Grokster

A very good recounting of the Grokster Supreme Court hearings today.

It's all about characters, not plot

It seems strange, but I'm convinced that one could write an award winning book, devoid of any real plot. Say about a guy who's sole mission in life is to sharpen every pencil he comes in contact with. That's not much of a plot, but I've realized that a good story isn't usually about plot, but instead about characters. If the pencil guy was the most interesting character ever written, then plot is secondary. Now it might be possible to carry a story on plot alone, even if the characters were bland and uninteresting, but people will complain that it's not as good as NY Times bestseller, "The Sharpener".

I've found that, as an amateur writer, in default mode, I'm a plotter. I started the book three times, each time focusing on the details of the plot and the devices used by the characters, etcetera. Each time I thought the damn thing sucked, and trashed it. Finally, I wrote about the characters. I tried to think about what character A would do in situation B, rather than how to advance the plot towards the ending I had in mind. It's a more natural way of developing a story that mirrors how plot develops in real life, not as a means to an end, but rather as the result of an action where the end is determinate based on the action.

So color me unsurprised when I realized that my two page query letter was all about the plot, and barely about the characters. I've rewritten it with a focus on the characters and the result is three quarters of a page (about 400 words). Not only that, but it's ten times as interesting in the rough draft alone. I think I'm getting somewhere.

Now enough of the amateur stuff, check out what a real writer can do: http://neilgaiman.com/books/anansi_ex.asp

Mini Mac

Help a guy out.

Words in 3 Paragraphs.

Now that the book is finished, I feel both a sense of accomplishment, and a sense that a whole lot of subsequent book-related work needs to be done. Being unpublished, as I am, I must now write a short synopsis of the book which I will send to publishers asking if they'd like to read it or not. This synopsis must be less than a page, grab the reader's attention, and give away all the surprises because a publisher is not going to want to read a book that has a crappy ending. So, I have 80 thousand words to summarize in about 300 words. I'm finding this incredibly difficult to do. Nevertheless, I'm determined to get it done even though results will probably be disappointing. But, as the saying goes, "You never know."

Million Dollar Crybaby [SPOILERS]

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of this so called "controversy" about the movie Million Dollar Baby. There's too many people claiming that this movie is just a very, very expensive commercial for stem cell research by Hollywood liberals. It's just a big political statement.

I wonder, what statement is the Governator trying to make when he blows both good guys and bad guys away in his movies? Murder is okay? How about 99% of romantic comedies? Premarital sex is okay? I guess these ultra-conservative, conspiracy theorist movie critics only watched one movie this year?

These are stories. The good ones involve difficult decisions. If everything was black and white and characters were able to make decisions with ease and without remorse, they would be predictable, boring, and dull. Let's face it, people make decisions. Sometimes they make good decisions, sometimes they make bad decisions, sometimes decisions are rough ones. They are required for good storytelling.

If you don't like it, then fine, but sometimes, just sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.