Writing Blog #4 flashbang

July 28, 2010 · Posted in Stories MJG, Writing Blog · 7 Comments

I’ve been told I sometimes write in a flashbang style. This has manifested itself in several kinds of feedback-

- I can’t read for more than 10 minutes at a time. It’s exhausting.

- Some of the sequences left me really feeling the pain the main character felt.

- Stop hurting him and give him some happy times.

So what is flashbang? I can think of two corollaries. One- Michael Bay. *shudders*. Two- an overexcited American teenage girl delivering just a little content with a lot of verby enthusiasm- ‘so like, there was us two guys, and oh my gosh, it was amazing, like, you guys, it was sooo freakin awesome, you know, and like…’

I write like that?

Ruin of the White Root Mine

July 26, 2010 · Posted in Gunma, Haikyo, Mines / Factories · 5 Comments

The White Root mine is old, so old that only the faintest outlines of its bones remain. Squint hard and you might see fragments of its ribcage scattered over the hillside, parts of a cracked skull just visible through the topsoil. Once it must have been huge, swathing up and down the valley and pumping out smoke, now there’s just a single slurry run and a few walls left.

I went there ages ago, on the same road trip that took me to the Gunma Ski Lift, Hume Cement Factory, and back to the Asama Volcano Museum.

Some kind of storage vat, I wager.

The Lonely Dead by Michael Marshall Smith

July 23, 2010 · Posted in Reviews · 2 Comments

I really wanted to like this book. Ever since Michael Marshall Smith wrote his sci-fi trilogy of One of Us, Spares, and Only Forwards, I thought he`d be one of my favorite authors.

My first novel (as yet unpublished ) was influenced by his breezy first person narrative style. His books were packed with cool ideas, tidbits of nifty philosophy, and it was easy to overlook the parts that didn`t make sense, felt like filler, or were just too damn smug.

Well, it`s not so easy any more. The Lonely Dead is all of the bad in that list, with almost none of the good.

Writing Blog #3 bad guy motives

July 22, 2010 · Posted in Stories MJG, Writing Blog · Comment

Last week I talked about character motivation- filling in the gaps between what characters want and why. It`s a fundamental part of story architecture- that the good guy wants something and will fight to get it. But probably more important than what the good guy wants is what the bad guy wants.

That`s what I was thinking about when I started this latest round of Dawn redrafts *. What do bad guys want? It`s the keystone of story architecture, because the bad guy-

- drives the story

- creates the conflict

- causes the wrongs the good guy has to right.

If we don`t believe in them, the whole endeavour is damaged. Sherlock Holmes without Moriarty is still a great detective, but a shallow one. To be truly great, we need the push-pull of an antagonistic relationship. The good guy and the bad guy make each other greater.

So I thought about motives. I made a list of some of the villains I most like, and tried to draw a line through them to some common threads. Here`s what I came up with:

Kyushu’s dying theme park- Ceramic Land

July 21, 2010 · Posted in Haikyo, Nagasaki, Theme Parks · 17 Comments

During Japan’s real estate Bubble in the 1980′s, theme parks were the investment to make. They couldn’t fail. Sink millions into expensive construction, land, and man-power, and ride the surging economy to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All those decades of post-war militaristic industrialism had finally paid off, and people were finally taking more leisure time and traveling further afield to enjoy it- you couldn’t go wrong with a theme park.

Except of course, you could. The Bubble burst like an over-ripe peach and all the wacky ideas that before had seemed so bright- The Russian Village, Gulliver`s Kingdom, Sports World, now were black spots on the company ledger that had to be redacted from public view.

Glorious pylons in back echo the building`s form.

Star Trek: The Next Generation #7 Masks

July 16, 2010 · Posted in Reviews, Star Trek · 2 Comments

This is an odd one. Author John Vornholt drops two away teams comprising all the senior bridge crew onto a medieval world where everyone wears masks. They bumble around looking for each other and for the guy they were sent to find- Almighty Slayer, to initiate diplomatic relations. They get lost, they bump into all kinds of important people, and ultimately don`t do much of anything.