interesting things

Everyone Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die

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Jim Hines talks about killing characters in books, especially beloved characters and protagonists. You can see the discussion on his main website or follow a much larger conversation (by a factor of ten or more) on his LiveJournal.

I posted a comment there (my LJ handle is burger_eater, for those not reading this post there) but wanted to expand a little: When it comes to killing characters in violent stories–and many fantasies rely on fighting for their conflict–there’s a wide spectrum between the slasher flicks at one end (where everyone dies) and the A-Team (where a whole armory-worth of bullets are fired but no one is ever hit).

Where readers fall on or within those extremes depends on the type of book they’re reading, their mood at the moment, or whether the wind is southerly. That’s natural. But I was astonished by the number of people who said they felt “betrayed” by the death of a major character.

Personal (and spoiler-free) story: When [Major Character] was killed in the first book of A Song Of Ice And Fire, I was startled and grateful. It was a real Joe Bob Briggs moment*, thank you muchly, and it showed me just how much danger these characters were in.

Contrast that with the end of that Tad Williams tree-killer epic, where ten or twelve characters rush into a headlong fight with Big Evil but only one minor character loses his life.

If the reader is ready for it–if they’re willing to go along–it’s powerful and fun. If the reader is not ready for it, either because a book has too much killing or not enough, they feel manipulated.

Of course, no one story will satisfy everyone, but I sure would like to work out the fat spot on the bell curve.

* Joe Bob Briggs number one rule for a great horror movie: “Anybody can die at any moment.”

Randomness for 1/6

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1) A cult I might join, and a manifesto that would do me good.

2) This is an article I’ve been waiting a few days for: What if the Christmas bomb had exploded? Did the Nigerian terrorist have enough explosive to bring down the plane? The answer seems to be “Maybe, but probably not.”

3) Lunch Lady Paper Dolls! Not your average lunch lady, either–it’s the crime fighting lunch lady from the popular comics.

4) Pride and Prejudice, told through emoticons. This is awesome.

5) The Venn Diagram of Cookie Status.

6) The difficult, difficult work of plotting AVATAR.

7) Screenwriters are trained to fail the Bechdel Test. “Ego and laziness – the intrepid supervillain team!” via Jim Hines.

Quote of the day

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This is a long one, from an interview with Terry Rossio, one of the highest-paid screenwriters working today, and the man who runs the Wordplay site, which is full of writerly advice. I learned a lot on the Wordplay message boards, and in the columns, and I learned a lot from this interview (even though I’m supposed to be MAN BITES WORLD.

Anyway, this is about screenwriting, naturally, not writing books, but I think it’s pertinent:

JRM (interviewer): How did you break in, and how did you come to be where you are now?

Terry Rossio: I’m going to try to not give the usual boilerplate answers in this interview, and that means not going along with false presumptions, no matter how seemingly benign. The question about breaking in seems perfectly legit, but really it’s not. A writer must create compelling work, and then try to sell it. Once sold, the writer has to do the same thing again. It’s really not true that the writer ‘breaks in’—that’s an artifact of the belief that the person is being judged, not the work, and also of the belief that there is an inside and an outside, which I don’t think exists. There are too many screenwriters out there with only a single credit for there to be an inside, and too many writers on the outside making sales, to too many markets which are either new, changing, or undefined.

In truth buyers are just not that organized, your buyer is not my buyer, or in some cases, you can become your own buyer. Courtney Hunt was nominated for an Academy Award this year for best screenplay for Frozen River, and she’s never sold a screenplay. Is she on the inside or the outside? In truth, anyone, at any time, can come up with South Park or Superman or Sandman, and that’s all that matters.

And I can’t resist adding this one:

Screenwriters are the Charlie Browns of Hollywood, and everyone else holds the football.

I recommend reading the whole interview. Yeah, it’s a little long, but the stuff on constructing a story is wonderful

Remembering 2009 as it should be remembered

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By the worst movie of the year!

It played in four theaters, and I’m told the distributor asked the theater owners to burn the prints so they wouldn’t have to pay to have them shipped back.

Here’s the trailer, which I imagine was supposed to interest viewers instead of drive them, laughing, to other theaters.

“They’ve got, uh, printers in the basement you can use.”

Public Access TV would be a step up for these guys.

Whitman Authorized Editions for Girls

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I shouldn’t be startled by this, but I am. Maybe the only reason I’m surprised is that no one is doing it right now.

I stumbled on this weird bit of publishing history because I watched a Bonita Granville NANCY DREW last night (NANCY DREW — REPORTER. Verdict: terrific. It rang the bell for my expectations of a Nancy Drew movie, which aren’t necessarily sky high, but still). After the movie, I did what I usually did after seeing a good performance by someone I hadn’t heard of before: I looked them up online.

Bonita Granville’s wikipedia entry directed me to the Whitman Authorized Editions above. For those who didn’t click the link (and who have bothered to read this far) the WAEfG were suspense/adventure novels that starred actual movie stars of the time. For instance, Bonita Granville gets to star in her own Nancy Drew-like adventure, Bonita Granville and the Mystery of Star Island. There’s also Judy Garland and the Hoodoo Costume, Dorothy Lamour and the Haunted Lighthouse, Deanna Durbin and the Feather of Flame, and so on.

Some of the novels portray the actresses as themselves. Some (like the Betty Grable’s) portray the actresses as themselves if they’d never become famous movie stars.

Now, I’m sure there’s a fan fiction term for this: famous real people breaking up Nazi spy rings or solving decades-old murders in the swamps, or whatever. They even sound like they’re full of id-driven weirdness.

But why doesn’t someone try to revive this? It sounds like it could be odd, fun and successful, if it was handled correctly. Jennifer Love Hewitt and the Spectral Lighthouse, or Michelle Obama and the Mystery of Chesapeake Bay, or Anne Hathaway and the Poisoner’s Letter, or what the hell, even Susan Boyle and the Music Hall Gunman.

These people are all public figures, too, so I’m not sure what sort of rights issues would be involved.

How good the world is now

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Years and years ago, I saw an animated version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL that impressed the hell out of me. The ghosts looked like ghosts and some care was taken at the start of the show to establish that this was a haunted story.

Plus, it had the scariest Jacob Marley ever.

Of course, this was back in the pre-information days, when I’d have no idea which “A Christmas Carol” it was, or when it would air again. There were several years when I spent the weeks before the holiday studying the TV Guide, searching for half-hour versions of the show in case I could fine The One.

I did, once. It aired on The Family Channel (the only time I ever watched that channel) and there was Jacob Marley, speaking out of his gaping, unmoving mouth. There was the ever-shifting Ghost of Christmas Past. There was Ignorance and Want, depicted as though they were already dead.

Then I couldn’t find it again.

Of course, now we’re living in the information age, and an obscure supernatural cartoon is content. Can the internet resist content? I think not:

Facebook users click this link.

Chuck Jones produced it. Alistair Sim is the voice of Scrooge, and he plays him differently than most actors do–less gruff and hostile, more weak and aggrieved. And of course there are the ghosts.

Hey, I realize the holiday is pretty much over, and being Christmas most of you are probably sick of it. But if you like really well done ghosts, check this one out.

Randomness for Christmas Eve!

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Let’s go with a theme today:

1) Christmas gift warning! HP Computers: Racist? via mightygodking, who called this a FAIL, and I have to agree.

2) Give yourself a gift! The writer’s bible for Batman: The Animated Series. And here’s some analysis by Chris Sims.

3) Have some glad tidings! How Earth 2 Will Save Publishing.

4) Why does “A Christmas Carol” have to play every year? “Evocriticism” or Evolutionary literary criticism–an evolutionary explanation for the appearance of art.

5) More gifts! And prOn! It’s book pr0n. via James Macdonald on the Absolute Write forums.

6) Norad Santa Tracker. ‘Nuff said.

Randomness for 12/22

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1) Five Facebook Status updates by Star Wars characters.

2) It’s a Wonderful Night of the Living Dead! In 1992, when IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was still in the public domain, the director of 976 EVIL 2 used it in a dream sequence, where one of the leading ladies mixes IAWL up with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, with cheesy and hilarious results. via Bill Martell at sex in a sub.

3) Parkour Santa! Warning, kids: Do not try this at home!

4) An amusing story of Christmas “murder.”

5) The Jeff Dunham Show is the Worst Thing in the Entire World.

6) And here’s the runner-up for the second-worst thing: Um, yeah. That’s “I’m Gonna Spend My Christmas With a Dalek”. It’s one of those YouTube videos with the song playing under a static album cover image and, as bad as you think it’s going to be, it’s actually much much worse.

Three Things addendum

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The third thing I was planning to mention last night? The one I forgot and remembered? That wasn’t the one I’d planned on originally.

The real third thing was that my son’s baby sitter said that, earlier in the evening, before I’d returned home, they’d seen what looked like a dog by our apartment door. A closer inspection revealed it to be a coyote.

I wasn’t there and didn’t see it for myself, but they reported seeing a coyote in our front yard.

Randomness for 12/16

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1) Library book overdue by 99 and a half years.

2) Humans vs. Zombies, the live game. Photos of the event. (Humans won! Yay humans!)

3) Connecting fructose and childhood diabetes.

4) And, for a different sort of unhealthy ingestion: Blood drinking 101

5) A wooden castle–built from 396,000 popsicle sticks.

6) Lawsuit seeks to remove atheist from public office. It seems North Carolina’s state constitution bars atheists from holding public office. It’s an unenforceable law, thanks to a decades-old Supreme Court decision, but it’s the basis of a suit seeking to have Cecil Bothwell removed from a city council seat.

7) In contrast to my Author’s Big Mistake post from earlier today, a hilarious book review with a very smart author response.