Home.

I'm home for a few days this holiday season, and glad about it. I was home a few months ago to see my cousin off to LA, but it feels like much longer since I've visited for some reason. It's good to be back.

My dogs, who exist as the king and queen of this household, always pretend to be completely starved of attention when I wander home. I'll play with them, they'll pass out in exhaustion, then wake up thirty minutes later to start the process again. They consider a simple game of fetch to be the ultimate holiday present... the only problem being they'll have forgotten about it in an hour. Such is doggy life.

I hope to finish the Magic In Dogtown edits while here, and start The Next Thing. Research for the next project is going surprisingly, surprisingly well... when usually research always runs afoul for me. But more on that later.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

Congratulations Thomas!

I just discovered that one of my friends from college got himself published! You can buy his book of short stories online here, from Amazon.

Thomas is a great guy. We lived on the same floor at a very large dormitory in college, and sometimes he would come out and read us pieces of his writing. Knowing how intelligent and talented he is, you can bet your ass I'll be ordering this book.

So congratulations, Thomas! I'll read this as soon as possible, and I hope this will lead to many more of your books being published!

VILLAINS

I found this utterly fantastic comic linked off of writer John August's twitter feed, which explores villain motivations. Read the comic here: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0763.html

John August has actually written a lot about "bad guys" and how to write them well. I highly recommend reading them if you're at all interested in writing a good villain or just find them fascinating in general. Here's a link to one of his entries on antagonists: http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/every-villain-is-a-hero

I haven't written a purely evil villain in quite awhile. Most of my antagonists are either simply doing their best to survive any way they can, are attempting to overcome a major obstacle or trauma that is blocking their way, or are just trying to live with their fundamental desires.

Someone had asked me about bad guys on a previous project of mine, and what they were like. I responded with: "There are none. No traditional ones, anyway."

But man, sometimes I have the simple desire of writing a true villain who simply embraces anarchy at its most chaotic. It can be a blast. As a reader or audience member, I usually like to root for the villains. If anything, because when they're featured in stories, there scenes have no fat in them. They really move the plot along. Plus it's easy to tell that actors have a grand time in performing the roles. Even the Academy likes a great villain.

An upcoming story of mine will have an antagonist who is a serial killer. A rather gruesome one, too, so I've been thinking about "bad guys" for the past few weeks, and how to make them fresh and engaging.

Who are your favorite villains? What bad guy scared you as a kid? Which antagonist truly challenged the main character in the story? What can we learn from these dark characters? Would Batman have been as popular a franchise without the Joker? What made Scar from The Lion King so different from other Disney villains? What made Tim Roth's character in Rob Roy such a memorable and sinister villain?

Something to think about.

The "Well... Crap" Moment

*Spoiler Alert Regarding The Novel What Dreams May Come*

I'm currently reading through What Dreams May Come by the legendary Richard Matheson. At first, I worried about the many pages of exposition used to introduce the afterlife. Then, catching me off guard, Matheson did something very rare:

He forced a tough decision upon his protagonist.

That may not seem so rare at first, but it is when you think about it for a bit. Most of the choices we're presented with in stories may appear tough at first glance, but more often than not, the right decision is obvious. Of course, the protagonist might have to slay a dragon or two in order to rescue his/her beloved, but it's apparent from the onset that this would be the good and right thing to do.

Real life choices, at least in my experience, are rarely so obvious. Many of the difficult decisions to be made are of the "fucked if you do and fucked if you don't" variety, where even inaction could have disastrous consequences. Most of the time we have to just pick one and hope for the best. Think of how many times you've read a story where that happens, or have watched it on TV or a movie. I'd wager that you'd have difficulty remembering enough instances to even count on one hand.

That, to me, is why actual tough choices in fiction -- the "Well... crap" Moment -- are very, very infrequent.

In What Dreams May Come, the main character dies in a horrible accident. Despite entering the afterlife and all the miraculous beauty it has to offer, he can't help but worry about his wife he left on Earth. The other members of the deceased tell him not to be bothered, as she'll join him soon enough, but they are all shocked to learn that, in her infinite grief of her husband's departure, she decided to take matters into her own hands and end her own life.

At this moment the choice comes: does the protagonist let his loved one endure close to a quarter century of Hell -- or the novel's version of Hell, anyway --, or attempt a one in a trillion chance of finding her and risk losing both of their souls forever.

I dunno. To me, at least, that is a pretty shitty choice to be presented with. In the first option, she's guaranteed (most likely) to rejoin her husband in heaven, but at the expense of enduring unimaginable torment for years upon years. In the second option, he can make the brazen and most-likely-to-fail attempt to reach her, at the risk of royally fucking them both over for all eternity.

What would you do, in the main character's position? Would you let someone you loved more than anything else endure hell for close to twenty five years, or make a worse-than-the-lottery chance at rescuing him/her, at the risk of damning you both forever?

See, that is what I think writers should strive for more often. Fucked-if-you-do-or-don't decisions force the readers/audience into the perspective of the characters, and allow more opportunity for empathy. The television series "The Shield" was spectacular with this during the final season, which allowed the audience to share identify with a less-than-savory character that they otherwise wouldn't want anything to do with.

So, strive for those decisions in your writing. Make it tough for your characters... and your readers. They'll thank you for it.

Flipping Out.

I would've simply posted this on my facebook page or other similar media-sharing page, but there is simply too much blargh-ness (there's really no other word that captures it) in these four minutes and fourteen seconds to safely do so.

Nope, it has nothing to do with writing. Well, one of the clips in the video does, but mainly it is pure "blargh". If only I could set this video as my alarm clock. If only.

Anyway, here it is.

This is interesting.

You know how after a movie wraps up and the credits scroll, for the "Written By" section, you usually see twelve or thirteen names listed? When I was a kid and saw this, I thought to myself, "Do they all just sit in a massive room and type it out together word by word?"

No. It's just that most movie scripts go through many, many, many re-writes before they end up on screen. If the filmmakers like the story but wish the dialogue had a little more snap to it, they'll hire a new writer that's known for witty dialogue to come in and work on it. If the story may benefit from a little more adrenaline, they'll hire a new writer who has a solid history of white-knuckle thrillers. And so on, and so on.

Very rarely do I hear about scripts that avoid that adventure, and go to appear on screen without having gone through rewrite after rewrite. However, there are currently two major movies out right now that, from what I've heard, were made from scripts that were for the most part left unchanged.

Those two movies are The Social Network and Hereafter. You've more than likely heard of them.

Here's a great interview on deadline.com with Peter Morgan, the screenwriter behind Hereafter, The Last King of Scotland, The Queen, and Frost/Nixon. He talks about the events that lead up to Hereafter being made, which even involved Steven Spielberg! Enjoy:

http://www.deadline.com/2010/10/oscar-qa-peter-morgan-talks-hereafter/

Simultaneous Submissions And Multiple Submissions... What's The Difference?

While submitting work to literary journals and magazines, it's always a good idea to read their guidelines and criteria. Every publication is different. Sometimes, though, you'll come across a few recurring terms.

"Simultaneous submissions" is one of them. Not to be confused with "multiple submissions."

When a magazine discourages "multiple submissions", that means that the editorial staff don't want you submitting all thirty of your short stories to them at once. Even if they accept multiple submissions, it's still not a good idea to bombard them like that. Be humane.

Simultaneous submissions, though, means something else entirely. If a journal requests "no simultaneous submissions," that means if you submit one story for a publication's consideration, you cannot submit it to any other publication until they decide upon the story's fate.

When starting out in this biz, a first compulsion might be to just formulate a list of attractive publications and send them all your stuff... all at once. This is a terrible, terrible idea, and a sure way to burn bridges. It's best to research each publication on an individual basis and formulate the appropriate strategy..