Prequels, Sequels and Remakes

Prequels, Sequels and Remakes

I went to see the Star Trek prequel last night. It was really, rather good. It could have done with cutting in the middle. The plot got a bit wonky at times and there was the usual Hollywood obsession with set piece CGI spectaculars, even if they get in the way of the story but it was entertaining. My wife only fell asleep twice.

It got me thinking. One gets used to the idea that a long running brand in films or books will gradually get worse until it becomes a parody of itself. In any series there is a ‘jump the shark’ moment, if you’ll pardon the cliché. You know you have reached that point when the news that Dejah Thoris has been abducted again causes an exasperated response of ‘why doesn’t the damn woman be more careful’ rather than a thrill of excitement. There is a particular problem with a fantasy series in that the author feels pressed to reveal more and bigger revelations about the ‘world’ with each book until all sense of mystery is lost. Sometimes, the more I liked the original book, the faster the shark approaches.

However, long running series can be rejuvenated by a ‘back to basics’ approach where all the accumulated drag is stripped away to get back to the core of what made the story a success in the first place. One example is the James Bond franchise with Casino Royall. The new Star Trek movie is another.

All of which brings me to remakes. Why do they bother? A couple of years ago I noticed in my local DVD shop that the remake of the Italian job was heavily discounted while the original was still selling at full price. The mini was the star of the Italian job. It was a radical car that was iconic of England in the 60s. They remade it in California using the BMW mini, which is just another European car.

Last night I watched the remake of Reggie Perrin. It is utterly pointless. Martin Clunes is a good comic actor but he isn’t Leonard Rossiter. The dialogue does not work as they have set it in the 21st Century not the 1970s but retained some of the original but rewritten parts. So you get ghastly constructs like ‘take an email Miss ....’ That is funny only the first time it is used.

The question still remains – Why?

The power of paying attention

There's another fascinating book out about the way our brains work. A delightful woman named Winifred Gallagher has just published Rapt--Attention and the Focused Life. Using some pretty impressive research, she makes another case to support something I learned in the excellent book Brain Rules: that multitasking just doesn't work. Period.

A scientific study shows, according to Rapt, that our optimum period of concentration is ninety minutes. That means ninety minutes without phone interruptions, email distractions, conversations. Then, the study tells us, we should get up, move around, do something else. It also tells us that every interruption means the brain has to waste a significant amount of time getting "back on track". This seems to me a perfect model for a writer! I hope that's not just because I'm such a physically restless person.

Here's the blurb from the Penguin USA website:

In Rapt, acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher makes the radical argument that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how you choose to do it. Gallagher grapples with provocative questions—Can we train our focus? What’s different about the way creative people pay attention? Why do we often zero in on the wrong factors when making big decisions, like where to move?—driving us to reconsider what we think we know about attention.

Gallagher looks beyond sound bites on our proliferating BlackBerries and the increased incidence of ADD in children to the discoveries of neuroscience and psychology and the wisdom of home truths, profoundly altering and expanding the contemporary conversation on attention and its power. Science’s major contribution to the study of attention has been the discovery that its basic mechanism is an either/or process of selection. That we focus may be a biological necessity— research now proves we can process only a little information at a time, or about 173 billion bits over an average life—but the good news is that we have much more control over our focus than we think, which gives us a remarkable yet underappreciated capacity to influence our experience. As suggested by the expression “pay attention,” this cognitive currency is a finite resource that we must learn to spend wisely. In Rapt, Gallagher introduces us to a diverse cast of characters—artists and ranchers, birders and scientists—who have learned to do just that and whose stories are profound lessons in the art of living the interested life. No matter what your quotient of wealth, looks, brains, or fame, increasing your satisfaction means focusing more on what really interests you and less on what doesn’t. In asserting its groundbreaking thesis—the wise investment of your attention is the single most important thing you can do to improve your well-being—Rapt yields fresh insights into the nature of reality and what it means to be fully alive.

Evil Mini-Onion Here

Sarah has managed to catch the flu -- again. She swears it doesn't honk or oink, but it has knocked her flat. She promises to be back next week.

First Draft VS Rewriting

R&D Studio artwork. Just for fun.

I find rewriting fun. First draft is hard work. It's scary because I set off with an idea and a couple of characters ... and that's it. The story grows.

One of the lists I'm on has been debating the differences between being a Pantser and Plotter.

Plotters plan the whole book beforehand and can write chapter ten before they do chapter four. I can't imagine writing like that. I'm a Pantser (Seat of the Pants writer). I find out what's going on as the characters do. It makes writing the book exciting but hard work, because I'm constantly interrupted by my family, so I have to keep characters, world and narrative threads fresh in my mind over months.

By the time I get around to the rewriting, I can relax and thread through the character layers and subtleties that I look for when I read books. Without a deadline, the temptation is to keep rewriting for ever.

Having worked on some very long multi book narratives now, the only way I can keep it all straight in my head is to create a scene by scene breakdown in a separate document. Then, if I want to insert a character clue in a particular scene, I can find that scene without having to scroll through the document looking for it. I create maps, lists of terms and their meanings, character descriptions (did minor character X have a broken nose?) and I keep spare deleted scenes in a file. Obsessive Compulsive?

I think to be a creative person in any field you have to be a little bit obsessive. In the nicest possible way.

Recharging

It's May Day, traditionally a day of new beginnings and celebrations. Fires were extinguished and kindled anew. Herds went to summer pastures.

Me, I'm off to recharge and refresh on the Oregon Coast. Do you picture me lounging on the beach, sipping a mojito? Hah. I'll be working my butt off. I'll be lucky to get in a couple of walks.

I'm going to a writers workshop run by the incomparable team of Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. They have a whole series of them. I have taken a number of these workshops, including the Master Class, which I credit for keeping me in the game and teaching me to take my job (writing fiction) seriously. I highly recommend the Master Class for writers who are beyond the beginner level. There will be one this fall, and that will probably be the last.

This trip will be a change of pace, a change of place, and a chance to reconnect with writer friends I mostly only see online. It will be rejuvenating as well as educational. As others on this list have pointed out, the occasional retreat is good for stirring the creative juices (add crushed mint and ice). Being in the company of other professional writers reminds us that many of the challenges we face, we share with our colleagues.

There will be a lot of hard work, a lot of laughs, and probably a good deal of pizza. And at least one walk on the beach, I hope.

Tired Writer Syndrome and The Glass Slide

As it’s probably becoming apparent, I’m going through one of those times in life in which, though nothing particularly bad – knock on wood – is happening, one doesn’t quite know whether to scratch oneself or dig a deep hole in the ground and hide.
The last week has had two sick teen boys, workmen coming to fix the downstairs bathroom, two books that not only are due at the same time, but are insisting on coming out at the same time AND a con approaching – Penguicon in Romulus MI at which I am Guest of Honor this coming weekend – necessitating packing and all this.
This seems like a wonderful time to talk about two perennial issues of writers – at least of writers who also have to live (and make a living) in the real world.
This week I was asked by one of my fledgelings how one ever found time for writing. Well, he didn’t ask it, exactly, but that was the idea behind his probing. After all, he is in graduate school and he has no.time.at.all.
I run into this all the time with son number one and son number two, who are gifted artists and writers in their own right but who rarely "find the time" and are always "terribly busy." Of course, those two with the artlessness of teens can often be found playing computer games hours a day. I’m sure that my fan/fledgeling is a better steward of his time. Almost anyone is. But life has a way of taking up all your time. It’s why they call it life, after all, not that thing you do when you have time.
I’ve found over time that it’s all too easy to find writing squeezed out of your life by the most trivial of concerns. As the mother of two kids, owned by five cats plus two and having the normal duties of home maintenance and cleaning, I can always find something that needs to be urgently done. Right now. Instead of sitting at the keyboard.
It’s all too easy to give in to this, and I’d like to say I’m strong – most of the time. The truth is that I’m not, and I let real life TM interfere all too many times. There are days I get nothing done in writing. And when I’m managing to do the writing, or on deadline, the house goes to h*ll and I hate that.
There is no magic answer. The best I’ve found is that "you make time for writing and you stick to it."
The downside of this, when you have full time jobs, or other writing jobs, or children, or a family, is that you can fall prey to "tired writer syndrome."
In its milder manifestation, you’ll find yourself telling what should be shown or using a lot of passive voice.
In the worst cases, the story will read – quite without your knowing how – as if you were floating on a sheet of glass above characters and situations. The only cure for that is to go back in and BE there when you write it, no matter how tired, no matter how difficult it is.
No one said this job was easy. You sit at the keyboard, and you open a vein. Ink must continue flowing, even when it should be dry. And if this is what you want to do more than anything in the world, you manage it. Somehow.

Sarah's will be here soon

Good morning, this is the evil mini-onion. Sarah is running late this morning, but she will have a post ready later today. She apologizes, saying she's been overtaken by preparations for Penguicon, the arrival of the tile guys and the incontinent geriatric cat.

Please check back later. Sarah promises to join us just as soon as she can. Thanks.