One big sandbox...

You know, the internet is an amazing thing.

Sure, you have to sift through a lot of chaff to find anything good, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.

See, there is so much crap that it actually sets the bar low enough to give folks the courage to put stuff out there. It gives them the gumption to try putting some of their work out there, knowing that even if it's not as great as the good stuff, there's at least something definitely worse out there.

This does, of course, lead to a lot of crap. A lot of crap. With posting things on the internet being free and all, there's no filtering system in place like there is in the publishing industry and so anything and everything is on there.

But there is stuff that is mediocre. It's not fantastic, it has flaws, but it has so much potential that you like it anyway. It gets a following. The creators get practice in their craft and we get free entertainment out of it. Fanfiction, abridged series, podcasts, music, original fiction, short films, animation, blogs, all of that. For everything worth watching/reading/listening to/etc., there are a hundred ones that really aren't. But those things are worth watching/reading/listening to/etc.

I've been scouting out the forums at a few writing sites lately and watching a lot of videos on YouTube and just plain been reveling in the sheer volume of brilliance that can be exhibited there, unhindered despite their flaws. Sure, some of these never would have made it past a publisher's desk, but not always because they are hopeless.

Every endeavor will be flawed. There is no way to improve without making mistakes. But it can be hard when you're all alone. The internet gives us a place to put it out, have a community, and improve among others without actually having to face someone.

Because the internet is anonymous for the most part. I, at least, have a neurosis about showing my work to people I actually know (aside from my siblings, oddly). The anonymity is soothing. I have managed to strike up friendships with folks over the internet and we've become close, but for some reason, that wall that is put up between me and IRL people never gets built up.

I think it's because of the way the internet works and is accepting of everything thrown at it (sometimes to the point of madness). So, despite the crazy, I love you, internet.

Plug time! What has the internet brought you that you love in your deepest heart of hearts that maybe wouldn't be published anywhere but the internet?

For me, it's vloggers. And bloggers. And abridged series. And TVTropes. Thank you, denizens of the internet, for TVTropes.

Feel the love...

So, today, I opened my e-mail. In it was a notification for a lovely response to my last post from the lovely Trisha. I read it, smiled, then did a double take because, at the bottom, in what I had initially taken to be some sort of signiature at the bottom of the e-mail, were the words: "You have an award here."

Not quite, seeing as how I wasn't grumpy to begin with and I didn't quite "LOL", but you get the basic idea. Plus, hedgehog! 


Indeed, I received an award for my versatile blogging! Which surprised me, since I consider this a Johnny One-Note blog about writing, but hey, I guess there are many parts to writing! Plus, my nerddom covers many fields. 


Anyway...

The rules of the award are: Share 7 things about yourself. Pass the award to 15 bloggers recently discovered. Notify the blogger recipients. Link to the blogger who gave the award.

Okay, here we go...

1. I have a strange phobia of mirrors. Not really of looking at myself in them or anything, but I'm sort of strangely paranoid about being watched out of my mirrors. Of course, with my history of favorite entertainment (Labyrinth, Phantom of the Opera, and many other books and movies) this is probably not too surprising. 
2. When I was little, like eight or so, I wanted to be an archeologist.Before that, I had wanted to be an artist, so for a little while, I reconciled those two by wanting to be an illustrator for archeology books. 
3. My first introduction to Batman was from a few episodes of the show in the 60's that my parents had taped at the end of a tape with a Disney Christmas special on it. I didn't even know it was on there until one night when I finished watching Lady and the Tramp and was sitting there waiting for the tape to run out (I don't know... I was a strange child). The first one was the episode with the lady magician robbing the bank and falling in love with Batman. "Suspended over a... Holy birthday cake!"
4. I've never drunk a cup of coffee in my life (unless you count one iced coffee slurpee-type thing once because it was free and I didn't want to be rude) and I don't plan to. First, I'm super-caffeine-sensitive and I get shaky after I drink just a soda, and second, I don't like the taste at all.
5. I love the idea of cufflinks for some reason and was always jealous of guys for getting to wear them (I blame the Disney version of Peter Pan, what with how Mr. Darling was looking for his cufflinks in the beginning). 
6. I used to be terrified of 80's fantasy movies and the effects therein. Now, they are some of my favorite movies and effects.
7. I've never read an unabridged version of any Dickens and only one abridged version of Oliver Twist.

And as for who I would bestow this award upon...

1. Thinking Caps on Chaps by Jon
2. Holy Nerd-Blog Batman! by CaligulaBob
3. Aimée "The Great" by Aimée "The Great"
4. The Thought Process by A.L.Maddix
5. Don't Shake the Flask by syaffolee
6. Breaking Into My Shell... by Nicole
7. The Ink Ribbon Writer by Suzanne
8. 8-Bit Words by Liz Pezzuto
9. Working Title by Erin Millar
10. leo fair by Leo Fair
11. At the Iron Hill by Conrad Rice
12. Compulsive Creativity by theinsomniakid
13. Falen Formulates Fiction by Sarah Ahiers
14. Musings of a Procrastinating Author by Mildred
15. Enthusiasm Shoppe by Pumpkinhead

And there you have it. 

Music of the write...

One thing that film gets that prose doesn't: music. And I am super-jealous of it.

For real, I was listening to some of the soundtracks to my most favorite movies/shows/games recently and was literally just plain aching. I mean, music manages to bring so much into a story, playing with your emotions almost subconsciously, connecting you to characters and situations more quickly and effectively than just showing them would have. Music can stick with you long after a story fades, or be the glue that makes a story stick.

For instance, years ago, I watched the movie Escaflowne: 

(Yeah, don't believe the cover... it's not good. The show it's based on, however? Utterly fantastic.)

It's not that great of a movie. I mean, it's okay (it is really, really pretty to watch), but not the greatest (the English dub really ruined it for me too...). It was one of my first encounters with anime and while the story didn't impress me all that much, the music. Oh gosh, the music.

In particular, there was one song, sung by a minor character a few times through the course of the movie.

This. song. haunted. me. 

I mean, for years. 

(Related: Yoko Kanno is a genius among mortals. For real, check out her music - soundtracks especially.)

It was what actually made me watch the series years later when I found it on TVTropes, the sheer nostalgia of that one song. 

I love this song so much that I actually bought the soundtrack, it being the second CD I ever really bought and the second soundtrack I purchased (the first CD and soundtrack being the Labyrinth soundtrack). 

This song stuck with me much, much longer than the movie itself did. Or rather, the movie stuck with me because of that song. 

Music is important to writers, regardless of medium or genre. I listen to music all the time when writing (mostly my ever-growing collection of soundtracks for their virtue of having no words that I could sing along to and thus write down). It taps into some deep, visceral part of us and humankind at large. 

It can make something seem epic (really, try doing anything to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack without feeling just a tiny bit awesome) or subtle or emotional or flippant with just a few notes. It can build or deflate tension. 

It can also make or break a scene, as evidenced by those scenes/movies when the soundtrack is way too over-the-top for what's going on, or too underscored. But even then, the power of the music is demonstrated in the way that it does make or break the scene. 

It makes me jealous. It really does. The closest we writers get is collections of music that we pick out for our novels (there are many folks who do this, especially around NaNo - making lists of music that relate to or inspire their story) or original music like what Maggie Stiefvater did for some of her books. But regardless, we lose that scene-by-scene synch that films get. Even if a reader listens to the music while reading the story, they lose the moment-by-moment impact and timing, since everyone reads at a different rate.

The closest we could get, I suppose, is an audio book with music, similar to some of Brian Jacques' Redwall books, where the song lyrics he writes are actually sung. But instead, there would be actual music throughout the whole thing, in the background. Which now I want to do. Like, start a company to do. The difficulty would be original music for even a fraction of what is often a several-hour epic read.

It'll show you your dreams...

In storytelling, presentation is everything. Regardless of how cool an idea for a character/book/movie/graphic novel/speech/blog entry (*cough*) is, it will not work if it is not presented well.

The plague of many an aspiring writer seeking publication is an awful or lackluster cover letter. Many a movie has been butchered by bad acting or failed special effects. There are plenty of novels in the world with blindingly original ideas that are hampered by blindingly horrible writing.

Even a mediocre or unoriginal story can benefit from good presentation. How many "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" movies have been made, yet with the right actors and setting, they feel new and fresh, despite having been nearly the same story since the beginning of time.

However, poor presentation can cause a brilliant idea to be discredited, a mediocre idea to become just plain bad and an already bad idea to become laughable.

An example of  presentation making or breaking an idea is the graphic novel series Return to Labyrinth, an illustrated sequel to the cult classic Jim Henson film Labyrinth. If you haven't seen Labyrinth, I highly recommend it "(It's one of my favorite films of all time, for all of it's quirks, telling a rather deep story of growing up in more ways than one), but the premise is fairly simple: A daydreaming girl named Sarah (Jennifer Connely) wishes her baby brother Toby away in a fit of teenage angst. However, Jareth the Goblin King (David Bowie) takes the wish quite seriously and takes Toby to the Goblin City. Sarah has thirteen hours to solve the Labyrinth, but the Goblin King is going to do anything he can to stop her.

Spoilers ensue a bit from here on in.

The movies ends in a fairly happy way conventionally, with Sarah defeating the Labyrinth and reclaiming her little brother. For the hordes of Sarah/Jareth shippers out there, however, the ending is disappointingly ambiguous.

Cue the fanfiction. Many writers have put fingers to keyboard in desperate attempts to rectify the film's lack of any sort of overt romantic conclusion.

Then along came Return to Labyrinth. Playing on some hints in the movie and its accompanying novelization, "Return" focused more on Toby, now a teenager himself, getting dragged into the Labyrinth to be the new Goblin King due to some finagling on Jareth's part. Meanwhile, Jareth is trying to come to grips with his relationship with Sarah and a horrible decision he made about her.

It's no Watchmen as graphic novels go, but some of the ideas presented are kind of neat within the Labyrinth universe. The writing isn't stellar, but it's enough to keep me reading out of curiosity. I'd class it as at least a mediocre story. Nothing special about it, it's not puke your guts out horrible, and it's touted as the "official" sequel to the movie. (For the record, I no more consider this an "official sequel" than the slews of other "unofficial" sequels, many of which are better written. I have my own personal canon, thank you.)

What would make or break this piece and ultimately breaks it is the presentation. The art for the books is usually awful. It has its moments of legibility and even fairly good-looking-ness, but overall, it's just plain bad. Set this in contrast to the cover of the first volume.(And the artist doesn't seem to understand the whole concept of Jareth's gloves... *facepalm*) The covers are dropdead gorgeous, making the poor quality of the art within all the more inferior by comparison.

The presentation kills it. The idea could have limped by, maybe even been a big more well-recieved, had it only been drawn better. As is, the art just draws attention to itself and to the writing's weaknesses.

So all of these issues with the poor art and lackluster writing... and then comes the time it is taking to make the frickin' thing! I discovered this piece just a few months ago and waited rather impatiently for the third and fourth volumes at my library (since I didn't care to purchase them). Well, I read the third volume and in the author's note, I discovered that this thing has taken four years to get out. This is just three books out of a four book series and it takes them four years. The writing certainly couldn't have take that long and I have no experience with drawing regular sequential art, but seriously, a year and four months (if that time was divided up evenly) per book is a bit ridiculous.

Even as a casual reader with no vested interest beyond curiosity about a well-loved movie, this is incredibly frustrating. Maybe there are perfectly good reasons for the delay. But as a casual reader, it is very off-putting. Why be interested if it's going to take so long to get the last one out, the art is bad, and there are better fan works that update regularly otu there? Personally, I was effectively repulsed just by the time (and I'm willing to wait quite a bit for things).

Presentation: the "make it or break it" factor.