|
Written by Paul
|
|
Friday, 17 May 2013 00:35 |
I am always wary and often contemptuous of the oft-lauded "twist" ending. This kind of surprise - when well-executed - provides a kind of thrill that people associate with quality, even though it usually is not that. It's just that it momentarily forces engagement on an emotional level with even the most dull and banal story, it also forces the audience to go back and think over the entire work to that point in light of what they know now. It invites the kind of examination not common to pop entertainments and thus the uneducated consider the entire work to be therefore deeper and more 'intelligent' than the general run. This is not true at all.
Because characters must have all the information before them if they are to make intelligent, dramatic decisions. Think if we had not known - for example - that Vader was Luke's father until the very end, confessed as he lay dying after the death of the Emperor. Think how that would have robbed the entire movie of it's resonance. Every decision Luke made in Jedi was informed by that knowledge, and springing it at the end, after it was all over, simply for the transitory glee of jumping out and yelling 'surprise'. That would be a low kind of storytelling.
So does that mean that every bit of information must be made plain from the very beginning? No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is that characters must have the information relevant to the choices they have to make. I don't mean necessarily factual information, but the emotional information important to them, as characters, and relevant to their situation.
Thus a big reveal like this one, which has to come at the right time. If it is too early or too late it is meaningless, but at the right time it sets the stage for everything which will come after.
|
|
Written by Paul
|
|
Wednesday, 15 May 2013 00:59 |
One of the most necessary skills for a writer (and in fact, any creative person) and also one of the hardest to master, is knowing when to listen. There are times, as an artist, when you should listen to other people's advice, and times when you should not listen to anyone. The hard part is learning to tell the difference between those times.
In this interval since I finished the last chapter of Queen of the Sky Frontier I have been working over the pre-production for Imperial Blood - our intended Vampire Epic. I wasn't far into the planning before I realized this was going to be harder than I thought. A story like that will demand a higher class of prose on a daily basis, meaning it will be more demanding to write. Also, everything about it is coming out highly symbolic and mythic, which requires the underpinnings to be absolutely rock-solid and the beats of the story to be carefully worked out. Further, it is going to be a much more drama-and-character-driven story than the kind of adventure fiction I usually do.
Naamah and I were going over it again and we just had to sort of stop and say "It's not ready, and it's not going to be ready in time." In order to stay on schedule, writing has to start this weekend, and the story is not going to be worked out enough for that to happen. It is tearing me up to make this call, because I am already rolling - I am invested, I am dreaming about this story.
But I'm not going into this particular battle only partly prepared. The book in my head deserves to be written as well as it possibly can be. It would be easy - temptingly so - to just lower the blade, downshift, and ram into it for the sake of being able to say "I beat you". That, however, would not serve the purpose of writing a good book.
So when Naamah told me. "Look, it's not ready and we need to go to plan B," I had to listen to her. This is one of those times. She knows me better than anyone, even me a lot of the time. I have learned to listen to her even when I think she is full of shit.
So Imperial Blood will continue in development for next time, and we will be commencing Throne of the Depths as our next book. This is the book I wanted to write, even if nobody else really seemed to get my idea. The point is not me getting my way, but me taking on a project I know we can do while we keep working on the next one. Sorry if this disappoints anyone, but this is just the way we have to do it. Our lives are kind of in an uproar right now, and I can't kill myself working on the next project, trying to rush it when it's not ready to go.
So, vampires get pushed back to November, and next up will be undersea Jules Verne-style adventure, with fucking. I hope everyone can get on board for that.
|
|
Written by Paul
|
|
Sunday, 12 May 2013 22:14 |
So today's post marks the first one made from the new computer on all-new software. No longer tied to an old cracked version of Word 2003 I have moved over to LibreOffice. I keep having this feeling that the text looks sliiiightly different, but that's likely just the higher resolution on my new graphics card making everything look just a tiiiny bit different.
Knots in the lore of Imperial Blood are getting worked out, and I should be commencing writing this week - real writing, as opposed to pre-production work. Also, I have a trailer to hash out, as we would like to launch the campaign on June 3rd. Lots to do before then.
I'm killing a lot fewer people in this book than in Sky Pirates. I had a lot of villains in that book, and so the end was just one big showdown after another and in retrospect it seems a bit much. So this time I opted for fewer bad guys, less clearly-drawn lines between good guys and bad guys, and to make the whole thing about deciding what side you are on as opposed to 'how do we beat the villains?' Thus, I'm killing fewer characters off, so they can still be around to make decisions. Dead men add no drama.
|
|
|
