What I Did in the Dead of Winter

Hello Reader!  So I've been awfully busy the last few weeks.  Legitimately!  Stop laughing!  Anyways, I've been working hard on clearing my mind so I can continue writing on my novel.  Wait a minute, you just said you'd been working hard!  Shut up and listen, I'm getting there!

Schizophrenia aside, I really have been diligently pressing forward on a side-project of mine that I've taken quite a bit of pride in.  The culmination of my anger at M. Night Shyamalan coupled with my love for the series Avatar: The Last Airbender has resulted in a completed, 118 page script for a film!  Yes, it's a hefty and slightly arrogant task to undertake.  I've never taken a screenwriting class, what do I know of the intricacies involved in crafting a well-done movie?  But that's not the point of this exercise.

The point was to see if I could.  To see if I could finish the damn thing the way I wanted to finish it, to envision the first season of Avatar the way I feel it could be represented best.  It was quite a challenge, and through its travails I understand why Shyamalan failed.  Condensing one season of a television show requires more than just cutting out certain episodes and including others.  In fact, this condensation shouldn't even occur.  What should happen instead is an elevation of the plot's strongest points, the character's most powerful emotions and the story's most transcendent heights.

With Avatar, this is all rather easy.  You just had to pay attention and rewatch each episode religiously.  From Aang's emergence in the first episode to the awkward and rushed ending of the last, each thread of story is so clearly outlined and full developed by the show's creaters Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino that any missed beat is solely the fault of the writer.

Take for example Aang's love for Katara.  Several times in the show this love is clearly articulated.  The Cave of Two Lovers episode, The Play episode of Season 3, even the very first episode of the series depicts Aang's infatuation with Katara in crystalline brushstrokes.  But those are only a few episodes at a time.  What truly illustrated Aang and Katara's mutual feelings was the blushing, awkward glances, brave attempts at flirting and even daring rescues that occurred without lines being spoken.  It's these subtleties in acting, performance, cinematography and direction that Night left out of his film and that the creators of Avatar utilized extensively.

So what did I have to do to elevate the show?  Cut out several episodes, steal lines from one episode and insert those tidbits of information into scenes and places they did not exist beforehand.  I had to, several times, steal from future seasons and write-in events that would happen later in the series.  For example, King Bumi makes an appearance in the first season.  While the episode he appears in is derivative filler, the character himself is incredibly important.  He is part of the White Lotus!  A group of men that becomes so ludicrously important in the latter half of season two and final episodes of season three that shoving each of the main members' introductions into the second or third movies will demean their incredible importance.

It is crucial to introduce Bumi in the first film of three, give him time to be imprisoned in the second film, and then bring him back during the third.  Because in the second film, you have the introduction of the White Lotus itself, laying down railroad tracks the viewer cannot see the destination of but whose very construction intrigues them enough to come and see the Avatar world a third time.  And Hell, there's so much going on in the second season that using precious minutes of film time to introduce and give backstory to a rather kooky character right after Aang, Katara and Sokka have fought the battle of their lives and lost those that they loved seems to be a drastic and sadistic treatment of tone.

I was saving my 50th for something amazing

Hello Reader!  It's been fifty, 50, FIFTY, %)!!! weeks that I've been posting on here about my novel!  You'd think I would have finished by now.  But no, as always, school has taken over my life.  Thank God (swt) at least this year, I'm getting good grades.

Onto bigger and better things however!  Hopefully you've all heard of NaNoWriMo.  If not, then click the link!  Here's the gist of the organization.  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month - clever no?  Basically, participants are asked to type, write, sketch, doodle a 50,000 word novel in one month - the month of November - and whether the novel is good or not, post it onto their website.  No editing, no rethinking of ideas, none of the things that most authors rely on to make their novel great.  Just pure, raw, imaginative creativity.  It's exciting isn't it?  To be free from the hassle of analysis, self-doubt, judgment.

That's why I'm doing it.  I've been obsessing over the quality of the novel for so long, and I'm not sure if it's even boosting the quality of the damn thing.  In fact, I think it may be diluting the quality of it.  A nice break, one where I'm actually being productive on the side, would be nice.  Thus far, I haven't really written in it.  One chapter, a measly 10,000 words after deleting around 30,000, into the new version of the novel and Neuroscience has decided to make my life ten times harder than it already was.  First world problems are a bitch.

So what's the new story about?  I wanted to write something on an aircraft carrier, something detailing the life of a marine in deep space.  Yes, I'm sticking with science fiction.  I think I've already explained it beforehand, but it feels appropriate to reiterate my feelings about the genre.  I feel that science fiction allows me to create this alternate history through which I can influence my characters and give them context for their actions.  What's the point in making them do something, if the reason for it is so current, so present in their own realities?  Then it just seems fraudulent, like I'm letting you (the reader) see my hand at work.

Take for example a situation where Mary finds her new husband has been cheating on her.  She goes into a rage, and beats him to death with a frying pan.  Then she buries him under their garage and has to deal with his ghost haunting her for the rest of her life until finally she decides to kill herself.  Well, that sucks.

Now what if we knew that her husband had a history, a history of being a playboy and wantonly flirting with other women?  And that it took every fiber of Mary's being to get this man to settle down and be with her?  What if we also knew her own mother had a history of mental illness, one with symptoms similar to the hallucinations Mary seems to be having after her husband's death.  And then! it's revealed that the reason why she knew how and where to bury her husband's body, as well as how she knew to stay away from the cop's suspicion for so long, is because she comes from a family of gypsies living in the South  - that's a direct pull from The Riches, I know.

Doesn't that sound more exciting?  Hell, it's a longer paragraph, that's for sure!  So, science fiction gives me that leeway.  It allows me to write about characters who have depth beyond their own measly lives, giving them drama and connecting them to a larger play they are all a part of.  It's high falutin stuff, this explanation/reasoning of mine, hoity-toity to the max and border line arrogant, but at least it makes an interesting story.  Or what I hope is an interesting story.

SO, what exactly am I writing about.  I started off writing about a young marine in an engine room reading a bunch of maps.  Then alarms start to ring everywhere and a monster appears in front of him, crawling its way from a torture room it has just escaped from.  Then I began to write about something I knew would happen eventually.  I just didn't want it to happen now.

I began to tie the story in to the Magna Beast's story.  In the world I've created for the Magna Beast, there are six known sentient races.  The Mags and Howlas, the Quasarians, the Nymphs, Humans, Hyths, and...well shoot that's about it.  So I choose the Hyths to be a part of this story.  In my novel, the materials for the new technology allowing people to create laser guns is found on the Hyth planet.  So I decided that the Hyth our young marine meets is going to be the same Hyth who was found with his crew shipping those materials.

And thus, the mad chain of ragtag events zig-zag their way towards a final conclusion in the deus ex machina of my first novel.  It's sort of like The Hobbit.  Bilbo finds the ring, by accident, and, also by accident, ends up giving the ring to Frodo who embarks on this enormous journey to destroy all evil.  It's insane how one event, one instance in a person's life can drastically metastasize and affect forces larger than his/her understanding.  I love to play with that, events building upon each other to create a varied tapestry.

Anyways, I think I'm going to blog about my progress on this new novel.  It's an exciting journey to begin on.  And hey!  I think I did write something pretty watershed-like for my 50th post!  Here's to a new novel being finished quicker than the old one!  Huzzah!  Until next time then.