New Meme

Well, from all appearances it looks like these days all the blogging I'm doing is in response to memes I've been tagged in. Sorry about that! I have several book recommendations I'd like to write up, hopefully soon. In the meantime, here's the meme, thanks to Paul Shortt.

This particular meme is the Liebster Award, and it has its various rules and questions and... well, I'm not much good at following rules when it comes to memes, so I'll just make up my own.

The first rule was to share 11 facts about me. I think I'm just going to stick to one. I find that more interesting. And this is my one fact:

The thing that has surprised me most about writing is how much I enjoy doing the research. I never liked writing papers in school, and the research for them always annoyed me. I could see the point of doing it, but I could never apply the research to anything long term. When it comes to books, though, the research suddenly becomes fascinating. One of my most recent research subjects was British currency from the 1840s. I looked up what different coins were in circulation at that time (some of it was really quite confounding), and how much a typical family in London might spend on various necessities. I loved learning all the information. It truly fascinated me in ways that it never would have if I'd been doing the research for a term paper.

The next rule was to answer 11 questions from Paul. This I'm happy to do. My modification: I'd love to see Paul's answers to all of these.

1. What movie do you secretly love? Oh dear, confession time, hm? There are a lot of movies I love, and few of them are secret. I'm a big action movie fan. But in general I don't like rewatching movies very much. There are very few I enjoy more than two or three times. But one of them—my shameful secret I suppose—is the movie Accepted. I really have no idea why, but it always amuses me.
2. If you could travel to any place in the world, where would it be? You know how people say that if you throw a coin into Trevi Fountain in Rome you are destined to return there some day? Well I've been to Trevi Fountain, and while I loved it I don't feel a need to return. But there's another place that is my equivalent of Trevi. It's the beach of Rhyl in the north of Wales. I was there about 8 or 9 years ago, and I've always felt like I needed to go back. That and I want to continue on from there to Conwy Castle once again.
3. When you were a child, what was your dream job? Astronomer. But then one day a real astronomer told me that in his career he didn't actually get to sit outside looking at the stars all night, and the dream pretty much died right there.
4. What was your favourite childhood toy? I had lots of favorites over the years, but the one that comes to mind right now is this pair of tiny dolls. They had hard plastic heads and squishy bean bag bodies, and I liked to squeeze the bodies between my thumb and forefinger and make their heads nod back and forth.
5. Do you have any hobbies that don't involve reading, writing, or that don't involve the internet? I crochet. My grandmother taught me how, but she's left-handed and I'm right-handed, so I'm half certain I'm doing most of the stitches a little incorrectly. I can never seem to follow a pattern printed on paper, though I can usually figure out how to make something if I see an example of it, and I love making up my own patterns.
6. Do you have a lifelong dream? Time for another confession I suppose. I always wanted to have an idea that nobody ever had before. It's a very egotistical dream. But it's probably why I ended up writing.
7. When did you come to realise it? Wow, really looking for all my embarrassing secrets, aren't you? I was in middle school, and I thought that I had come up with some brilliant new way of understanding dimensions past the 4^th. I was lying on my bed imagining that I was on some talk show where they kept telling me how brilliant I was for coming up with this while only in middle school.
8. What tv show could you watch over and over? As in rewatch or just keep watching if the series continued to air forever? Honestly I'm not sure I have an answer to either. As a kid I watched Lois and Clark and loved it so much. I watched the whole series again recently and still really enjoyed it, but I don't think I could just keep rewatching it. White Collar is one of my favorites now, but I don't know that it will always be. I'm getting more and more into Dr. Who, so maybe that. Hard to say though.
9. What one part of modern living could you not live without? Plumbing and sanitation. I'm a germaphobe.
10. What one part of modern living would you love to live without? Unhealthy food additives. There's so much in our food that we aren't even aware of. And I realize that going back to "pure" food would change our entire way of life, but if there was some way to have both...
11. What book or movie are you most looking forward to in 2013? The books I was looking forward to are all out already! Days of Blood and Starlight, The Archived and Scarlet are all recent releases that I really looked forward to and thoroughly enjoyed. (I'm in the middle of Scarlet right now as it just came out yesterday.)
    As for movies, I'm very excited about the new Star Trek. Really really looking forward to that.

And that's it! I don't think I'll tag anyone, but if you'd like to do the meme, please go ahead! Paul had some really great questions, so go ahead and use those.

All the best to you all.

Movie Analysis: Unstoppable

Last week my husband and I watched Unstoppable for our weekly movie night. Have you seen it? If you haven't, the main idea is that a runaway train carrying hazardous cargo is heading full-speed for a major city. If it is not stopped before it reaches the city, a sharp turn in the track at the city limits will cause it to derail and release said hazardous cargo and kill lots of people. Big stakes.

Now I'm not going to say that it was the very best movie I've ever seen, but this movie did one thing really really well:

It created tension.

For example, in the very beginning of the movie we see a crowd of little children visiting the train yard on a field trip. These children have one obvious purpose—to be put in danger so that we're on the edge of our seats waiting to see if they'll be okay. Looking ahead I thought, “Well, there you have it! The final showdown will be train vs. tots, and the main characters will have to come in and save the kids. Ho hum.”

Ten minutes later that very showdown happened (minus the main characters), and I realized maybe my prediction had been a bit premature. That dangerous scenario I'd been envisioning was only the first tense moment in a string of ever-increasing conflicts. I'd have only a moment of relief after each near-disaster before being presented with the next impending catastrophe.

This movie kept me hooked.

And that tension came down to a few major components:

-great pacing

-characters who had been given enough history for me to care whether they lived or died

-build-up to higher and higher stakes with increasing difficulty of resolution

As far as action movies go, this is a great one for studying how to keep an audience riveted.

If you've seen it, what did you think? Do you agree? And if you haven't seen it, what movies keep you on the edge of your seat?

The Joker

Last night I finally saw The Dark Knight for the first time. I guess I'm a little bit (way) behind on that. If it so happens that I'm not actually the last person alive to see it, anyone who hasn't should stop reading because there may be some spoilers ahead.

As someone mentioned today in discussing The Dark Knight, the movie really wasn't about Batman but about the Joker. He was the star of the show. And that got me thinking, what makes the Joker work in this movie? And there were two pieces that immediately came to mind:

The Acting. The one thing I'd heard over and over before watching the movie was how stellar Heath Ledger's acting was, and everyone was right about that. The way he moved, the way he talked, his presence... all spot on. The portrayal of the Joker was the biggest part of what made him such a spectacular villain.

But without good writing the acting could have only gone so far...

Consistency vs. Inconsistency. For me this is the heart of character. The Joker remained consistent in ways that mattered. His outlook on life never wavered. He worked through complex plans in order to create chaos. He was unhinged but logical. He was always perfectly balanced between methodical and spontaneous. Those character traits never changed.

And yet he was also inconsistent in the right ways. Specifically: he lied. He told different stories about his past. He manipulated people by telling them whatever was necessary to make them do as he wished. The inconsistency between what he said and what was real drove many of the scenes in the movie.

So I think the writers did a fantastic job showing so many complex sides to this one character.

One thing I did wish... There was one part of the movie that I would have liked to have seen happen differently. All the way through the majority of the movie the plot had never hesitated to “go there” into dark, dangerous conflict. Important characters died. The Joker manipulated Batman into saving one character instead of another. So I was expecting even more grit right at the end.

In this particular scene, the Joker has placed explosives on two ferries, one containing a group of prisoners, the other a group of ordinary civilians (including children). Each group has the trigger for the explosives on the other ferry. If neither group pulls the trigger on the other by a certain time, both will go off. Both groups end up waiting, neither killing the other, and Batman stops the Joker before he can detonate the explosives.

I found that outcome a little unbelievable. I kept expecting the civilian group to pull the trigger on the others. (Surely one of the parents would do that to save his or her child.) And I thought that, in keeping with the Joker's nature, he had lied and actually given each group the trigger for their own boat. I was almost sure the civilian ferry would pull the trigger and unintentionally kill themselves.

That's not how the story turned out, and probably for several good reasons. I still thought the Joker was very well-crafted and the highlight of the movie.

What stands out about the Joker for you?

Lessons from Groundhog Day

So Groundhog Day is long past and spring is (kind of) here now, BUT... as anyone who has a cat probably knows, sometimes the little rats keep you up for an hour in the middle of the night. The one upside is that occasionally while lying awake and wondering how you'll ever get back to sleep, you get a random idea for a blog post.

Or is that just me?

So the other night after turning on all the lights to clean up the little terror's mess (and really, why does she think she can inhale her food and then tear around the house without getting sick?) I suddenly recalled—for no apparent reason—the movie Groundhog Day. And, in what seemed like an obvious sequence of thoughts at the time, I began to realize the ways in which the plot is a little like writing.

If there aren't any consequences, you're free to experiment

In the movie, Bill Murray's character Phil lives the same day over and over and over. Once Phil gets over being completely unnerved by this development, he realizes that he can do whatever he wants. Some of the most entertaining moments of the movie are while he's doing completely outrageous things because there are no permanent consequences.

The same thing is true for us when writing first drafts. Now I've heard that in the time of type-writers, this wasn't so much the case. But I'm firmly part of the computer generation, and there's nothing to stop me from typing as many words that will never be used as I please. A new blank page is only a click away.

So don't be afraid to try something new! Experiment with a new voice, a risky plot line or a troublesome character. At best you'll add something exciting to your work; at worst you'll have practiced something different.

A string of facts do not make a character

Eventually Phil comes to realize that what he really wants is Andie MacDowell's character Rita. So he sets about memorizing every single fact about her that he possibly can. Then with each repeated day he comes closer and closer to winning her over by pretending to be everything she's looking for. But the plan never works. Why? Because Rita isn't just a long string of memorized facts. Really knowing her doesn't mean knowing a list of things about her.

We can run into the same problem with our characters. Sometimes we might have the temptation to jot down a bunch of character traits and “favorites” (favorite color, favorite food, favorite flower) and think they fully describe a character. But in order to understand our characters more fully we need to dive deep into their needs, their desires and the mindsets that inform the ways they see the world.

Revise, revise, revise

Finally Phil discovers that his greatest personal need is to make Groundhog Day the very best day that he is capable of making it. But he doesn't succeed right away! Perfecting that one day is a loooooong process. Even once he has the outline of the day right, he still has to refine the details.

And writing is the same way for us. First drafts aren't perfect. We can only achieve our best work with focused editing.

But if Phil could do it, so can we! And maybe that's the biggest lesson from the movie: if a stuck-in-a-rut weatherman can have one perfect day, what might we accomplish?