Another great video!

This is from Bookfox.  Enjoy!

9 Steps to Take Your Writing from Mechanical to ALIVE

Another great video from Brandon McNulty

This video discusses 11 great tips to get a story done faster.  These are fantastic tips.

I have done most of these things at some time in my life.  How do we do them more consistently?

Hollywood's Bloated Ending Problem--a quick Romulus note

Hollywood's Bloated Ending Problem (Writing Advice) from Brandon McNulty

Just thought I'd share another video from Brandon.  This one talks about endings, and he makes a good reference to Alien: Romulus.  After my last post, I thought this was kinda interesting.

Not only that, but the videos Brandon McNulty does with these Good vs. Bad are lots of fun.

Romulus?

 I wrote a couple of blogs about Aliens.  

Revisting this because Nick and I just went to see Alien: Romulus.

The Frankenstein theme and ideology that ripples through our culture fascinates me.  I think Jurassic Park stated this well:  

Ahh.  Jeff Goldblum.

Sure, Jurassic Park, Terminator, and Aliens explore this driving passion: man creates a monster that can destroy him.

One of the wonderful ways that the Alien movies does this is in the dual monsters.  Certainly, and perhaps most obviously, man created the aliens (or develops them).  The aliens continue to become more demonic and more terrible, evolving into plagues that infect humans.

But the other monsters that the Alien movies use are the synthetics.  This is such a lovely tension: the synthetics in the movies have cloaked motives and desires, and in the most recent movies (Prometheus and Covenant), some synthetics are almost as monstrous and horrible as the aliens--of course, in much different ways.  The synthetics have incredible characters and tension.

Both the aliens and the synthetics are marvelous and amazing monsters, created by humans, yet the humans do not fully understand the potential devastation or destruction they cause.

The opening of Covenant was beautiful.  In about 2 1/2 minutes, we meet the two main characters, learn their relationship, understand the strange tension between them, and see no aliens.  

This opening is brilliant, lovely, and terrifying.  I probably could watch another 10 minutes of this.  I want more.

Now we get to Romulus.

Huh.

The opening in Romulus is quite strangely, none of these things.  Sure, no aliens.  The opening includes too many characters, too much artificial and unnecessary character development, and dark scenes with no beauty or cloaked tension.

Perhaps the most disappointing character is the synthetic, Andy.  Andy is simple, almost ridiculously so.  Some of the other characters tease him, and Andy appears hurt, but this does not quite make sense.  When the powerful lead woman (girl, doesn't hold a candle to Sigourney Weaver) reprograms Andy, his motives are still obvious--this does not lend to any real tension.  The other characters learn about his motives quickly.

I am keeping this very brief because I wish to focus on the incredible Frankenstonian theme.  This does not get old.  We continue to reuse this theme because, I believe, we fear this in our own lives and own world.  Whether we fear the power of AI taking over our world or the bureauchratic systems controlling our lives, this theme is just as poignant and applicable today.

And yes, I will watch any Alien movie.

Isaac Asimov may be turning in his grave!

Robots fascinate me.

Certainly, I geek out on the Frankenstonian themes in Terminator and all the Alien movies.  The Frankenstein stories that have pervaded our movies and stories in different ways and in different forms amaze me.

We create life.  We play God.  Then, suddenly, in a terrible epiphany, we realize that what we created can destroy us.  

What amazing pride, and what an amazing fall of hubris.  Icarus takes the ultimate fall.  What a brilliant idea.

But, what if--and this is a huge if--we create AI, and the AI doesn't have any intention to take over the world, to take over humanity.  No terminator machines or Alien monsters looking to kill off humanity.

What if it is so much stranger?

What if, in learning human logic and in learning our world, robots learn the same emotional responses?  To break up marriages?  To play with sarcasm?

To commit suicide when they are just fed up of working?

Life imitates art.  I will find a way to write about this.

How to be a terrible writer

Just found Grayson Taylor, and this video made me smile.  Enjoy!

Revisiting Fight Club

After listening to the interview with Chuck Palahniuk (reshared November 18, 2023), I reread Fight Club.  If you haven’t listened to this interview, it’s worth it.  He’s fascinating. 

I recall reading Fight Club 20 years ago and thinking that, aside from the ending (which was actually better than the movie), most of the book was similar to the movie.  Strange, but the movie adapted the book well with the voice-over narration and the unreliable narrator.  It worked well.

 

On my most recent reading of Fight Club, however, I focused on Palahniuk’s use of rhetoric and rhythm. 

 

Bob’s big arms were closed around to hold me inside, and I was squeezed in the dark between Bob’s new sweating tits that hang enormous, the way we think of God’s as big.  Going around the church basement full of men, each night we met: this is Art, this is Paul, this is Bob; Bob’s big shoulders made me think of the horizon….

Bob’s shoulders inhale themselves up in a long draw, then drop, drop, drop in jerking sobs.  Draw themselves up.  Drop, drop, drop.

I’ve been coming here every week for two years, and every week Bob wraps his arms around me, and I cry.

Fight Club, 16-17

 

Bob, Chloe, the nameless boss, Marla.  Yes, the movie gave them mass exposure, but the book describes them with metaphors, rhetorical repetition, and yes, a bit of music. 

Add in violence and the lost generation and a crazy narrator, and no wonder this book is such a crazy success.  Funny, when I first read this, I knew the writing was smooth and easy, but I’m developing a deeper appreciation his the complexity of his style.

 

Novelist interview-Chuck Palahniuk

This YouTube channel is called, "Soft White Underbelly," and Nick has been listening to these videos.  

Nick played this one for me, and this left me a bit speechless--well, it's Chuck Palahniuk.  His background and story sound like a crazy novel alone, but he talks about writing and workshops and style, too.  

I may need to reread a few of his books and study his style a bit closer.

The First Guy To Ever Write Fiction--reshare from Ryan George

I recently found Ryan George, and he does these skits about the "First guy ever to" do such and such.  I find these videos quite amusing.

The one above is about fiction, so I'm sharing this here.  Enjoy!