If I want to make the characters to do something crazy and cool, please do not fight me on it. I am not interested in hearing that my ideas don’t make sense or that the characters would never do that. I have a word count goal to make for the day.
Or not.
Sincerely,
your author
And I’m one of them.
Last night, I was playing “Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb” and I was trying to work my way through the Prague levels, which take place in a castle. Why is that bad? Because the character has to walk on high ledges, jump from one building to another, shimmy of chains, use his whip as a swing and generally get very very high.
Me, I don’t like the heights. I could barely watch the end of Peter Jackson’s version of KING KONG on my 19″ TV set because the image of the ape at the edge of that building made me nauseous.
And yeah, so did Indy. Several times, I had to jump out into the void and catch a chain, then swing back and forth and jump to catch another chain or a ledge by my fingertips. Then there were the fist- and gunfights on balconies.
Whenever someone fell, screaming all the way down, I got a knot in my stomach. And when it happened to Indy I had to walk away from the computer.
Some people shouldn’t play computer games.
I’m left with an introductory essay I wrote to lead off the conversation. The essay was all wrong for the forum and the format, but what did I know? So, I’m going to inflict it on you.
Snark
I’m not going to talk too much about who does snark well and who doesn’t–I don’t feel confident in the depth of my knowledge of the genre, and I’m imagine that, no matter what I say, someone out there would respond: “What about Sofalina Kricklistik and her Butt-Kicker Chronicles? Those books are snark hilarity! Where have you been?” And then I’ll be too embarrassed to continue.
But I do want to talk about Snark Gone Wrong, because I have seen it. Boy have I ever.
Two things I keep in mind when I read/write snark: First, snark (sarcasm, whatever you want to call it) is an attack. Not a knife-to-the-belly attack. Not a burn-down-your-house attack. But it is an attack, with all the rules of attacks and a couple of special rules.
The second is what Keith Olbermann has said in interviews about his feud with another cable news personality: Always punch up.
Remember Kolchak, the Night Stalker (the older, good one, not the new, lifeless one)? Darren McGavin was abrasive and sarcastic and comtemptuous of the people he braced, but those people were always big shots. They were politicians, police chiefs, gallery owners, whatever. The powerful and the snobbish. When he dealt with working joes, he was still himself but he was more respectful.
Here’s a quote from a column by Terry Rossio, on his excellent writing site Wordplay, discussing (among other things) the story changes that ruined the animated Sinbad movie of a couple years ago:
Quick aside: Wordplay is screenwriting-specific, but it’s a great place to learn about story. Check out the columns.
Back to the point I’m allegedly making: Anyone who’s seen Sinbad (and I count myself among the unlucky few) knows exactly what he means–Sinbad opens the movie with a big fight, where he handles all his enemies very easily. And through the whole thing, he mocks and humiliates them.
And he comes off as a jerk.
Some months ago, I followed a link to a snarky retelling of an incident in a Wal-Mart. The writer had noticed a fishbowl that said “Free Candy” on the side, but instead of taking one, she took them all.
When the manager and clerk tried to get her to return it, she raised a fuss. When she wrote about it on her blog, she made a bunch of comments about the employees’s weight and unfashionable clothes. I had to stop reading, because I kept thinking “What an asshole.”
When a character snarks, they should snark at the powerful, the careless, the cruel. (Remember when I mentioned “special rules”? You can snark against an awful situation, too. But it should be genuinely awful. ZOMG, my valet laid out the wrong waistcoat! won’t cut it. And yeah, that’s only one rule, but I put the plural in there in case I think of something else later.) They shouldn’t punch down.
One last bit: Years and years ago there was a TV show called STINGRAY (Nick Mancuso turned down the Bruce Willis role in MOONLIGHTING to play Stingray, and boy, there’s no booze in the world that can dull the pain of that.) The villain in the pilot was one of those boob tube drug lords we used to see so often, and the bad guy would say “Can you see me?” right before he shot them.
At the very end of the pilot episode, the villain is lying on the deck of his Miami Vice smuggler boat with a bullet hole in him, and Our Hero is crouching over him, smoking gun in hand. The villain looks up and says: “Can you see me?”
And the hero, a little gloating, responds: “Yeah, and you look terrible.”
The villain asks his question again–“Can you see me?”–as though he didn’t hear. Our Hero realizes the man can’t see or hear him; he’s already too close to death. Mancuso, in that moment, plays it perfectly. He shows a flash of regret at the snark he’s just laid out, because the narrative has turned the villain into a pathetic figure in the space of one BLAM!. “Stingray” realized he was punching down.
The panel itself was fine, although the message board software was a little woogy. Actually, it was fun. I look forward to Sunday morning’s panel.
I’d planned to stay up for James Enge’s author chat, but I’m fading already. Sorry, man.
I’ll be taking part in my first author panel ever, as part of Flycon 2009. It’ll be taking place right here at 8 pm PST.
Drop by if you like. I plan to embarrass the hell out of myself.
Eta: It’s over.
I’ve been so swamped with everything, that I haven’t been able to to make a sensible comment on the racism in sf conversation that’s been going around. And now that Mary Anne Mohanraj has written this post on John Scalzi’s blog, I don’t have to.
Because those four points are pretty much the basics of my understanding about race in this country (except she expresses them better than I ever could). A racist culture produces racist citizens, and I’m one of them. I’m not proud of it–in fact, I’d very much like to fix that part of my mental programming. It’s difficult, though. As pnh said several weeks ago, this stuff in ingrained in us.
Anyway, I’m going to leave out the other comments I was considering–I’m far from an expert here, and I’m still reading and thinking on what people say. I’m also turning off comments, because this isn’t the best place to discuss the issue. Check out the post and follow the links. Good night.
First: I made Jim Butcher sick to his stomach. (Actually, it’s a very nice comment from him.)
Second: Everyone Loves Blue Dog? Still not done.
Third: Today? Done. And I’m still sick.
I’m going to be taking part in Flycon next weekend. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a virtual science fiction convention being held on LiveJournal and sff.net, in which people from all over the world can get together online at an appointed hour and post about specific subjects.
Jeez, I really did forget to mention this before now, didn’t I? Well, let’s just say that for a long time it seemed really far off in the future, and now suddenly there’s a preliminary schedule for next weekend.
I’ll post the times and places of my discussions when the schedule is finalized. Hope to see you all there.
Is anyone reading this active on one of these sites?
LibraryThing
GoodReads
Shelfari
LivingSocial
RedRoom
WeRead
I find that Child of Fire is already on Shelfari and I am already on LibraryThing under my short story name.
But are any of you folks active on these sites? If so, what do you like about it?
I’m allergic to the idea of joining a social networking site solely to promote my book (although I received this list of sites from a how-to-promote document from my publisher)–in fact, I’m tempted to drop my book cover as my default user icon on LiveJournal because I’m thinking it’s a little tacky. But I’m not averse to joining an interesting site.
What do you think?
From this point forward, I will treat a drippy kitchen faucet the way I treat a malfunctioning computer keyboard: I will detach it, throw it out and buy a replacement.
This shit is not worth the headache or the mess.
But first of all, I met today’s goal and made up the words I missed on Wednesday. The book is finally hitting its stride, thank Pikachu. Now, if only I hadn’t put in a bunch of exposition that was basically a repeat of 30 pages before…
I hate exposition.
Also: it’s Love Day. I got up at 4:30 to make Salad Eater the ginger pear scones she requested. I’d mixed the dry ingredients last night and wrapped her gift, too (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). No flowers this year. That was an expensive book.
Unfortunately, I left to write today’s pages before she woke up, so her Love Day gifts were sitting on the table waiting for her. It would have been nicer if I was there, but it didn’t happen.
Time to collect my library books and go home.