Pissy snarky day...Wonderfalls and other musings

[shadowkat]

Ugh, having the worst time of it with my internet server - it's been bouncing back email I send to aol users again. I get their email, they just may not get mine. Highly annoying. So - cjl? If you are reading this? Yes, we are on for Sat at noon. Looking forward to it. ;-) (I think it went through this time, since I haven't gotten a postal non-delivery message back yet regarding it.)

Watched Wonderfalls tonight. Interesting show, sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, sometimes just plain perplexing, and other times incredibly clever. But not really predictable, which is an amazing feat for a tv show these days. I've come to the conclusion that the whole thing is meant to be taken somewhat tongue in cheek and is a parody of those oh-so-serious teen/young lady helps people shows such as: Dead Like Me, Tru Calling, Joan of Arcadia, and Touched by An Angel. Every once and a while formulaic shows will spawn something witty and clever as a sort of frustrated response to them. The OC, Beverly Hills 90210, One Tree Hill, Everwood and their ilk finally spawned Arrested Development a half hour parody of these oh-so-serious dysfunctional teen/family soap operas. Both are laugh out loud funny, especially if you've seen an episode of the shows that they are wittily making fun of.

Wonderfalls also had one of the best lines I've heard all week: Jaye to Binky (the Jaye wanna be or investigator reporter - you aren't sure which throughout the episode and neither is Binky or Jaye for that matter, which is amusing in of itself and also somewhat annoying and perplexing at the same time..): "You want to surround yourself with people who are at least at or below your level, but not fellow narcissists because that would direct the attention away from yourself."

Now, if I can only get past the jarring Malcolm in The Middelesque direction, which comes very close to giving me motion sickness each time I tune in, I'll be fine. (This may be the reason I don't watch Malcolm in The Middle that much.) Feel for the tv writer, my friends - they are literally ordered by marketing people to come up with clones of successful shows, the ones who maintain some sort of sanity or innovation, come up with parodies of the successful shows from time to time. From all the jarring hand-held camera techniques I've seen on TV lately, I'm beginning to think TV directors are equally bored. I'm also feeling this odd desire to conviscate their hand-held cameras.

At any rate - Wonderfalls and watching the DVD version of BTVS S4 Pangs this evening, along with some of
herselfnyc fanfic, relaxed me.
Lovely writer herself.

I think my difficulty with the villainous in the current Harry Potter is she reminds me a little bit too much of evil boss, same smarmy attitude, same bureaucratic nastiness - yes, you can be killed by memos. I kid you not. At any rate, I'm only on page 349 and I already want to see the character skinned alive. Not good, considering I have at least 400 more pages of her torturing characters to deal with. Ugh and I was *really* enjoying the book. Hmmm. Maybe I'll skim over her sections? Trying hard not to spoil myself.

Speaking of spoilers - jumped briefly over to BAPS and ASSB. I got slightly spoiled on 18, but nothing major. They seem confused by the spoilers over there-so you can't learn that much anyway. Which is a good thing. Since I would like to finish the year unspoiled if possible. Still more spoiled than I'd like to be for 17 and 18, but no more than I was in February when I got spoiled on 15/16. (A bunch of spoilers came out together.)

Have decided that people's responses to what is coming or even what has already appeared on-screen, has a lot to do with how committed they are to the fantasy story in their heads, which they deseperately want ME to tell. People - no writer is going to tell the fantasy story in your head, but you, they are going to tell the fantasy story in their head. You'd think this would be self-evident? Apparently not. (sigh). And no, this is not about anything that has appeared on atpo recently - I actually loved the criticism thread on Amends, wholeheartedly agreed with several folks on that thread.

Snow?

Snow? Yes, it's Pretty. Magical. Mysterious. We're all agreed on that (well when we're not sick of it and inconvienced) But ahem...we've been using it as a metaphor for these things since well the 1800s and The Christmas Carol, it not before..it's becoming a tad cliche don't you think? Was cute when Bing Crosby coined "I'm Dreaming of A White Christmas..." in 1940s. But now? Over 50 years later and 1000 of tv and movie and books later? Can we find something else? I only say this because in the space of the last year I've seen it used as "miraculous" in at least ten tv shows.



Sorry, snarky mood tonight - I put it down to a combo of bad internet server, bad weather, pms,
and cabin fever. Need Spring. Now! ;-)

Comments

Re: Ah yes..

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

LOL! Perhaps you're just more comfortable with dialogue?
I was discussing this with cjl recently and he said that he feels more at home with the dialogue, describing the setting or action portions makes him impatient.

The curse of the TV generation, I'm telling you. I feel that my strengths are dialogue and characters. My weaknesses are descriptive writing and conveying emotions.

Maybe this isn't from too much television, though. Maybe it's just a Rorschach of my personality. I'm the most unobservant person in the world. I never notice things around me. I do notice people, but not my environment. I'm an ex-psych major, so people fascinate me. And I absorb overheard dialogue like a sponge. It's amazing to me to look back at my scenes, and see places where I spit back dialogue I picked up in some random place (or on TV!)

Now, looking at my novel, I can't help but think the weaker sections might be the dialogue. That surprised me, because I honestly thought I was better at dialogue. All my life I thought I was great at dialogue and horrid at description.

This gives me pause, because maybe I'm not as good at dialogue as I imagine. But maybe I'm better at description than I give myself credit for. I bought this book on descriptive writing to get tips, and have been doing an in-depth analysis of my novel looking for places where I can apply the author's advice, and I'm finding a lot of my description isn't as bad as I thought. A lot needs work, but I'm not as stingy on the description as I believed. Or as rotten at it.

Now, I'm trying to figure out how to write dialogue again, dialogue that actually says something about the character that is the character.

Not easy. Sometimes I worry all my characters sound the same--namely, they sound like me. Well, me when I'm being stiff and formal. The truth is, all the characters ARE me, just different parts of me mixed in with bits and bobs of other people I know and maybe some fictional characters of other people.

What pov do you normally write in? One way I learned to get a character's distinct "voice" was by rewriting a scene entirely in the first person of the pov character. Sit back for a few moments, get an image of that character in my head, the way they're likely to talk and think, and then write the scene in the first person. Then later switching it back to third person. Some adjustments need to be made at that point, but it made a radical difference in my word choices in dialogue and in the character's introspection and their description of the world around them.

Re: Ah yes..

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Not easy. Sometimes I worry all my characters sound the same--namely, they sound like me.

Ran into the same problem. A friend who'd read my novel came back to me and said, "you know I love your dialogue but everybody sounds the same, they have the same sound."
This worried me. So I tried to come up with slang terms for some. Didn't work by the way - the person who read that version gave me hell for the slang. Ugh. You can't win. LOL!.

A lot needs work, but I'm not as stingy on the description as I believed. Or as rotten at it.

If you can do it - I really suggest getting a few trusted friends to take a look - one's who are willing to give criticism. Tough by the way. I did it. Picked three people. Two of them were actually quite good, the third lousey. But they pointed out things to me about my writing that I had no clue about. Like you, I don't consider myself an observant person. When I take a walk with a friend - they notice the buildings, the gardens, etc - my focus is on what they are saying, the conversation, what to say next - I'm almost completely unaware of my environment - I could be anywhere. And when I walk by myself? Same thing happens - I get completely lost in my thoughts - the environment around me tends to fade into the background. So how could I possibly be good at description? Yet for some reason writing description and being observant don't go hand in hand. I have a friend, very observant, notices everything around them - can't write description to save their life. So maybe it is just how you think. I think in pictures and describe the pictures - like a constant movie going on in my head.
Some people think in music tracks or sounds. It's weird.

What pov do you normally write in?

Hard one. I'm most comfortable in third person close, I think it's called. It's the one in which you are in the person's thoughts, but using pronouns like she/he/her as opposed to I or you.

Example from evil fanfic:"Dawn’s voice or something incredibly similar to it, Buffy’s stomach tightened and the wood from Mr. Pointy cut into her palm. She heard the sound of something being tossed then bouncing, skittering across the marble until it slid to a halt beside her leather encased foot. "

I think that's third person close? I've forgotten what to call these things. I can't do first person. The first version of my novel was written in first person and boy was she a pathetic whiny thing. Another thing my creative writing prof taught me - "don't write in first person unless you can separate yourself from the character, because when you write about yourself you often come across horrid or too-good-to-be true." Not everyone has this problem of course. But I do. Actually, come to think of it - I don't really like most first person narratives, prefer the third person close - like how JK Rowling's does Harry Potter, where you are completely in Harry's pov but using third person.

I've experimented with jumping points of views - another problem with my novel. Discovered - it is very tricky thing to do without confusing the reader. You must be sure the reader knows whose pov they are in at all times. Confuse the reader at your own risk. Readers are fickle, they get annoyed with you - they are gone! This happened to me with readers of my novel - I attempted to shift point of view within a chapter, also every other chapter, didn't work that well.

You know even though it is tough writing well, I find the craft incredibly fun. I get some odd thrill trying to figure out how to make all this work.

Eek...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Just realized example taken from evil fanfic and out of context, reads horribly. At any rate you get the point,
use third person pronouns yet stick in the thoughts of one characters pov.