Saturday News and Notes

Sally and I sat down and watched this week's Fringe and this week's V last night.  I gotta admit that I was a little disappointed in Fringe.  I mean, it wasn't a bad episode of anything, but they've been building this thing between Peter and Olivia for weeks, and then they did absolutely NOTHING with it.  Disappointing.  They could've at least hung a little teen-angst in the air.  And then, too, Fox had been promoting the big "shocker" ending all week, but folks, if that ending was anything, it was obvious.  Strictly paint-by-the-numbers.  Like I said, I was expecting better from a usually top-notch show.

For my money, V was a little better, but that's a show that needs to turn up the heat, time now, or they're gonna start losing audience.  And there were a couple of seriously groan-worthy spots, too.  I mean, look, the Visitors are supposed to be reptiles, right?  So why so Vulcan?  Some of the best scenes from the original were drawn straight out of the always entertaining Diana's sheer cattiness.  Come on!  Diva-ism almost always plays well in the cheap seats.  Eh.  They seem like they want the visitors to be both reptile and insect, and that strikes me as bad science.  And worse science fiction.

Also... what was up with the whole, "I'm not your real father" thing?  *GROAN*  If it turns out that Tyler is half-Visitor or something, I'll be out.  That's just idiotic.

This morning's TV was substantially better.  As I noted yesterday, Hannah and I made an explicit plan to sit down this morning and watch the first part of Starblazer: The Quest for Iscandar.  Heh.  She got up at 6: 30.  "Is it time yet?"

Me (Groggy): "Yes Hannah.  It's time."

Anyway, I didn't know how she was gonna like it.  First off, this is a girl who gets scared of the wicked octopus in The Little Mermaid, and she's already seen the freakin' Little Mermaid about 1,000 times.  And then, too, we live in the year 2010.  Quest for Iscandar came out in 1979, and I haven't seen it since it was on regular TV back before school in the mornings.  So, bottom line, I had no idea how it was gonna look to modern eyes.

Well, it was pretty good.  I mean, the picture wasn't spectacular--or anything that could reasonably be labeled spectacular--but it was passable.  Muddy but impressive.  The shots were well designed.  They got the very most they could out of their budget and tech.  And the story literally blows away anything that's on TV anymore.  Shit, I doubt the censors would even let such mature subject matter on TV these days.  I can just see some freakin' cartoon getting a TV MA rating because it's too damned "political."  Anyway, I knew Hannah was digging it when the Argo was trying to dodge the Gamalon Marauder Missile, and Hannah turned to me gritting her teeth and said, "Take off!  Daddy, they need to hurry up and take off!  Oh no!"

The good thing about Starblazers--at least for kids--is that the Sequel structure is rock solid.  Or, to put it another way, the characters are constantly recapping the situation in order to express their determination to press on no matter what the circumstances.  And that's good because 6-year-olds don't always follow and remember complex plot details.  So all those recaps really help.

For adults, I think Starblazers is most interesting as a study in post-War Japanese psychology.  The show plays out like a Bushido revenge fantasy, and make no mistake: we're the bad guys.  At the same time, there's a pervasive helplessness that shows up in almost every frame--at least in the initial episodes.  These guys seem to get that Japan was beset by an enemy it had no business fighting.  The Gamalons are literally larger than life, and the producers take the time, several times, to point out that Earth has "No defense" against the Gamalon technology and Gamma-bombing.  I found it fascinating all over again.

This afternoon, I went for a ride.  I finally had a good long time to just get on my bike and go.  Ended up heading out to ride the hills on Stratford's north side.  Very nice.  I figure I put in about 25 miles in a bit less than 90 minutes, which is okay considering that it was windy, and I stopped for maybe 10 minutes to stretch after warming up.  I feel good now, but I need a beer.  Fortunately, there's a little collection in the fridge.

And that's all I got.  I was gonna put up something political this afternoon, but I don't think I have time, and anyway, the news these days is so damned depressing that I spend most of my time avoiding it.  Starblazers and biking are both good for that.

That said, if you got something you'd like to see here, drop me a note in the Comments.  I mostly play it by ear, but I take criticism and advice reasonably well if it's constructive.  Which means leaving a solution or two to go with your problem or complaint.

I doubt I'll be back tomorrow, so have a good rest of the weekend.

NEW New Color Scheme

Any thoughts?

Starblazers!

Big day for me and Hannah tomorrow.  We're watching STARBLAZERS! 

How cool is that?

Also, SLASH has a new album! Cool, huh?  I feel young all over again.

Storyteller’s Playbook: Scene and Sequel Structure

As I’ve noted before, one of the most common problems that I see amongst new writers is structure.  Telling stories can be a surprisingly technical undertaking, and that’s something that your average newbie just doesn’t understand.  Why should they?  For reasons I’ve never understood, we don’t teach story structure in high school.  I mean, your teachers might mention Three-Act structure in passing, but they never get into the actual mechanics of what makes it work, and they then compound the confusion by repeatedly asking students to do “creative” writing without first providing the tools to make that writing readable.  And that causes two problems.  The first is that it helps new writers learn the wrong lessons by accident, ultimately leading to a entirely false sense of security, and then, too, it makes them think that they can figure it all out on their own if they just struggle through it stubbornly enough.  That’s not helpful.  It’s true that some folks can instinctively find their way through some general storytelling, but even then, that’s usually because of an innate grasp of story and scene structure that they’ve learned through osmosis via excessive exposure to common storytelling media.  More commonly, writers come up with workable ideas which they develop foolishly because they’re ignorant of what real story development is.  This is then compounded by a lack of scene structure that makes so much amateur and fan-fiction utterly unreadable.

Story structure is the thing that prevents your idea becoming a mere series of random events that happen to the same set of characters.  Scene and Sequel structure, then, are the things prevent your now structured narrative from going off the rails.  They give good fiction its “I can’t put it down” factor.  They drive the story by maintaining tension.

In my humble opinion, Scene structure is not too difficult so long as you remember one simple rule: in fiction, bad things have to happen to good people.  In that sense, building a scene is a lot like building a story, only taken in microcosm.  You start off with a character who wants something—passionately.  The more he wants it, the more urgent is his need, the better.  You then complicate the scene, putting as many obstacles in our hero’s way as possible.  This is similar to what we saw in the Development phase of our Story structure discussion.  In your scene, you want to set a goal, set an obstacle, and then make things worse.  Look, when you put in twists and turns for our hero to overcome, you give him a chance to be heroic.  The scene unfolds as he works his way through the issues, gradually pushing the issue to its climax.  The climax is where Scene and Story structure differ.  For a Story, you want to resolve all of the issues at the end, generally allowing your hero to triumph in the face of adversity.  A single scene, however, doesn’t work that way.  With Scene structure, you want to end on a disaster!

Why?  Because if the hero wins out in the Scene, all the tension in your story goes out the window.

A great example of Scene structure comes at the beginning of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Indiana Jones wants to get into the tomb and get the golden idol.  And although we don’t know from the start of the scene exactly what it is that he’s after, we know it’s important because we can see how determined he is.  He faces a variety of traps and complications, overcoming them one by one.  He looks heroic.  At last, he comes into the main chamber, and we see the idol.  It’s beautiful!  It’s gold!  Wow!  Carefully, our hero crosses the chamber, pulls out his magic bag of sand, and swaps the sand for the idol, hopefully without triggering the trap.  But then what happens?  Disaster!  The sand starts to sink, and the temple falls apart.  Oh no!

And now we’ve set ourselves up for a whole ‘nother scene—Indy’s got to escape from the temple before he’s killed.  And by the way, how does that scene end?  Again, disaster!  Indy escapes the tomb, but all his work is for naught when the evil Nazi archeologist pulls a gun and takes the idol, telling our hero, “You see Doctor Jones?  There is nothing that you can possess, that I cannot take from you.”  Or something like that.  In any event, it’s that series of disasters that keep the story moving.  We want to see Indy triumph!  That’s what keeps us glued to our seats.

But although you can go from scene to scene to scene as a writer, eventually you have to slow the pace a little.  Eventually, you have to stop long enough to take a breather, set up the next big thing, or otherwise let the audience catch its breath.  And there’s backstory to consider.  There’s simple description.  Hell, there are even issues of clarity.  That’s where Sequel structure comes into play.

A Sequel is the thing that comes after a Scene.  And it’s what sets up the next Scene.  It works like this: Following a serious reversal, our hero takes a moment to take stock of his situation, eventually coming to a resolution.  He will push forward through the adversity, overcoming his challenges no matter what the odds!

For me, Sequel structure is a little more challenging.  For one thing, during a sequel your characters really aren’t doing anything.  They’re thinking.  Plotting.  Planning their next move.  That’s occasionally necessary, but it’s also inherently less interesting.  Sequels don’t move the plot forward.  They provide a segue from one thing to the next.  For that reason, you’re well advised to keep them brief—at least compared to your scenes.

Staying with the Indiana Jones theme, we get into Sequel structure when Indy gets back to America.  He’s at the college, he goes to meet his boss, and he immediately starts recounting his adventures.  That’s a necessary part of Sequel structure.  You have to recap the situation.  Put it into context for your readers.  Indy then starts on about wanting to get back out there—also part of the Sequel structure, the explicit statement that Something must come Next, that our hero is still determined—but that’s when we jump into the next Scene.  The men from the government are here to see Dr. Jones about the Ark.  And with that, the story takes off on its new course.

Scene and Sequel structure are a little more complicated for gaming.  For one thing, as a DM you don’t control the characters.  The Players control the characters.  And so, the characters’ drive and motivation is fundamentally up to them.  You can do things to give motivation, but ultimately the Players have to make their own characters live.  What you can do as a DM is keep an eye on the golden rule—in fiction, bad things have to happen to good people.  The other thing you can do is utilize Sequel structure to segue quickly and effectively from one Scene to the next. 

And then too, a big problem with Scene structure for gaming is that although encounters make good natural scenes, they also tend to end in triumph.  Your PCs defeat the evil monsters, and the world is a somewhat safer place.  Which would be fine if each scene were a separate story unto itself, but it presents a problem when you’re trying to link Scenes into a larger framework.  Each time your PCs triumph, you risk letting the tension out of the story.  And that’s no good.  So then, you need to have an idea of what’s going to come next BEFORE you start each encounter.  That way you can segue into it.  You can set up some kind of non-combat disaster that will propel your PCs and your story onward.

With apologies to my own gaming group, here’s an example of a Sequel that I wrote just this morning for the Sellswords.  After being stranded on a remote desert island, the group challenged and defeated a powerful black dragon named Scylla.  They then defeated a group of elven mercenaries led by a young and impetuous silver dragon named Baelthus.  In so doing, they’ve taken a prisoner—and possibly stirred up the wrath of a much more powerful ancient mithral dragon named Typhon.  In this piece, I’m trying to use the threat of Typhon to turn their triumph into a little disaster that will keep our story moving.  I also tried to set up the fact that our heroes need to make some important decisions—as part of the story’s Sequel—which will set their next course of action.  Structurally, this is set up by our prisoner, who recaps the situation in order to put it into context and set up the decision.  Our next Scene can then flow organically from whatever my Players decide they want to do.

Oddly, now that the battle’s over, the eladrin spear-sorcerer seems pleasant.  Even charming.  If he bears you any ill will over the deaths of his comrades, it’s buried deeply under his innate elven reserve.  He drops his spear to show that he is unarmed and willing to surrender, but he’s still wearing a golden circlet upon his brow, and a close examination of his person reveals a sheathed wand hiding in his left boot.  He was clearly holding this in reserve.

“My dear boy,” he says in response to Jaeron’s question, “where else could you possibly have gone?  You didn’t follow us into the Feywild, and it’s not as though this is a big island.  When Baelthus overflew the area and saw that you’d wrecked the lizardling village, well, it wasn’t hard to guess what you were after.”  He gestures at the beached caravel.  ”A chromatic dragon preys upon the pirates of the Sword Coast.  It’s only natural that she’d have acquired a little ship as part of her horde, no?  Of course, most Blacks wouldn’t go to the trouble of restoring a prize to quite this extent, but even so, Scylla is hardly unusual for her species.  Why even Baelthus knew of this ship’s existence, and he’s hardly a member of Great Typhon’s inner circle.  I doubt he’s ever even seen the Scrying Room.” 

At that, the eladrin’s reserve cracks.  But only for a moment.  An instant later, his icy reserve is back.  With a show of dignity, the elf brushes a bit of unseen dust from his shoulders one at a time. 

“Well, you have me now, gentlemen.  But what shall you do with me?”  He looks directly at Baslim.  “I tell you truly, Dead Man, that you cannot outrun Great Typhon forever.  And whatever fate finally finds you, I can assure you that your companions will share in it—completely.  What’s more, though I doubt that the Great One will care personally for the fate of one foolish Silver youngling and his followers, she was very interested in YOU.  In all of you, actually.  I do not pretend to be in the Mistress’s confidence, but I strongly doubt that she will allow you to simply sail away unmolested.  It is, after all, no secret that she has been locked in the Divining Room ever since that massive storm blew you off course—and into her sphere of inlfuence.  Alas, it goes without saying that the contents of her divinations are unknown to me, but I am aware—as you must be—that she possesses enough of the Spark of the Eternal to follow you wherever you might run.  At this point, she probably knows your future course better than you do.

“Ahh… the Court has been pondering it all for days.  As you might imagine, the mystery has only added to the intrigue.  They were divided on the meaning of the portents—and upon your personal fate in general, Baslim—even before you ran.  Now…  Well, Baelthus’s actions speak to belief of the larger faction, I think.  Desmond spoke for caution, but the more senior members—the dragons, you understand—they wanted action.  Quite apart from your inclination towards violence and mischief—and your association, however casual, with evil deities—I think that the Court members were afraid that our haven’s existence might be discovered because of you, and that this might ultimately compromise the Great One’s mission… whatever it might be.  The, uh, lives of a few inveterate slavers were but a small price to pay for our continued secrecy—at least as far as most of the Court was concerned.”

The eldarin shrugs.  “Well, it matters not now.  By right of victory the next move is yours.”

So.  It’s little cut-scenes—or as in this case, cut-sequels—like that that I find useful in keeping my story moving.  Not because I want to railroad the Players but because I want to be able to keep things in the proper context.  The Players control the characters, but I control the World.  We have to work together to keep it rolling along.  My half of that is setting things up in such a way that the flexibility of the characters makes sense inside a larger context of the story through which they’re moving.

Anyway, that’s a few words on Scene and Sequel structure.  If you want to see it done by a master, go pick up one of Jim Butcher’s many very readable novels.  Note the Scene and Sequel structure of his storytelling and the way it keeps the plot humming along.  The man is a master.  I merely offer him up as an example of how to do this right.

What I’m Reading: Recent Reads

You might’ve guessed this, but just in case you didn’t, look, I been busy, yo.  The super-secret project has been kicking my ass.  It’s not so much that I don’t know what to do or how to do it.  It’s not even that I don’t have the time.  The problem is that the damned thing’s been taking so much sheer mental effort that honestly, there just hasn’t been a lot left over for anything else.  I mean, I can still ride and train because for the most part that doesn’t take mental effort.  Triathlon is the antithesis of my work.  But blogging, writing, even managing Sellswords… all those things have kind of gone by the wayside this past week or so.  With that in mind, I’m not gonna do a full-on review this week.  I’m just gonna tell you what I’ve been reading, and you can take from that whatever you will.  And at this point, we’ll just have to see about Storyteller’s Playbook on Friday.  I’ll try, but I make no promises.

So.

Yesterday I finished Drew Karpyshyn’s 3^rd Star Wars book, Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil.  Fun stuff.  The first half dragged a little, but in general, I’ve enjoyed all of the Darth Bane books, and at least for me, this last one tied it all up nicely.  It ended well, and old Drew left himself some running room in case they let him write some more of this series.  Personally, I hope he does.  I’ll keep reading.

While we’re on the subject of Star Wars, I notice that Paul S. Kemp has a new Star Wars novel out called Crosscurrent.  I don’t know anything about it, but Kemp—a Canadian lawyer in real life, just like my own sometime writing partner Steve—is one of my favorite Forgotten Realms authors.  His Erevis Cale books are some of the best in the Realms.  With that in mind, if I see this one at my local library, I’m gonna check it out for sure.

I also skimmed Kevin Smith’s Batman: Cacophony yesterday, but it sucked a high hard one.  Look, I know a lot of folks like Smith and all, but for me, he hasn’t done anything decent since Mallrats.  And yes, I did like Mallrats—a lot—and if you didn’t, that’s not my fault.

Last week’s big read was the second of Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko books, Polar Star (the sequel to the much more well-known Gorky Park).  I’ve mentioned before that Smith is one of my personal heroes, and this book reaffirms why.  First off, the man isn’t even Russian, but he seems to understand Russians in a way that’s almost inhuman.  And then, too, who else could come up with these odd-ball plots?  Polar Star is a murder-mystery set on an Arctic fishing factory ship!  It’s also a damned-fine novel, which is probably a part of why I’ve had so little patience for bad writing—like Kevin Smith’s—lately.

Over the weekend, I read Storm Front, the second of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files comic adaptations from the Dabel Brothers, and it was LIGHT YEARS ahead of what the first one was.  Where I found Welcome to the Jungle plodding and poorly executed, Storm Front was a very faithful adaptation, easily capturing the original’s wry wit and sheer mad-capped excitement.  In fact, there were several places where the OGN actually improved on the original by the addition of simple clarity.  For that fact alone, adaptation scripter Mark Powers deserves a medal.  Even better, however, is the fact that although the GN Storm Front has the same illustrator as did Jungle, in the newer volume Syaf’s fanboy tendencies are kept well in hand.  We see him go over the top only once with fanboy excitement, and when he does, it’s entirely appropriate.  Plus the coloring is decidedly darker, and the inks are heavier, leading to a much, much edgier look over what I’m sure are similarly styled pencils. 

My only complaint on Storm Front is its cover.  It’s ugly.  Harry Dresden should NOT have a late 80’s Jheri curl style white-boy afro.  In blonde, no less.  Gimme a break, alright?  If he stands too close to an open flame, he’s gonna catch fire like Michael Jackson dancing for Pepsi.  That’s just wrong.

Finally, there’s this morning’s fare, Vertigo’s Madame Xanadu (Volume 1), a book that Variety called “Classic” but that I personally found a little plodding in its 3^rd Act.  Eh.  I’m not gonna sit here and say that’s it’s a bad read or anything.  It grabbed me from the beginning, and the art is excellent throughout.  Where it came apart for me was in the end.  We never get what I’d call resolution.  The whole thing reads like some kind of weird, fanboy-esque unfulfilled lust fantasy.  And that leaves me cold.  If I end a book wondering “what’s the point?”—I mean, what’s the point?  Girl makes mistakes, fails to learn, and makes more mistakes.  She not only doesn’t get the boy, she never even gets a chance to try to get the boy.  And that’s supposed to be a story?  Come on.  That’s the START of a story.  But it plays like it’s an ending, and in any case, I’m sure as Hell not gonna hang on for Issues 12 through 15 (i.e. Volume 2) based on a false finish.  Ugh.

So there you have it.  This afternoon I’ll be reading Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert’s Batman and Son.  Morrison hardly ever writes bad stuff, and Kubert is a legend in his own time, so I have high hopes.  But I feel like Batman done me wrong a few times lately, so…   

Well, here’s hoping.

Happy Easter!

I hope you had a good holiday.  We finally had some nice sun this weekend, and I managed to get in a pair of rides.  I even got in some climbing yesterday.  Not too bad. 

Today we went to early service and then headed out to Sally's sister's for a late lunch.  Again, that wasn't bad at all.  We took some pictures, so if i get a chance, I'll post a few.

What about you?  Did you do anything good?

Injuries, injuries...

Well, the good news is that I don't have a hernia.  But the bad news is that I do have a pretty badly pulled groin muscle.  And it hurts.  I can't run, and really I can just barely ride.

*sigh*

This tri season is already tough, and it hasn't even started.