Some Lessons Learned While Writing The Book

As some of you know, I have written two novels in two different genres. For the boys I wrote a Western in the classical tradition.  The book is Knight Errant and it aims to celebrate basic heroism in a difficult situation.  For the girls I wrote a supernatural thriller called "Pray For You" about dealing with loss when an entity shows up to create havoc.  Anyone can enjoy these books.  You can find links on my website which is on the bio and my Facebook page.  I encourage you to sample the Kindle version if you are so inclined.

With that preliminary out of the way I want to showcase an interesting lesson I learned in creating these two works of fiction.  The lesson has to do with where you think you are going to end it.  And then discovering that to earn that ending you either need to scrap the book entirely or re think what the book is really trying to do.

In exploring this idea I will not be spoiling either of these stories.  I will illustrate this with a writer's process on how to solve a problem.  In both of these cases I only had to get to the point where I felt comfortable handing the book over to a reader to find out if I had something worth sharing.  All this work to get to draft 1 in other words.

First, let's look at Pray For You, the supernatural title.  I have lived with this story the longest.  In terms of evolution of this tale it took me eight drafts to get to the 1.0 version.  That was the version where I first handed it to a reader.  It was a kind of urban fantasy version with these characters.  My reader thought it didn't work at all.  They were not wrong.  The characters worked and the ending I had in mind was more or less there but it wasn't earned.  To fix it I did something unusual with the story.  I applied surgery.  I took the broad beats and cool lines and non cringy dialogue and kept that.  Then I jettisoned the rest.  I was even more ruthless as I invented scenes and dialogue to bridge gaps and make it work.  The characters stayed the same but the genre completely changed.  Gradually I got to version 2.0 and that's the version you will read.  I finally felt I had an ending that was earned.  

The bottom line for this book is that I trusted the characters I created to save the story.  This helped me with the courage to cut the lines that I wrote and rework the book to the story it was meant to be.

Knight Errant, the Western, has a different genesis.  I believe I came up with the plot and characters for a screenplay that I never fully drafted.  I had a very specific ending in mind while it was still at the screenplay phase.  But something funny happened when I got to that scene in the novel.  I was only about half done.  As written it was a long story, not a novel.  I put the thing away for about a week and didn't touch it.  Then I realized I needed to address the consequences of this chase that drives this story.  Addressing those consequences forces me to find nuances in the characters and maybe get at the heart of what really drives them.  And I feel I got a better ending out of it than where I initially had thought.

For this book, I once again trusted the characters.  This one didn't require the kind of surgery that Pray For You did but it did force me to wrestle with consequences of something set in motion in the story.  In addressing the consequences I think the story is better for it.

I will leave you with a final thought about the writing process.  You'll know in your gut when the work is ready for another set of eyes.  No time before the keyboard is ever wasted.  

The Perils of Pitching

According to this link Andy Weir had a pitch for Star Trek that went nowhere.  The linked article doesn't state what the pitch was but goes into greater detail the frustrations with the state of Star Trek.  

J Michael Strazynski had a rather famous pitch in 2004 that rebooted the series in interesting ways.  They didn't go with this at the time instead giving us the 2009 version which led to Alex Kurtzman running the franchise.

Discussing the merits about the franchises and who runs them is outside the scope of this piece.  Two failed pitches above are examples of the business of Hollywood.  It goes something like this:  Producer says "I have an awesome idea for (insert media adaptation here) and I will know exactly what to do with it when it walks through that door."

Andy Weir and Stracynski didn't get past that producer because whatever the idea was it wasn't what he wanted.

If you ever wonder why Hollywood never seems to do much original work it is usually because those original scripts floating around out there act like resumes for whatever IP producer X has in their pockets.  "We're not doing that but we have this other thing over here..."

To use an upcoming example.  Steven Knight (famous for many works but Peaky Blinders is the most recent) has been tapped for whatever the new James Bond film will be from new masters at Amazon.  Whatever his pitch was it must have worked because he landed the gig.  I am cautiously optimistic because one of my favorites of his is Eastern Promises from David Cronenberg-a film that while I like I can't revisit too often because of it subject matter and execution.  

All this is to say don't judge the talent pool by what gets rejected.  Judge it by what gets made.  In the end all that counts is the experience it produces.

Sheena and Schwarzenegger and absurd connections

According to this link we will have three Arnold Schwarzenegger films coming down the pike with him revisting three of the franchises that helped make him a Hollywood icon.

One of those is Commando 2.  Because of this I thought it would be fun to explore the link, superficially though it is, between Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and pulp comic icon, the most famous Jungle Girl, Sheena.

The short answer is screenwriter Steven E De Souza.

Commando, the film from 1985, is an only in the 80s absurdly fun Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle about a retired specialist trying to rescue his daughter from a general who's planning a coup in his own country.  The name of the country?  Val Verde, a stand in for whatever location screenwriter De Souza needed to make the plot make sense.

Val Verde is also the name of the country in South America where Sheena makes her home in a somewhat lengthy run across three comic book companies.  De Souza was effectively given carte blanche to reboot the character for a modern audience.  The only reason this works as well as it does is her first appearance in this rebooted version is from 2007 with Devils Due Publishing.  Her last mini series in this rebooted form came from Dynamite Comics and left her in a boarding school.  De Souza's rebooted Sheena is fun for what it is even if the continuity doesn't quite gel between the Devil's Due Era and the Dynamite Comics era.  

The Val Verde used in the Sheena comics is not the same Val Verde in the Commando film but I thought the connection was funny.  I don't expect the filmmakers to revisit that fictional country for the plot of the sequel.  According to the article the sequel has already been written which is further along in development than some announced projects.  I will be curious to see if anyone other than Schwarzenegger comes back into this.  Alyssa Milano returning as his daughter would be hilarious.

Sheena's comic book future, at least in the rebooted form, is dormant right now.  She'll probably turn up in another form down the line.  If Commando 2 can be made 40 years after the original then Sheena can make a comeback as well.  As risk averse as most American media companies are, if the idea is executed well enough then an audience will seek it out and may find something fun.

How Hollywood Gets Its Soul Back the Sequel

This link is a good break down of the fears that business Hollywood has over Paramount taking Warner Bros.  It's the same fear when Disney took Fox.

The WGA in another article is condemning the merger because it will result in less jobs.  This is true but both articles don't address the problem underlying current business practices.

You've got to get people to want to come to the theatre.  Ticket prices are a barrier.  The quality of the experience is another.  Finally the content being projected is the last.  If these three things get fixed the people will come back.  

Think of this like hotel chains competing with Air BNB.  Make the experience better than some strangers extra room or house.  

The ticket prices are tied into the overall economy which can't be controlled.  But what can be controlled is the budgets in which Hollywood produces content.  We seem to be vascilating between micro budget movies and blockbusters.  No middle ground.  That ground has to come back.  Once the studio has its investment back the rest is gravy.  This in turn helps the theatres keep their costs down and the ticket prices can be adjusted.

Fixing the theatre experience seems to come down to two things.  The first is refreshment cost.  These food prices are high because only after a certain point do the theatre exhibitors get their share of the profits.  The shorter the theatrical window the smaller the return.  People don't see a good return on investment when paying for sub par food for the duration of the movie.  

I am torn about this because I think the theatrical experience should be special.  Unfortunately too many people turn this into their living room and decorum is out the window.  You can mitigate this with ushers enforcing behavior but that can be a big ask these days.  At the very least ushers need to be able to at least confirm everything is working properly with the tech and the house lights and the sound.  

The last part of this equation is the content itself.  Behavior when watching something in public is different when watching it in private, or at least it should be.  The theatrical experience should reward this.  I think we are going to head there in the future and right now these are the growing pains of evolving the theatre experience into something special.

RIP Dan Simmons

I did not expect to hear this news.  I have a handful of influences on my own works over the years and Dan Simmons is one of them.  Most of it came down to "How come I didn't think of that?" followed by "He executed that so well there is no point trying my own.". Anytime a writer finds someone's work that forces you to think bigger and work harder is a boon to your own output.  Dan Simmons did that for me.

He really is that good.  There's a few of his collections I haven't read and three stand alone novels I haven't touched.  Also I should give the latter half of the Hyperion Cantos a chance again sometime.

There is a succinct tribute to the author from another writer named Jon Del Arroz.  I am sure there will be many more in the future.

Depending on the genre you like chances are you'll find something you like from his forays into science fiction, crime, historical adventures, and horror.  Sometimes his books encompassed at least three of those.  If you haven't discovered his writing yet, I envy you.

X Files Reboot inbound and some hopeful musings on it

According to this link we have an X Files reboot coming.  I will reserve judgement until an actual trailer drops.  But being the eternal optimist I am I will gladly give them the benefit of the doubt.  Like Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey I consider this a kind of dare on behalf of the filmmakers.  Ryan Coogler's filmography is fine for the genre and these days jumping between film and TV projects is not as odd as it was back in the 90s when the original was in production.

It's interesting to me that they are going for pilot first as that is rarely done now.  The original XFiles pilot still holds up and sort of stands on its own.  For me the original show still holds up very well but I still think an opportunity was lost when they didn't transition to feature films after the 1998 film that finally answered the alien conspiracy question.  I think they should have continued with movies after that.  As such, on a rewatch I say stick with the first five seasons, watch the 1998 film and then the 2008 film and stop.  I am in the minority with this opinion.  I only saw bits and pieces of the Xfiles with seasons 6 thru 9 and I don't remember seeing any of the limited runs of 10 and 11.  

(As an aside, I have this theory about the perfect length for TV shows.  5 seasons which results in about 100 episodes.  You reach 100 shows and you can air forever 5 days a week in syndicated programming and take in the ad revenue which is a license to print money.  Obviously this no longer works with Internet and streaming)

I don't know how well an overarching conspiracy plot would work today.  Shows like Burn Notice or Lost overstay their welcome when they just keep piling on twists and turns and the original XFiles did this too.  Coogler and his team would have thought of that.  The pairing of skeptic and believer is always a solid play and goes back at least as far as Holmes and Watson.  Writing and casting will be key here and until we know the second lead none of this matters.

Pour One Out for Mass Market Paperbacks

According to this article Mass Market paperbacks are officially over.  It gives a succinct history of the format and why it went away.

I accept that the market forces change and it certainly didn't happen all at once.  I just recently read the novel "Heat 2", a sequel in book form to the 1995 film and I had a good time with that.  But the format might as well be a trade paperback as it is taller than a typical mass market but not as wide as a regular trade.  These days I call the left one a mass markets even though it really isnt.

What's replaced the mass market is the ebook.  I appreciate the convenience but it reminds me more and more that we're not really owning the product.  We're shifting towards a market that supports try everything and then curate your personal collection.  

I also miss the days when we had actual art for the cover.  Such as this one

All this is to say read however you want and fill your shelves with whatever makes it look cool.