Non-Fiction – The Company They Keep

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


by Diana Pavlac Glyer

Glyer’s book deals with the nature of interaction in creative groups, as seen in the Inklings. If you thought you knew everything there was to know about the Inklings, this book will change your mind on that. There’s still more to be discovered about how they interacted. Glyer’s style is brisk, clear and engaging.

Diana Pavlac Glyer

Diana Pavlac Glyer

But beyond that, her insights into the Inklings are exceptional. I found myself considering my own interaction within creative circles as I read her analysis of the interactions of the Inklings, and based on my own experience, I completely agree with her conclusions. But she also relies on academic studies of social interactions to back up her analysis. All things considered, this is perhaps the best book on the Inklings I’ve read to date.

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Writing Books – Save the Cat!

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


by Blake Snyder

There’s nothing like a good title to catch your attention. In fact, that’s one of the first points Blake Snyder makes in Save the Cat! If you’re a writer who thinks “The right title will come to me eventually,” you need to at least read what Snyder has to say. Trust me, I’ve been right there with you. But the insights that Snyder unfolds as he goes along will help you focus in on the essentials of your story. What he conveys certainly works for screenwriting, but it also applies to other forms of storytelling.

Blake Snyder

Blake Snyder

His prose is direct and engaging. It’s like sitting down with an upbeat, cheer-leading mentor. The delight Snyder takes in doing his own storytelling gets transmitted to any reader of this book. Beyond all the helpful pointers he presents, this book reminds us all that storytelling is supposed to be fun for the storyteller.

Even though I have plenty of practice in writing, I’ve found that what Snyder has to say has been helpful to me when I’ve been a little stuck on a problem in a particular project. The enthusiasm that underlies his advice encourages me to believe that there is a solution to whatever problem I’m dealing with.

I’ve recommended this book to writers who need some guidence in getting their stories organized, or who are trying to figure out how to pitch their stories.

Since this book came out, I have encountered those who dislike Snyder’s seemingly facile handling of structure issues, or the coy-cuteness of the tags he gives for story beats. And of course, there are readers and followers of the book who treat it like gospel. But Snyder himself, would have pointed out that the book is a method for looking at your story structure, not an iron-cast blueprint. He would have laughed and agreed with those who think the story beat tags are cute/coy. But the point about them is that they are memorable, which is what makes them useful. As for that concern about those who treat the book as gospel, he would have said that the important thing is whether or not the writer tells a good story. Because above all, helping others tell good stories was what was important to him.

This is the book I recommend to those who are beginning to get serious about being writers. I certainly do not discourage them for reading the other books on story structure, the ones that have a longer history on bookstore shelves. But if you start out with Snyder, you will always remember his enthusiasm about the act of telling a story – which is a valuable gift to any aspiring writer.

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Writing Books – The Hollywood Standard

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


by Chris Riley

There are plenty of books available that tell you about the importance of sticking to the standard formatting of screenplays. The screenwriting programs available will automatically format your script to proper margins and placement of dialogue. So, what do you need this book for?

Christopher Riley

Christopher Riley

Well, there are some things that the computer programs won’t tell you. They won’t tell you why a certain order of elements in a slugline is preferable. They won’t tell you why it is not a good idea to think you can fool Studio Readers by changing font size. But Chris Riley does. Element by element, he explains why the Hollywood Standard format for scripts developed. Beginning with the use of Courier 12. By fortuitous chance, filmmakers discovered that using that font and size made for a very helpful equivalence of one page to approximately one minute of screen time. Perhaps the most useful discovery for the filmmaking process ever. But Riley explains the production value of ordering bits of information in the script. And when you think about it, it even makes good sense for the reading of a script. Unlike prose, where you might want to hold back pieces of information about the environment for dramatic effect in the storytelling, when we’re talking about visual images, it doesn’t work that way.

The book is completely thorough, element by element, punctuation, ordering of information. Everything you need to know to make your script the cleanest, most shootable thing from the first time you print it out. It is now in its second edition, which should give you some idea of how valuable and useful this can be on your shelf.

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Writing Books – Good Scripts, Bad Scripts

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


by Tom Pope

Pope makes the point early in his book that you can learn as much from a bad film as from a good one. If you know what to look for, that is. This book proves the point: the chapters are worth re-reading from time to time.

Tom Pope

Tom Pope

The strength of the book is that Pope pin-points why a film does or does not work, particularly in the realm of structure. One of my favorite chapters is the analysis of Singing in the Rain, giving the history of how a story was built around a list of songs. But the analyses of the failures of Cutthroat Island and Falling in Love also serve as warnings against running into storytelling with too little preparation and insight.

The book is a very useful refresher on important aspects of storytelling, from the necessity of keeping a focused story spine (the failure of The Abyss) to the need for interesting characters to connect to (the problem with Falling in Love). Although the analytic skills Pope brings to the task are sharp, he also has a very accessible prose style that engages the reader in his discussions

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Writing Books – Understanding Comics

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


by Scott McCloud

Whenever I encounter someone who says they want to get into writing for comics, the first thing I ask is whether or not they’ve read Understanding Comics. Because if they have not, there isn’t much point in directing them toward the few books about comic book scripting. They need to read this book to get a grasp of the possibilities of graphic storytelling.

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud

In this book, McCloud unfolds the nature of graphic storytelling. The history of it, from painting pictures on cave walls up to the modern technologies of image capture. But beyond that, he explores the ways this medium can play with time and space, internal and external worlds, the combinations of words and images that neither prose nor film can successfully replicate. It is a medium of great power, and is, unfortunately, greatly misunderstood (mostly by being dismissed as “kid stuff”).

McCloud explores the way readers encounter the information (visual and verbal) in panels and on the page. He describes how the comic book page and the reader interact (for this medium also provokes an active engagement from the reader). And all this deep and meaty material is presented in the medium being described: definitely a case where the medium is the message. It might seem like a novelty or a gimmick, but the reality is that there is no other way he could accurately inform his reader of the significance of his subject. Until you see his explanation of how time functions within a comic book panel, you will not grasp it.

No matter how much you read comic books, “just” reading them will not give you the knowledge you would need to be an effective creator of them. Many talented writers have worked their way to knowing the elements McCloud teaches on these pages. But no one has presented that knowledge as effectively as this. So, if you want to try your hand at writing in this medium, the matter of sequential graphic storytelling, study this book first.

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Writing Books – Making Comics

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


by Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud, creator of Zot!, produced an important groud-breaking book some years ago, entitled Understanding Comics. That book could serve as the textbook for the first semester in a course on creating comics (be it daily strips, monthly books, or graphic novels). This book would be the textbook for the second semester – where you are taken into greater detail the crucial matters for creating an effective piece of sequential art/storytelling.

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud

Although McCloud is himself primarily an artist, and much of Making Comics focuses on the visual aspect of the medium, this book should be studied by writers as well. The more the comic book writer understands the considerations an artist brings to the collaboration, the better the writer will construct the story to serve those considerations. Writers often focus on the story in their head, seeing it rather like a movie, where the scenes are in constant motion.

But artists have to capture a specific moment. Or capture an image that looks like a specific moment, but really implies the forward motion of time within its frame. (For a better understanding of that subtlety, do read Understanding Comics.) The size of the panel frame, the placement of that frame, whether or not to have the contents of the panel break out of the frame – these are all considerations the artist might be dealing with, but which might never cross the brainpan of the writer. And yet, if writers were much more conscious of the considerations of the artist, and the problems the artist has to address, they would probably deliver scripts that are tighter, and more inspiring to the artist who has to render them.

Certainly this book is a must for the aspiring comic book artist. But I also think it is necessary for the comic book writer.

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Movies – Hitch

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


starring Will Smith, Eva Mendes and Kevin James
directed by Andy Tennant, written by Kevin Bisch

Now, I’m a fan of Will Smith’s. He’s engaging and open, and brings a joi de vivre to his work. Hitch shows off these charms delightfully. Smith pays the title “Hitch”, a date doctor who coaches guys on how not to overwhelm the girls of their dreams, so that the relationships can progress to deeper levels. Of course, he’s been so badly burned in his past, he’s not very good at getting to his own deeper levels. Given that, when he’s dropped into the circumstances of coaching an accountant on how to win a high-profile heiress, he’s not prepared to find himself falling for a major gossip columnist.

Will Smith and Eva Mendes in "Hitch"

Will Smith and Eva Mendes in “Hitch”

It’s a perfectly tangled situation, but the real charm of this movie is that all the characters (well, except for an incidental jerk crucial to the plot, played by the always excellent Jeffrey Donovan) are appealing. We’re not watching a story of people overcoming unappealing flaws, we watching nice people overcome misunderstandings and their own defenses.

The extras on the DVD are fun. In the interviews, there is also the information that Smith insisted that the script be reviewed by a psychologist. That’s an interesting tid-bit, and may indicate one of the factors that makes for the film’s charm: time and energy was spent on getting the characters “just right”. In an age when too many films are rushed before cameras without polishing, the craftsmanship here shines.

Smith also wins points with me by not trying to up-stage Kevin James. James, a funny man in his own right, is very sweet as the unlikely accountant Romeo. The scenes with these two guys together are very funny and human. The different styles mesh, and they work together very well indeed.

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Movies – Galaxy Quest

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman; directed by Dean Parisot; story by David Howard, screenplay by David Howard and Robert Gordon

For anyone who loves television science fiction shows, but especially those who love the original Star Trek, Galaxy Quest is a complete delightful romp. The script presents an observant yet affectionate portrait of fan phenomena, from the young geeks fans (born after the original show as off the air) to the effect on the actors.

That may sound deep for a comedy that speculates on “what if aliens thought the broadcasts of a corny science fiction show were historical records?” That proposition sets the story rolling. And along the way, we’re given a rather substantial story about the nature of leadership, of heroism. It touches on how we can acquire those qualities we have only been pretending to have. And above all, it shows us the power of inspiration and the need for heroic models.

Cast of "Galaxy Quest"

Cast of “Galaxy Quest”

This is currently one of my favorite “feel good movies”. It cheers me up.

The cast is outstanding. Alan Rickman obviously has fun playing the sour, classically trained actor stuck with a nonsensical tag-line — well, nonsensical until he is given real cause to recite it. Sigourney Weaver, known for playing many smart characters, flounces along as the air-head actress who has a truly empathic heart. But the most exceptional performance, in my book, belongs to Tim Allen, who plays the Shatner parody without making a cartoon of it: instead, his blow-hard actor visably learns that playing a hero and leader doesn’t make you one, at least not until you accept the responsibility of the job.

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Movies – Battlefield: Earth

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


starring John Travolta, Barry Pepper, Forest Whitaker; directed by Roger Christian; from the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, screenplay by Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro

I went to see this opening night in the theaters, in order that my friends would have someone who actually had seen it, to give them a first hand report on it. Trust me, it is riddled with problems.

Forest Whitaker & John Travolta in "Battlefield: Earth"

Forest Whitaker & John Travolta in “Battlefield: Earth”

I had to wonder at the production. Just on a visual level, the quality of special effects and make-up and costuming were poor, worse even than a 1960s science fiction show. The aliens, who are supposedly eight feet tall, are unconvincing. Their size is conveyed by putting everyone of them on high platform shoes and an outrageously lofty wig. The result of this is that their faces are too small for their apparent size. When I saw this in the theater, The Green Mile had been previously released. In that film, the character of John Coffee was supposedly a similar giant. Yet his excess size was successfully conveyed by a combination of CGI effects and staging tricks. So I wondered why Battlefield Earth’s designers chose such a sorry route. There were other problems in the visual presentation of the aliens, but I’ll stop with a reference to their hands. Supposedly their fingers were over-long. The production gave the actors rubbery gloves with long fingers, the fakery of which is easily spotted in the way the “fingertips” quiver whenever the characters move their hands.

We will quickly pass over such plot inanities as how people who, for most of the film, are illiterate and yet successfully manage to teach themselves how to fly complicated 20th century fighter jets. Or that fighter jets that have been sitting around (we are told) for a thousand years, manage to be perfectly functional (let alone be still gassed up). And as another friend (Erik Burnham) pointed out, after all the centuries the aliens have been removing the gold from Earth, they still managed to miss the vault at Fort Knox?

One of the most irritating film choices was the editor’s decision to use a wipe transition, wherein the wipe began from the center of the screen and swept to the sides. This was used regardless of what the final image of a scene was. It became absurd when the final scene image was someone’s face: there’s nothing like having a crack cut through the face of the main character and then having it all be “swept away.”

I’m sure we are all aware of the forces behind the film, which caused it to be made. What I do not understand is how the filmmakers seemed to have totally chucked any sense of craftsmanship out the window.

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Television Series Sets – Farscape

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Sarah


starring Ben Browder, Claudia Black

I admit that I did not hop on board Farscape at the beginning of its run. I had followed Babylon 5 for its entire run, and then been disappointed by the way Crusade was handled. So I wasn’t quite ready to follow another space opera, especially one that was as continuity-heavy as Farscape seemed to be. It looked great and I am always inclined to trust the Henson Company when it comes to creature creation. But I wasn’t ready to deal with it.

But then, just before the beginning of Season 3, I caught a rerun of the Season 2 finale.

Cast of Farscape

Cast of Farscape

I was very impressed. Not just with the look of Farscape. The writing and acting were both excellent. In spite of the fact that I actually knew very little about the established backstory, I had no problem following that episode. The reasons for that, which I’ll go into in a minute, are the consistent qualities of the series throughout its run. As I began to get into the series, I was seeing it piecemeal at first. Only later in Season 3 did I get completely plugged in.

The show has a very good conceptual presentation. The “look” is distinctive. The mix of make-up and puppetry to create the various alien races is far more successful than the “give them a weird forehead” attitude of later Star Trek series. In particular, Pilot is a completely believable creature.

The writing is sharp and full of life. The writing is crucial for creating the ability to reference backstory “incidentally” for each episode plot, making it possible to view almost any episode out of context and still be able to follow the events of that episode. The writing presented essentials by way of character interactions and reactions. Because, in the end, what the audience needs is not necessarily the history, but rather the significance to the characters.

Which leads to the last element that makes this show shine: the cast. Always, the cast delivers the emotional reality of the characters. The clarity of the performances succeeds in conveying all the crucial information about backstory which the writing might leave out. The nature of the relationships, down to the subtlest variations in how the relationships may be at any particular moment, always comes through.

Like any series, there are some episodes that are less sterling than the standard. But over all, Farscape is a very engaging, thought provoking science fiction series. It has a moral compass and advocates love and compassion, even when the circumstances are difficult and painful. And it does all this without preaching. Instead, it makes you feel it. And that’s entertainment.

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