takes up over half the runtime (41 minutes out of 75, I shit you not; it is 23 sodding minutes before Lady Tremaine gets a line), and we meet two of the birds before we even meet Cinderella. The animals, then, drive the bulk of the plot. But this isn’t like Sleeping Beauty, where the supposed protagonists take a back seat to fairy face-offs.  See, while the mice are the main ones we see in action, they never act on their own behalf. Ever. The one time we see them doing something for their own benefit is when they go out seeking food, and who’s the one that provides it? In addition to feeding them, Cinderella clothes them and teaches them to speak (which is something they value, apparently) and protects them from traps and the cat. This has created a cult of personality, where the animals all happily sing to her tune as they perform incredible feats of engineering in her service. Everything they do on-screen serves Cinderella’s interests, from acting as her lady’s maids in the morning to altering her dress to helping her escape her tower. In short, she has a small army of devoted minions at her command, who prove by the end that they’re willing to risk their lives against a sadistic predator if she needs them to. Do we say that the supervillain has no agency because he hangs out on his dark throne until the final battle, letting the underlings get their hands dirty until then?  (Am I calling Cinderella an evil mastermind? Well, she has taken over a kingdom by the end credits. Just saying.)

tl;dr: Cinderella is fighting for equal rights and a fair leave policy, is maybe a little bit psychic, and can bend animals to her will. I’m not claiming that she’s a perfect template for a protagonist, or that there’s not some problematic bullshit at work here. (The love-at-first-sight thing is only part of a ludicrously compressed timeline; the entire story, barring the prologue, takes place in just over 24 hours, including the complete organization of a royal ball.) But this incarnation of the fairy tale gives us a heroine who’s snarky, determined, and industrious at the very least, a woman who unfailingly approaches her situation on her own terms even if she’s not exactly fighting to change it. She might not be a feminist icon, but she’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.

[constablewrites]

I haven’t been able to get up as much new material as I would like here, because, well, I haven’t been reading or watching or playing new things. I’ve been writing. This revision has been occupying just about every shred of free brain space for the last several months.

And today, it’s done. Second draft. in the can.

Stuff That Changed

MS stands at 115K words, up from 90K on the first draft

Had been thinking in standard three-act structure terms, but started looking at it as five acts, instead. That meant creating a fourth act out of whole cloth (which is where most of the new words went)

Fixed soooooo much of the geography. Turns out research actually helps, who knew?

Also fixed the various houses where most scenes take place, so they reflect actual Singaporean architecture. Hugely helped by finding detailed floor plans of a shophouse from multiple angles--in some dude’s PhD thesis. 

Split one character into two

Corrected my laughably bad understanding of the Chinese secret societies from the first draft

Progression of the leads’ relationship now makes sense

Gave my protagonist much more control over the plot

Sorted out the secondary characters’ personalities because they kept blending together

What Comes Next?

Taking a week off to stuff stories in my face

Burn the hard copy of my first draft. (I don’t like having it floating around, and also it’s so fucking satisfying, you guys)

Transfer the manuscript from Novlr to Word

Take care of the remaining [bracketed items], mainly names I didn’t want to have to come up with on the spot

Oh, the names. It is entirely possible that every single significant character will get a name change in some way, because it’s a domino effect. And I need an actual name for the protagonist’s house instead of the placeholder I used

Fix any other small stuff I notice while copying it all over

Send to my beta readers

Find the first of my sensitivity/authenticity readers. I’m going to want to get checked on several angles, but there’s one specific aspect that could have major foundational issues if I got something wrong. So that I’m doing out-of-pocket before I go any further

Revise based on beta feedback, hopefully nothing huge. There’s one subplot that I know is squishy but haven’t been able to fix myself, but everything else is pretty solid at this point.

If everything checks out, one last polish

Pick a better title? I suck at titles

Then onto the query-go-round, baby

And deciding which project to tackle next. I had a couple I was torn between, but I got a Shiny New Idea in the last few days that is sorely tempting

So still a long way to go. I had hoped to be querying by the summer, but I had also hoped to be done with this draft before Christmas, so we’ll see. The big question mark is gonna be how long it takes my first reader to get back to me, and how many problems they identify.

But it’s another major milestone down, one step closer to the day where I will no longer be writing this book (because it currently feels like I will never not be writing this book).

Now I just need my brain to stat working again, because I’ve plowed through something like 15K words in 4 days and I’m not entirely certain what century I’m in.

[constablewrites]

What Goes Unsaid in The Quick and the Dead

I love me some dialogue. There’s nothing quite like a good snappy exchange, and great quotes are the kind of thing that becomes timelessly viral (as evidenced by the average quantity of Monty Python quotes in a given D&D session). But dialogue isn’t everything, and there’s a whole lot you can do without ever saying a word.

As befits a story about a stoic badass riding into a town full of stoic badasses, The Quick and the Dead is practically a master class on this topic, packed with just about every kind of visual communication you can imagine.

Here’s one silent exchange from very early on, when the Lady first arrives in Redemption:

The creepy mustached guy, Eugene Dred, will be her secondary antagonist, right behind Herod. Notice the way she shows him her gun, and his reaction? Their enmity gets set up immediately, in just under 15 seconds.

Another similar exchange of glances establishes Herod’s primary challengers (Ed. note: This GIF cuts out a couple of shots in the middle):

In both cases, pretty much all it takes to set up these relationships is eye contact. There are a whole lot of characters in play and not a lot of time to set everything up, so this method efficiently builds audience expectations, so we already know what’s going down even before individual beefs get explained.

Efficiency occasionally leads us to an entirely wordless scene. The Lady meets with Cort to work out the rather complicated conspiracy that will see her fake her death and blow up half the town, but we naturally don’t see that whole discussion. All we see of it is this:

Of course, it’s not a silent film, and there’s quite a bit of dialogue. But the visuals still don’t slouch, frequently providing crucial subtext:

The barkeep is talking about the food and drink Herod is paying for. Later on, Dred will rape the girl, and the Lady will kill him for it.

And, of course, there’s the trailer-friendly, not terribly subtle but still rather awesome:

The movie is thick with background details, too. I’ll spare you examples of the gun porn (every fighter carries a unique, frequently blinged-out and customized, weapon) because this page would be about eighty screens long. But look over the Lady’s shoulder in the saloon for a wanted poster for one of the other contestants:

Or the skulls and bones that are all the hell over that scene:

The saloon scene is a good example of how the film divides its focus well among its large ensemble cast, and they’re frequently worth watching in the background throughout. For instance, you can spot every character who makes it past the first round as they watch the first duel:

Here’s Foy’s priceless reaction to the glass of water that almost hit him in the face:

Or watch Cort’s hands twitch after he’s held a gun for the first time in years:

Those little details help keep the character present and active, even while the lines are going to other people.

Okay, so that’s an awful lot of examples, and admittedly, things like subtle acting choices or set dressing aren’t really major tools in your arsenal as a fiction writer. Still, there are a few things that can be drawn from this for writers in any medium:

Don’t forget who’s in your scene. If a character is there, they’re going to have a reaction, even if they don’t have any direct involvement.

Well-chosen details in the setting can reveal a lot. For instance, describing in prose everything happening in the densely-packed saloon scene would take dozens of pages, but it would be easy enough to include the skeletons.

Don’t be afraid to pare down. If you can establish something with just an exchange of glances or a gesture, maybe you should, especially if it helps build the tension.

Remember your other senses! Though we’ve mainly discussed visuals here, the click of a gun and the thunk of the clock are omnipresent throughout the film.

[constablewrites]

The Three Ways to Identify an Antagonist (Are All in The Rocketeer)

When you talk about imparting information in a story, there are actually two groups that need to get clued in: the audience and the protagonists. So, we have three potential combinations for how we start:

Established Villain: Both the audience and the characters know the bad guy

Dramatic Irony: The audience knows who the bad guy is, but the characters don’t

Big Reveal: Neither the audience nor the characters know the bad guy

(There is a fourth combo, where the characters know something the audience doesn’t, but that one doesn’t often apply to the identity of the antagonist. And it would kind of ruin my thesis here, so shh.)

As it happens, all three of these flavors of antagonist are in The Rocketeer. (Spoilers ahoy, obvs.)

Established Villain

The Feds know from the outset that the rocket thief is working for gangster Eddie Valentine, and as we learn around the second act break, they also know that Valentine has been hired by an unidentified Nazi spy. In general, you see this one mostly in retellings where the audience is already familiar with the story, or in series and serials where characters reappear frequently.

Benefits: There’s not a lot of mucking about with setup. Nazis frequently get used in this capacity (though not in The Rocketeer, funnily enough) for exactly that reason. You don’t need to spend a lot of time establishing who they are, what they want, or just how nasty they can be. Both the audience and the heroes say, “Oh shit, Nazis!” and we can get on with things.

Drawbacks: Our current storytelling culture tends to favor novelty, originality, and surprise, and the identity of the bad guy is a frequent source of that mystery. As such, you don’t see this one as much anymore.

Dramatic Irony

Our first introduction to Neville Sinclair is when he’s chewing out Valentine for fucking up the robbery. Though we don’t yet know why he wants the rocket, there’s no question that he’s up to no good. Tends to be common in kids’ movies where the “sides” are clearly delineated.

Benefits: Easy source of tension. The audience is on edge from the moment Sinclair sets his sights on Jenny, although she doesn’t realize the danger she’s in until much later. If you didn’t suspect Sinclair from the start, the only emotional investment we’d have in his seduction of Jenny is pity for Cliff that he’s going to get dumped.

Drawbacks: Be careful to keep track of who knows what, or of treating something as a reveal when the audience already knows. It’s also easy to fall prey to accusations, fair or not, that a character is carrying the Idiot Ball.  After all, we may know a character is in a horror movie, but they don’t.

Big Reveal

Oh shit, Nazis!  We actually get the reveal in two consecutive scenes demonstrating the two different variations: Jenny stumbles upon information that solves the mystery for both her and the audience simultaneously, while Cliff puts the pieces together for himself when he’s told about the Hollywood spy, and then explains his conclusions to the group.

Benefits: The aforementioned suspense and surprise!  We all live under the shadow of the spoiler now, so it’s rare to find a story these days that doesn’t have a reveal of some sort.  Throwing this sort of curveball at the characters can also force them to reevaluate and change tactics, as when the reveal to Valentine prompts him to betray Sinclair.  (As a side note, I always thought that development was kind of cheesy, but rather awesomely, it’s Truth in Television: prominent gangsters worked with the government during WWII to aid in the war effort.)

Drawbacks: Setting up a good reveal is a tricky balancing act: too much information and the audience will figure it out early, but too little and it feels like an ass pull.  You also have to make sure you don’t have a reveal for the sake of having a reveal, since those can easily drag a story down.

As demonstrated here, the different ways that the antagonist’s identity can be revealed aren’t necessarily better or worse than each other; they just do different things.  Which one is best for your story depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

[constablewrites]

The Villains Who Don’t Do Anything

Look, I really wanted to like The Rise of Skywalker. I liked The Force Awakens. I loved The Last Jedi. I wasn’t expecting Great Cinema, but I at least hoped to be entertained. Instead, I just couldn’t bring myself to care. Part of it was the grating way the heroes did nothing but bicker and part of it was that I knew there was no way J.J. Abrams was going to do anything really daring or subversive. But the biggest problem was that the villains were absolutely useless.

I’m sure bringing back Palpatine seemed like an easy way to up the stakes for the finale. He’s the biggest bad, right? Even Vader was afraid of him! But TROS doesn’t seem to understand the way that played out.

In the original trilogy, Palpatine gives Vader a choice: Luke turns, or he dies. And Vader takes this threat seriously, never giving any indication, until the moment he makes his final choice, that he thinks there might be a third option. We are certain the Emperor can kill Luke because Vader is certain of it. Anakin’s fear for his son becomes our fear.

TROS opens with Palpatine and Kylo Ren, but in this case, it’s not a choice, it’s an order: kill Rey. And Kylo’s response is basically, “Sure, Sheev, I’ll get right on that *wanking gesture*” Seriously, when he does his ForceTime with Rey, he immediately tells her that he’s ignoring the order. Yes, he has his own intentions for her. 

Buuuuut... if Kylo Ren doesn’t fear the consequences of defying Palpatine, why the hell would we?

It doesn’t get any better from here. I’d have to watch it again to be sure, but I don’t remember the Knights of Ren doing anything other than stalk around like they’re trying to find the cosplay meetup for Sith OCs. Not even killing a few civilians to show they’re serious. The one time they see any action is when Ben Ren mows them down. (Again, I will admit that I might be wrong about this. Though it’s telling that if they did do anything actually threatening, it clearly didn’t make much of an impression.)

And the villains are further undermined by the fact that the heroes don’t have to sacrifice a damn thing to beat them. Every potential cost or setback is nullified almost immediately. I’ve never seen that many emergency backups outside of an ad for cloud storage. Even when they blew up the obligatory planet, the only people who we might have cared about losing miraculously (and without explanation) made it off! Phew, I almost had an emotion there. Glad we dodged that bullet. (Yes, Leia and Ben both died. But that was 1) to save Rey specifically, not to further the cause everyone kept banging on about, and 2) narratively inevitable, what with Carrie Fisher’s death and all Kylo’s murder.

This wasn’t the only way the new trilogy tried to bank on residual audience connection to the original, but it’s by far the most damaging. The filmmakers take Palpatine’s menace as a given and don’t bother to establish it for themselves beyond some creepy set dressing and some unfortunate contact lenses. 

TROS fatally misunderstands what makes high stakes.. They have enough firepower to blow up every planet in the galaxy! (Somehow.) And yet, at no point did I think the heroes were in any danger, not when they feint at killing off two main characters and undo it ten minutes later, not when the worst Palpatine can manage is to scramble the Resistance fleet’s Waze access temporarily.

It’s possible to feel genuine dread even in the sort of movie where you know it’s gonna have a happy ending. Movies for kids aren’t, as a rule, afraid to break some hearts. (Pixar basically built its reputation on that.) But TROS was too timid to make the audience feel any difficult or negative emotions, so they ended up with a film where it’s hard to feel much of anything.

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And lo, the holidays are immediately followed by illness as day follows night.

Actual post next week, I promise.

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Setting the Stage for a Character Twist

One type of twist that can be surprisingly difficult to pull off is the face-heel turn. (In wrestling, faces are good guys and heels are bad guys.) Done poorly, it can seem abrupt or arbitrary, and instead of packing an emotional wallop it can just make the audience feel like they’ve wasted their time investing in the story. You have to build it up as a believable progression.

(Spoilers follow for Ready or Not)

Alex starts off the deadly game of Hide and Seek determined to help his wife Grace escape, declaring that she’s everything to him and he can’t lose her. He’s very actively working against his family: hiding her, getting her into sensible shoes, opening the doors, and destroying the cameras. They also establish from the very first scene how close he is to his brother Daniel, and Grace overhears a conversation about how Alex is the one of them who’s a decent person.

Then there’s the conversation Alex has with his mother while cuffed to the bed. He insists that Grace has made him a better person, that he will absolutely choose her over his family, and that he doesn’t believe in the curse. But his mother challenges this assertion and says she knows him better. This beat is crucial in his character arc; his tears show that he’s more conflicted than he claims.

Finally, Alex breaks free to find his beloved brother dying from a gunshot wound. (He didn’t see that it was Daniel’s wife who shot him while Daniel was trying to protect Grace.) He does, however, see Grace brutally beating his mother to death. When she warily stays back from him, he says, “You’re not going to stay with me after this, are you?”

We’ve been given all the pieces to immediately understand how this breaks him. He’s lost his brother and his mother within a span of about two minutes. If he’s going to lose Grace no matter what he does, why not possibly save the rest of his family in the process? The tension of that moment between the two of them comes from the audience knowing what Alex will do but hoping maybe we’re wrong.

I actually tossed around with some writer friends the possibility that Alex might have remained true and selfless. But that would require either some rules lawyering to get him out of the infernal punishment, or him dying tragically and duplicating the noble sacrifice we already got with Daniel. Neither of those fits the tone of the horror comedy nearly as well as Grace flicking the ring back at him, whereupon he explodes like a gory balloon. (Had the curse not been real, you’d want to reveal that no later than the beginning of the third act, because then the family would suddenly need to preserve their secret, giving them a very different but equally pressing need to kill Grace--it would be an escalation rather than a resolution.)

Even from the very beginning, his parents talk about how this will bring Alex back to the family. The steps toward that ultimately happening are laid out in a reasonable manner where his choice feels natural and inevitable.

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Batman, Misdirection, and Knowing your Audience

I’m going to be spoiling the everliving shit out of Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, so nearly this entire post is going behind a cut. Go watch it, it’s pretty great. 

Whenever a story promises to include Jack the Ripper, it’s almost a guarantee that they’ll take some stance on his real identity. And in DC Elseworlds, half the fun is seeing how they fit the familiar characters into this new setting, So when I sat down to this one with my friends, we immediately started speculating.

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An Ode to the Baddies of Die Hard

Spare a thought for the poor goon, will you? After all, the bad guy can’t do all that heavy lifting himself, and the good guy can’t go straight to the top and sort shit out off the bat or we wouldn’t have much of a story. Like an impressive skyscraper, it all comes down to the support structure; an organization is only as good as its people. Sure, the baddie can throw wave after wave of anonymous masked bastards at the problem, but that’s not very engaging for the audience. So speaking of impressive skyscrapers, let’s take a look at Die Hard.

Yup, in addition to being indisputably the greatest Christmas movie of all time, it’s also widely considered to have a nearly perfect structure, so this probably isn’t the last time I’m gonna come back to it. Hans Gruber’s flunkies aren’t fully-fledged characters, true, but they’re far from faceless bullet fodder.

For starters, all twelve “terrorists” have names, which is uncommon. Usually beyond the Dragon and a couple of important henches, the rest of the crew usually ends up credited as “Soldier #5.” True, they’re not really given backstories or motivations to go with the names, but it helps make their interactions amongst each other feel realistic. It doesn’t so much matter if I remember which one Marco is, just that they’re worried McClane might have gotten him.

Speaking of interactions, special mention goes to Karl and Tony, the very blond brothers. You get a hint of their personalities and relationship in the brief scene where Karl takes a chainsaw to the phone lines Tony is trying to patch. But their biggest significance to the plot comes when McClane kills Tony and taunts the terrorists with his corpse, and Karl loses his shit. His dogged pursuit of McClane isn’t because of sadism or orders from Gruber, it’s because this is the bastard who killed his little brother and he wants to make him pay. It’s not enough to make us root for him or anything, but it makes him human.

The movie’s filled with little humanizing details like that, from the dude who nabs a candy bar during a standoff to the guy who pours Ellis a soda during his failed negotiation attempt. The director’s commitment to realism was such that he used extra-loud blanks that permanently deafened his star, and that realism carries through in the depiction of the bad guys. Even though you don’t know their histories or their personal goals, they feel like real people, which makes them more interesting foes for McClane. There’s more tension in him trying to evade a cunning, desperate individual than there would be if it were some dumbass blindly following orders.

Die Hard skillfully balances a lot of different characters, but I think the restraint shows best in the goons. There’s just enough personality and humanity to give them some depth and intrigue without stealing screentime and sympathy from the good guys. That’s not an easy trick to accomplish, and it adds quite a lot to the movie’s core. Hans Gruber just wouldn’t be the same without his gang.

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Behind the Scenes: Backing Up to Go Forward

I don’t normally talk much about my own writing, because it’s generally more useful to talk about things that people are actually familiar with. But I had a moment recently where I got stuck, and what I looked at to get myself unstuck might help people out a bit. 

Our heroine is at a fancy party and is approached by an acquaintance, who apologizes for being a bit of a dick the last time they met. This is how far I got:

As the countess was pulled away by another socialite for a more private conversation, Tari noticed someone approaching purposefully from the corner of her eye. She turned to see a familiar face with memorable high cheekbones. “Mr. Tan! What a pleasant surprise.”

Tan Sin Pho bowed. “It seems your prediction that we would run into each other proved correct,” he said.

I stared at it for like half an hour trying to figure out what comes next, then gave up and called it a night. As I was getting ready for bed, I realized that one single word in this passage utterly torpedoes me.

Any guesses to what it is?

The culprit is “pleasant.” See, I need Sin Pho to apologize. If he thinks she’s happy to see him, he doesn’t have much reason to do that. There’s also not a good way for either her to respond or him to continue that connects to anything else that might be useful to include in this conversation. Basically, I jumped ahead, and thus left myself with nowhere to go.

Here’s the revision:

As the countess was drawn into a more private conversation with another socialite, Tari noticed someone approaching purposefully from the corner of her eye. She turned to see a familiar face with memorable high cheekbones. “Mr. Tan! This is a surprise.”

Tan Sin Pho bowed. “You did predict we would run into each other,” he said.

“It’s always gratifying when one is proven correct,” she replied. Lady Alva’s companion continued pulling her toward the further end of the room; Tari shifted to keep them in sight.

“I hope that’s not the only good thing about it.” Tari thought this might be an invitation for flattery, until Sin Pho stepped closer and said more quietly, “I fear I got a bit deep in my cups when last we met.”

Other adjustments: tweaked the first sentence so I could use “pulled” where it made more sense, and split up the bit about her prediction being correct so it gives the followup line to him rather than her.

It’s not perfect, mind. I’m pretty sure I’ve used the “turned to see a familiar face” transition elsewhere and it’s not that strong to begin with, and I could probably stand to clarify that Tari is specifically turning away from him to keep an eye on Lady Alva, so Sin Pho is reacting to her body language as well as her neutral word choice.

But still, I can work with this. Each piece of the conversation now leads naturally to the next. It builds toward something in a way it just couldn’t before. From here the rest of the scene was pretty easy to finish.

Editing midstream can be a tricky thing, especially if you’re making changes without a clear idea of what benefit the changes will have. But writing is often like making your way through a maze--if you hit a wall, you could try to brute-force your way through, but it’s more likely that you just made a wrong turn somewhere further back.

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The Power of the Right Description

Of all the tools at a writer’s disposal, simile and metaphor have to be among the most powerful. Sure, you might spend paragraphs or pages trying to convey an image or an idea in exact detail, or you could get the entire thing across just as clearly in a single phrase. What we do is basically magic, you guys.

True, as an extremely powerful tool, this one is also really easy to cock up. (Side note: It would appear that the answer to the question, “Is there a Tumblr of that?” is always yes.) However, I think more can be learned in this case from examining the ones that do work, and breaking down what makes them work so well.

One of my favorite descriptions of all time ever comes from one of David Levithan’s chapters of Will Grayson, Will Grayson:

The whole place smells like debt.

Just bask in that one for a moment. This is not an explicit description; after all, the concept of “debt” does not emit molecules that are picked up by olfactory receptors and interpreted by the brain as sensory data. What it is, is evocative. If you’re given no other description of an apartment other than that it “smells like debt,” chances are pretty good you’re still going to have a mental picture of the place. Now, one person may envision musty hand-me-down furniture while another sees a home filled with battered Wal-Mart offerings, but the beauty is that that doesn’t really matter. Where the specifics aren’t important, you can fill in the blanks yourself.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman is another rich trove of great description. Take this introduction to the assassins Croup and Vandemar:

There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar’s eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelry; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.

It’s a fairly long stretch of pure description, the kind of thing that some writing coaches might tell you to avoid on principle. Unlike the first example, this one is explicit description, of details that are very well-chosen. (The fourth point in particular gives you quite a solid lock on their respective personalities.) The poetry comes from the fact that you’d need a way to tell apart people who look nothing alike; this tells you that they’re a unit, two halves of a single malevolent entity, their interchangeability as torturers and killers more significant than their physical discrepancies. Plus, there’s a punchline, and the Rule of Funny overrides pretty much everything.

Here’s another passage that’s deceptively straightforward:

Richard could already tell that he was the type of person who was always in motion, like a great cat.

A solid, concrete visual aid to establish the mannerisms of just about anyone. But he’s not describing just anyone. He’s describing the Marquis de Carabas, a powerful figure who takes his name (and possibly more, for it is that kind of place and that kind of tale) from Puss in Boots. It’s a pattern that persists throughout the novel, as de Carabas is repeatedly described in decidedly feline terms, and other characters get their own epithets: Croup and Vandemar are frequently depicted as a fox and a wolf, for instance, and Hunter’s descriptions always come back to leather and caramel. This usage makes it easier to keep straight the large and colorful cast, and also helps evoke the almost totemic power of these ageless creatures.

It’s fine to have description that’s purely sensory, that only tells us what an object or action looks or sounds or smells like. But when you’ve got the opportunity to also tell us more about what that thing means, what that thing is? That’s when the magic happens.

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A Quick-and-Dirty Plot Structure Trick

We’re about halfway through NaNoWriMo, so many of you are probably feeling the Act II Blues. You’ve got all the setup, you might have some idea of how you want it to end, but the stuff in the middle?

There are lots of ways to get through Act II, but one I’m fond of is what I call the “Nice Try Midpoint.” Essentially, it’s this:

Your characters have developed a plan to deal with the story problem and are taking steps to put it into action. But then, nice try, something major happens that throws them into disarray and forces them to reevaluate. The rest of Act II is them dealing with the fallout from that and preparing for the final showdown.

A few examples:

The Incredibles: Bob fights the Omnidroid and feels like a new man, getting back into shape and happily going back for another mission. But nice try, this is a big ol’ deathtrap set by a scorned fan. Now he has to sneak around and try to figure out what’s going on and how to get home.

Star Wars: Luke delivers R2′s message and tracks down a ride to Alderaan, But nice try, Alderaan has been blown up. Now they have to try to escape a heavily fortified Imperial vessel. 

Die Hard: John gets the police to show up and start taking the threat seriously enough that the cops are ready to charge in. But nice try, Hans is ready for them and takes them out easily. Now here comes the FBI.

Essentially, it’s a way to keep your heroes active so they’re not just twiddling their thumbs waiting for the finale. Which also keeps them from looking dumb for not trying to solve the problem earlier. They did try, and things got worse. Stakes escalated, tension increased, and maybe a nice flashy setpiece for good measure.

Nice try, heroes, I’ve still got half a novel to write.