The Second Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen So I never read a dungeon crawl before. Certainly not what I was expecting — not from something written in 1984 (I thought fantasy authors were better than that) — but it’s the best way to describe it. It’s straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. The main characters start by going to a town. They meet some supporting cast who are on their way to a quest. There’s negotiations and debates and arbitrary motivations. One of the characters drops out and is never seen again, like she stopped coming to the meetings. And then they break into this vault guarded by a…
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Why Do We Keep Remaking Carrie?
Why does Hollywood keep remaking Carrie? Is it that good a story? I understand the appeal. It’s simple in concept and appeals to base emotions. We all want to have superpowers. We all want to exact revenge on certain people in our lives. We all feel suppressed by “the rules” whether that’s government or religion, they always seem to have the same ridiculousness and irrelevance. But do we need four movies to tell us that (five if you count “Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver”, but let’s not talk about that). There’s the original Sissy Spacek version (1976), “The Rage: Carrie 2” (1999) which I loved, but is really the same basic story, “Carrie” the…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2013 (Part 1)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick It’s definitely unlike the movie. I’ve complained before about Blade Runner, and that it’s all style and lacking cohesion. The book feels a little more satirical, a little more biting, and not so concerned about looking and feeling cool. It’s really steeped in allegory and metaphor and THE MESSAGE. It’s interesting how the director saw a movie in this. The portion that made it into the film is quite minimal. He probably could have saved some money by filing off the serial numbers. The book itself? Well, it’s hard to put an opinion on it. It’s a novel to be…
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4 Ways I Get Ideas
1. Movies Mostly bad movies. Sometimes mediocre movies, and rarely good movies. It’s because I see a movie like Dragonslayer or Westworld and think, “This is such a great concept, but it’s executed so poorly. There’s no story here. And I think it should go like this…” This happened with “In a Dragon’s Age”. In Dragonslayer, there was this old man who I thought was going to be a cool character, but he dies in the beginning. I wished he was in the entire movie, playing mentor to the bumbling magician. And that idea evolved into a crochety old man ranting to young whipper-snappers about the days of dragon-killing. “Z…
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Herbie Loves Christine
You know what’d be an awesome concept for a movie? If Herbie the Love Bug fell in love with Christine, the murdering car from the Stephen King novel/movie. Herbie’s a cute, innocent guy from the suburbs. He doesn’t have much for power, but he’s got a lot of heart, and he’ll never give up on you. He’s a “love” bug, after all. Christine, however, is a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. You fuck her over, she will ride into your living room, climb up your stairs, and dig her front tires into your lungs. But Herbie sees Christine at the [INSERT NAME OF GENERIC INTERNATIONAL CAR RACE…
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The Books I Read: April – May 2011
Dune by Frank Herbert This one’s on everyone’s must-read sci-fi books of all time so I figured I’d better read it or I’m not really an author. And I hadn’t seen the David Lynch movie before this, so I wasn’t ruined by that (I have seen it since, but I’ll get to that later) (And I did see the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series and read the comic beforehand, so I knew what to expect going in). And it’s a good thing I did — there is a lot going on here. It takes place in a very well-developed world. Almost too well-developed. There’s a lot of characters, a lot of factions,…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2010
Ariel by Steven R. Boyett This is the kind of book I want to write. They say if you can come up with one truly original idea, you’ve accomplished a great deal. I know I’m no good at that, but I love genre-mixing, both writing it and reading it. Ariel is one of those books that is actually urban fantasy. Not oppressed vampires, bare-chested werewolves, and leather-bound bounty hunters. A unicorn and a boy journey from Atlanta to New York, surviving the apocalypse. There are dragons and gryphons, and there are skyscrapers and cans of beef ravioli. It’s a got a street-smart unicorn and a samurai swordsman. I can tell…
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The Books I Read: July – August 2010
Weaveworld by Clive Barker(unfinished) I wanted to read some Clive Barker. I read a short story of his called “Dread” that I really loved. But I couldn’t get into this story. I didn’t understand the stakes. I couldn’t care about the main characters or what they were doing. I couldn’t keep track of them. I’m sure they were good characters. Great characters, even. I just wish he had written a novel to go with them. The two main guys have no defining personalities. The two villains are pretty good. Gaimanesque. But the “Alice in Wonderland” other world concept has been done to death. And unless you’ve got something to spice…
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Fossils
In “On Writing”, Stephen King talks about discovering the story as akin to uncovering a fossil. You brush away a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, not quite knowing what you have until you’ve unearthed the whole thing. And you shouldn’t try to discern what it is until it’s all unearthed. I didn’t used to subscribe to this metaphor because I am a plotter. I like to start a story with lots of pre-writing. I spend some time incubating that idea, thinking of neat things I want to include in that story. Then I arrange my neat things in…
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I Write Like…
I write like Stephen King I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing! Edit: After further analysis, it seems like each story results in a different author. “Milk & Honey” returned the above. “Playable Character”, “Fairy Kingdom”, and “Thicker Than Water” returned Dan Brown. “Influx Capacitor” and “Black Hole Son” returned James Joyce.
