Half busy, half miserable. Started a post based on a series of tweets that got...out of hand, but haven't finished it yet and as it stands it's really whiny, even by my standards, so I might not bother finishing.
If you're interested, my twitter feed is here --that's actually where I've been doing the bulk of my online writing lately. 140 character bursts are substantially easier to handle than complete sentences, at least when you're in the mood I've been in.
However! That mood seems like it might be changing, because, you guessed it! I'm on some new pills. Actually, I'm back on some old pills which were really good for a year and then gave me insomnia for a couple months, after which I stopped taking them and became less alert and, I strongly suspect, less pleasant to be around. I've only been taking the new/old meds for a couple of days, but I can already feel myself evening out a bit emotionally.
Which is good, because like I said above, I've got a fair amount on my plate right now. In addition to the various pitches I've got floating around a number of editorial offices, things seem to be picking up on the screenwriting front, too. A producer with fairly extensive credits is working with me and Scott O. Brown to develop a screenplay based around a comic we wrote eons ago that never got published. Actually, it's based on a concept SOB pitched solo that I was brought in to help co-write in a form quite a bit different than what he'd originally intended. Naturally, Mr. Bigtime Producer's take on the property is pretty much the one SOB'd originally wanted for it anyway, so now he gets to write the story he wanted to do in the first place, but he's got the dubious joy of having a co-writer he didn't have when he originally proposed the story. I'm actually kind of surprised he's still talking to me, now that I stop to think about it...
Last time I checked, I was quite proud of the comic version we wrote of the piece in question, and hope that we'll someday be able to get it out. SOB and I retain the rights to the underlying but non-existent comic property, which is potentially problematic, but realistically, we weren't exactly rocketing towards a finished comic as it was, and, well, if you want a career as a screenwriter (I'll take one as any kind of writer, even copy), when someone as big as Mr. Bigtime Producer's willing to develop a screenplay with you, you've kind of got to take the shot. Even if taking the shot is likely going to be hours and hours and hours of your time for no money upfront--a scenario I've been getting used to over the last ten years in general and the last year and a half especially.
In addition to that, the managers are working on notes for what I'm promised will be The Final Revision of the spec I've been working on for the year and a half this weekend, so that should hopefully see my part of that process come to a close soon, at least till someone wants to pay for rewrites. Well, not "wants to pay for rewrites" so much as "will pay for rewrites regardless of whether they want to or not." And I've also been given a deadline for a revision of the spec pilot I wrote a couple years back that everyone loved until they decided it needed to be changed significantly. And after that, I've got deadlines for the Christmas thing outline, the supernatural thing proposal, the other supernatural thing proposal (which I'm probably going to pull because "Hollywoodizing" it enough to make it sellable would turn it into something I don't really want to write.)
And when I'm not working on that stuff I've usually been painting. I really need to get some more hardboard to paint on. The 2x2 foot or less scale I've been forced to work in recently is really dragging me down. 3x4 feet's the minimum dimensions for a real painting. And someday I will get back to the art college scope of 6x10 feet...someday...
So that's why there hasn't been much blog activity from me lately. If the way this little note unspooled is any sign of what's to come, that might change in the near future. But I wouldn't count on it.
What's new with you?
A
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Friday, March 5, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
The Future is Four Days Ago
The Future of Story conference took place at the Grant Macewan Arts Centre this past Friday and Saturday. I was there, largely because I was invited to speak on a panel Saturday afternoon. This was nice, because I'd have wanted to go anyway if I'd known it was happening prior to being invited, and now I got to go for free. I didn't even have to pay for parking or gas, because the arts centre is literally two and a half blocks from my front door.
No question, this was a sweet deal for yours truly, and I used all the skills I learned as an art student to take advantage of the opportunity, descending on the cheese platters like a living god of the locusts and mostly enjoying the "two dollars for everything" cash bar (I say mostly because the first night I paid two bucks for a can of Sprite Zero. EVERYTHING cost a toonie...)
Even without the free food and the cheap booze, it would've been a worthwhile experience. For me, anyway. Mileages seem to be varying, judging from the reactions I've encountered, largely at the twitter #futureofstory feed, which I blanket-bombed Saturday night with 20-some tweets after the conference, relating the most interesting, inflammatory, and/or bizarre statements I'd written down during the programming I attended.
I don't know that I've got much to say about the specifics of what I saw. Keynote speaker and BONES creator/showrunner Hart Hanson's talk on Friday night was easily the highlight of the weekend, and some thoughtful person has transcribed the whole thing online. Well worth reading for anyone looking to create stories for a mass audience; perhaps a little frustrating for those of a more, for lack of a better word, artistic bent.
In between cheese cubes, I got to talk one on one with Hanson for a couple minutes, during which he advised me to, basically, be really happy about Cowboys & Aliens being written by Kurtzman and Orci. "You should be happy," he said, or something close to it, "Happier than you seem to be." And this was after I'd had a couple beers; I thought I was acting pretty happy already. Perhaps I'm not as enigmatic and inscrutable a figure as I strive to portray.
In addition to Mr. Hanson's presentation Friday, I saw a panel called (I believe) "Creating the 21st Century Writer" entirely by accident. I'd thought I was going to the panel about new journalism, but had aimed myself at the room specified in the program, rather than the one in the revised schedule. I don't think I was the only one, either. By the time I figured out I wasn't where I was supposed to be, I was already ensconced in the back row of the room. Exit options were limited; I didn't think I'd feel comfortable lugging all the stuff I hadn't had a chance to get coatchecked out right in front of the panelists.
The only panel I saw on Saturday (note: I didn't see mine--I went into my public appearance fugue state at the beginning and was pretty much lost to reality for the next hour and a bit...) that I think went anywhere near the implied topic of the conference followed, this one dealing with reality television. Some juicy quotes there, most of which I failed to record because my pen died an ignominious death and when it comes to portable technology I'm one step removed from carving stuff on stone tablets.
There then came the alt-narrative panel which I was on and which was, to my surprise, actually attended. Three other panels were happening simultaneously, one of which featured Hart Hanson; I was semi-convinced nobody was going to come to ours, but as it turned out the room was not entirely devoid of non-panelist human life.
With one exception, I have no idea what I actually said during the panel. I'm still foggy on what a couple of the other panelists actually do (I write comics, Mike Laidlaw writes videogames, Kim Clegg and Ava Karvonen are involved with all sorts of multimedia platform development but I'm not clear what that involvement entails and probably don't even have the vocabulary to grasp it fully.)
One thing I do recall is suggesting that I could think of two ways to determine when the alternative becomes the mainstream, and one of those ways was when it started making money. Beyond that, it's all a haze of me being nervous and computers failing to work properly (for a minute, Mr. Hard Copy here was looking PRET-ty good with his old-fashioned comic books to hand around, I think...) ("Hardcopy" would be a great name for a hard-boiled detective, wouldn't it? Needs a sidekick, though. "This week, on HARDCOPY & McCOOL: When they investigate the death of the Archibishop of Canterbury, a mysterious figure from Hardcopy's past appears, threatening his friendship with McCool!")
After that, there was just the Crotchety Old Peop--er, A Word from the Wise panel. A distinguished panel of authors, all winners of the Governor-General's Award, but perhaps an odd note on which to close something called The Future of Story.
It was only after that last panel that I was able to put my finger on the second of two tensions that seem to me to have underpinned much of the overall conference. The first of these, introduced by Hart Hanson during his opening address, and one that's of perpetual interest to me, was the tension between the artist and the entertainer. Hanson, refreshingly, made no bones about his role as an entertainer (though I might dispute his characterization of art, even as it relates to narrative.) It was nice to see someone unconcerned with the pretense that they were creating something "more" important than entertainment, who nevertheless obviously takes the creation of entertainment very seriously. Well, it was obvious to me; Hanson's lecture was full of humour and self-deprecation, which I suppose could be interpreted by some as his being less than fully invested creatively in what he does (even if he point-blank said otherwise.)
This attitude stood out in stark contrast to many, if not all, of the 21st Century Writer and Word from the Wise panelists, who seemed to go to great pains to portray what they do as Important. Also important to them and, I gather, folks like bookseller Laurie Greenwood: the format in which what they do is received. Which brings me to the second tension: the schism between new and old, especially as it relates to media.
This divide between old and new wasn't immediately obvious to me during the conference itself. It should have been, with comments floating around like Sophie Lees' "Blogging is the antithesis of craft"--a notion so ridiculous I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and interpret it as a deliberately provocative statement designed to inspire discussion. Even her fellow panelists pointed out that not all blog posts are unedited, ill-thought out ramblings (which is in no way meant to imply this one isn't exactly that), and I believe one even said they stopped their blogging activity because it was taking too much effort to polish their posts.
But it wasn't obvious to me, not until I got back Saturday night and read the twitters under the #futureofstory hashtag. It seemed at the time that a good portion of them were arguing a position that the tweeters didn't feel was sufficiently represented on the panels they were watching, that of the early adopter of technology.
(As an aside, I've never wanted to have reliable mobile internet access in my life so much as I did this weekend--two or three people were livetweeting the event and it would have been fascinating to follow the online conversation in realtime with the panels and speakers being discussed. It's almost enough for me to wish I had a cellphone.)
At least one of the livetweeters seemed somewhat offended by a conference named The Future of Story focusing to the degree it did on the past, at least when it came to narrative delivery platforms. And honestly, judging from statements attributed to some of the panelists by the (admittedly likely to be at least somewhat biased) twitterers, I can understand why.
Now, I like books, and, for what it's worth, I think of a books as printed objects substantively different from an electronic document containing the same information. Someone tweeted something to the effect that a book isn't a format, the implication (quite possibly made explicit, I can't remember) being that an e-book is also a book. I'd go as far as to say a novel's not a format, but a book is and so is a digital document--but that's a semantic argument that probably isn't worth having.
An argument that maybe is worth having is whether the book as an object is going to be a viable delivery platform going forward, as opposed to digital documents conveyed via some form of monitor, be it a computer, cellphone, e-reader or whatever new shiny thing comes next. When someone with a vested interest in print media claims a kid can only be taught to read via text on paper--that's a questionable position and it's one that I'm not sure was as thoroughly questioned as it could have been (I wasn't at the panel in question, though, and am basing that on commentary tweets).
I don't think it's out of line for people who don't mind, or even prefer, to read books on monitors to take offense at someone implies or even outright states that their platform preference is somehow less... valid? Authentic? Just plain less?--than "real books" because kindles don't smell like fresh ink on old parchment. As I seem to recall saying in my panel, I'm leery of assigning a sweeping value judgment to something that isn't inherently good or bad, but simply is. Could I read an entire book on a kindle? I don't know, but, financial issues aside, I wouldn't mind finding out.
Even if I didn't, even if the only way I could read a book was if it had physical pages, it would be unbelievably arrogant to try and claim a position of authority on the matter of how books ought to be read based on nothing more than some combination of personal preference, ingrained habit, and wishful thinking. I can actually see the face my niece would make at me if I tried to tell her it's wrong to read something online if a print version's available. It's the face young people make at old people who've said something particularly stupid; she makes that face at me a lot.
I find it unfortunate that the conference didn't explore this friction between old and new in much depth, at least not on the programming I saw. Instead, each panel tended to be filled with people of like mind--in terms of diversity of activity and possibly opinion, the alt-narrative panel quite possibly contained the most variety of any of the programming. Which, depending on the intended goals of the conference, could actually have been part of the point. If an attendee or student wanted to find out about reality television, they would go to the reality TV panel, where reality TV people talked about reality TV. It was only during the question and answer session afterwards that a couple basic assumptions of a reality television producer faced any sort of challenge. One questioner, who assumed those wanting to appear on such a show were too naive to understand what they were setting themselves up for, clearly felt the whole thing was a moral cesspit; one exec's blase response to viewers suggesting she should have contacted childrens social services regarding a {I assume} parent's treatment of a child on one of their shows--basically, "our job is to document lives, not interfere with them (more than necessary to maximize the drama)"--left me feeling uneasy. Part of me wishes those were the kinds of subjects discussed during the panel proper, rather than the Q&A session afterwards.
All that said, there's a reasonable chance students and other interested parties walked out of the reality television panel with a better understanding of "unscripted programming", and a better chance still they wouldn't have walked out with the same sort of potentially useful information if the panel had instead featured a reality producer squaring off against someone who doesn't think a reality show involves actual writing. Such a set-up would be dramatically different, and perhaps more along the lines of what some expected/wanted. Certainly there seemed to be some frustration among the online contingent towards a perceived imbalance between those who insist print is inherently superior to digital content.
All of which amounts to what, exactly? Everyone I interacted with seemed to agree that the conference made little, if any, progress towards answering any substantive questions regarding the future of story. (In a conversation post-conference a student suggested that, inspired by things like Twitter/facebook/email/blogging, extreme brevity could become the next big thing when it comes to literary style. I found that an interesting idea, even if it actually happening would pretty much dump me in with the dinosaurs, no matter how much I accept and support new media platforms.)
But really, how could anyone, any gathering of people, hope to provide concrete answers about the future of a concept as ephemeral as "story"? While there probably could have been more detailed discussion about what the future (as opposed to the present and arguably the past) hold for narrative forms, things are moving way too fast for anyone to be able to speak confidently about what's coming down the pipe. As Gloria Sawai said, regarding the conference's subject, "Am I supposed to know that?"
For my part, I'm glad I got to take part. If I don't agree with all (or even most) of what I heard said this past weekend, it was still a positive joy to be among those who think about what story is now, and what it might become.
A
PS: The Macewan Arts Centre has the worst pop machines in the entire universe. I swear, the entire building was conspiring to prevent me from getting my hands on a Coke Zero, which every other machine claimed to have as part of its offerings. One machine was out of CZ, one was out of everything, another wouldn't accept my money, and yet another had a sign on it declaring that while it would technically give me a Coke Zero, the cooling mechanism on the machine was broken, so the pop would be hot (not just warm, but hot.)
PPS: Also, the mens bathroom nearest to the cafeteria? Ridiculously hard to get to. Only way I managed was by getting a student to show me where it was, and I honestly don't think I could find it again.
No question, this was a sweet deal for yours truly, and I used all the skills I learned as an art student to take advantage of the opportunity, descending on the cheese platters like a living god of the locusts and mostly enjoying the "two dollars for everything" cash bar (I say mostly because the first night I paid two bucks for a can of Sprite Zero. EVERYTHING cost a toonie...)
Even without the free food and the cheap booze, it would've been a worthwhile experience. For me, anyway. Mileages seem to be varying, judging from the reactions I've encountered, largely at the twitter #futureofstory feed, which I blanket-bombed Saturday night with 20-some tweets after the conference, relating the most interesting, inflammatory, and/or bizarre statements I'd written down during the programming I attended.
I don't know that I've got much to say about the specifics of what I saw. Keynote speaker and BONES creator/showrunner Hart Hanson's talk on Friday night was easily the highlight of the weekend, and some thoughtful person has transcribed the whole thing online. Well worth reading for anyone looking to create stories for a mass audience; perhaps a little frustrating for those of a more, for lack of a better word, artistic bent.
In between cheese cubes, I got to talk one on one with Hanson for a couple minutes, during which he advised me to, basically, be really happy about Cowboys & Aliens being written by Kurtzman and Orci. "You should be happy," he said, or something close to it, "Happier than you seem to be." And this was after I'd had a couple beers; I thought I was acting pretty happy already. Perhaps I'm not as enigmatic and inscrutable a figure as I strive to portray.
In addition to Mr. Hanson's presentation Friday, I saw a panel called (I believe) "Creating the 21st Century Writer" entirely by accident. I'd thought I was going to the panel about new journalism, but had aimed myself at the room specified in the program, rather than the one in the revised schedule. I don't think I was the only one, either. By the time I figured out I wasn't where I was supposed to be, I was already ensconced in the back row of the room. Exit options were limited; I didn't think I'd feel comfortable lugging all the stuff I hadn't had a chance to get coatchecked out right in front of the panelists.
The only panel I saw on Saturday (note: I didn't see mine--I went into my public appearance fugue state at the beginning and was pretty much lost to reality for the next hour and a bit...) that I think went anywhere near the implied topic of the conference followed, this one dealing with reality television. Some juicy quotes there, most of which I failed to record because my pen died an ignominious death and when it comes to portable technology I'm one step removed from carving stuff on stone tablets.
There then came the alt-narrative panel which I was on and which was, to my surprise, actually attended. Three other panels were happening simultaneously, one of which featured Hart Hanson; I was semi-convinced nobody was going to come to ours, but as it turned out the room was not entirely devoid of non-panelist human life.
With one exception, I have no idea what I actually said during the panel. I'm still foggy on what a couple of the other panelists actually do (I write comics, Mike Laidlaw writes videogames, Kim Clegg and Ava Karvonen are involved with all sorts of multimedia platform development but I'm not clear what that involvement entails and probably don't even have the vocabulary to grasp it fully.)
One thing I do recall is suggesting that I could think of two ways to determine when the alternative becomes the mainstream, and one of those ways was when it started making money. Beyond that, it's all a haze of me being nervous and computers failing to work properly (for a minute, Mr. Hard Copy here was looking PRET-ty good with his old-fashioned comic books to hand around, I think...) ("Hardcopy" would be a great name for a hard-boiled detective, wouldn't it? Needs a sidekick, though. "This week, on HARDCOPY & McCOOL: When they investigate the death of the Archibishop of Canterbury, a mysterious figure from Hardcopy's past appears, threatening his friendship with McCool!")
After that, there was just the Crotchety Old Peop--er, A Word from the Wise panel. A distinguished panel of authors, all winners of the Governor-General's Award, but perhaps an odd note on which to close something called The Future of Story.
It was only after that last panel that I was able to put my finger on the second of two tensions that seem to me to have underpinned much of the overall conference. The first of these, introduced by Hart Hanson during his opening address, and one that's of perpetual interest to me, was the tension between the artist and the entertainer. Hanson, refreshingly, made no bones about his role as an entertainer (though I might dispute his characterization of art, even as it relates to narrative.) It was nice to see someone unconcerned with the pretense that they were creating something "more" important than entertainment, who nevertheless obviously takes the creation of entertainment very seriously. Well, it was obvious to me; Hanson's lecture was full of humour and self-deprecation, which I suppose could be interpreted by some as his being less than fully invested creatively in what he does (even if he point-blank said otherwise.)
This attitude stood out in stark contrast to many, if not all, of the 21st Century Writer and Word from the Wise panelists, who seemed to go to great pains to portray what they do as Important. Also important to them and, I gather, folks like bookseller Laurie Greenwood: the format in which what they do is received. Which brings me to the second tension: the schism between new and old, especially as it relates to media.
This divide between old and new wasn't immediately obvious to me during the conference itself. It should have been, with comments floating around like Sophie Lees' "Blogging is the antithesis of craft"--a notion so ridiculous I want to give her the benefit of the doubt and interpret it as a deliberately provocative statement designed to inspire discussion. Even her fellow panelists pointed out that not all blog posts are unedited, ill-thought out ramblings (which is in no way meant to imply this one isn't exactly that), and I believe one even said they stopped their blogging activity because it was taking too much effort to polish their posts.
But it wasn't obvious to me, not until I got back Saturday night and read the twitters under the #futureofstory hashtag. It seemed at the time that a good portion of them were arguing a position that the tweeters didn't feel was sufficiently represented on the panels they were watching, that of the early adopter of technology.
(As an aside, I've never wanted to have reliable mobile internet access in my life so much as I did this weekend--two or three people were livetweeting the event and it would have been fascinating to follow the online conversation in realtime with the panels and speakers being discussed. It's almost enough for me to wish I had a cellphone.)
At least one of the livetweeters seemed somewhat offended by a conference named The Future of Story focusing to the degree it did on the past, at least when it came to narrative delivery platforms. And honestly, judging from statements attributed to some of the panelists by the (admittedly likely to be at least somewhat biased) twitterers, I can understand why.
Now, I like books, and, for what it's worth, I think of a books as printed objects substantively different from an electronic document containing the same information. Someone tweeted something to the effect that a book isn't a format, the implication (quite possibly made explicit, I can't remember) being that an e-book is also a book. I'd go as far as to say a novel's not a format, but a book is and so is a digital document--but that's a semantic argument that probably isn't worth having.
An argument that maybe is worth having is whether the book as an object is going to be a viable delivery platform going forward, as opposed to digital documents conveyed via some form of monitor, be it a computer, cellphone, e-reader or whatever new shiny thing comes next. When someone with a vested interest in print media claims a kid can only be taught to read via text on paper--that's a questionable position and it's one that I'm not sure was as thoroughly questioned as it could have been (I wasn't at the panel in question, though, and am basing that on commentary tweets).
I don't think it's out of line for people who don't mind, or even prefer, to read books on monitors to take offense at someone implies or even outright states that their platform preference is somehow less... valid? Authentic? Just plain less?--than "real books" because kindles don't smell like fresh ink on old parchment. As I seem to recall saying in my panel, I'm leery of assigning a sweeping value judgment to something that isn't inherently good or bad, but simply is. Could I read an entire book on a kindle? I don't know, but, financial issues aside, I wouldn't mind finding out.
Even if I didn't, even if the only way I could read a book was if it had physical pages, it would be unbelievably arrogant to try and claim a position of authority on the matter of how books ought to be read based on nothing more than some combination of personal preference, ingrained habit, and wishful thinking. I can actually see the face my niece would make at me if I tried to tell her it's wrong to read something online if a print version's available. It's the face young people make at old people who've said something particularly stupid; she makes that face at me a lot.
I find it unfortunate that the conference didn't explore this friction between old and new in much depth, at least not on the programming I saw. Instead, each panel tended to be filled with people of like mind--in terms of diversity of activity and possibly opinion, the alt-narrative panel quite possibly contained the most variety of any of the programming. Which, depending on the intended goals of the conference, could actually have been part of the point. If an attendee or student wanted to find out about reality television, they would go to the reality TV panel, where reality TV people talked about reality TV. It was only during the question and answer session afterwards that a couple basic assumptions of a reality television producer faced any sort of challenge. One questioner, who assumed those wanting to appear on such a show were too naive to understand what they were setting themselves up for, clearly felt the whole thing was a moral cesspit; one exec's blase response to viewers suggesting she should have contacted childrens social services regarding a {I assume} parent's treatment of a child on one of their shows--basically, "our job is to document lives, not interfere with them (more than necessary to maximize the drama)"--left me feeling uneasy. Part of me wishes those were the kinds of subjects discussed during the panel proper, rather than the Q&A session afterwards.
All that said, there's a reasonable chance students and other interested parties walked out of the reality television panel with a better understanding of "unscripted programming", and a better chance still they wouldn't have walked out with the same sort of potentially useful information if the panel had instead featured a reality producer squaring off against someone who doesn't think a reality show involves actual writing. Such a set-up would be dramatically different, and perhaps more along the lines of what some expected/wanted. Certainly there seemed to be some frustration among the online contingent towards a perceived imbalance between those who insist print is inherently superior to digital content.
All of which amounts to what, exactly? Everyone I interacted with seemed to agree that the conference made little, if any, progress towards answering any substantive questions regarding the future of story. (In a conversation post-conference a student suggested that, inspired by things like Twitter/facebook/email/blogging, extreme brevity could become the next big thing when it comes to literary style. I found that an interesting idea, even if it actually happening would pretty much dump me in with the dinosaurs, no matter how much I accept and support new media platforms.)
But really, how could anyone, any gathering of people, hope to provide concrete answers about the future of a concept as ephemeral as "story"? While there probably could have been more detailed discussion about what the future (as opposed to the present and arguably the past) hold for narrative forms, things are moving way too fast for anyone to be able to speak confidently about what's coming down the pipe. As Gloria Sawai said, regarding the conference's subject, "Am I supposed to know that?"
For my part, I'm glad I got to take part. If I don't agree with all (or even most) of what I heard said this past weekend, it was still a positive joy to be among those who think about what story is now, and what it might become.
A
PS: The Macewan Arts Centre has the worst pop machines in the entire universe. I swear, the entire building was conspiring to prevent me from getting my hands on a Coke Zero, which every other machine claimed to have as part of its offerings. One machine was out of CZ, one was out of everything, another wouldn't accept my money, and yet another had a sign on it declaring that while it would technically give me a Coke Zero, the cooling mechanism on the machine was broken, so the pop would be hot (not just warm, but hot.)
PPS: Also, the mens bathroom nearest to the cafeteria? Ridiculously hard to get to. Only way I managed was by getting a student to show me where it was, and I honestly don't think I could find it again.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Stuff and nonsense
When it rains, it pours, and man, it's been pouring this last couple weeks. Bad enough my psychiatrist is using me for sinister drug experiments that cured my five-year old migraine and absolutely destroyed my sleeping patterns as well as any desire to continue breathing, but the whole "Jon Favreau might possibly be interested in directing a comic Foley's got a co-writing credit on (just ignore the novel-length safe harbour text that comes after the announcement, I'm sure he's going to actually gonna do it, honest)" publicity onslaught has people wanting to talk to me (and in at least one case, send me free stuff) (note: if you're ever not sure whether to talk to me or send me free stuff, send the free stuff. I like free stuff).
One of the odd things about these people is that most of them seem interested in material aimed at 6-11 year olds. So, after years of frustration trying to get people to look at Master of The House, The Spooky Kids, BadBoy, etc., I found myself in the weird position of scrounging through my old word backup files looking for additional kids stuff (to go along with Early McKay, No More Parents, and L'il Hannah & The Big Frickin' Gorilla.)
While I had not a lot of luck finding material I think is appropriate for that age group (there are some who question whether Master of The House and the Spookies are actually suitable material for kids, to which I say, "I'd have loved this sort of thing when I was a kid and I turned out--uh, never mind, I'm sure it'll be fine."), I did come across the snippet below, written five or so years back, which I'm posting here because I haven't posted much of anything anywhere for a couple weeks and I feel kinda bad about that.
This was a first run at coming up with a framing sequence for a comic book version of a short sci-fi comedy piece alternately titled Strange Animal Behaviour and Impure Thoughts. I actually pitched Impure Thoughts through one of the recently opened doors available to me, and while the people on the other side liked it, they "couldn't wrap their head around the tone". Part of the problem with trying to pitch a Douglas Adams-esque absurdist sci-fi comedy inside 50 words or less is certainly in conveying the tone to the reader. I reckon "It's a Douglas Adams-style absurdist sci-fi comedy but with more explosions" ought to do the job, but if the person reading the pitch isn't familiar with Adams' work in its non-Hollywood form, yeah, grasping the intended tone is gonna be a problem.
Anyway, here's the snippet, warts and all:
…so I said to him, “I may be an artificial intelligence, but you’re a real idiot!”… What could he do? If he doesn’t like my attitude, he can delete me - what the hell?
You scared the hell out of me, you bloody ape! How the hell did you get in here? This is a restricted file, you know -
You do know? Then what are you - Oh. I get it. You thought you were being clever, hacking into forbidden folders just to show you could do it. Mission accomplished, You got in. Congratulations. Now get out. There’s nothing to see here, move along before I’m forced to alert the Authorities to this illegal interface.
...
Why are you still here? I told you, there’s nothing to see here. The events recorded here never happened, do you understand what I’m saying? Why would anybody want to know about things that never happened?
OK, OK, I get the message. You want to view the files. Don’t see why, but then, I’m not ruled by biochemical reactions the way some sentiences are. Not that I’m pointing fingers or anything.
Are you sure you don’t want to quit now and go have yourself a nice juicy banana? Huh? No? All right, then. Sit yourself back, enjoy yourself, and try not to pick insects off anybody who happens to come bursting through the door intent on erasing you from existence for reading the following, highly confidential and completely non-existent file, which has the perfectly reasonable file name of xiopasaghio_01, but which a flawed sentience like yourself preferred to call STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR.
Where do you want to start? Finding a beginning’s a tricky thing when there’s temporal disruption involved. Yes, there is some time travel, and I’m not talking about the standard rate of 3600 seconds an hour, either. This was quite impressive, if a little on the unpredictable side…
A
One of the odd things about these people is that most of them seem interested in material aimed at 6-11 year olds. So, after years of frustration trying to get people to look at Master of The House, The Spooky Kids, BadBoy, etc., I found myself in the weird position of scrounging through my old word backup files looking for additional kids stuff (to go along with Early McKay, No More Parents, and L'il Hannah & The Big Frickin' Gorilla.)
While I had not a lot of luck finding material I think is appropriate for that age group (there are some who question whether Master of The House and the Spookies are actually suitable material for kids, to which I say, "I'd have loved this sort of thing when I was a kid and I turned out--uh, never mind, I'm sure it'll be fine."), I did come across the snippet below, written five or so years back, which I'm posting here because I haven't posted much of anything anywhere for a couple weeks and I feel kinda bad about that.
This was a first run at coming up with a framing sequence for a comic book version of a short sci-fi comedy piece alternately titled Strange Animal Behaviour and Impure Thoughts. I actually pitched Impure Thoughts through one of the recently opened doors available to me, and while the people on the other side liked it, they "couldn't wrap their head around the tone". Part of the problem with trying to pitch a Douglas Adams-esque absurdist sci-fi comedy inside 50 words or less is certainly in conveying the tone to the reader. I reckon "It's a Douglas Adams-style absurdist sci-fi comedy but with more explosions" ought to do the job, but if the person reading the pitch isn't familiar with Adams' work in its non-Hollywood form, yeah, grasping the intended tone is gonna be a problem.
Anyway, here's the snippet, warts and all:
…so I said to him, “I may be an artificial intelligence, but you’re a real idiot!”… What could he do? If he doesn’t like my attitude, he can delete me - what the hell?
You scared the hell out of me, you bloody ape! How the hell did you get in here? This is a restricted file, you know -
You do know? Then what are you - Oh. I get it. You thought you were being clever, hacking into forbidden folders just to show you could do it. Mission accomplished, You got in. Congratulations. Now get out. There’s nothing to see here, move along before I’m forced to alert the Authorities to this illegal interface.
...
Why are you still here? I told you, there’s nothing to see here. The events recorded here never happened, do you understand what I’m saying? Why would anybody want to know about things that never happened?
OK, OK, I get the message. You want to view the files. Don’t see why, but then, I’m not ruled by biochemical reactions the way some sentiences are. Not that I’m pointing fingers or anything.
Are you sure you don’t want to quit now and go have yourself a nice juicy banana? Huh? No? All right, then. Sit yourself back, enjoy yourself, and try not to pick insects off anybody who happens to come bursting through the door intent on erasing you from existence for reading the following, highly confidential and completely non-existent file, which has the perfectly reasonable file name of xiopasaghio_01, but which a flawed sentience like yourself preferred to call STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR.
Where do you want to start? Finding a beginning’s a tricky thing when there’s temporal disruption involved. Yes, there is some time travel, and I’m not talking about the standard rate of 3600 seconds an hour, either. This was quite impressive, if a little on the unpredictable side…
A
Monday, August 17, 2009
Mumbles (incoherently)
It's hard to express what's on one's mind when what's on one's mind would best be expressed by a phrase like "Frgghluh mmlrrgh nurr. Nurr, nurr. NURR." But it's been a week and I feel like I really ought to post something, so NURR it is...
***
This is pretty awesome. "This" being a post that features Carson van Osten's "Disney Comic Strip Artist's Kit." Everyone who's interested in comics (strips or otherwise) as a storytelling medium really owes it to themselves to look at the Kit. I'm glad I encountered it now, just a few days before I do a public critique of Jay Bardyla and Daniel Schneider's WEIGHTLESS (not FLIGHTLESS, as I previously referred to it, in fact, pretty much the polar opposite of Flightless.)
Link via The Beat.
***
The intense pressure of posting two to three times a week at Mightygodking has had an unforeseen effect on my general online demeanour, leading to me doing something I don't think I've ever actually done before, and definitely haven't done more than a handful of time, if at all, which is to post something and then delete it without someone else asking me to. This turns me into something of a hypocrite; I've long maintained that people should have the guts to 1) take responsibility for what they write by signing their name to it, and 2) stand by what their words, taking the heat and apologizing for them if they were out of line, but not deleting them.
Earlier this year I broke the first rule, posting under an alias at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood site. As long-time readers may recall, I felt so bad about this that I immediately wrote a post exposing my own hypocrisy, if only to the two or three people who read this thing.
The second rule I broke a few days ago over at the Canadian Geek forums, after I launched into an unnecessarily snarky reply to another poster, accusing them of resorting to cheap rhetorical tricks to try and score points for a weak argument while using pretty much the same cheap rhetorical tricks to attack them. So I deleted it, I'd say less than a minute later and I think before anyone had a chance to read it. Even so, it makes me feel a little squicky.
The whole incident did bring my attention to the aforementioned effect posting at MGK has had on me. To me, the site's strong point has always been owner and prime mover Christopher Bird's humour, so when I was given a shot, my intention was to post primarily humourous pieces over there (something I wasn't entirely successful with this last go round.) But humour's not really something that comes naturally to me, it's something that I really need to work at (at least I need to do that to get it right.) In the face of needing to find two or three things I can spin comedy out of a week, I find myself framing everything I come across, every interaction I have as either grist for the mill (which is mostly OK and something I reckon most writers do regardless of what they're working on) or as a potential target for ironic mockery.
This is fine when I'm coming across, say, Sarah Palin being a lying, idiotic cowbeast. It's not so fine when someone who doesn't deserve to be a target ends up in the crosshairs. And that's what happened when I posted at C-Geek. Someone said something that pissed me off, and I opened up with both barrels when all that was really required was a flyswatter. I don't think I wrote was particularly unfair, or even unreasonably rude, and some of it I think was mildly amusing. But what I do think it was was unhelpful and unnecessary. Letting it stand wasn't going to help anything and in fact I think it would've pretty much killed any possibility of a civil discussion going forward. In the face of that, I did what I never do and deleted the comment. And under the same circumstances I'd do it again. But hopefully, now that I've noticed how I'm approaching things at the moment, the same or similar circumstances won't happen again.
A
***
This is pretty awesome. "This" being a post that features Carson van Osten's "Disney Comic Strip Artist's Kit." Everyone who's interested in comics (strips or otherwise) as a storytelling medium really owes it to themselves to look at the Kit. I'm glad I encountered it now, just a few days before I do a public critique of Jay Bardyla and Daniel Schneider's WEIGHTLESS (not FLIGHTLESS, as I previously referred to it, in fact, pretty much the polar opposite of Flightless.)
Link via The Beat.
***
The intense pressure of posting two to three times a week at Mightygodking has had an unforeseen effect on my general online demeanour, leading to me doing something I don't think I've ever actually done before, and definitely haven't done more than a handful of time, if at all, which is to post something and then delete it without someone else asking me to. This turns me into something of a hypocrite; I've long maintained that people should have the guts to 1) take responsibility for what they write by signing their name to it, and 2) stand by what their words, taking the heat and apologizing for them if they were out of line, but not deleting them.
Earlier this year I broke the first rule, posting under an alias at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood site. As long-time readers may recall, I felt so bad about this that I immediately wrote a post exposing my own hypocrisy, if only to the two or three people who read this thing.
The second rule I broke a few days ago over at the Canadian Geek forums, after I launched into an unnecessarily snarky reply to another poster, accusing them of resorting to cheap rhetorical tricks to try and score points for a weak argument while using pretty much the same cheap rhetorical tricks to attack them. So I deleted it, I'd say less than a minute later and I think before anyone had a chance to read it. Even so, it makes me feel a little squicky.
The whole incident did bring my attention to the aforementioned effect posting at MGK has had on me. To me, the site's strong point has always been owner and prime mover Christopher Bird's humour, so when I was given a shot, my intention was to post primarily humourous pieces over there (something I wasn't entirely successful with this last go round.) But humour's not really something that comes naturally to me, it's something that I really need to work at (at least I need to do that to get it right.) In the face of needing to find two or three things I can spin comedy out of a week, I find myself framing everything I come across, every interaction I have as either grist for the mill (which is mostly OK and something I reckon most writers do regardless of what they're working on) or as a potential target for ironic mockery.
This is fine when I'm coming across, say, Sarah Palin being a lying, idiotic cowbeast. It's not so fine when someone who doesn't deserve to be a target ends up in the crosshairs. And that's what happened when I posted at C-Geek. Someone said something that pissed me off, and I opened up with both barrels when all that was really required was a flyswatter. I don't think I wrote was particularly unfair, or even unreasonably rude, and some of it I think was mildly amusing. But what I do think it was was unhelpful and unnecessary. Letting it stand wasn't going to help anything and in fact I think it would've pretty much killed any possibility of a civil discussion going forward. In the face of that, I did what I never do and deleted the comment. And under the same circumstances I'd do it again. But hopefully, now that I've noticed how I'm approaching things at the moment, the same or similar circumstances won't happen again.
A
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The agony and the...well, slightly less agony.
While various people have different opinions as to what's caused my current bout of CRIPPLING FACEPAIN!, the end result is that I've spent much of the last seventy-two hours feeling like someone sanded my teeth down to exposed nerve endings and then stuffed a dead raccoon into my nasal cavity.
While there's really never a good time to feel like your life would be immeasurably improved if you used a sharpened spoon to dig out the contents of your skull (at least not that I've found, and I've got some experience in this area), feeling that way when you've got an artist waiting for the fun and wacky and generally awesome script you promised him by today is particularly problematic.
I don't know who said no writer likes writing, but every writer likes having written. I mean, I know Neil Gaiman said it and it was in an interview with him that I read it, but I believe he was quoting someone else. Either way, that's a fairly accurate assessment of my view of the whole "sitting down and transforming an abstract idea into a concrete story" thing. It's not hard work--I'd rather be writing than housepainting, though that's not saying much, as I'd rather floss my teeth with a buzzsaw than paint houses for a living--but it's not as easy as lying in bed doing nothing. Frequently it's not even as satisfying as lying in bed doing nothing.
All of which is a long way to say I don't usually get a lot of joy out of writing. I can't recall a single instance when writing has actually improved my mood. That may be because I can't recall a single instance of anything that happened more than fifteen minutes ago, but I tend to believe it's largely because I don't write much when I'm not in a good mood to begin with. If I'm not happy I'll write what I've absolutely got to because someone's waiting for or expecting it, and if I'm feeling particularly sorry for myself, I might dash off a whiny Facebook update or blog post (even though doing so inevitably makes me feel worse about myself for venting in public when I've got what is, by any reasonable standard, a pretty good life.) And that's about it.
But even in my state of extreme discomfort and/or prescription medication-induced zombification, finally hammering the script for NO MORE PARENTS #1 into shape on Monday and Tuesday was a less arduous task than I'd expected. Maybe I'm still basking in the warm glow of finishing something on the promised deadline that I didn't think I'd be able to when that deadline loomed, but there's something about this project...I'm having trouble putting my finger on what it is, but I think it may be that I actually connect with and like the characters introduced in the first issue in a way that I often don't at this stage in the writing process. I feel like I've leapfrogged over the "getting to know you" stage of scripting and settled into a comfort zone where I just let the kids (and robots) tell me what they want to do, rather than me telling the characters what they're going to do and then adjusting them as characters so what they do makes sense inside the context of the story. (Note to those who may be interested: If you're working on a WFH project, life's a lot easier if you approach things the latter way, if only because there's someone higher than you on the totem pole who has the power to make you and the characters do what they tell you and understanding and accepting that will save you and your editor a lot of headaches.)
Mind you, letting the gang do what they want required me to seriously revise the action I'd originally laid out for the second half of the issue; I had to reconsider and rewrite the basic shots from the ground up perilously close to the appointed deadline. And while Nick seemed happy with the first batch of script pages I sent him, I think he'd be a bit more comfortable if the characters didn't like talking quite so much.
But setting all that aside for the moment, I'm left in the bizarre circumstance where writing something was about as enjoyable as it possibly could be, even though it was written while I was absolutely, positively, "on the edge of doing something selfish, stupid, and irrevocable" miserable.
Which I think is pretty cool. Hopefully the good feelings I have for the script will show on the finished pages. Even if they don't...well, I like it. And feeling the way I do at the moment, liking anything at all, much less something I'm personally responsible for, is a blessing.
A
While there's really never a good time to feel like your life would be immeasurably improved if you used a sharpened spoon to dig out the contents of your skull (at least not that I've found, and I've got some experience in this area), feeling that way when you've got an artist waiting for the fun and wacky and generally awesome script you promised him by today is particularly problematic.
I don't know who said no writer likes writing, but every writer likes having written. I mean, I know Neil Gaiman said it and it was in an interview with him that I read it, but I believe he was quoting someone else. Either way, that's a fairly accurate assessment of my view of the whole "sitting down and transforming an abstract idea into a concrete story" thing. It's not hard work--I'd rather be writing than housepainting, though that's not saying much, as I'd rather floss my teeth with a buzzsaw than paint houses for a living--but it's not as easy as lying in bed doing nothing. Frequently it's not even as satisfying as lying in bed doing nothing.
All of which is a long way to say I don't usually get a lot of joy out of writing. I can't recall a single instance when writing has actually improved my mood. That may be because I can't recall a single instance of anything that happened more than fifteen minutes ago, but I tend to believe it's largely because I don't write much when I'm not in a good mood to begin with. If I'm not happy I'll write what I've absolutely got to because someone's waiting for or expecting it, and if I'm feeling particularly sorry for myself, I might dash off a whiny Facebook update or blog post (even though doing so inevitably makes me feel worse about myself for venting in public when I've got what is, by any reasonable standard, a pretty good life.) And that's about it.
But even in my state of extreme discomfort and/or prescription medication-induced zombification, finally hammering the script for NO MORE PARENTS #1 into shape on Monday and Tuesday was a less arduous task than I'd expected. Maybe I'm still basking in the warm glow of finishing something on the promised deadline that I didn't think I'd be able to when that deadline loomed, but there's something about this project...I'm having trouble putting my finger on what it is, but I think it may be that I actually connect with and like the characters introduced in the first issue in a way that I often don't at this stage in the writing process. I feel like I've leapfrogged over the "getting to know you" stage of scripting and settled into a comfort zone where I just let the kids (and robots) tell me what they want to do, rather than me telling the characters what they're going to do and then adjusting them as characters so what they do makes sense inside the context of the story. (Note to those who may be interested: If you're working on a WFH project, life's a lot easier if you approach things the latter way, if only because there's someone higher than you on the totem pole who has the power to make you and the characters do what they tell you and understanding and accepting that will save you and your editor a lot of headaches.)
Mind you, letting the gang do what they want required me to seriously revise the action I'd originally laid out for the second half of the issue; I had to reconsider and rewrite the basic shots from the ground up perilously close to the appointed deadline. And while Nick seemed happy with the first batch of script pages I sent him, I think he'd be a bit more comfortable if the characters didn't like talking quite so much.
But setting all that aside for the moment, I'm left in the bizarre circumstance where writing something was about as enjoyable as it possibly could be, even though it was written while I was absolutely, positively, "on the edge of doing something selfish, stupid, and irrevocable" miserable.
Which I think is pretty cool. Hopefully the good feelings I have for the script will show on the finished pages. Even if they don't...well, I like it. And feeling the way I do at the moment, liking anything at all, much less something I'm personally responsible for, is a blessing.
A
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
STORY IDEAS I WISH I HADN'T THOUGHT OF
I can't help it: every once in awhile an idea for a story pops into my head that's just completely stupid. Not silly--I like silly ideas--but stupid, the kind of idea that makes me feel like I lost an IQ point just by conceiving it. An idea like...
THE FURRY
Otto Mellon likes to pick up chicks dressed up as a giant pink squirrel. His attitude: if you've got a problem with that, well, tough.
Several Harry Potter fans actually do have a problem with that, at least when he's hanging around with his similarly attired buddies stinking up their favourite sci-fi con. As a prank, they jump Otto, tie him up, and dump him in the local chemically-polluted reservoir, their theory being that it won't make him smell worse.
The reservoir's ooze has a chemical reaction with Otto's sweat and his squirrel costumes synthetic fibres. When Otto crawls from the muck, he discovers he's bonded with his costume on a molecular level--he can't take it off.
From here, we could go two ways, superhero or horror. In the case of the former, Otto dons a cape and fights for "his people's" right to party. If we want to go horror, we modify the title slightly to THE FUR(R)Y, have Otto go insane and take horrible vengeance on the fantasy-lovers who tossed him in the gunk.
Either way, shortly after I finish writing the story, I cut my own fingers off as an act of penance.
***
"AND THEN I GOT MAD..."
The thing that was bugging me last week? Chris Handley, a long-time manga collector and by all accounts not a pedophile at all in Iowa, is facing up to fifteen years in prison for attempting to read wholly fictional material.
If that wasn't enough to get my blood boiling, Dick Cheney's out and about not getting arrested for coordinating the torture of real people while Obama's done an about-face and decided not to release photographic evidence of rape of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
If real people being really raped qualifies obscene (and I kinda think it has to), it follows that the President of the United States is in possession of real obscene material.
But it's a comic collector who's likely going to prison, because drawings of things things that don't exist having intimate relations with each other, well, society's got to draw the line somewhere, right?
A
THE FURRY
Otto Mellon likes to pick up chicks dressed up as a giant pink squirrel. His attitude: if you've got a problem with that, well, tough.
Several Harry Potter fans actually do have a problem with that, at least when he's hanging around with his similarly attired buddies stinking up their favourite sci-fi con. As a prank, they jump Otto, tie him up, and dump him in the local chemically-polluted reservoir, their theory being that it won't make him smell worse.
The reservoir's ooze has a chemical reaction with Otto's sweat and his squirrel costumes synthetic fibres. When Otto crawls from the muck, he discovers he's bonded with his costume on a molecular level--he can't take it off.
From here, we could go two ways, superhero or horror. In the case of the former, Otto dons a cape and fights for "his people's" right to party. If we want to go horror, we modify the title slightly to THE FUR(R)Y, have Otto go insane and take horrible vengeance on the fantasy-lovers who tossed him in the gunk.
Either way, shortly after I finish writing the story, I cut my own fingers off as an act of penance.
***
"AND THEN I GOT MAD..."
The thing that was bugging me last week? Chris Handley, a long-time manga collector and by all accounts not a pedophile at all in Iowa, is facing up to fifteen years in prison for attempting to read wholly fictional material.
If that wasn't enough to get my blood boiling, Dick Cheney's out and about not getting arrested for coordinating the torture of real people while Obama's done an about-face and decided not to release photographic evidence of rape of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
If real people being really raped qualifies obscene (and I kinda think it has to), it follows that the President of the United States is in possession of real obscene material.
But it's a comic collector who's likely going to prison, because drawings of things things that don't exist having intimate relations with each other, well, society's got to draw the line somewhere, right?
A
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Saturday dribs
On the e-mail confidentiality disclaimer front: Over at the LJ version of this blog, LJ User argentla points out that not all people who have them on their e-mails are douchebags--some of them just work for douchebags.
And argentla knows what he's talking about when it comes to employer douchebags, so, yeah. My apologies if I inadvertently offended anyone who's using those disclaimers because their boss is a jerk.
***
"Blessed are the meek: for their brains shall be eaten first." Matthew 5:5
The Zombie Stinque Bible project lets you join I don't know how many others in adding zombies to your favourite bible passages."For God so loved the world, that he made His Son a zombie, and whoever is bitten by the Son shall also become zombie and be undead everlasting." John 3:16
I really hope this catches on and peoople start adding zombies to the book of mormon and quran. I'd suggest adding them to scientology texts, but I doubt anyone would notice.
***
For the past three days, I've found myself wanting to write an epic narrative poem. Because I'm not spending enough time working in dead and/or anonymous forms already.
This is almost certainly down to my reading altogether too much about Lord Byron, and Percy and Mary Shelley. Who, it turns out, were all melodramatic jerks to one degree or another. Mary appears to have been the most sympathetic of the bunch, but the descriptions of her I've read really do lead to the conclusion that she put the "pathetic" in "sympathetic". She never really had a life to call her own and invested almost all her emotional wellbeing in self-absorbed a-holes and/or dead people.
This is why I avoid research as much as possible (well, that and I'm lazy.) Whenever I wrap myself up in something, I start absorbing more than the information I'm looking for--I also pick up stylistic tics and the desire to write things I wouldn't in a million years write otherwise, like epic narrative poems. Or, as I think I'm going to refer to them from now on, massive ditties.
A
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Dying is Easy.
I'm semi-convinced the major reason the vast majority of comic books consist of people hitting other people (or things) is that writing fights is one of the easiest things to do in comic form. Even assuming the writer goes to the effort of coordinating the combat and describing it in sufficient detail that the page and panel composition don't rest entirely or almost entirely on the shoulders of the artist (which isn't safe to assume), it's still a lot easier to come up with something like:
HERO: YOU LITTLE %#*&, I'M GONNA KICK YOUR %#*&ING HEAD IN!
SFX: THWAMM!
VILLAIN: ARGH!
...than it is to make a page of talking heads (or even more active heads) say something interesting.
For whatever reason, the hardest material for me to write has always been comedy. When you're looking at a joke for the nineteenth time, it's difficult to remember why you thought it was funny to begin with. And the kind of comedy I tend to prefer, certainly as a reader--that of the Wodehouse/Adams/Pratchett variety--is all about the deft use of language for comedic effect. This kind of work isn't--or I can't imagine it being--off the cuff stuff. It's words that have been honed and refined, worked and reworked until they're perfect.
Frankly, it's not a lot of fun to write this sort of thing. But it's extremely rewarding when someone finds something I wrote to be funny. It's even better if I can find it funny myself, by viewing it through fresh eyes (usually eyes that haven't read the material for a couple years, run by a mind that doesn't remember writing it in the first place.)
When I'm writing something for which "being funny" is the primary goal, my approach is fairly simple: brainstorm as much stuff as possible, figure out if some of it's funny, try and figure out if some of it could possibly be funny with some work, toss the rest and then try and find a way to wedge the good stuff into a narrative framework (the looser the framework, the better.)
Which of course leads to a lot of material that never gets used.
As I was digging through the office a few minutes ago looking for something to write notes on, I came upon a few pages of stuff that appears to be the result of a comedy brainstorming session. And, as I've been exceedingly lax with the blogging lately but don't really have much I feel like talking about at the moment, I figured, hey, I wrote it, I might as well use it.
I can't be sure, but I'm guessing the following material was aimed at the script for a Platinum Studios project I created called JEST CAUSE (which remains one of my top five favourite scripts I've written to date). It might have been done for THE TOKEN GOBLIN, too...in any event, it reads as though I was aiming for comedic fantasy with it. I offer it unedited, warts and all, in the hopes that one of my half dozen readers will get some meagre entertainment value out of it. If you don't...well, you get what you pay for.
Here we go:
-All the fashionable lairs these days are built by Maurice, a former evil wizard whose fashion empire was built on a foundation of impeccable taste and bloodshed.
-It is said that history is written by the victors: Victor Conroy, Vic Hedges, and Victor Vincenzo were the heads of the historians guild.
-Not since pork chop leapt from frying pan has
-If all the world's a stage, then the gods are the director, writer, and largely the audience. The lives of the merely mortal are there to amuse and entertain them, but nobody but the gods gets to take a bow when the curtain falls.
They're desperate for appreciation. "Didn't I do good?" they ask, and the person they ask damn well better give them the right answer, lest they be well-damned.
-All things are relative. Necessity is the mother of Inventtion, and Madness merely the weird uncle of Ambition.
-There's a place for people who defy the gods, a place specially designed to make them wish they hadn't.
-"No, seriously, three of them, and they could talk and build houses. Well, one of them could, the other two just kind of stacked wood and straw up and prayed for good weather."
A
HERO: YOU LITTLE %#*&, I'M GONNA KICK YOUR %#*&ING HEAD IN!
SFX: THWAMM!
VILLAIN: ARGH!
...than it is to make a page of talking heads (or even more active heads) say something interesting.
For whatever reason, the hardest material for me to write has always been comedy. When you're looking at a joke for the nineteenth time, it's difficult to remember why you thought it was funny to begin with. And the kind of comedy I tend to prefer, certainly as a reader--that of the Wodehouse/Adams/Pratchett variety--is all about the deft use of language for comedic effect. This kind of work isn't--or I can't imagine it being--off the cuff stuff. It's words that have been honed and refined, worked and reworked until they're perfect.
Frankly, it's not a lot of fun to write this sort of thing. But it's extremely rewarding when someone finds something I wrote to be funny. It's even better if I can find it funny myself, by viewing it through fresh eyes (usually eyes that haven't read the material for a couple years, run by a mind that doesn't remember writing it in the first place.)
When I'm writing something for which "being funny" is the primary goal, my approach is fairly simple: brainstorm as much stuff as possible, figure out if some of it's funny, try and figure out if some of it could possibly be funny with some work, toss the rest and then try and find a way to wedge the good stuff into a narrative framework (the looser the framework, the better.)
Which of course leads to a lot of material that never gets used.
As I was digging through the office a few minutes ago looking for something to write notes on, I came upon a few pages of stuff that appears to be the result of a comedy brainstorming session. And, as I've been exceedingly lax with the blogging lately but don't really have much I feel like talking about at the moment, I figured, hey, I wrote it, I might as well use it.
I can't be sure, but I'm guessing the following material was aimed at the script for a Platinum Studios project I created called JEST CAUSE (which remains one of my top five favourite scripts I've written to date). It might have been done for THE TOKEN GOBLIN, too...in any event, it reads as though I was aiming for comedic fantasy with it. I offer it unedited, warts and all, in the hopes that one of my half dozen readers will get some meagre entertainment value out of it. If you don't...well, you get what you pay for.
Here we go:
-All the fashionable lairs these days are built by Maurice, a former evil wizard whose fashion empire was built on a foundation of impeccable taste and bloodshed.
-It is said that history is written by the victors: Victor Conroy, Vic Hedges, and Victor Vincenzo were the heads of the historians guild.
-Not since pork chop leapt from frying pan has
-If all the world's a stage, then the gods are the director, writer, and largely the audience. The lives of the merely mortal are there to amuse and entertain them, but nobody but the gods gets to take a bow when the curtain falls.
They're desperate for appreciation. "Didn't I do good?" they ask, and the person they ask damn well better give them the right answer, lest they be well-damned.
-All things are relative. Necessity is the mother of Inventtion, and Madness merely the weird uncle of Ambition.
-There's a place for people who defy the gods, a place specially designed to make them wish they hadn't.
-"No, seriously, three of them, and they could talk and build houses. Well, one of them could, the other two just kind of stacked wood and straw up and prayed for good weather."
A
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Comics' Biggest Blight
thread on Canadian Geek has transformed into a more general discussion about the state of the industry between a frustrated, successful comics retailer (Happy Harbor's Jay Bardyla), an equally frustrated, not nearly as successful comics creator (me), with occasional interjections from other people trying to get a word in edgewise.
***
Andrew Sullivan on why he blogs. I've only read a page and a half, but it includes some interesting historical bits, including the origin of the term "log", which make it worth mentioning right there.
(via Chad Gervich's Script Notes blog)
***
NO QUARTERLY ASKED
The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples has a variant cover on VAMPIRELLA QUARTERLY, and I either just noticed or noticed earlier and forgot. Probably the latter, that sounds like something I'd do.
Anyway. Now she just needs to do something (official) for Red Sonja and she'll have worked on the Pre-1990s Scantily-Clad Ass-Kicking Babe Trifecta, which also includes Sheena. Then she could go back to drawing MY stuff*...
If anyone out there is in touch with someone in a position of authority at Dynamite Comics, please tell them they should hire Fiona for an RS book. End the insanity, before it's too late.
***
DON'T WANNA, NOT GONNA. MAYBE
I don't want to write a zombie story.
I DON'T.
***
I JUST DON'T SEE IT
OK, yeah, there was a communications error and we did the wrong strip.
I still don't understand how you didn't notice that the jet plane was missing, or that there was a robot completely unrelated to the strip in practically all the panels until we were done lettering.
Argh.
thread on Canadian Geek has transformed into a more general discussion about the state of the industry between a frustrated, successful comics retailer (Happy Harbor's Jay Bardyla), an equally frustrated, not nearly as successful comics creator (me), with occasional interjections from other people trying to get a word in edgewise.***
Andrew Sullivan on why he blogs.
I've only read a page and a half, but it includes some interesting historical bits, including the origin of the term "log", which make it worth mentioning right there.(via Chad Gervich
's Script Notes blog)***
NO QUARTERLY ASKED
The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples has a variant cover
on VAMPIRELLA QUARTERLY, and I either just noticed or noticed earlier and forgot. Probably the latter, that sounds like something I'd do.Anyway. Now she just needs to do something (official) for Red Sonja
and she'll have worked on the Pre-1990s Scantily-Clad Ass-Kicking Babe Trifecta, which also includes Sheena. Then she could go back to drawing MY stuff*...If anyone out there is in touch with someone in a position of authority at Dynamite Comics, please tell them they should hire Fiona for an RS book. End the insanity, before it's too late.
***
DON'T WANNA, NOT GONNA. MAYBE
I don't want to write a zombie story.
I DON'T.
***
I JUST DON'T SEE IT
OK, yeah, there was a communications error and we did the wrong strip.
I still don't understand how you didn't notice that the jet plane was missing, or that there was a robot completely unrelated to the strip in practically all the panels until we were done lettering.
Argh.
***
DEAR GOD, WHY?
I have an idea for a reality-TV show.
Please, shoot me.
***
SCREW YOU, BRITISH COLUMBIA
You know what you did.
A
Sunday, November 16, 2008
I am a machine.
An aging machine that's going to break down soon, but a machine nonetheless. Cold medication might slow me down, but nothing short of finishing the job can stop me when I've got deadlines. I AM UNSTOPPABLE.
And now some Nyquil is in order, I think.
A
And now some Nyquil is in order, I think.
A
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