50 Shades of Why

So, the movie is finally out and people have seen it and the reactions are mixed. What is up with 50 Shades of Grey. Why were the books so popular and why is the movie getting such mixed reviews? I think I’ve found the answer to that. It is a fantasy that really shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

When it comes to our sexual fantasies, what turns us on in our heads is occasionally things that would repel us in real life. Books often tie into that fantasy world and titillate us with things happening to characters that border or downright are a sexual fantasy. It works in a book. It is just the reader and the words and the images they create. None of it is real.

Then there is the obligatory movie adaption. The reaction I’m seeing spread over the internet is mixed. Well, not so much mixed as mixed in why they didn’t like it. Fans of the books don’t find it to be a good adaption. The characters lack any spark and the actors don’t really portray the characters as written. Others just object to the BDSM that is at the core of the story.

So, what went wrong and what is wrong with this movie. Well, it lays at the heart of the reason the books were so big. Fantasy. I’ve read enough to know that even if the author describes something, a reader can take or leave that description. In this case, the large body of female readers have made Christian Grey whoever they want him to be. By turning it into a movie, you cut off that fantasy and you give them an actor in the role. Suddenly the flaws of the story pop out. You no longer a reader immersed in the world the author created, you are an observer watching two people act out the scenes.

I’ve seen a great many who have praised Dakota Johnson for her performance and a great many who have panned her performance. The book is written in first person present tense. It creates an immediacy and the reader becomes Ana Steele. The movie, by necessity, changes that immediacy to the typical outside viewpoint, similar to third person. That inner connection to Ana is lost and you can only observer what she does. Basically the fantasy is broken.

Then there is the subject matter, BDSM is something unique. It is two people mutually agreeing to have rough sex. That is all fine and good, but it has to be handled delicately. Stray too far and it is no longer BDSM but domestic violence and rape. Most movies that touch on this emphasize a safe word. Some unusual word that allows a participant to call a halt to everything. This is usually because the typical words of “no” and “stop” then become part of the fantasy allowing the simulation of things, all with the knowledge that should it go to far there is always that safe word. For many who have been a victim of domestic violence or rape, watching such a simulation is disturbing to say the least. Safe word or no, the concept of BDSM brings unpleasant memories. There are others who just find it distasteful and anything but romantic.

The end result is a movie that is being panned by the critics and the audience. While the books were a great hit, the movie appears to be a dud. It seems it failed to maintain the fantasy of the books, and just became a tale of BDSM and leaves most viewers wondering why the books were so popular. I think this movie will appeal to those who find Jamie Dorman hot and who can identify with Dakota Johnson. For the rest of us it has become 50 Shakes of Why. That is one of the dangers of making a movie based on such a personal fantasy.

Origins of Characters

I recorded a documentary on the behind the scenes off the James Bond franchise a while back and I finally got to watch it a couple of nights ago. While much of it was the behind the scenes drama of the movies, the first part held a lot of fascinating aspects for me as a writer.

Ian Flemming participated in World War II as a spy. However, he was not a field spy, but he did manage a field spy team. He would rather have been in the field. He was a commander in the Royal Navy, but land bound in London. During the war he fell for a young courier. They were very close, but she was killed and it left him heart broken. After the war he was lost. Spent time at his Goldeneye estate. When the Cold War dawned he got the idea for James Bond. Many aspect of James Bond are autobiographical. Flemming was a bit of a playboy and never really settled down.

So, how did Flemming create James Bond. Well, the name came from a book on birds he had at Goldeneye. James Bond was the author and Flemming thought it just the sort of boring name his spy would need. Otherwise Bond was basically the spy Flemming had wanted to be, but reset from WWII to the Cold War. Bond was a cold killer and a passionate lover. He could switch from one to the other as the need arose. You can't quite say that Flemming didn't give him flaws, but it is those flaws as a person that make him a great spy. The same flaws Flemming saw in himself. Well, maybe not flaws, but aspects of his personality that really didn't fit in with the quite life.

That is just one example of how you create an iconic character. George Lucas did something far different with Star Wars. He consulted Campbell's book of mythical archetypes and used those to populate his story, a strange mixture of samurai cinema, WWII war movie, and his own boyhood in California. If any character in the film shared traits with Lucas himself, it would have been Han Solo, or maybe Chewbacca. The others come from myths and speak to the type of story humans have been telling for millennia.

Then there is Charles Dickens. So much of his work is autobiographical. He knew the things he wrote about and while I can't say if he put himself in any of the characters, he definitely put his family in them. Some writers didn't leave much to compare, but there are tantalizing tidbits. Victor Hugo was out on the streets of Paris and came across a barricade on that fateful night. Who might he have seen there that led to Jean Valjean, Marius, Enjolras, Eponine, or Gavroche. Regardless of the individuals, whoever he met that night likely died and lived again in the spirit of the characters he created.

Jane Austen lived most of the life of her heroines. He family was of modest income, comfortable but not rich. Her family was close. Her stories are a biography of her time. But unlike her characters, she never found the love and marriage she made sure they had.

Writers often create characters who are based on hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled. Lives cut short, loves lost, careers not tried. Often characters are more polished that the original, but sometimes they go the other way. This all goes in line with what I think makes a good character. Realism is the key to connecting with the reader. Sometimes that realism may be linking to our real life fantasies, not our real life. Some characters live the life we can only dream of, some are so close to us that we empathize with, some are so bad off that you hope no one you care about ends up like that. But in each case and in the areas in between, they are the realities encountered by our species. Our characters, even when they wield great powers that defy physics, are human. That is what makes them relateable to readers.

So it is no wonder that some of the most iconic characters have their origins in the real lives of their creators or the lives of those around them. The good characters feel real because they have their origins from the complex and human lives of their creators.

Write What You Know?

They say when you sit down to write that you should write what you know, but is that really good advice? I’ve come across a few instances where it just might be the worst advice you could follow.

This past year there has been a big blow up in the speculative fiction community about gender stereotypes in writing. More recently there was an analysis of the seven season of the new Doctor Who series using the Bechdel test to determine if the show was sexist or not. Now I have issue with that test, not because of what it is trying to test, but the way it does it. That’s a topic for an entirely different time. Right now what concerns me is the way writers deal with sensitive issues such as race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation.

Race I think I have handled. I grew up in a town that was predominantly white, but not exclusively. I consider myself blind to race, as in I do not treat anyone different because of how they look. I never have. I wasn’t raised that way. I am very race conscious. I know racism exists and I deplore it in all its forms. No one should have to experience that. I have filled my writing with a variety of races and if they were every to turned into movies (I know it’s a pipe dream, but no writer can help it) and cast according to how I see the characters, there wouldn’t be many roles for white people.

But it has come to my attention, through some of the things that have been happening, that my treatment of gender may be a little too close to how I was raised. There have been few working women in my family and there are few in my stories. An oversight I intend to correct. As I have pondered just how this came about, I have reached the conclusion it is because I have followed the advice and written what I know. No bad intention on my part, but the things that influenced me when I was young, and from which I continue to be inspired, tend to be male dominated. Just about everything I watched or read is male centric.

It is odd. I was raised by women (with few strong male figures in my life) and I portray women as people with their own strengths and weaknesses. I’ve even been told that when I write female protagonists that they are stronger characters than my mail protagonists. Even so, the ideas I come up with for stories lack many women characters. Men and women share this world 50/50. The characters in my stories should follow the same split, but I was well into my fourth novel when I realized what I was doing.

And this applies to how I portray sexual orientation. I knew of no one who was not straight when I was growing up. I had some good influence from one of my favorite writers on the topic, but found religion for a while and was quite against it for a while until I realized 90% of the stuff they were feeding me was untrue. It took me a while to come back to a better place and I consider myself to be very forward thinking. I support marriage equality and early detection of gender identity (so a young person can get hormone therapy before hitting puberty so their body can develop as the gender they see themself as). But because this is something I have little experience in, I am hesitant to write characters like this because of that advise to write what I know.

So we come to today and my writing, and that of many people, which does not correctly reflect our world or our beliefs because we are writing what we know. It is drilled into us and I see that advice, while great for looking for a genre or story idea, is horrible advice when it comes to populating our stories. Our world had changed considerably and we need to change with it. Not just in our beliefs, but in the characters we fill our stories with. No, I may not be comfortable writing about a gay or transgender character, but I need to expand my horizons and learn and grow. No, I may not know enough right now, but I can learn, study, ask questions, seek advice, make new friends, etc.

So I propose a corollary to Write what you know. That is, if you don’t know it, learn it. And don’t stop with what society sees as issues. Imagine your own. In speculative fiction we have opportunities to imagine things that may never be reality, but it can let us explore these issues. We can make our writing a platform for equality for all while telling damn good stories. In fact some of the best writing has a clear message.

Bye Bye, Mary Sue

Writers are often faced with an issue when creating characters – believability. We have to balance the task of creating real, fleshed out characters with what we need to tell the story in the space allotted. Some are better at it than others. Those who have failed have led to some interesting character tropes. In particular is the character labeled Mary Sue.

Before I get into what makes a Mary Sue, I should first cover the goals and desired character tropes that it is sometimes confused with. Hopefully if you are reading this, you are familiar with the term ‘trope’, but just in case, a troupe is a convention or device a writers uses that will be immediately familiar to their audience. Some of the notable character tropes are the hero, the old mentor, the damsel in distress. Writers use them to best effect when they use a trope as a skeleton to build a fully fleshed character on. One of the desirable tropes is the Everyman trope. The Everyman is a normal person, someone the audience can relate to. They are used to great effect in many ways in a story, but have come to prominence as the protagonist. A proper Everyman is well rounded, fallible, not particularly heroic, but someone who can make it through adversity. They key to good fiction is to take a character trope and produce a realistic, well rounded character.

And then you have a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a miss of the Everyman trope. A Mary Sue masquerades as an Everyman, but where an Everyman has flaws and seems real, a Mary Sue is almost too perfect and too successful. Thing come too easy for a Mary Sue. If you have every played role-playing games, a Mary Sue plays with loaded dice. This trope was really born in fan fiction, but you can find them almost anywhere. Everything seems to go their way and yet they pass themselves off as completely normal. Readers wait for them to crash and they never do. I really shouldn’t just limit this to written fiction as it applies equally well to moving pictures, but even they have a script written by someone. Whether it is a reader taking the words and building a character in their mind or an actor performing the part, you still have a writer behind it.

I would pin the difference between an Everyman and a Mary Sue as failure. You expect and get failure from the Everyman. From a Mary Sue you will never get real failure. What does it mean to fail? Well, in the extreme it means death. But it also means you lose the love, you can’t save someone important, you can’t succeed at every step and have to try again. Failure builds character. It also lets readers connect with the character. What it boils down to is that with the Everyman, success is not guaranteed and usually not fully achieved. With a Mary Sue, they are going to succeed and get just about everything they want. For an Everyman, success comes with a price or is incomplete. For a Mary Sue, there is little price and it is complete (unless the writer saved something for a sequel).

The Mary Sue is like this because the trope comes from wish fulfillment. The writer wants what they character gets. It is a fantasy where everything goes the right way. In good fiction, as with life, few things come that easy. The Mary Sue character has everything come easy and the story just lacks something. It may be action packed, and a thrill ride, but there is no real danger, not sense that failure is imminent. By creating this sort of character, the writer has diminished their work. That said, parody and comedy have different rules. I don’t write that way, but the only time a Mary Sue can work to good effect is when the purpose of the story is different. For normal dramatic fiction, a Mary Sue is a bad thing.

The Mary Sue trope is not always a deliberate thing. Usually it is done on accident by someone who has yet to acquire their full set of writing skills. We can forgive a budding writer for falling for this trap. It is an easy fix. But when you have someone who eschews the fix and keeps doing it, you just have a bad writer. A writer needs to have a reason for everything. If you want to put in an Everyman, they need to have flaws and failure. If you have a comic purpose, you might have need of a Mary Sue. A writer needs to know their craft and use the tools and tropes that are called for to best meet the expectations of the reader. A reader of serious fiction will read a Mary Sue story and hate it or be totally bored.

Eliminating Mary Sue characters (except for those rare instances when they serve a purpose) is one of the first things a new writer needs eradicate. It is one of those things that separates the amateurs from the professionals. Few other character tropes are so fully tied to bad writing as the Mary Sue is. Part of that is the trope’s birth in fan fiction and the wish fulfillment of the fledgling writer. I did it. It is the hallmark of a writer who has yet to learn that to make fiction interesting, you have to put your characters through hell. You also don’t want to just insert problems for problem’s sake, but that is a post for another time.

Staying Creative

This is a season when it is hard to stay creative. At least for me. Too many family events going on to keep the writing going. Then it is hard to get back to it.

Well, I have no good answers as to how to stay creative. In many ways it is kind of a question. What I find works best is to just dive back in as soon as possible. I've managed to meet every November writing goal I've set for myself, including this year, but the early months of the year have always been my least productive time for writing. I'm hoping this years is an exception.

I have plenty of goals for the year. I am working hard to finish one novel right now. I'm 3/4 of the way through it and the end is in sight. But I did take a break on another novel to write this one. So the new year sees me with several projects, including two novels to finish.

I think the one thing that does work the best for me is to keep taking the time to enjoy other people's work. It invigorates me to experience a good story. I try to turn that into energy for writing.

Staying creative is hard work. That is part of how it works. It takes work to be creative. You have to stick with it and not be an artist, but a craftsman.

Selling Your Soul

Writing is a constant struggle to maintain the balance between something intimate and something marketable. We put our soul into our work and then we turn around and have to sell it. It doesn't matter if you writer fiction, non-fiction, for movies or for books, you have to sell your writing, your soul, to someone else.

Today I stumbled across a book that deals with that singular point, selling your work. Blake Snyder takes an interesting tack on it in Save The Cat. While he is a screenwriter and his book is geared toward his industry specifically, there is a lot for any type of writer to learn. Snyder focuses on something that had crossed my mind on several occasions in the past years and that is you need to know what you are writing before you write it. Not the whole story, but the premise. To do that he asks that we answer one question BEFORE we ever start writing - What is it? He, of course, focuses on what that answer should include to be successful in Hollywood, a far tougher market than the publishing world or the self-publishing world. He focuses on irony as the key thing that draws in potential producers.

We writers of novel length fiction have different audiences with different interests. Irony is a very good hook, but it may not be the most important for every genre. Know thy genre is the critically important mantra that will help you hook the readers you want. Ultimately, not matter what you write, it has to be sold to the public, either by you or by someone you sold your work to. The public will ask "What is it?" and you need to have the answer.

The first step, before you even name your characters or pick your setting, is to get to the heart of your story. Craft a simple one line sentence, commonly called a logline. You aren't interested in who at the moment, just what. The what is the foundation of your story, even if you are writing a biography.

Once you have the what is it is time to add in genre and who. Genre colors everything. You can have a story about a ship captain, but knowing that it is a modern cruise ship in a murder mystery, a future spaceship, a nineteenth century whaler, or a ship carrying a magical item to save the world. Genre colors the conflict and the characters. Then the who gives us a frame of reference, a way into the story. Who is this story about and why should we care about them. We novel writers have and advantage over Hollywood screenwriters in that our characters don't need to be as relatable. They don't need to be vehicles for stars and they don't have to be simple.

Next is structure and pacing. Snyder writes specifically about movies and gives a very set pacing (a tad dictatorial for my taste - but his pacing works). Novels flow at a different pace. A move screenplay is just a fraction the length of a novel (under 20k and only about 150 words per page) so there is less room to play with pacing. In a novel we have 4 or more times the length to work with and can weave much more complex stories so the structure is not nearly as set. But the pacing needs to be just as consistent. Movies are commonly considered to be structured in 3 acts. Novels are more like 9. You can have multiple highs and lows that build to the final climax and denouement. There is more time to delve into characters, large and small. Still, you don't want to get side tracked. You still need to stay focused on that idea you crystallized in the logline.

The nice thing is that this works for planners and pantsters. For planners, you can go a step further and plan out your structure and fill in the details. For pantsters, you have only created the kernel of the story and are free to wander to your ending, but you must keep pacing in mind as you do so. Some of the suggestions Snyder has can help, even if you don't want to preplan where you are going, you can set goals, such as in an 80k story, by the time you reach 40k, you should be halfway through your story and should be well into the problem. On the advice of Isaac Asimov (the essays from Gold), I always plan my ending so I know where I am going, but I leave how I get there up in the air.

But no matter what you write or how long it is, if you are serious about making writing your profession you will need to hawk you wares once you have your project finished. To do that, you need to have a clear image of what your story is about, who it is about, and what genre it fits into. One trick that I have learned but not yet mastered is that in trying to find a taker for your story, you don't have to be very precise in your logline/hook or summary. You want the person on the other end to read your story and everything needs to be designed to do that. These aren't skills that come easy to most writer, but doing these things up front will give you a better chance. If you create the basic logline first and then embellish it with the who and genre of your story (and then stick to that as you write), you will have the best possible tolls to gain the readers you want. This piece of your soul called a novel needs to be read and the better you can explain the what and who to potential readers, the easier it is to sell to them.

Where To Begin...

One issue that commonly plagues writers is where to begin a story. The standard advice of beginning when the action starts or to start with an action scene doesn't always lead to good results. I will attempt to put down my thoughts on the subject in a way that I hope will be helpful.

The good news is that you don't have to find your beginning when you start writing. Sometimes it can be more helpful to your overall story if you go back and fix it after you have the ending to your story ironed out. For those who outline in depth, you might just have enough of your story before you begin your first draft, but getting in and writing it might still give you cause to go back and edit your beginning later.

The trap many fall into is equating staring your story with action to starting it in the middle of an action scene. That is the wrong sort of action. It might work for some stories, but for others it can set a incorrect image of the story. If you aren't delivering hard hitting action scenes all through your story, you probably don't want to start with one. No, the meaning of starting with action is to start with your first character doing something. It's supposed to be an action verb, not an action scene. It doesn't matter how mundane it is, but the verb should not be static. Looking in mirror is not action. Lounging in bed is not action. Driving is, opening a door, even waking up or some life event works. Visit your favorite books and see how they start. Chances are it isn't with a fast paced action scene.

What is that moment that is the best beginning? It is the moment when things change. It could be as seemingly insignificant as a blown interview or cancelled appointment or as eventful as a birth, death, marriage, or car accident. Think about it like alternate realities. What is the point where this story breaks off from all possible other stories. Then find the first interesting thing that happens. Often the very first scene will be the change, but at other times, it has already happened. Such as a couple agree to sell their house and move, but the first scene is their final walk-through of the house - the moment that sale becomes final, at least for the characters if not the bank. In the first Star Wars movie (Episode IV) the pivotal moment is when the plans are stolen, but it doesn't impact our characters until Leia gives the plans to R2-D2 during the epic battle over Tatooine. In The Hobbit, that moment is when Gandalf chose Bilbo to be the fourteen's member of Thorin's party, but we don't start the story until Gandalf puts a mark on Bilbo's door on the day of the gathering. And this is nothing new. Jane Austen started Pride and Prejudice with a conversation about Netherfield Park being rented at last, the day Elizabeth Bennett learned of the event that would change her life.

Also, if you like to be a bit more realistic, sometimes those early moments on the path to the conflict are not always that interesting. Maybe the key moment happened some months ago, but only now do things that make for a good story pick up. The key is to know what the pivotal moment is and how your characters get involved. One way is to have the opening scene be when another character gets involved. George Lucas used the two droids as his vehicle for moving the story. They are technically secondary characters, but they are the story link between Leia and Luke.

Once you lock in where to begin, the question becomes how to begin. That really depends on your story. But no matter what the story, you have to keep in mind two things. First, get the reader's attention and get them hooked by your story. Second, every story should build to the ultimate climax. You don't want to start with something so big and epic that the rest of your story can't live up to it. Now if you are going to tell a big epic war story, like Star Wars, you can start with a battle. If your character is in the military and a particular battle is crucial to the start of his story, then that works. What you don't want to do is make the opening scene bigger than the payoff later supports. You don't need big to snag an audience, what you need is something intriguing. Something that catches their interest. Movement and action verbs are just one of many tricks to do that. Mystery is another.

Like with just about every aspect of being a writer, the best education is to read and read widely. Step out of your comfort zone. Say, like me, you love science fiction and fantasy. On occasion, pick up a historical fiction, a mystery, a spy novel, or a chicklit. It will enrich your writing and let you in on what other types of writers are doing. I've found some pretty great books that way. While reading for enjoyment is always a good thing, as a writer, you really need to do more. You need to pay attention to how the plot unfolds, where they start the story, how the opening scene catches you, how the conflict builds and morphs and moves to the climax. There are many ways to structure a story and the more ways you know, the more widely you are read, the more depth your stories will have.

The Annoyance Of 'Whom'

Sometimes a word outlives its usefulness. 'Whom' is nearly such a word. It has lost much of its meaning because it was most people don't understand when to use it. Consequently when in doubt, people use 'who' instead.

Part of this stems from a lack of knowledge by the learned grammarians as to the origins of the word and its correct usage in historical context. Students of German should instantly understand what I am talking about because Old English and German had the exact same structure of pronouns. Modern German has four cases, Nominative (subject), Accusative (direct object), Dative (indirect object), and Genitive (possessive). You may notice that two cases carry the name object and therein lies the problem. 'Whom' is a specifically Dative form of 'who'. That is why when grammarians say that if it is an object use 'whom' and to our ears it usually sounds wrong. Because it is. Most of the objects are Accusative and so use 'who'. Only when used in Dative do you need 'whom' and only then does it seem to fit.

The gist is that something that started back in the Dark Ages during the birth of English, is still causing changes even today. 'Whom' is becoming less and less frequent. Fewer people use it and more and more just stick with 'who' in all instances. This has been a problem for English since the original Accusative form, 'whon', went away. Those of learning have consistently replaced it with 'whom', while the common people have replaced it with 'who'. Trouble is the common people tend to win these sorts of things. This particular issue has just taken a lot longer to work itself out than just about any other linguistic conundrum. Technically we still haven't fully worked it out, but it is pretty obvious that 'whom' is on the way out at last.

Bad Witing: Who Notices and What Matters

I am making no secret I am boycotting Star Trek Into Darkness (warning, if you don't like spoilers, don't read further), but in addition to the whitewash casting that sparked my boycott, I have reports from those who have seen it on just how badly written it is. The most detailed report so far has been from James Cawley. For those who haven't heard of him, he is the other James T. Kirk. He stars and produces the fan made Star Trek: Phase II. His report on the flaws and plot holes of Star Trek Into Darkness is magnificent.

As a blog about writing, I thought it would be useful to delve into the topic of bad writing using this film as an example. The real thing I want to focus on is who notices and what sort of issues matter and what don't. Now, things are a bit different for movies than for books, but not by too much.

Star Trek Into Darkness is full of plot holes and logical inconsistencies. Cawley goes in depth on the major offenses and points out many of the minor offenses as well. The plot details don't matter for the sake of this discussion. I'm more interested in the audience reaction. With this movie it varies widely, but most have enjoyed it. Even Cawley says it is better than that last one. I'm sensitive to race issues so casting Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonian Singh doesn't sit well. If you've read my work you'll know from the cover art and characters descriptions that I avoid using a typical westerner unless there is a reason. That on top of a dubious sequel to the dubious 2009 film and the bad writing reported by several people I trust, and I have chosen to boycott it. Not just now, I don't plan to ever see it. That puts me in somewhat of a bind, but Cawley has done an excellent job of reporting and it is more than enough to use for examples.

No matter what you write, there are two audiences you must please. You must please the general public and those who will be reviewing it. For novelists, the latter includes agents, editors, and publishers, as well as book reviewers. There is no work that will be universally loved, so often it is a matter of finding the right people to review it. You need someone who likes the same sort of thing. That is why agents, editors, and publishers usually focus on a few select genres. In the case of something part of such a well-known legacy as Star Trek, one of the key group of reviewers is not just the followers of the genre, but the followers of the franchise. Do they matter? Yes, they do. But the question is how much.

Star Trek has a long history and the fans first stepped up to keep the series on the air. But by the third season the writing was on the wall and Roddenberry lost heart and let scripts through that were less than stellar. It shows. Such classics as Spock's Brain and Turnabout Intruder really make you question the series. When it came to the movies, the legions of fans made Star Trek: The Motion Picture a hit, even though it is a more cerebral story filled with visual effects. They came back with a trilogy of popular movies, culminating in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the biggest popular hit of the franchise. That is because it took good Star Trek and made it accessible to the general public. It did so without dumbing down the franchise.

Fast forward to 2009 and the release of the simply titled Star Trek. The movie uses an alternate timeline to reboot the franchise and rattle the cages. In spite of casting an outstanding actor for the part, the film lacked a good villain. He was poorly written and was barely involved in the plot. I won't go into all the plot holes in that film. I was able to turn off my Trek logic detector and just enjoy it. Now we have its sequel, created by the same writers and production team.

It is clear form the careless nature of the writing that both these movies helmed by J.J. Abrams are all about the action. What that does is cater to the general public, the wider audience. That is well and good and would be fine, except there are the legions of loyal Star Trek fans who expect more. We have put up with the drawn out Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the low quality (but oddly with a story that is closer to the spirit of the Original Series) Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. We dealt with Star Trek: Generations and the horrible breakdown in crew ability, all just to destroy the sets. We could deal with these because even while being less than great, they adhered to the ideals of Star Trek. That is missing from these new movies. And with the casting choice for the role of Khan, this latest one falls flat. We old timers will speak up. We are a group of reviewers that Abrams and his crew have chosen to ignore. While we may not have a big impact on the ticket sales these first weeks, we are the ones who normally see a film multiple times and then buy the home video release later. My boycott may have no impact now, but if enough Star Trek fans who care about story are disappointed enough in this film, it won't do well for long.

So what we have in Star Trek Into Darkness is a very pretty movie with serious story issues. The casual observer may not notice, or there may be just a flicker that something doesn't seem right. The closer observer, the critic, the reviewer, the Star Trek fan, is going to see these things and it will diminish the product. On a multi-million dollar effects movie, the expense of spending a little time on the script and bringing in someone who can pick out those flaws before the film gets made is minimal and would pay for itself in the end. By not caring and paying attention to those things, you lose some potential repeat business.

For us writers, this is a cautionary tale. Imagine instead of a die hard Star Trek fan, you are dealing with an agent who specializes in your genre. You write a good tale, but you goof up a few things. If you write historical fiction, perhaps you have introduced some anachronism that would spoil your story for potential readers. Perhaps you write science fiction and have leaned too far to the supernatural. These things can be a deal breaker. If you are lucky, someone will point them out to you, but in a world where the slush piles are so large, they are just looking for a reason to pass. The sort of carelessness Abrams has shown with Star Trek is the sort of thing an agent is going to pass on.

Now in this case, the movie is likely to be a huge success and Abrams will continue to ignore the protests from the fans as he rakes in the money. But consider that if he had done it right, not only would he rake in the money, but he'd make more people happy in the process and probably make even more. The lesson in this is to keep the reviewers and fans happy. You can't please everyone, but you need to please as many as you can. Writers need to focus on the agent/editor/publisher at first, and then, as they grow in popularity, their fans. It seems such a simple thing, but some people just don't get it and it shows in how other people feel about their work. So while much of the general public gives Abrams an A for this movie, this reviewer gives him an F. He failed to do some simple things that would have only given him a better finished product.

Langley, Wrights, and Copyrights

Today I thought I would delve into the issue of copyrights, piracy, and just what is good for creative work and what harms it. Copyright is supposed to protect creative work, but does it? Is it effective? Piracy is suppose to be a bad thing, but is it? Is it as dangerous as some make it out to be?

My primary example of what to do and not to do comes from aviation. More correctly, the dawn of aviation. As the 20th century dawned, there were many who were trying to use the current engineering to produce a heavier than air flying vehicle. Lighter than air had been mastered more than a century before, but heavier than air was proving a challenge.

Modern research gives us some interesting glimpses as to what the situation was. In fact, the first person to actually fly may not be who we think it is today. There are several contenders, but none has solid documentation. But to those living at the time, there was one name, more than any other, associated with flight. That was Samuel Pierpont Langley. His work was public, as were his failures. He may have been the first to build a flight worthy aircraft, but on the first try, it clipped the catapult and crashed. It took months to repair and the second attempt also ended in a crash. Before the plane could be repaired for another attempt, the Wright Brothers had flown.

The Wright brothers worked in secret. Not complete secrecy, but they didn't advertise or conduct their flight tests in the public eye. Being the first to achieve a controlled, powered flight of a heavier than air vehicle, they go down in history. Their plane flew not just once on December 17, 1903, but four times. The poof that they were on the right track lay in successive machines based on that first one. They won the first military aviation contract from the US Army. But, as I said, they were secretive. They jealously guarded their patent and sued anyone who violated it. They quickly lost the PR campaign to Langley. The final straw was when Glenn Curtis rebuilt Langley's vehicle and successfully flew it. The Wright brothers maintained their legal right to the patent, but Langley got credit. In fact, modern aviation owes more to Langley and the other inventors than to the Wright brothers. The brothers were so paranoid in their protection of their patent that they ended up stifling aviation development in the US. They were so focused on protecting their invention that Wilbur died from the stress and they made few further innovations. Meanwhile Langley was given credit and during most of the 1920's and 1930's, he was considered the father of flight. By then the Wright brother's patent had expired and Glenn Curtis had seen to it that the Langley design had become the pattern for all US aircraft.

That brings us back to the present, where we all know the Wright brothers were the first to fly and, above all, had the most successful early aircraft design (aerodynamic controls, power, distance, altitude, etc). In our electronic age, we are plagued or tempted (depending on your point of view) with a plethora of illegal digital copies of music, movies, TV, books, and games. There are a rare few that actually charge for this illegal content, but it is usually free. To compare this with the Wright brothers, their method was to sue EVERYONE. There were no exceptions. They spent so much time and money on it that their work suffered. They are like the poster child for the RIAA and MPAA, who follow those same tactics. The Wight brothers went after anyone even using their inventions, most of whom were not making a penny on it. History has pretty well proven that it doesn't work. A more workable solution is to only go after the the major violators. Those who flaunt the law and those who are profiting from selling your ideas. That would have cut down immensely on the stress the Wright brothers put themselves under.

The best way to combat someone violating your idea is to make sure the public know it is your idea. The Wright brothers failed in this. They were so concerned about protecting their idea, they never truly profited from it and, for a good deal of time, they lost the recognition. In the end they even lost the design lineage. Langley truly is the father of modern aviation. To apply this to our modern digital piracy situation, you have to look at what is worth fighting and what isn't. If you try to fight every single infringement, you will face a never ending battle and you will ultimately lose the PR battle. You fight the ones who are taking credit for your work or charging money for it, and let those who are giving it away, with your name still attached, alone. It's free publicity, after all. That will really limit what you have to watch for, reduce your stress, and maximize your creative time. And that is really far more important than worrying over every single illegal copy out there. The best weapon in the fight against piracy is to keep creating. If you let that be impacted, you have lost, just like the Wright brothers lost. Don't follow the Wright brothers example.

The Bard's Last Hurrah

For well over a century there have been those who doubt that William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon wrote the plays historically attributed to him. The controversy has always peeked my interest and the more I look into it the more my mind is set that the man from Stradford was indeed the bard. The latest piece I have stumbled across concerned Shakespeare's personal life and how it relates to the plays.

The real origin of the doubts about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays dates back to the early nineteenth century. Before that, it was taken as an incontrovertible fact. But in the nineteenth century, amid the culture of owning slaves and the science of phrenology, there was the concept that some people were better then others. It led to the assumption that more primitive peoples were mentally inferior and that the upper classes were mentally superior to the lower classes. As we know today, that is totally untrue, but along with that, it was called into question how a man who was barely educated, from a middle class family in the small town of Stratford could have moved to London and crafted plays that have come to be regarded as the best literature in the English language. The doubts rolled in and a slew of candidates for the real author were put forward.

The only problem with this scenario is that there are absolutely no facts to back up the idea that someone else wrote and William Shakespeare was just an actor and theater owner. What is has done is to send those who hold that Shakespeare was the author on a quest for every last piece of documentation and evidence that could possibly exist. The shear volume of information retrieved from the Elizabethan and early Jacobian era is astounding. Every piece of evidence points to one answer, that Shakespeare did his own writing.

As a writer myself, I have always been quite offended that the only reason Shakespeare couldn't have done his own writing was because of his class and perceived education and literacy status. The most prominent alternate candidates do have that pedigree and were known to write, but there is no concrete evidence to link a single one of them to the plays. Plus, it requires all the extant attestations that William Shakespeare was from Stratford and wrote the plays. Particularly the attestations in the First Folio, be false and that there was some conspiracy afoot to preserve the secrecy of the real author. We call such ideas that lack evidence and are based more on the alternate theory or denying the real evidence a conspiracy theory. Some of the other ones are that we didn't really land on the moon and the 9/11 was an inside job. Again, no basis in fact, just a denial of the official history and facts and alternate theories that really make no sense.

Then we come to his last plays. His son, Hamnet (named after a family friend in Stratford), died at the age of 11. Just a few years later, in Twelfth Night, we find fraternal twins (mirroring Shakespeare's own children Hamnet and Judith) and the girl thinks the boy dead. It is a main focus of the play. Then we come to Hamlet. The name is different, but similar, but it is the true sense of loss that fills the story that links this play to Hamlet's son. Records of who played what part indicates that Shakespeare played the Ghost. It is an interesting twist on speaking beyond the grave.

But the real interesting bit comes from The Tempest. This story has no direct origins and appears to be original, inspired by news of the day. The records of who played the roll indicate Shakespeare himself played Prospero and that it was not performed at the Globe, but at an indoor theater where the lighting could better be controlled and would call for additional stage directions. If that is true, it is very telling that the words Prospero speaks are words of farewell, appropriate to a writer and actor in his last work. The lines seem to have double meaning, in the story carrying a strong meaning and for Shakespeare himself having a second meaning. This was the last play written and last performance of Shakespeare. He soon retired to Stratford and died five years later. All the dates correspond and it is far too great a coincidence that following the last play written by Shakespeare, the actor retired and that the lines he spoke on stage were so very poignant to a man planning on retiring. None of the alternate candidates have such a connection to the plays.

Sometimes it is hard to believe who holds an anti-Stratfordian opinion. Sir Derek Jacobi does and Samuel Clemens did. But at their heart, the words of Shakespeare have something that requires one thing of the writer, genius. No mind, no matter family status or education, could create such lasting and deeply moving works without genius. Genius knows no class and is not hindered by education. For the one thing that the plays of William Shakespeare most certainly are, are works to be spoken, not read. These are plays by an actor for actors. They offer some of the most challenging parts every created. With few exceptions, we only have dialog to get across to the audience who these characters are and it is done in a masterful and genius way. Yet in The Tempest we have what amounts to a sign off. The perfect end to a glorious career as writer and actor. Prospero is the main character, front and center and has the last lines. Playing Prospero, Shakespeare would have been on stage almost constantly. What a treat for his audience. A man noted as both a playwright and an actor (something we have many of in our own time) having a grand exit as both. Oh, to have been in that audience on the last night he performed.

Keel, Ribs, and Planking

A few days ago I discovered videos of a class Brandon Sanderson taught in 2012 on writing at BYU (http://www.writeaboutdragons.com). As I was watching, I began to see a new way to describe how I write. I write in the same way they used to build wooden ships. I start with the keel - the story from beginning to end, with little fleshed out in the middle. then I add in the ribs, knees, planking, masts, rigging, sails, and paint. Now that I have you confused, let me explain.

The keel is the core of building a wooden ship, like USS Constitution. It is what everything attaches to. This is your main storyline, your main idea. The thing that runs from beginning to ending. You know you start with the bow and end with the rudder, but what lies between is only an idea until the rest is built. You don't even know what the rudder will look like or how far it will turn, it's too soon for that, but you know where it meets the keel. You know where your story leads and what the end scene will be, even if you don't know how it plays out.

There are several ways to build the ship from here and I could describe in detail how a modern engineer would do it or an artist, but neither of those fit the way I work. An modern engineer would have a full CG plan of the ship done and just have to make the parts and put them together (the outliner). An artist might just wing it and through trial and error create the ribs, lay over the planking and so on (a pantster). The way it was done back in the day is closer to the way I write. I lay down the keel, construct the ribs, from bow to stern, lay in the beams, knees, overlay it with planking, starting at the keep and working up to the gunwales, then caulk the planks to make them watertight, then tar the hull and overlay it with copper sheathing (if I want it to last), then launch it. That is the first draft. A story complete and in the shape I want it, but with out the final polish. At a distance the hull looks complete, but there is work yet to do, but it does mean the story is set.

With the story set, it is time to edit, polish and finish it up. When it is ready, the hull slides down the ways into the water. So to when the story is finished and ready, it is time to submit it to agents, publishers, or get it ready for self-publishing. The book release is like a ship's maiden voyage, fully outfitted, crewed, and ready for the sea. The journey from finished hull and launching to maiden voyage is like taking that finished and complete manuscript and putting the final touches on it, editing, formatting, and giving it a cover and sending it out into the world of readers. There are many things to do to finish a book, but that story, laid down in the rough draft, remains constant. It all goes back to the keel, that original story idea and leads you from the opening lines to the final chapter.

Les Miserables - Still More To Say

It really isn't surprising that with a book the size of Les Miserables, that I would have more to say on it, especially relating to the movie.

After reading an interesting review on the new 2012 film of the musical, my mind latched on to one significant change from the musical to the movie and just why Victor Hugo went into such long detail on seemingly minor plot points. Hugo gives us long pages of detail about both the Bishop of Digne and Waterloo. To a modern audience it can seem as if these are wasted paragraphs. They are anything but.

Think for a moment about who the main character is in Les Miserables. It is Jean Valjean. Yet, without the Bishop of Digne there would be no Jean Valjean. In the musical the lyrics the Bishop sings to Valjean are "I have bought your soul for God." That really gets to the heart of the story. For the first chapters it seems that the Bishop is the main character and then we turn from him to Valjean, but do we really turn? No. The spirit of the Bishop follows Valjean wherever he goes. That lesson taught that sank in shortly after they parted, is what drives the entire story. The Bishop has set everything in motion with his un-characteristic love and kindness. Hugo spends so much time with the Bishop because, more than even Jean Valjean, this is the Bishop's story. We are just seeing one example in how what the Bishop taught by example touched even the most hardened convict.

Those who haven't read the book or seen the longer French films of Les Miserables, may not realize how pivotal Waterloo is. In the musical it is barely mentioned to indicate Thenardier had been there "picking the pockets of the English dead," but there is so much more in the novel. Where the Bishop set in motion all of Jean Valjean's actions, Waterloo sets in motion all the actions of Thenardier and Marius. Hugo spends so much time describing Waterloo, both the events of the battle and emphasizing how much time had passed since then, because it is important to understanding the story. Thenardier wasn't just picking the pockets of the English dead, he was picking the pockets and anything else he could find from all the dead, and there were a lot of dead. This is important because it shows what a miracle it was for Thenardier to find the senior Pontmercy alive among the dead. There were so many dead that it was pure chance that Thenardier found him. This effects Marius later in the story (in scenes that don't appear in the musical). In fact, Marius and Cosette aren't even born when the events with the Bishop and at Waterloo take place.

A modern writer would need to spend considerably less time delving into these two scenes. A little telling would speed up the story immensely, but to craft the same story, both scenes are necessary because they are the backbone upon which all the rest sits. Without the Bishop and Waterloo, there is no Les Miserables.

Which brings me back to the change that prompted this thought. In the musical, in the finale, the ghost of Fantine appears to Valjean, followed by the ghost of Eponine. While Eponine has great significance to the audience, she has no significance to Valjean. In the movie, Eponine is absent and in her place is the Bishop. This is very significant and meaningful for Valjean and can even be inferred form how Hugo wrote the original version of the scene. The Bishop helps close the story he started. Very fitting. Again, an improvement to the musical which only makes me love the movie all that much more. I am so looking forward to the blu-ray/DVD release.

An Old Gem - The Conqueror

They have been making movies for a long time. Not all of them have been received well, regardless of the quality of the film. The Conqueror is one such film.

It was produced by Howard Hughes and released in 1956. Probably the two most notable things about it are that it starred John Wayne and that an unusually high percentage of the cast later developed cancerous due to the filming location. One thing the movie does not pretend to be is historical. Great effort was made to make it look right, which probably led to the unusual filming location for the exterior shots, but this is a drama inspired by history and it says so early in the opening credits.

I've read many comments on casting John Wayne to play the medieval Mongol leader and to me, it is a brilliant piece of casting, right in line with so many of Wayne's best roles. This is a grand 1950's historical epic, though it isn't very long as it only covers the opening years of Gengis Khan's career. Gengis Khan, or Temujin, his proper name and what he is called through the film, is a rough Mongol warrior who is so similar to the rough cowboys that Wayne usually plays that it is frightening. Few actors have that rough but lovable quality that Wayne did so well. Some complain about casting someone of European ancestry to play an Asian, but according to our best description and Mongolian genetic analysis, Temujin had red hair and green eyes and carried a patrilineal Y chromosome inherited from  distant European ancestory, as many Mongols matching that description.

So from the start it wars that this is a drama inspired by historical events, and it delivers. I could go into the differences between history and the film, but there is little point. It is an engaging story that gives us the spirit of these people while very inaccurately telling their story. I think the research in set design and costumes was far more accurate. Oh, and a word of note, having watch this right after watching a more historical dramitization of some of the events, it was very obvious that the horses used in this movie were totally wrong. They were probably the stock horses used in the westerns of the day and were way too big to be a proper Mongolian pony.

The one flaw was the attempt on the part of the screenwriter and the director (or maybe Hughes himself) to use stilted dialog. It lent a periodish feel, but felt forced and fake. Fortunately the story was compelling enough that I got used to it except when it was particularly bad.

Due to its age, this film could use a restoration. The transfer I watched (the only one I know of that is available on DVD) was either a technicolor print or a first generation color film copy. It suffers from some color misalignment and has the cigarette burns (the old end of real marks).

If you are a stickler for history and offended at the casting choices, this movie isn't for you. If you enjoy a good historical adventure epic, this is just your thing. The political backstabbing adds a wonderful depth and is something they did get right (in spirit though not for this period in his life)

I'd give it 4 stars out of 5 simply because of the scripted dialog and some technical issues. Otherwise it is a wonderful adventure that I enjoy watching over and over.

Les Miserables - The Five Star Movie Musical

I am a big fan of musicals. Less so than some other things, but still, I have many among my collections. Hollywood used to make them even if Broadway didn't, and of course they adapted all the major musicals of the day, sometimes more than once.

The latest in this long line is Les Miserables. Unlike many movies, this production is helmed by the the man who originally produced it for the stage, coupled with an Academy Award willing director. This set the bar for what I was expecting very high and the film paid off. As a particular fan of Les Miserables (the novel) and being familiar with many of the adpations, this film is one of the three best adaptions of the book to every be filmed. The other two were French productions. Well, so was this in many ways. Most people know this musical as a Broadway or West End production, but the creators are French. To quote Wikipedia, "music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, original French lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, with an English-language libretto by Herbert Kretzmer"

So why did they get it right and others who have brought the tale to the screen fail? Because they told the whole story. All of the Hollywood versions of the story end with Javert's suicide. Having listened to the Complete Symphonic Recording of the musical and read the book, I was in shock when the Liam Niesen film went from Javert's suicide to credits. For how excellent it had been up until then, that ruined the film for me and I have never watched it again. some of the older version stray even further.

One of the problems with adapting Les Miserables to the screen is length. It is a huge story. It was first printed in 1862 in five volumes (for those interested, Project Gutenberg has digitized the original French edition and it can be found in the odd library). Each volume was approximately 100,000 words making the whole roughly half a million words. Roughly the same length as The Lord of the Rings. That one was brought to film as three 2 1/2 hour movies. Fortunately Victor Huge tended to ramble on. Before you ever meet Thenardier or Marius, you get a detailed examination of the Waterloo battlefield. He manages to keep such side track interesting and riveting with his excellent writing, but much of that can be dropped. Even so you are left with a huge volume of story.

The two French versions that tell the complete story are the 1958 film staring Jean Gabin clocking in at 210 minutes, and the 2001 TV miniseries staring Gerard Depardieu consisting of 4 90 episodes (360 minutes). My dream is to have the 1958 film, in French, with subtitles. If anyone knows where to find such a version, let me know. I have a descent copy of the 2001 version. Neither one adds any filler and both still omit a detail or two.

Which brings me to the film version of the musical. The musical, first performed in its present form in London's West End at the Barbican Theater in 1985, tells much of the story in song. This allows for cramming much more information into a shorter time period. Still, things are missing. Between the original French concept album and the first performance in 1985, Eponine's sister Azelma vanished. There is nothing to link Eponine and Gavroche, her brother. Fantine's back story only appears in song (where you get the gist of her having a love affair, getting pregnant, and being abandoned). We are given a wonderful song to introduce the Thenardiers that really sets the tone of their character. Song gets right to the heart of the characters with little need for long establishing scenes or explanation. Brilliant song writing gets to the heart in a few hundred words and a few minutes where a normal movie has to spend time showing you the events and Victor Hugo spend endless pages filling in back story. The musical strips away the extraneous and leaves the core story, from beginning to end, with few omissions that are missed in a 180 minutes show.

And then there is the film adaption. Tom Hooper didn't just adapt the musical for film. No, this is a re-adaption using musical as its inspiration. In so many ways he went back to the book and restored much of what had been lost (sadly, Azelma still didn't make the cut, even as a background character). Marius's Grandfather is back, we flash to Gavroche when Eponine dies, the letters are in their proper place, and we finally get to see the convent where Jean Valjean and Cossette hid for many years. The musical has been adjusted to be closer to the book.

Most of all, we break from the musical format. A musical is performed on stage where the audience is by necessity distant from the action. My wife and I had excellent seats for the touring production that came to Denver in 2011. As I watched the movie, and reexamined it after the fact, I came to the conclusion that the movie give us an intimacy that the stage production just can't. That is a flaw in many filmed musicals, you still aren't in the action. I this film, you are there, you are with the characters. It isn't just the closeness of the camera, the final piece that lets us in the story is that the actors were signing live. You hear and see what the camera caught. There are effects (much of the wider picture, such as the ships and port in the opening scene, are added), but they are just set dressing. Much of the film comes to the theater as filmed, sound and image.

My previous favorite musical adaptions were Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music, both are a mix of dialog and music. Les Miserables is more music than dialog. It could have been dry like the adaption of Phantom of the Opera, but the live singing isn't just a gimmick, it brings the audience into the film. Think of it as sonic 3D. On top of that were an excellent cast, adept at acting and singing, fantastic sets and costumes, an attention to detail for the period, epic cinematography and editing. I found many of these roles, especially the three female lead roles, to be the best of any version of the musical I have heard, and I've heard a lot of them.

As a movie adaption of a musical, it is excellent. Hollywood can't help but change things and the difference between this and Phantom of the Opera is in stark contrast. Phantom was very faithful but lacked heart. Something didn't click. Les Miserables clicks, everything works, and yet it is not nearly as faithful. Words were changed, songs omitted, songs added, and yet it is even more powerful than the original musical. Tom Hooper's changes all bring the movie closer to the book and the original powerful story. Every change serves to heighten the emotional impact of an already stirring musical. I couldn't help thinking that the stage production could be improved by adopting some of the changes made for the movie. Normally I detest changes that Hollywood makes as they tend to detract rather than add. The two film version of South Pacific pale in comparison to a Nebraska community production of the original stage version. Yet this time, each change, although noticeable, only enhances, never detracts.

I can't wait to see it again and see what else I notice. The more I see it the less I'll notice the changes and the more I'll enjoy it. After just 1 viewing I would say it is the greatest movie musical of all time. It might end up supplanting Gone With the Wind and Star Wars as the film I consider the greatest of all time. I definitely give it 5 stars.

What Makes A Good Review

This topic has been on my mind for a while, especially since yesterday. In fact, as I plan on writing a movie review for my next post, you may end up reading that post before this one. No matter. It relates to reviews of all sorts.

Part of what sparked this was an absolutely horrible review of the film Les Miserables that can be found on CNN's website. I gave the reviewer and F, not because she panned the Golden Globe nominated film, but because of the content an nature of the review. Not every film is for everyone, but when you are in the business of writing a review, it needs to have information useful to those reading it. This particular review had nothing of use and really didn't say much besides showing that the reviewer hated the music the movie was based on and didn't seem to realize that was based on a classic book. There was little information on the quality of film making (be in writing, cinematography, set design, sound editing, film editing, singing caliber, acting quality, casting choices, or much else). The only thing that was clear was that she didn't like the musical and had judged the film based on that dislike and that she found Russell Crow's performance to be forced.

It is a perfect example of how NOT to write a review. Whether you are doing this professionally or because you have an opinion to share, you need to explain yourself in a manner that gets to the heart of what you like or don't like. For instance, I intensely dislike Star Trek: Generations. Why? Simple, the part of the story that revolves around Geordi and the hack of his visor throws 7 years of good writing for the series out the window. For someone who watched the TV series (the target audience for the film) it yanked you right out of the film. Yes, it was that bad. Those same tricks had been tried time and again in the series and the crew had detected them and performed as trained each time. It was like the crew had been replaced by fakes. Bad writing on one sub-plot destroyed an otherwise descent movie.

That is how you say way you disliked something. It needs to be specific and useful. A reader (or viewer if you make your review recommendations in video format) needs to come away from your review with information so they know if they are likely to agree with your review or disagree. Someone who has not watched the 7 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation isn't likely to be bothered by the same things that I was about Star Trek: Generations.

This holds true for book reviews. For independent authors, if you want the author to get something out of the review, you have to be specific. I've had a couple of reviews that comment that the book needs editing, but they don't say whether it is typos, grammar issues, or larger story issues. Is this person picky, or did I miss something obvious. I don't know from the general nature of the comment. Be specific. It might be something as simple as they don't like the dialect I write in, or it might be something as major as I used the wrong master document when I formatted it for upload.

Be specific, even if you are saying you liked it. What did you like? The reader of the review needs to know this for the review to be of any use. When reviewing a published book, you can give it a star rating to give your overall impression of it, but if you are going to take the time write something, give some details. Even something as simple as staying the story was enthralling says something. It means you were absorbed and there is a good chance the reader of your review will be as well. Don't say, "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" or "something just didn't work". If that is all you have to say, just give it the star rating or don't do anything.

That said, I have much to say about the film version of Les Miserables. And that is the criteria I use for when to write a review. If I just couldn't get into it and felt it just wasn't for me, that doesn't tell anyone anything, not unless you know exactly what I like and don't. Chances are the reader of a review isn't going to go out and check on all your likes and dislikes. If you become famous, that might be enough, but most reviewers aren't famous and never will be. Give the details and make your review something of value. A book can be well written and in need of proof-reading or it can be a good story that needs some editing to bring it out. Or maybe the movie you saw was well acted but poorly written (though sometimes it is hard to see that like the horror that is Highlander 2).

Give the reader something to go on, something to let them know if your review is useful to them or not. That is how to write a good review.

The Art of Voice

If you are a serious writer, you will know what I mean by 'voice'. It seems elusive and nebulous, but I've found it really isn't that hard to understand or to find. The problem most writers have is with quality.

Your writing voice is how you put your words together. All of us who use language to communicate (and I suspect that Dolphins and Wales may be among those numbers) speak in a unique way. Speaking is very natural and we are programmed to learn it as children. Each of us speaks with a unique voice. We adopt slang from our generation or from generations we associate with. We use words common to our environment and we learn how to say things in a certain way by those we have around as our language skills develop. Usually our parents and siblings, who are around us constantly in our first years, are the most influential, but as can be seen from people who grow up speaking multiple languages, school and society are equally important.

All this goes into creating the way we speak. The way we tell stories, such as how our day went, what the dog did with our homework, or to regale an audience with our summer exploits. We have a unique voice even if we are illiterate.

Many people make the great mistake in thinking that writing is our primary form of communications. Writing is just a series of symbols that encode our spoken language into a tangible form that we can share with others. It has recorded the words spoken by others for thousands of years. We can learn how they spoke because for most of human history there was no difference between the written voice and the spoken voice.

Fast forward to modern times. Experts on writing are looking for this mystical thing called 'voice' and can't pin down what it is. Some say you either have it or don't. Some say you can learn it or develop it. Some say everyone has it, it's just a matter of quality. Well, they are all true to some extent. Our modern society has divorced speaking and writing, turning them into two distinct methods of communication. Writing has gained this mythic status as something you have to have talent at. Rubbish! Far too many writers out there make writing far more complicated that it really is and they really want others to believe it is that hard. For the most part they have succeeded, but it is all hogwash.

Writing is speaking through a pen or keyboard. That is all. Just put the words on paper as you would speak them. Too often we get caught in the mystique of writing and forget its origins. For some, this will not result in grammatically acceptable writing, but that is something easy to correct. Good grammar is important for verbal and written communication to maximize your audience. As a society we are far more accepting of oddities in verbal communication then written communication. So that is a concession we have to make. Still, your writer's voice is not some mystical thing, it is the ability to imprint your writing with your unique personality.

I discovered this by accident many years ago when I was tutoring a foreign student in college. She had a paper to write and knew the material very well. But her mistake was to compose it in her native language and then translate it to English. I made her tell me what her idea was verbally and then made her write down what she had just said. The result was an A on the paper. Writers too often try to compose their words and then translate it to the page. The secret is to write it as you would say it. If you have seen the commercials for Dragon Naturally Speaking, there's another example. The people in the commercial go on and on about how it helps make writing easier. Why? Because speech recognition software records your spoken word in text. It bypasses all that translation from thought to speech to writing. If you want to find your writers voice, learn how to speak on the page instead of translating your thoughts into what you think writing should be. You'll get in your own way and obscure your natural voice.

That isn't to say you have the ability to tell a story. That is a different talent only distantly related to your ability to string words together. But it is your ability to string words together that is the key to voice when you write. It puts YOU on the page so that readers can hear your voice when they read your writing. And even the experts tacitly acknowledge this. One of the many ways suggested to improve your writing is to read it aloud. If you follow my advice, when you do that it will flow naturally. Better to have it sound right from the beginning rather than try to fix it at the end. That makes more work and creates and inferior product to what you could have had in the beginning. The closer your rough draft is to your final draft, the more alive it will be. The more it will sing with your own unique voice in every sentence.

What's In A Name? Sometimes Timing

We writers have to know all about words and how to use them. Meanings, definitions, usage, slang, puns, you name it, we have to know. So in a recent political discussion when my opponent used a word to try and label me, it got me thinking. Warning, what follows does contain politics (mine specifically), but pay more attention to the way the words are use

My opponent asked if I was a socialist. What the hell does that word mean? There are a lot of answers. What he meant by the word was a communist. He got that meaning from Glenn Beck. But is that what it really means? No, it isn't. It is, however, a common right wing label for those who espouse a view of government regulation, class leveling social programs, and a perceived godlessness that they feel equates someone to a communist. So in this sense, the word socialist is mean as a pejorative insult. I took it as such and responded with facts that showed they were talking nonsense.

What, then, is socialism? In the modern usage it refers to a different economic system where good are manufactured for consumption, not for sale. Companies are owned the government on behalf of the people or by the the people directly. The former in practice and the later in theory. This was true in the USSR form of Communism. In a pure form, all companies are owned in the same way. However, in general practice this system has been around since pre-history and is nothing new. In the 19th century, the thought was that the workers would take over the companies and the need for governments would vanish. In practice, the ownership always fell to the governments.

Now when I say this has been around since pre-history, what do I mean? The concept of the state (the head of state and defacto owner of everything in the state was usually a monarch) owning companies was very common. It still is. We do not live in a society were everything is done for profit. We have public services, such as water, gas, electricity, police, schools, fire-fighers, paramedics, road construction, and other public works. As you move further back into history, more and more things that we today have as independent businesses were owned an run by the government. The expeditions to the new world were all sponsored and funded by the monarchs of the day. Even going back to castles and cathedrals of Europe, the Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids, these are public works, not private. By strict definition, this is equivalent to the modern socialist ownership of companies by the government. But the thing was, this was never called socialism until the USSR took the Marx's communism and created the USSR and government ownership of everything.

It is from this that the insult arose. I didn't really connect it until I was watching a program on TV and they played a clip from the 1950's where the speaker referred to socialists. He was of course speaking of the USSR. Cut to today and Glenn Beck using it to label President Obama and accusing him of taking over healthcare. First off, for that label to be even tenuously correct, Obamacare would have to in some way take over from the private sector insurance companies. Instead, Obamacare establishes stronger regulation of the capitalistic health insurance industry and mandates that everyone over 130% of the poverty line buy health insurance and then expands Medicaid, the government health care coverage for the poor to cover everyone below 130% of the poverty line. That does not produce a government run healthcare system and does not match the definition of socialism. It is less government run than the other services I mentioned above.

And that brings me to my last definition of socialism. It was actually the first definition of the word, but least used these days. It refers to correcting capitalism for the natural imbalance of rich and poor by leveling the system while not making things equal. This is what all western capitalistic countries practice to reduce poverty. It is no longer called socialism, but things like social programs, social welfare, or, more disparagingly, entitlement programs.

So when someone uses the words socialist or socialism, which one do they mean? As you see, they are not interchangeable. And should you take offense? Probably not. If they intend to be insulting, educate them on what modern socialism means and how it is actually in use in every society in the world. Otherwise a simple yes or no works quite well.

From a writer's point of view, this discussion is important for two reasons. First, the usage for this word over time. The word means something different in 1830, 1880, and 1980. If you write period stories or have any political barbs to throw around in your story, you should know when and how to use the word. Second, this isn't the only word like this. If, like me, you write fiction that takes place in the future, you can come up with other words that might have a history like this. Or, for anything else, you need to research your terms and find out how words are used in context and how they are misused, either in honest mistake or to create a deliberate insult.

Words are crazy and powerful things. When you are talking about one that gets used as a label, you are talking about something even crazier and more powerful. Careful how you use them. Timing is everything.

Dreaming of Freedom

Elsewhere in the world, people are not as lucky as we are. Here in this country is the the presidential election year and we are bickering about politics. No one is dying, being killed, being denied their freedoms that we Americans so take for granted.

That is not true elsewhere in the world. Right now, Malala Yousafzai is fighting for her life. Why? she dared to speak out for her right to education. The Taliban in Pakistan found her words a threat and tracked her down and shot her. It really makes our petty bickering seem really dumb.

I don't want to go down a rabbit hole of complaining about troubled, that goes against the point I am trying to make. As we quibble over the right to health care and religious freedoms, we need to remember people like Malala who have to stand up just to get an education.

To learn more about Malala, what she has been through, and what real oppression feels like, please watch this documentary by Adam Ellick - Class Dismiss - on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F5yeW6XFZk

Is Silence Golden?

It has been a while since I posted something. As many of you know, I write under a couple of pen names and I have taken the leap of self publishing. As part of my efforts to build that brand, I participated in a blog tour this summer. A post a week on other people's blogs and hosting a post a week on mine. Problem wasn't I didn't have my blog setup very well so I recently remade it. It looks much better now and I'd like to invite anyone who follows this blog to follow that one. It is doubtful I will very often do more than one post at a time. Though I'm going to have three posts in quick succession because I'm going to list all my posts on other blogs.

So, my silence really wasn't me being quiet, it was me rambling on elsewhere. Now, if I'd been smart, I would have done all this before participating in that blog tour, but we live and learn. It was a fun and challenging experience, and it resulted in a flash fiction that I rather like.

If you have a chance, check it out and see how not silent I was this summer. I could use the traffic.